Approaches to the Fertility Transition in Victorian England

The secular decline of marital fertility which took place in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century England and Wales is considered by using a number of approaches. Among the theoretical approaches considered are those of transition models, and social diffusion. The former overemphasises the role of industrialization and urbanization; the latter is inappropriate when dealing with the development of a small-family ideal in Victorian society. Explanations of fertility decline using ecological and time-series analysis are considered. The registration districts of England and Wales provide the framework for analyses of spatial variations in marital fertility and its correlates in 1861, 1891 and 1911. A time-series analysis attempts to establish the sequential nature of social, economic and demographic changes during the sixty years preceding the First World War. The following points are emphasised in conclusion. The Victorian fertility transition was not directly related to the development of an urban-industrial society, the social diffusion of family ideals or the use of appliance methods of contraception. But its immediate cause was probably linked to the substantial increase in family planning literature available from the 1870s, and the challenge that this posed to the tradition of unlimited marital fertility. This critical change in social attitudes to family planning was facilitated both by developments in mass education and, ultimately by the decline of infant mortality.