Demography and Degeneration

Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain

Richard A. Soloway

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780807845547
  9780807818657
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469611198
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Richard Soloway offers a compelling and authoritative study of the relationship of the eugenics movement to the dramatic decline in the birthrate and family size in twentieth-century Britain. Working in a tradition of hereditarian determinism which held fast to the premise that “like tends to beget like,” eugenicists developed and promoted a theory of biosocial engineering through selective reproduction. Soloway shows that the appeal of eugenics to the middle and upper classes of British society was closely linked to recurring concerns about the relentless drop in fertility and the rapid spread of birth control practices from the 1870s to World War II.

Demography and Degeneration considers how differing scientific and pseudoscientific theories of biological inheritance became popularized and enmeshed in the prolonged, often contentious national debate about “race suicide” and “the dwindling family.” Demographic statistics demonstrated that birthrates were declining among the better-educated, most successful classes while they remained high for the poorest, least-educated portion of the population. For many people steeped in the ideas of social Darwinism, eugenicist theories made this decline all the more alarming: they feared that falling birthrates among the “better” classes signfied a racial decline and degeneration that might prevent Britain from successfully negotiating the myriad competive challenges facing the nation in the twentieth century.

Although the organized eugenics movement remained small and elitist throughout most of its history, this study demonstrates how pervasive eugenic assumptions were in the middle and upper reaches of British society, at least until World War II. It also traces the important role of eugenics in the emergence of the modern family planning movement and the formulation of population policies in the interwar years.

Index

• Abortion, 106
• Acland, Sir Arthur, 158
• Africa, 1
• Aims and Objects of the Eugenics Society, 231
• Allbutt, Henry, 100
• Allen, Grant, 122
• Ancient civilizations: decline of, 95. See also Greece; Rome
• Annals of Eugenics, 218, 219, 388 (n. 92)
• Anthropological Institute, 30
• Anthropometic laboratory, 31
• Anti-Semitism, 339;
  • in Nazi Germany, 301–3
• Anti-Suffrage Review, 134, 135, 136, 159. See also Women
• Aristocracy, 36, 74, 77;
  • fertility of, 16, 51, 75, 126
• Armstrong, H. E., 128
• Army Medical Services, 42
• Artificial insemination, 290. See also Eutelegenesis
• Asia: fertility in, 245
• Askwith, Lady, 273
• Asquith, Herbert Henry, 9
• Association of Infant Welfare Centres, 153
• Astor, Lady, 329
• Atkinson, Mabel, 129, 130
• Attlee, Clement, 327
• Australia, 61, 163, 188, 278
• Austria, 265; birthrate in, 233, 240

• Baby boom, xiii, xv, 241, 357, 358. See also Children
• Baker, John, 220, 228, 231;
  • and contraceptive research, 198, 221, 222, 223, 224;
  • critical of eugenics, 356. See also Volpar
• Balance of Births and Deaths, The, 234, 253
• Baldwin, Oliver, 281
• Baldwin, Stanley, 253
• Balfour, Arthur James, 2, 9, 35, 45, 46, 5...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Demography and Degeneration
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One The Turn of the Century
• Two Eugenics and the New Population Question
• Three Deterioration and Decline
• Four Class and the Religion of Race Culture
• Five Eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism
• Six Race-Motherhood
• Seven The Dysgenics of War
• Eight Eugenics and the Birth Control Movement, 1918–1930
• Nine Reform Eugenics, Population Research, and Family Planning, 1930–1939
• Ten Race Suicide Revisited: The Menace of Underpopulation
• Eleven Family Planning and the Fear of Population Decline
• Twelve Feminism and Family Allowances
• Thirteen World War II and the Population Question
• Fourteen From Baby Boom to Birth Dearth
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index