Home > History Fact Finder > Political and Social Movements - When Did The Birth Control Movement Begin?

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

When did the birth control movement begin?

The birth control movement began during the late eighteenth century, when people started questioning the Earth's ability to sustain a large population. Prior to the 1800s, the death rate had offset the birth rate, so the overall population of the Earth remained the same. However, scientific advances during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resulted in better food supplies, control of diseases, and safer work environments for people living in developed countries. The result of these advances were longer life spans and an increase in the world's population. Thus birth control came to be regarded as a solution to overpopulation.

In the early 1900s Margaret Higgins Sanger (1883–1966) founded what became known as the birth control movement in the United States. While working as a nurse in the poor neighborhoods of New York City, Sanger had seen the negative...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. International Movements
   1. When did nationalism emerge?
   2. What is Zionism?
   3. What was the nonviolent Indian reform movement?
   4. What was the May Fourth Movement?
   5. Who were the Wobblies?
   6. Who was Eugene Debs?
   7. What happened at Tiananmen Square?
   8. What is Solidarity?
   9. What was the anti-apartheid movement?
   10. When did the birth control movement begin?
   11. Do women have the right to vote in all countries of the world?
   12. What is the zero population growth movement?
2. American Movements
   1. When did the abolitionism begin?
   2. How did the slavery question affect the admission of new states to the Union?
   3. What is racism?
   4. Did slavery end when the slave trade was outlawed in Britain?
   5. Why did President Lincoln wait to issue the Emancipation Proclamation?
   6. What is the history of the Ku Klux Klan?
   7. What was the Niagara movement?
   8. Who were the notable abolitionists?
   9. What was the nonviolence movement?
   10. When and how did the Civil Rights movement begin?
   11. What were the Freedom Rides?
   12. When did Martin Luther King Jr. give his famous "I Have a Dream" speech?
   13. What does the letter "X" in Malcolm X's name mean?
   14. How did Southern states prevent African Americans from voting in the first half of the twentieth century?
   15. What was the Temperance movement?
   16. What was the American Suffragist movement?
   17. What is Populism?
   18. What was the Progressive movement?
   19. When did the U.S. labor movement begin?
   20. Why was the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory important?
   21. What is the AFL-CIO?
   22. Who was César Chávez?
   23. Who are Nader's Raiders?
   24. Who were the hippies?
   25. Did the feminist movement begin in the twentieth century?
   26. How did Silent Spring influence the environmental protection movement?
   27. What is the ERA?
   28. What is the gay rights movement?