Fertility and contraception: The experience of Spanish women born in the first half of the twentieth century

Abstract

New data based on retrospective interviews with older informants enable us to review the history of contraceptive use among Spanish women over much of the twentieth century. This source is unique because it includes cohorts of women whose reproductive lives took place before, during, and after the baby boom. Traditional contraceptive methods (withdrawal and periodic abstinence) were central to the experience of the first set of women, while the last set made full use of modern as well as some traditional methods. For the first cohorts, traditional methods spearheaded the historic decline in fertility, while among the last set of women modern methods led to a precipitous decline towards the belowreplacement fertility that continues in Spain today. There is no evidence that the modest increases in fertility during the baby boom in Spain were the result of a decline in the use of contraception among married women.