The University of North Carolina Press

328 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 28 illus., 12 fig., 13 tables, appends., notes, index

Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia

Cloth

ISBN  978-0-8078-3322-3

Published: December 2009

Paper

ISBN  978-0-8078-5992-6

Published: December 2009

Revolutionary Conceptions

Women, Fertility, and Family Limitation in America, 1760-1820

By Susan E. Klepp

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In the Age of Revolution, how did American women conceive their lives and marital obligations? By examining the attitudes and behaviors surrounding the contentious issues of family, contraception, abortion, sexuality, beauty, and identity, Susan E. Klepp demonstrates that many women--rural and urban, free and enslaved--began to radically redefine motherhood. They asserted, or attempted to assert, control over their bodies, their marriages, and their daughters' opportunities.

Late-eighteenth-century American women were among the first in the world to disavow the continual childbearing and large families that had long been considered ideal. Liberty, equality, and heartfelt religion led to new conceptions of virtuous, rational womanhood and responsible parenthood. These changes can be seen in falling birthrates, in advice to friends and kin, in portraits, and in a gradual, even reluctant, shift in men's opinions. Revolutionary-era women redefined femininity, fertility, family, and their futures by limiting births. Women might not have won the vote in the new Republic, they might not have gained formal rights in other spheres, but, Klepp argues, there was a women's revolution nonetheless.

About the Author

Susan E. Klepp is professor of history and affiliated professor of women's studies and of African American studies at Temple University. She is author or coeditor of six books and editor of the Journal of the Early Republic.

Reviews

"Klepp's adept use of quantitative data and visual imagery makes the fertility transition real in cultural as well as demographic terms. We see the transformation in the representations of women's bodies and calculate the shift in numbers of births. Her knowledge of the evidence is unsurpassed, and she presents her finding with clarity and insight."
--Kathleen M. Brown, University of Pennsylvania

"Susan Klepps brilliant research reveals that an intimate American Revolution lurked under the familiar one, destabilizing old ways and quietly transforming American society in ways that few men understood. She challenges much that we thought we knew; many otherwise admirable books now feel outdated."
--Linda K. Kerber, University of Iowa

"Written by one of our most distinguished historians, this marvelous book analyzes the revolution by the women of Americas founding generations to assume greater control over their lives. This shift in consciousness and behavior transformed the new nation every bit as much as did the traditional political revolution."
--Billy G. Smith, Montana State University

"Specialists and students alike now have an excellent, strongly argued monograph on long-term fertility decline in the United States that highlights women's choices. While carefully delineating regional and racial variations in patterns of fertility, Klepp convincingly makes the case that women deliberately limited family size in the name of new ideals about personal autonomy and mutuality in marriage promoted by the American Revolution and evangelical Christianity."
--Toby L. Ditz, The Johns Hopkins University