HUM ANAE VITAE ’S 50T H A N NI V E RSARY
B
efore the publication of Humanae Vitae by Bl. Paul VI fifty years ago,
there was great pressure on the Church to approve contraception,
and that pressure has not abated. Yet until the nineteenth century, not just
Catholics but all Christians considered contraception to be at odds with human
dignity. What explains the change in attitude? Those who would offer pastoral
help to couples struggling with the teaching should first try to understand the
social and historical background of the encyclical.
The change from an agrarian, rural so-
ciety to an industrial, and then techno-
logical, urban society profoundly affected
attitudes about contraception. Until the
Industrial Revolution, the norm was for
people to marry, have regular marital
intercourse, and gladly accept whatever
children came along. Of course, people
who were misbehaving or were not nor-
mal married couples sometimes resorted
to contraception, but married people
tended not to have a problem accepting
the teaching on contraception. To un-
derstand this, we need to reflect on what
agrarian society and health care were like
before the dawn of modern medicine.
Running a farm used to require far
more labor than it does today, and, of
course, children helped their parents with
the farm work. Since the farm produced
what everyone in the family needed to
eat, children were regarded not as an
economic liability but a needed blessing.
People tended to want a lot of children.
Yet because women breastfed their ba-
bies—which was the only way they could
feed them—the return of menstrual peri-
ods was delayed, creating a natural spac-
ing of children. Then too, because of the
relatively primitive state of medicine, the
infant mortality rate was much higher in
earlier times, and many children who sur-
vived infancy died from diseases that are
easily treatable today. With the far higher
death rate of infants and young children
and the higher death rate generally, a
couple might have twelve children but
only a few who survive into adulthood.
Moreover, raising children was in
many ways easier in earlier times. This
responsibility did not prevent the mother
from working outside the home, because
doing so was never an option in the first
place. Both men and women tended to
work on a farm right where they lived.
The mother was already there, and even
small children could do things like feed
the chickens and help with the gardening.
A major shift took place, however,
with the Industrial Revolution and the
movement of much of the population into
cities. Even as that shift was taking place,
it became clear that germs cause disease,
and so institutions and individuals began
to develop sanitary practices. So too,
modern medicine discovered effective
remedies for disease. As a result, the
mortality rate decreased dramatically.
Industrial urban life required someone
to be at home to take care of the children,
but the home was not the place where
the work that supported the family was
done. And the transition from childhood
to adulthood became far more difficult.
To do well in such a context, children
needed to receive more education and,
except for the relatively few who were well
to do, needed to be trained in a skill for
a long time. This delayed the time when
children could leave home and begin
their own families.
The result of all these factors began to
emerge in the urbanized and industrial-
ized economy of the nineteenth century,
in which it became impossible for most
people to have all the children that they
naturally could have and properly care for
all and get all children successfully start-
ed in life.
This situation hasn’t changed in post-
industrial, technological society. Rather,
the financial challenge for parents has
perhaps become even greater. So, the need
for most people to exercise responsible
parenthood by limiting the size of their
families is evident. Most people cannot,
as people in times past could, just get
married and have all the children that
naturally come along. That problem
arose when society began to change, and
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