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64 ©FSRH J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2010: 36(2)

Goldman/Book review

BOOK REVIEW

Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility
and Family Limitations in America,
1760–1820. Susan E. Klepp. 2009. NC, USA:
The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN-
13: 978-0-8078-5992-6. Price: £53.95. 352 pages
(hardback)

This book has been published on behalf of the
College of William and Mary and the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation in the USA, both of
which coincidentally I came across this summer
while in Virginia. It is very clear that Americans
have a deep relationship with their colonial
heritage and take huge pride in authenticating and
recreating their origins, as anyone who has
visited Williamsburg will have witnessed.
Similarly, this book has been meticulously
researched from a wealth of sources and
challenges old assumptions on fertility and
family planning in colonial times. The author’s
central theory is that American women began to
reject the lifetime of childbearing and started to
limit births more than 100 years in advance of

Western Europe, with the exception of France; an
alternative ‘American revolution’ that was
invented and implemented by women
themselves.

This book is not easy bedtime reading
material and has numerous footnotes with
historical references. It relates to many diverse
ethnic, cultural and religious groups such as
Quakers, the Pennsylvania Dutch, rural and urban
populations. There are attractive illustrations of
women and family groups, often portrayed with
fruit and flowers as iconic props representing
‘female promise and procreation’. There is a
complex association throughout with the
demographics of enslaved women; I would have
been interested in a chapter specifically on their
lives and patterns of childbearing. Thomas
Jefferson, the third USA president, took up with a
slave, Sally Hemmings, after the death of his wife
in 1782. Modern DNA testing has suggested his
lineage continues in the current African-
American population although, as a consummate
politician, he denied any carnal relationship with

a slave at the time.
The birth control chapter states that most

historians conclude that contraception was not
significant in colonial America. The author
disputes this and found examples to the contrary,
but mainly referencing herbal remedies from
diaries, chemists and doctors’ notes. She found
little reference to sexual abstinence other than
with nursing mothers. Given the lack of effective
contraception from the modern perspective, it is
not exactly clear what underpins the
revolutionary limitation of family size.

In summary, if you are writing a PhD on
historical patterns of fertility in North America
this book will be a godsend. For the rest of us, it
may become a little dusty on the bookshelf but
was an interesting read over the Christmas break
nevertheless.

Reviewed by Ailsa Gebbie, FRCOG, FFSRH,
Consultant in Community Gynaecology, NHS
Lothian, UK

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