The Decline of Non-Marital Fertility in Europe, 1880-1940.

Between 1880 and 1940, to take approximate dates, illegitimate fertility rates in Europe dropped precipitously, falling in most countries by 50 percent or more. The rates used throughout this article relate extra-marital births to the number of unmarried women. Although there are interesting exceptions related to the existing census, the general picture is clear; a decline in illegitimate fertility commenced in most countries in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and was arrested in the 1920's and 1930's. Once it had begun in a country, the downward course was swift and uninterrupted, until non-marital fertility had been cut in half. The study of illegitimate fertility suggests the importance of interaction and communication in the diffusion of birth control. The behavior of unmarried and married women was modified, not as a result of a change in their respective sets of motivation, but as the result of obscure changes in the attitudes towards reproduction, and in the knowledge and acceptability of contraception and abortion. Married and un-married women shared these changes, and they adapted the new knowledge and the new techniques to their own private situations.