Wise Parenthood . .
- London: A.C. Fifield, 1918
London: A.C. Fifield, 1918. First Edition. Very good -. 7 3/8” x 5 1/8”. Paper over boards. Pp. viii, 34. Very good minus: covers damp-stained, slightly warped and edge-worn; light foxing to front title label, prelims and a few pages' edge.
This is the scarce first printing of a work on the status of birth control in the early 20th century, written by a pioneering female expert and advocate, Marie Carmichael Stopes.
Born in 1880 in Scotland, Marie Carmichael Stopes has been referred to as “one of the grandmothers of the sexual revolution.” She earned a doctorate and became a lecturer in botany in 1904 (making her the first female faculty member at the University of Manchester), specializing in fossil plants and problems in coal mining. Her first marriage was unconsummated, and its annulment in 1916 led her to studies of sex, marriage, childbirth and their value in society. She founded the first birth control clinic in the United Kingdom and authored multiple scientific and literary works, such as Married Love (1918) and Our Ostriches, a play about working-class women being forced to procreate throughout their lives. Passionate, if problematic, Stopes advocated for suffrage and women's rights, but also supported eugenics among the lower classes. She died in 1958. Marie Stopes International, an NGO working on sexual and reproductive health worldwide, was established in 1976.
In this book, written as a follow-up to Married Love (and rife with excerpts from and urges to read that book), Stopes declared that “The question before us is not whether or no[t] birth control should be allowed. It is in daily use by the great majority of the more intelligent married people.” The problem was the “general dissatisfaction with most of the methods used” and the “widespread ignorance of satisfactory methods even on the part of medical practitioners.” “Numbers of people,” she argued, were “in urgent need of a better method . . . The following pages are written for them.”
Veering from the norm, well ahead of her time, the author opined that “Churchmen recommend (though I wonder if they practise) 'absolute continence.' Where the mated pair are young, normal, and in love, such advice is not only impracticable, it is detrimental. A rigid and enforced abstinence can be as destructive of health as incontinence.” She proffered a number of suggestions as to pregnancy prevention, some medically valid and many not, asserting that “The ideal method is not yet discovered, though I am following up a line of research at present on a method designed greatly to improve on those now available.” The book also held a page of glowing reviews for Married Love and a list of further reading.
A trailblazing, if contentious, effort by an early female birth control advocate. OCLC shows 24 holdings of this first edition, with only 11 in the United States.
This is the scarce first printing of a work on the status of birth control in the early 20th century, written by a pioneering female expert and advocate, Marie Carmichael Stopes.
Born in 1880 in Scotland, Marie Carmichael Stopes has been referred to as “one of the grandmothers of the sexual revolution.” She earned a doctorate and became a lecturer in botany in 1904 (making her the first female faculty member at the University of Manchester), specializing in fossil plants and problems in coal mining. Her first marriage was unconsummated, and its annulment in 1916 led her to studies of sex, marriage, childbirth and their value in society. She founded the first birth control clinic in the United Kingdom and authored multiple scientific and literary works, such as Married Love (1918) and Our Ostriches, a play about working-class women being forced to procreate throughout their lives. Passionate, if problematic, Stopes advocated for suffrage and women's rights, but also supported eugenics among the lower classes. She died in 1958. Marie Stopes International, an NGO working on sexual and reproductive health worldwide, was established in 1976.
In this book, written as a follow-up to Married Love (and rife with excerpts from and urges to read that book), Stopes declared that “The question before us is not whether or no[t] birth control should be allowed. It is in daily use by the great majority of the more intelligent married people.” The problem was the “general dissatisfaction with most of the methods used” and the “widespread ignorance of satisfactory methods even on the part of medical practitioners.” “Numbers of people,” she argued, were “in urgent need of a better method . . . The following pages are written for them.”
Veering from the norm, well ahead of her time, the author opined that “Churchmen recommend (though I wonder if they practise) 'absolute continence.' Where the mated pair are young, normal, and in love, such advice is not only impracticable, it is detrimental. A rigid and enforced abstinence can be as destructive of health as incontinence.” She proffered a number of suggestions as to pregnancy prevention, some medically valid and many not, asserting that “The ideal method is not yet discovered, though I am following up a line of research at present on a method designed greatly to improve on those now available.” The book also held a page of glowing reviews for Married Love and a list of further reading.
A trailblazing, if contentious, effort by an early female birth control advocate. OCLC shows 24 holdings of this first edition, with only 11 in the United States.
Details
Title
Wise Parenthood . .
Author
Stopes, Marie Carmichael
Condition
Very Good
Publisher
A.C. Fifield: London
Date
1918
Edition
First Edition