new directions for the study of australia's fertility decline

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR THE STUDY OF AUSTRALIA'S FERTILITY DECLINEAuthor(s): Ann LarsonSource: Journal of the Australian Population Association, Vol. 14, No. 1 (May 1997), pp. 47-67Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41110441 .

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Vol.14, No.l, 1997 Journal of the Australian Population Association

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR THE STUDY OF AUSTRALIA'S FERTILITY DECLINE

Ann Larson Australian Centre for International and

Tropical Health and Nutrition (ACITHN) Indigenous Health Program

Edith Cavell Building, Royal Brisbane Hospital Herston Road QLD 4029

Most studies of Australia's historical fertility decline have emphased the similarities of the pace and composition of the decline with those of the United Kingdom, continental European countries, and other colonies settled by the British. Recent scholarship has questioned the useful- ness of focusing on aggregate data that give misleading impressions of homogeneity. Preferred methodological approaches take a holistic view to the determinants of fertility change within a local context. The scope for analogous studies in Australia is considered, through a review of potential source materials and research questions.

The concept of a single demographic transition has 'survive[d] a con- tinuous stream of contradictory findings that would long ago have killed off more mortal entities' (Szreter 1993). Although the term 'demographic transition theory' has not been fashionable with demographers in recent years, 'demographic transition' and 'fertility transition' remain in common usage (van de Walle 1992). Monocausal models which relate indicators of 'modern- ization' to early signs of fertility change and fertility differentials still underpin most demographers' research, consultative reports, and first year lectures on population trends.

The demographic transition theory is not as politically relevant as it once was. Birth rates have fallen in the great majority of countries and there is a global consensus on the importance of family planning programs and individuals' rights of choice. Monocausal models are no longer required as a rhetorical tool to convince politicians and policy makers to institute programs. Researchers interested in fertility change no longer face an imperative to construct and test global generalizations. Current work puts reproductive behaviour in a broader context of the private and public lives of women, couples, extended kin, communities, classes and castes. From this perspective it has become clear that fertility decision making is complex and the result is tremendous variety in strategies of family formation. The conclusion is that there has never been a single transition to lower fertility, but rather many transitions (Gillisef al 1992).

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Two complementary strains of demographic research in the 1990s have pointed to measurement techniques and interpretative frameworks with which to investigate multiple demographic transitions. This article reviews this litera- ture from the perspective of how new approaches can be used to enrich our understanding of Australia's fertility decline. The quantitative evidence for diverse paths to smaller families is presented first. Next I discuss advances in the 'political economy' of fertility and suggest some fruitful directions for a political economy of Australia's fertility decline. Finally I consider some of the methodological ways forward and note some specific reproductive strategies which warrant more research.

Evidence for Multiple Fertility Transitions

Before embarking on a discussion of recent studies, it is useful to recall the two major interpretations of the causes which trigger a decline in marital fertility. The competing theories of innovation and adaptation (Carlsson 1966) still dominate historical studies of fertility change. According to the innovation hypothesis, the initiation of fertility control within marriage is new behaviour made possible by the introduction of new technology or new values and norms which permit previously inconceivable behaviour to be adopted and rapidly diffused through the population. Such a sharp break in behaviour can only be explained by identifying conditions enabling married women (or couples) to restrict the number of births. The adaptation hypothesis states that restriction of marital fertility occurred as a response to changing economic and social circumstances which made lower fertility advantag- eous when it had previously been undesirable. Diverse demographic responses to similar social and economic change are consistent with an adaptation interpretation, since behaviour is grounded in the old ways while simultaneously responding to new circumstances.

Guinnane et al (1994) have argued that there are two minimal empirical tests of the innovation hypothesis. First, the onset of fertility decline should constitute new behaviour; that is, not behaviour that had been practised by a minority and eventually adopted by the majority. Second, the onset of fertility decline should occur simultaneously in widely varying economic and social circumstances. The adaptation hypothesis would lead one to expect circumstances to play an important role in the timing of the decline. Using Guinnane et al 's logic, evidence of multiple fertility transitions strongly supports the adaptation hypothesis. And that is exactly what recent studies have shown.

Let us first begin with what we thought was known about the historical fertility decline. The European Fertility Project documented fertility levels in the provinces of ten European countries from approximately 1861 to 1930 (Watkins 1986). The principal method used to measure declines was the Coale index of marital fertility (L). This measure uses the total number of

48



births and the age distribution found in a census or estimated. Births are indirectly standardized to control for differences in age structure.

The results of the European Fertility Project were interpreted as demon- strating considerable homogeneity in the timing of decline. The European Project demonstrated that once marital fertility fell ten per cent from pre- transition levels, it continued to decline. Furthermore, provinces within countries tended to initiate the decline in a relatively brief time. According to Watkins (1986:432), 'if France is excluded, 59 per cent of the provinces of Europe experienced the beginning of the transition during the three decades between 1890 and 1920' Individual countries had initiated marital fertility decline in all their provinces in spans from 16 years in England and Wales to 78 years in Switzerland. Many demographers have interpreted these findings as suggesting that fertility limitation was a new idea - an innovation -

probably resulting from cultural rather than economic or technological change (Lesthaeghe and Wilson 1986; Cleland and Wilson 1987).

A similar pattern can be seen in the trends in lg in Australia (Jones 1971). Marital fertility began to decline in the 1880s and accelerated in the 1890s everywhere in Australia except for Western Australia, which only shows evidence of a decline in the 1890s. Ig was lower in urban areas but urban and rural areas alike apparently initiated the decline in the 1880s (Figure 1). In general, once begun, the martial fertility decline was sustained, although after the rapid declines during the 1890s rates rose slightly during the next decade. All of the colonies experienced a ten per cent decline in martial fertility by the 1890s, within ten to 15 years of urban Victoria which shows the earliest decline.

Is this picture of simultaneous change true? Guinnane, Okun and Trussell (1994) have recently made two important criticisms of the interpretation alleging a homogeneity of the European fertility transition. First, they question generalizations by Watkins (1986) and Cleland and Wilson (1987) that a majority of European provinces initiating a decline within 30 years or 7 1 per cent of provinces within 50 years actually indicates simultaneous behaviour change. Second, is it really acceptable to ignore France, or for that matter other outliers such as Ireland and Italy, in search of general truths about European fertility decline? Figure 2 gives the trends in lg for a number of European countries, Australia and New Zealand. There is scope in the graph to tell a story about either homogeneity or diversity, depending on the plot one prefers.

More critically, Guinnane and colleagues demonstrate that lg detects fertility limitation only after such behaviour is widespread. Reliance on lg to define the start of a fertility transition will mean that the initial stages of a fertility transition are likely to go unnoticed.

49



2? 0.9 -i - «

I 0.8 - o- ^^^^ ••§ 07

t- :^::=^^5k -«- Urban Australia E d^^^^Sv ^^^

-*- Rural Australia

^ 0.6 -

é^^^^**v ^^ -^- Urban Victoria

8 _ ^Ss. -a- Rural Victoria » 05- _ ^v ? ^ -m- Urban NSW .2 0.4 - -a- Rural NSW

ü 0.3 J , ■ ■ 1 1871 1881 1891 1901

Census year

Source: Jones (1971).

For example, a 27-percentage point increase in actual controllers corresponds to a 50- percentage point increase in the proportion who intend to initiate fertility control at mean parity 5. Thus while a 10% decline in 1^ corresponds to increases of 20 to 35 percentage points in the proportion of actual fertility controllers, it also corresponds to increases of 24 to 77 percentage points in the proportion who intend to initiate fertility control (Guinnane, Okun and Trussell 1994:8).

Their point is two-fold. First, Ig does not decline by the threshold ten per cent until at least one quarter of married women are controlling their fertility and that this is too late for an adequate exploration of either the innovation or adaptation thesis. Second, in the context of early modern European, fertility limitation was inexact. Successful reduction in family size by a minority suggest a much larger group of unsuccessful limiters who had nonetheless experienced either an ideological change or had tried the new contraceptive techniques.

The principal evidence supporting a near-simultaneous fertility decline and, by extension, the innovation hypothesis, is seriously flawed. Alternative types of data lead to substantially different conclusions (Johansson 1991). Simply using levels of aggregation smaller than provinces reveals greater diversity than is conveyed by the provincial-level data produced by the European Fertility Project. For example, Friedlander, Schellekens and Ben-

50

Figure 1 Urban and rural Australian marital fertility, 1871-1901



Figure 2 Marital fertility in various countries, circa 1870-1920

QQ ...♦>.. Ireland

ï 0.8 +'^ ..-o--- Italy

■c I^t1^^^^ * -A- Australia

E 06 - * ^^^sL^xl* • -,

S 05 ^ ns' 4j ^""^'^^ nNÌ -*-- Sweden

"8 no °-3 " ^^a -9- England& g

no °-3 " Wales 0.2 J 1 « . 1 1 -»-Germany

1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 - a - France

Approximate census year

Sources: For Australia and New Zealand, Jones (1971); for other countries Haines (1990).

Moshe (1991) found enormous variation in demographic change in England's 600 districts, contradicting the impression of uniformity from county-level data. Anderson and Morse (1993a, 1993b) also found the parish-level diversity in Scotland's demographic history of low nuptiality and high marital fertility relative to that of England during 1861-1914 to be more fruitful than county-level data in explaining the contrast between English and Scottish demographic behaviour during the period.

Measurement techniques other than the Coale indices also demonstrate that fertility declines were not uniform between or within population groups. Other indirect measures in common usage because they rely on age-specific marital fertility rates which are almost as readily available as total counts of births are the Coale-Trussell parameters m and M, which indicate departure from a natural fertility pattern of age-specific marital fertility (Coale and Trussell 1974, 1978). The value of m measures the steepness of the decline in marital fertility by age, with values greater than 0.2 usually interpreted to mean the beginning of fertility control The value M was formerly interpreted as a relatively neutral constant reflecting the level of fertility. It is now under-

51



stood to reflect the spacing of births, especially in the early birth intervals, and the extent of childlessness. M is expected to take a value near one in all populations, but it is now clear that values below 0.7 or 0.6 are common in populations with extensive spacing, especially by young women.

The measures m and M can detect at least four types of fertility decline: limiting of high parity births and no early spacing; limiting and early spacing; early spacing and no limiting; and no limiting and no spacing (Ewbank 1991). Therefore, unlike Ig, comparisons of marital fertility as measured by m and M lead to findings supporting the heterogeneity of the fertility decline. In a comprehensive review of the patterns of marital fertility in Western nations at the turn of the century, Haines (1990:23) concluded that 'the demographic transition in Western nations did not take place in a uniform manner'. In particular, he highlighted the extensive marriage and the low fertility of young women which characterized the United States and France. In a similar study using data for white Americans before 1920, Ewbank (1991) was able to map remarkable geographic diversity in the level and composition of marital fertility. His conclusion stresses a number of regional characteristics which need further study with, in his words, 'both quantitative and qualitative data'.

For Australia there are few sources of published data which would allow more detailed analysis of the geographic diversity of fertility transitions comparable to the recent work done for European and North American populations. Hicks (1975) attempted to uncover more subtle fertility differentials by geographical area by studying ratios of under five year olds to married women in the reproductive ages in shires and districts arranged by population density. Between 1891 and 1901 there were declines in all density categories, with greater declines in the most heavily populated areas. Little change occurred between 1901 and 1911. Unfortunately Hicks did not examine earlier censuses.

The other source of data which show aggregated trends in fertility is age- specific marital fertility rates during the critical years of the Australian fertility transition. As far as I know there are only two sets available. A set for New South Wales was produced by Coghlan in 1903. The other set is based on birth registrations and census population figures for Melbourne (Larson 1994). Not surprisingly, Melburnians had lower fertility in 1871 than New South Wales (Figure 3). By 1901, both populations had reduced marital fertility. However, relatively young women in their late twenties and early thirties in Melbourne had especially low rates. Furthermore, in 1901, the fertility rate in Melbourne was below replacement with a net reproduction rate of 0.95 whereas it was 1.2 for New South Wales. In America, Sanderson (1987) has noted that by 1900 native-born white women in northeastern cities had achieved below replacement level fertility. Clearly such low fertility was not unique to American cities.

52



Figure 3 Age-specific marital fertility rates, Melbourne and New South Wales, 1871 and 1901

0.5 -i 1

E 0.4 - ^^-î^-..

- *- Melbourne 1871 Ï 0.3 - >/><: A o. no U¿ ' ^sS*- ^ò - • - Melbourne w no U¿ '

^^Î^v-a 1900/01 £ 0.1 - '1 ..-A--. NSW 1871

O* t ex u o> & fc & ex -o.- NSW 1901 O* t T?

ex o^ u o§> o> & fc & ex

<p ¿y T? $* o^ & o§> $r ^r 5 year age group

Sources: Coghlan (1903) for New South Wales; Larson (1994) for Melbourne.

In Figure 4, four regions within Melbourne have different patterns of marital fertility. The most noticeable is the high fertility in the northern and western suburbs. During the 1880s housing developments flourished in this region, providing moderately priced workingmen's cottages. By 1891, more than half (53 per cent) of householders in this formerly impoverished area were skilled workmen and nine per cent were white collar workers. These young families were among the most prosperous of the working class. It is also worth noting that the region with the lowest fertility among women in their late twenties was the richer suburbs to the south and east of the city.

New Interpretative Frameworks for Fertility Decline

The consensus which has developed that there has not been one fertility transition, but many, presents new challenges to the search for causes. Analysis of the diverse behavioural options implied by the adaptation thesis requires complex explanatory models. Former reliance on single variables such as the Besant-Bradlaugh trial or universal schooling cannot account for the observed diversity. The approach to fertility change which is now preferred is to view it as influenced by broad social, economic and political forces but mediated by local historical contexts of culture and institutions (Gillis et al 1992; Szreter 1993).

53



Figure 4 Age-specific marital fertility in Melbourne's suburbs, 1891

0.5 -i i

c 0.4 - "^r:::^ss. • c * ^O^N- ••••-••City

¡ 0.3 - • ^^|>^- -*•- Inner i 0.2- ^^X -*--S4E «2 ^^O» ■ N&W

0 J . . . 1 V» ■ m^" I r> f& f> <& & &

<$r tf $* #> #r $r Age groups

Source: Larson (1994).

Greenhalgh (1990) and Johansson (1991) urge researchers to adopt a political economy framework for the analysis of contemporary and historical fertility declines. Such a framework would direct analysis towards a broad range of influences on fertility which are mediated in local contexts. For Johansson (1991) these influences are the 'implicit9 policies of government which affect fertility decision making, including, but not limited to, the supply of contraceptives and contraceptive information, the opportunities for child labour and consequent economic value of children, and the increasing legitimation of the political and cultural power of (middle-class) women to assert control over their bodies.

Greenhalgh' s definition of the scope of a political economy of fertility is even broader for it includes not only the implicit and explicit acts of the state but of all institutional influences at the global, regional, national, community and family levels which shape demographic behaviour in a specific local context. Johannson (1991) also discusses the role of non-state directed influences on fertility using a metaphor of cultural software through which policies are processed. However, her case study of the English fertility decline stresses actions by government that had an implicit relevance to fertility decisions. The key concept for Greenhalgh is that actions at a local level are embedded in these social, economic, political and cultural processes but mediated through local agency. Her exemplars of political-economic fertility analysis include studies which place the reproductive decision making of men and women within a context of gender relations between couples,

54



cultural practices of financial responsibility to offspring, class identity and employment opportunities for children.

The shift towards studying fertility change by marrying analyses of macro forces and micro responses is complemented by developments in cultural history. In a wide-ranging review Hareven (1991) calls for greater attention to linking 'the new dimensions of the family's private and inner life ... with the demographic patterns of household structure and kinship' (p.123). Perrot's (1990) study of nineteenth century private life in France and England has rich material on the middle class. She argues that the privatization of domestic life both fostered and exacerbated increasingly strong expressions of individuality, especially from women and children, starting in the mid- nineteenth century. These expressions were important psychologically, but they also altered political relations within the family and generated new cultural manifestations within the arts. Hareven also urges more attention on working class families' experiences in changing from entities with a multitude of functions to ones focused principally on domestic responsibilities. Seccombe (1993) has provided the broad outlines ofthat transition in Europe with specific attention to implications for reproductive behaviour.

What emerges from these various approaches is that fertility decision making is enmeshed in broader institutions and histories. Individuals and couples in different local settings make their decisions while negotiating their way through a complex and conflicting web of incentives and disincentives for intercourse, contraceptive use, marriage and childrearing.

Exploring a Political Economy of Fertility for Australia

Emphasis on the uniqueness of demographic behaviour and the importance of local institutions will be a new approach for research on the Australian fertility decline. Previous studies have stressed similarity with contemporary English speaking populations (Caldwell and Ruzicka 1978; Larson 1994 but also see Jones 1971; Förster 1974). Caldwell and Ruzicka (1978:81) wrote:

The rationale for a consideration of Australian fertility trends lies not in their uniqueness but, rather, in the extraordinary similarity between the course of birth rates in Australia and the United States, and the similarity between the fertility of these two societies over time and those of Britain, New Zealand, and English-speaking Canada. If we focus not only on the international and national but also on the

regional and local forces which may have influenced Australian fertility during the last decades of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth century, there are a number of likely explanatory factors which have a distinctively Australian accent. Official explicit policies on fertility in Australia were fundamentally pronatalist in the early twentieth century (Hicks 1978). These policies included actual restriction of access to contraceptives, abortion and information on controlling fertility, policies similar to other Western

55



countries at the time (Johansson 1991). What follows is a rather idiosyncratic reading of Australian history which selectively highlights two themes which could be explored in greater depth to determine their relevance to fertility behaviour.

Relative Costs and Values of Children

Employment opportunities for child labour have been implicated as an important determinant of fertility for segments of the English working class (Levine 1985; Johansson 1991; Schellenkens 1993; Seccombe 1993). I have argued that between 1870 and 1900 compulsory schooling was not a major obstacle in reducing the use of child labour in Melbourne because of the dwindling employment opportunities for children under age 13 (Larson 1994). Nonetheless, in Melbourne there was a clear difference between skilled tradesmen, who commanded increasing wages through most of their adult working lives and unskilled workers who achieved their top pay in their early twenties (McCalman 1982; Larson 1994). I have argued that the rising earnings of the skilled workmen throughout the life cycle allowed them to invest more heavily in their sons1 training. A youth had to be at least 15 years old to enter an apprenticeship, and for the first several years would be paid only a token wage. An unskilled worker could not have afforded to give his son an apprenticeship when there were plenty of well paid but dead-end jobs available for youths as young as 14. Poor Melbourne families were probably better-off if they had many children - balancing the costs of raising them with the sizeable returns they could bring to the family when they were older. Additional workers would have been especially important to blunt the impact of seasonal and cyclical unemployment (Lee and Fahey 1986). I found that up to 1900 only the wives of men in middle class occupations or skilled trades practised child spacing.

Other Australian settings had different micro-economies of child rearing. A rich collection of studies on family structure and change in towns and rural areas edited by Grimshaw, McConville and McEwen was published in 1985. Most of these articles include some quantification of marriage patterns and fertility levels and many look at additional aspects such as schooling, inheritance and employment. However, they all place reproductive behaviour within a local context and are cognizant of the subtleties of ethnic identification, economic opportunities, and social stratification. Several link the maintenance of high fertility with the value of children.

Grimshaw et al (1985) investigated family structure in Horsham in the wheat-growing belt of the Wimmera District in northwest Victoria between the 1860s and the 1890s. Fertility levels for the original intrepid selectors who established themselves in the early 1870s were extremely high - on average in excess of eight children. This was in common with many 'frontier'

56



populations in Australia and elsewhere in which women married young and had very short birth intervals. Typical explanations for high frontier fertility are that adult sons are important assets in a farming family, costs of raising an additional child are minimal and parents are self-selected for good health.

The study of Horsham as a frontier settlement and after its transformation to a prosperous farming district of established small-to-medium landowners puts the advantages and disadvantages of high fertility in a fuller context. Despite the images of the isolated frontier family, Grimshaw and colleagues stress that selectors, especially the successful selectors who remained in the area, used family strategies to consolidate holdings, rationalize work and achieve greater economies of scale. Fathers and mothers or widows would select properties adjacent to those of adult children; siblings joined forces. Although men also divided land holdings between children and their wives upon death, family land would be fragmented in title only. Large families were an economic advantage but they also fostered the social support that relatives nearby can provide.

Even some more settled farming communities had reasons to maintain higher fertility. As Horsham* s population developed and original selections were consolidated into larger and more successful operations, children continued to provide valuable labour but were rewarded with land to allow them to launch their own lives quickly and in relative prosperity. Women in Horsham who were born between 1870 and 1889 had an average of 6.6 children - well above the national average for that period. Similarly, the tightly-knit community of German farming families at Boonah, Queensland did not start to reduce fertility for twenty years after national rates first declined (Cole 1985). Women marrying between 1870 and 1889 had in excess of eight children on average. Even the 1890-1913 marriage cohort had an average of 5.5 children. Cole attributes this modest decline to 'a growing scarcity of cheap land and agricultural opportunity within the district than any other single cause' (p.61).

Mitchell and Sherington (1985) present a fascinating account of two towns. The first is the settled fanning community of Kiama on the New South Wales coast. From very early in its history it had an even sex ratio and relatively old age at marriage. Schooling was demanded by the population. Farming families still needed child labour but school and work demands accommodated each other, at least up to the minimum school leaving age. By contrast, life was more precarious in the mining village of Bulli. Class- consciousness, frequent economic hardship and child labour opportunities meant that many children attended school intermittently. Unfortunately the authors were not able to present fertility data sufficiently detailed to demonstrate whether child labour and other economic realities affected reproduction.

57



Nation of Suburbanites

Although the political economy of rural communities is interesting, late nineteenth century Australia was predominantly urban. Even by 1850, 40 per cent of Australians lived in towns or cities and in 1891 nearly two thirds of the population was urban (Butlin 1964). While most of the urban population lived in only a handful of capital cities, these cities had much lower densities than cities in Britain or much of the United States. Davison (1995) has traced the origins of the sprawling urban landscape to the very first years of town planning. Intentionally, with civic pride and backed by substantial colonial and later state revenues, cities were developed along the suburban model of detached family homes on individual plots of land. Even the most dense suburbs near the central cities had densities much lower than those found in Britain.

Australian historians have argued that the respectable working class comprised the bulk of migrants to Australia and the dominant ethos of the new society (Hirst 1984). Homeownership was one of the markers of respectability and the potential to live in and even to buy a suburban home was an inducement to migration (Davison 1995). Once arrived not all migrants and succeeding generations were actually able to afford to purchase a home. But the proportions who did were quite high; estimates from various studies based on Melbourne's suburban ratebooks range from 40 to over 50 per cent (Dingle and Merrett 1972; Davison 1978:175-189; Larson 1994:173- 174).

Other Australian institutions have their origins in the values of working class respectability which were so powerful during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hirst (1984) includes public works in times of economic hardship, the mechanics institutes, public schooling and friendly societies among the institutions which had their origins in British working class values but were transformed, in late nineteenth century Australia, into egalitarian institutions which were uniquely Australian. He characterizes the underlying values as 'mutual seeking of self-improvement'. Home ownership and suburban living which were other embodiments of these values (Reiger 1985:32-55) were collectively reinforced through membership in building societies and the socially heterogeneous character of many of the suburbs.

What is not yet understood is how this respectability influenced women and the institution of the family. A history of Australian urban fertility behaviour would have to investigate the development of the institution of the working class family not as a derivative of the British version but as one embedded in the ideologies and economic and social realities of Australia's suburbs. Feminist historians have stressed that suburban living promoted and exacerbated the ideology of separate spheres for men and women. Yet that rhetoric may also have increased women's negotiating powers in domestic

58



matters and may have led to a 'domestic feminist' demand for reproductive control and smaller families.

At present we can only surmise the Australian character of these private negotiations. The material rewards of a respectable life were achievable for many working class suburban families despite the vicissitudes of the local economy (Macarthy 1970). This may have reinforced tendencies towards family 'planning', which was then known as the 'prudential method*. On the other hand, respectability and collective self-help may also have cushioned families from the need to limit births. Compared to cities in other countries, Australian families enjoyed the relative comfort of about half the number of people per room (Davison 1995). Friendly societies made it easier to afford health care for growing families and, at least in some colonies, free schooling kept down the costs of educating children (Hirst 1984). What may have been a widespread practice of working men giving their wives their unopened pay packets would have maximized the money available to support growing families and implies cooperation between couples rather than bitter struggles (Ackerman 1968[1913]).

Methods for Australian Studies

Future historical studies of Australians' reproductive behaviour should be able to meet two demands. First, they should be structured to investigate influences on behaviour at both the macro and the micro level. Second, they must be able to measure behaviour and changes in behaviour in a manner that can be convincingly linked to explanatory factors.

The detailed analyses of behaviour now required must be done with individual data. Australian historians frequently bemoan the loss of census manuscripts. However, although original vital registration data are more time consuming to extract in a useable form, they give richer information on the dynamics of family formation than decennial censuses. Naturally, registration data have their limitations. Each colony /state handled its own registration system as they do today and the information routinely recorded varies between states and over time. Furthermore, in the current user-pays climate, some state governments do not allow historians free or reasonably priced access to this national resource. Nevertheless, as the former section has shown, enough researchers have received permission in the past for us to appreciate the potential of these data sets.

Other quantifiable data can complement the vital registration data and are a necessary adjunct in a more holistic study of reproductive behaviour. Hospital data record the health consequences of sexual behaviour; school records describe the attendance and scholastic achievement of children forgoing economic activity; wage books give meaning to occupational classifications;

59



wills testify to the direction of intergenerational wealth flows. The list is limitless.

However, quantifiable data are not the only sources which can enrich our understanding of the context of fertility decision making. The classic texts of historians include letters, diaries, newspaper reports and fortuitous texts generated from contemporary inquiries. More recently anthropologists have turned to historical themes, expanding traditional data sources with the use of oral histories (Greenhalgh 1990). Even some historians are using oral histories to illuminate attitudes and behaviour in periods beyond the personal ken of the informant (for example, Reay 1996). When the focus is still on relatively recently behaviour change, even population surveys may be able to give greater meaning to changes. Santow (1993) identified the persistence of the use of withdrawal among southern European immigrants in post World War n Australia. She was then able to link sexual behaviour to other research on conjugal relations in those cultural groups and present a generalized hypothesis about the use of withdrawal and gender relations. Clearly, methodological approaches will vary according to the time period, locale, and social group of interest. The challenge for researchers is to identify data sources which allow localized voices to emerge so that we learn how individuals/families/communities demonstrated agency in responding to broader factors over which they had no direct control.

The trite response is to call for more multidisciplinary teams of researchers. These will undoubtedly contribute to better research but they are more likely to be products of changing research questions rather than the instigators of such questions. A more immediate need is for demographers and historians to educate themselves. Historians need to appreciate that the study of marital fertility is not 'square' (Greenhalgh 1990); fertility behaviour can enlighten basic issues about women's autonomy, family consumption and production, the impact of service provision (or withdrawal) on families and individuals and a host of other issues of contemporary interest. Demographers need firstly to read more widely about the societies and/or time periods they study. Secondly, they need to use their technical expertise to go beyond simple descriptive analysis of fertility change and to strive to collect and analyse data to model and predict variations in fertility behaviour and fertility change. Finally, demographers need to acknowledge the methodological and theoretical benefits of studying small, unique communities intensively as opposed to studying large populations superficially.

Demographic Questions for Australian Studies

The discussion on the timing of the fertility decline highlighted a major criticism that earlier work had too narrowly defined the fertility transition. A

60



number of axioms are now considered to be counterproductive. For example, the European Fertility Project defined the fertility transition as a sustained decline in marital fertility, whereas prolonged periods of modest levels of control have also occurred. Another classic example is the elevation of a descriptive category of controlled fertility, parity-specific control, to a restrictive definition of such control as the only type of fertility change relevant to the study of fertility transitions. Future work on Australian fertility change should look beyond measures which are only sensitive to near- universal fertility reduction positively related to age or parity. Birth spacing, childlessness and one child families are alternative fertility control strategies. Each was apparently widespread throughout the first decades of the fertility transition but has been given very little attention by historians or demographers.

Birth Spacing National studies of European populations and regional studies of white

Americans around the turn of the century suggest that under certain circumstances spacing of lower order births was an important fertility strategy (Haines 1990; Ewbank 1991). However, Guinnane et al (1994) concluded that, like Ig, Trussell and Coale's M and m are not sensitive to a large minority of spacers or to failed attempts to space or limit which result in only slightly longer birth intervals. This means that adequate study of birth spacing requires individual level data. Anderton and Bean (1985) were among the first to identify evidence of differentials in birth spacing as well as early stopping in their unique sample of birth histories from the Mormon Historical Demography Project. They were able to make this discovery because they had complete marriage and fertility histories. Their findings have since been replicated elsewhere, but only by researchers with data sets that measure the dynamics of family formation (Bean et al 1992).

In my study of Melbourne I was able to explore occupation differentials in intentional spacing of births. The birth certificates in Victoria recorded the date of marriage and the name and age (in years) of previous children born to the couple. Crude measures of intervals can be derived for women who continued to bear children. This analysis showed that by the end of the century women were taking longer to have the same number of children than was the practice in earlier decades. Specifically, controlling for parity among women with three to eight births, the interval from marriage to latest birth was, on average, ten months longer in 1900 than in 1871, 1881 or 1891. Another data set which linked a sample of Melbourne marriages to the birth certificate of the first child born after the marriage confirms that first birth intervals were longer at the end of the century. The mean first birth interval increased from 14 months in 1866 to 16 to 17 months between 1871 and

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1891 and 20 months for marriages celebrated in 1896. Most of the increase was due to the 15 per cent of couples who postponed their first birth for three or more years. Only five per cent of marriages in 1866 through 1886 had such a lengthy first birth interval.

Even more convincing is the fact that between 1871 and 1900 there was an increase in the proportion of births which came three or more years after the previous sibling (excluding births whose previous sibling was dead or whose mother was in her forties). In 1871 and 1881 the previous siblings of 17 per cent of registered second, third and fourth order births were three or more years old. This percentage rose to 25 in 1891 and to 35 in 1900. The change was concentrated in specific occupational groups. Among professionals and businessmen the proportion rose from ten to 20 per cent in 1871 to close to one half in 1900. Skilled workers also exhibited a significant increase with one third of their 1900 second to fourth order births having been delayed for three or more years.

Unfortunately there is little other evidence of birth spacing in the first stages of Australia's fertility decline. I suspect that this is because most research based on constructed birth histories has been done by historians. They have lacked both the technical knowledge to measure spacing and a sufficient number of cases to look at parity-specific differentials in birth spacing. A current project on maternal education and fertility in early twentieth century Adelaide should increase our understanding of birth spacing differentials (Alison Maekinnon pers. comm.).

Childlessness and One-Child Families

It is now apparent that increases in childlessness and in one-child families were important features of the early fertility decline in some societies. Morgan (1991) has shown that in some places in the United States a surprisingly large proportion of ever married white women born between 1861 and 1865 had no children. For example, in the New England state of New Hampshire 19 per cent were childless while in ten states less than six per cent were childless. Further analysis of the United States 1910 Census Public Use Sample showed that marital childlessness occurred at times and in places characterized by greater fertility limitation as measured by parity progression ratios and children ever born (see Tolnay and Guest 1982 for a similar study).

Census data suggest that increased voluntary childlessness was also a feature in Australia's fertility decline (Table 1). Approximately eight per cent of wives who would have been expected to have children in the late 1860s through the 1880s remained childless. Marital childlessness started to increase in the 1890s when other evidence suggests widespread adoption of fertility limitation. Childlessness as well as one-child families remained high through the first decades of the new century.

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Table 1 Percentage of married women who had had no children or only one child in their current marriages

a /w r • % of wives Census year Age at census Average

a year

/w %of r wives • childlessor

when 30 childless ^q^m

1911 65-69 1874 8.4 12.4 1911 60-64 1879 7.9 12.4 1911 55-59 1884 7.8 12.8 1911 50-54 1889 8.3 14.6 1911 45-59 1894 9.1 17.0

1921 60-64 1899 12.1 19.7 1921 55-59 1904 12.4 21.4 1921 50-54 1909 11.9 22.2 1921 45-49 1914 11.7 24.1

1947 55-59 1920 9.4 21.7 1947 50-54 1925 10.7 24.7 1947 45-49 1930 12.2 28.1 1947 40-44 1935 13.5 31.0

Note: The data refer to women, beyond child-bearing age, living with their husbands. Source: Australia - Censuses 1911, 1921 and 1947.

The only individual level analysis of historical levels of childlessness in Australia was prepared by the industrious Coghlan in 1903. His proportions of childless marriages in New South Wales were prepared 'partly upon information obtained at the Census of 1901 and partly on the records pertaining to the deaths of married women during the past twenty years'. He provided no other methodological details but his data are internally consistent. He showed that childless marriages were more common in the 1890s than in the 1860s, particularly for women who were over 30 years old when they married. Moreover, controlling for women's ages but not for marital duration, he showed that childlessness was considerably more common in the city and suburbs of Sydney than in the rest of the state. The areas with the next highest childlessness ratios were the more densely settled agricultural regions. Coghlan concluded (1903:17):

The explanation of the difference must, therefore, be sought for, either in the influence of town life or in the occupations of the people. As to the influence of town life, this, so far as concerns New South Wales, may be summed up in the question of artificial checks, the aids to which are more accessible in the cities than in the country. Researchers in the late twentieth century have stressed that childlessness of

Australians and Americans at the turn of the century was not intentional but the result of indefinitely prolonged birth spacing (Ruzicka and Caldwell 1977; Morgan 1991). However, a proper test of that hypothesis requires both more

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demographic data about who remained childless and more analysis of texts which elucidate the contemporary meanings of childless marriages and childless wives.

Research on childlessness will be more difficult than research on birth- spacing. Ewbank (1991) remarked that most of the small area studies he reviewed did not estimate the proportion of couples who never had a child. This was because studies that rely on reconstructed maternity histories through linking marriage and birth records are plagued by attrition from the sample. When a marriage cannot be linked to a subsequent birth it is usually assumed that the couple moved out of the area, especially since young couples are relatively more mobile than others. However, death certificates in many Australian states record the number of offspring. Large data compil- ation efforts such as the computerization of nineteenth century Tasmanian births, deaths and marriages will have the combined advantages of minimiz- ing the effects of out-migration because of greater geographical coverage and being able to confirm childlessness through relatively painless links between marriage and death certificates (Peter Gunn pers. comm.).

Conclusion

Demographers have begun to recognize that there is not a single fertility transition but a multitude of transitions that must be explained within their historical, cultural and institutional contexts. This new interpretative framework suggests a number of exciting new research questions concerning Australian fertility patterns. In the late nineteenth century Australia was a diverse society. There are many reasons and some evidence to suggest that there were also diverse demographic responses which ultimately converged to produce smaller families. Studying these processes and understanding the different family relationships and meanings which made them possible will enrich our understanding of Australian culture and society.

Demographic historians need to seek out diversity not by continuing to use the same aggregated data and conventional literary sources but by seeking new evidence. Quantifiers need to redouble their efforts to obtain complete maternity histories. Summary measures popular in the 1970s and 1980s are clearly not sensitive enough to answer the critical questions.

Such work is difficult and we need to recognize that this is a national effort, and not let the burden entirely fall on obsessive PhD students. Australian historians and demographers ought to collaborate on data needs before collection and to share data sets after they have been compiled. Historians relying on texts need to seek out new data sources to hear a range of voices describing the social changes in the family. For example, there is still time to use oral histories to understand the meaning of changes if not the actual reasons in the first decades of the twentieth century through the

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recollections of people who were children then. We need to lobby against restricted access to official documents and excessive charges. At a minimum we need a source handbook to encourage easier access and consequently more research into population history.

Acknowledgments This is a much revised version of a paper presented at the 1994 Australian

Population Association meeting in Canberra. Since then I have had the privilege of discussing these issues with a number of historians interested in demographic history. I have taken account of their interests and recent writings while revising this work. I particularly acknowledge useful convers- ations with Alison Mackinnon and Peter Gunn and comments by the two anonymous reviewers.

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new directions for the study of australia's fertility decline

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