Figuring the Population Bomb

Historians of twentieth-century American women's history have written much about the efforts of women of various demographics to assert control over their reproductive lives. Particular attention has been paid to the issues of two groups: white, middle-class women's demand for access to safe and reliable contraceptive devices and abortions to enable them to plan desired families; and the struggles of women of color to reproduce in a nation where multiple formal and informal institutions endeavored to prevent them from doing so. Carole R. McCann's previous work has been instrumental in establishing this history. Of course, the American narrative is neither unique nor disconnected from global trends. Indeed, through the mid-twentieth century, global experts, state builders, activists, and others bemoaned what seemed to be startlingly uneven birth rates amid what Paul R. Ehrlich famously termed “the population bomb” (in his 1968 book with that title). Moreover, these demographic experts worried that, without immediate action, the world would continue to see increasing suffering and, ultimately, economic, social, and environmental collapse as a result of unchecked global population growth, most especially in the global South. McCann's important new monograph demands that we rethink this history, this time interrogating the premises underpinning our reading of the “facts” and also the questions and assumptions that produced them

Baby boom · Demographics · Genealogy · Narrative · Political science · Population · Population growth · Sociology · State (computer science · White (mutation · Demography · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History

• Reproductive Justice and the History of Prenatal Supplementation

  Meredith W Reiches, Meredith Reiches•Signs: Journal of Women in…•2019

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