oursin | Probably neither are entirely correct (Reply)

Apparently - I haven't saved link, which was to op-ed column about rather than the source - someone has just committed another It's All In The Genes book.

In which I am given to understand that a claim is made about the British aristocracy having large families...

Which is deeply curious, because Sir Francis Galton, founder of the 'science' of eugenics, or at least its namer, averred that from his study of this same group in the C19th, aristocratic families tended eventually to run to daughters and die out or at least, The Name vanished.

This could, of course, be the view of a member of a rising professional middle class about the effeteness of the upper classes and their need to outbreed from time to time to restore (manly) vigour.

I have a reference to Proceedings of a seminar I once attended that says that prior to c. mid-late C18th aristocratic ladies tended to get pregnant at atypically frequent intervals because of the practice of putting babies out to wet-nurses, but with the rise of changing ideas of motherhood so that they nursed their own offspring this altered.

Evelyn Waugh (according to Nancy Mitford) claimed that only the middle classes practised birth control. We are not entirely convinced of the soundness of Mr Waugh's demographic researches.

I also feel that the effect of those very high-class ailments The Pox and The Clap may have had some impact on fertility, no? (Sid sez HAI!)

Plus, some of those large families in the C18th and C19th were of very assorted parentage due to the convention of 'heir, spare and then some leeway for extramarital activity'.

So, really, I would like to see the workings on this, except I am not sure I could be bothered to actually spend time reading any work that is based on the premise indicated, when I could be alphabetising my spice rack or simply staring at the wall.