Fertility, infant mortality, and breast feeding in the seventeenth century

Abstract

A positive correlation between fertility and infant mortality is generally accepted under certain conditions. The investigation of population change in two parishes in south Oxfordshire during the Stuart period was carried out as part of a Ph.D. thesis. It became apparent that there was a clear link between the death of an infant and the reduction of the subsequent intergenesic interval. It also seemed clear that lactation had an important part to play in fertility and infant mortality. The infant feeding habits of the seventeenth century are difficult to establish. The diaries of many women do not include this evidence. A pattern was established that clearly indicated aristocratic and gentlewomen did not usually breast feed, whilst yeomen and husbandmen's wives did, when they could. The most recent medical evidence regarding the mechanisms of puerperal lactation was sought on both sides of the Atlantic, and has indicated the effectiveness of breast feeding in the control of fertility. Although this cannot have been understood in seventeenth-century England, it appears to have been a means of limiting the size of peasant families. Although the evidence for breast feeding is lacking, the very low infant mortality rate in the two parishes, approximately 113 per thousand live births, indicated that these compared favourably with certain aristocratic women during the seventeenth century who were placing their infants with wet nurses or weaning early on to meal pap. A great deal more evidence is needed to establish that infant feeding methods may be responsible for massive population change leading to industrialization, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. It is of course very important in the developing nations of today. © 1978, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.