The Adoption of Fertility Control on Mykonos, 1879-1959: Stopping, Spacing or Both?

Abstract

This abstract examines the timing and means of the fertility transition on the Greek island of Mykonos in the period 1879 to 1959. By combining the results of family reconstitution with oral evidence, an unusual insight into the pathways of the fertility transition of this island population is offered. The paper concludes by outlining a model of the adoption of fertility control, a model which sees the transition from high to low fertility as a transition from spacing to stopping, and from innovation of methods to innovation of ideas.

On Postponement and Birth Intervals

“…It is not only in Pressat's dictionary and by Bongaarts (1992) that all contraceptive use by women who want more children is assumed, or even defined, to fall in the residual category of birth spacing. For example, Okun (1995) states that "spacing behaviour refers to deliberate fertility control that is independent of parity" and this definition is adopted by Hionidou (1998). In other words, all parity-specific birth control is limiting, all other birth control is spacing.…”

Australia’s Fertility Transition: A study of 19th-century Tasmania

“…Other demographers have argued that deliberate birth spacing-that is, intentionally lengthening the time between births early in marriageplayed an important role in the fertility decline (Anderton and Bean 1985;Bean et al 1990;Santow 1995;Szreter 1996;Hionidou 1998). Analyses of fertility in 19th-century Utah show that stopping behaviour was an important fertility control strategy during the fertility decline, but birth spacing was also used as a strategy to limit fertility (Anderton and Bean 1985;Bean et al 1990 Nowadays, as with the associated 'innovation/adaptation' debate, most scholars agree that both stopping and spacing behaviours played a part in the 19th-century fertility decline, but the extent to which these behaviours were responsible for the decline within a society is a matter for investigation (van Poppel et al 2012).…”

“…It is worth noting that Okun's analysis involves modelling stopping or spacing behaviour, but not a combination of both, as argued by Anderton and Bean (1985). Hionidou (1998) termed the interval between the first birth and the penultimate birth the 'overall' interval. In the Tasmanian marriage cohorts, the mean overall birth interval was inversely related to parity in every marriage cohort-for example, decreasing from 30.4 months for couples with three to four children to 22.9 months for couples with 11-16 children in the 1880 cohort (Table 7.9).…”

Worldwide fertility declines do not rely on stopping at ideal parities

“…Numerous studies of historical Europe have been interpreted to support this view (Knodel 1979(Knodel , 1987Hionidou 1998;Reher and Sanz-Gimeno 2007). However, in the last two decades, converging lines of evidence challenged the primacy of parity-specific stopping in driving down fertility.…”

“…As Van Bavel notes, quantitative demography has traditionally focused on parity-specific stopping in part due to the early development of analytical tools for assessing parity-specific stopping (Coale and Trussell 1974;David et al 1988;Van Bavel 2004b). However, in the last two decades, quantitative demographers have also developed a number of tools to demonstrate that fertility declines in a number of specific settings have involved a combination of both parity-specific stopping and increases in spacing and postponement (Anderton and Bean 1985;Knodel 1987;Feng et al 1995;Hionidou 1998;Szreter and Garrett 2000;Van Bavel 2004a; Timaeus and Moultrie 2008; Van Bavel and Kok 2010; Timaeus and Moultrie 2013).…”