Family Planning and the Long Eighteenth‐Century Pocketbook. (23rd February 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Williams, Helen
• Other Names: Blackwood Ashleigh guestEditor.; Ingram Allan guestEditor.; Williams Helen guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Journal for eighteenth-century studies. Volume 46:Number 1(2023)
• Page Start: 113
• Page End: 133
• Publication Date: 2023-02-23
• Subjects: family planning -- menstruation -- pregnancy -- pocketbooks -- almanacs -- ephemerides -- medicine -- diaries -- reproduction -- Anton F.A. Desberger; Eighteenth century -- Periodicals; Europe -- Civilization -- 18th century -- Periodicals; Dix-huitième siècle -- Périodiques; Civilisation -- 18e siècle -- Périodiques; 940.25305
• DOI: 10.1111/1754-0208.12867
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1754-0194

Abstract

Abstract: Eighteenth‐century medical literature recommended that women record their menstrual cycles to identify dates of conception, measure gestation, and predict delivery. Women's pocketbooks were natural repositories of such pregnancy‐related data. This article charts the history of women's pocketbooks providing printed affordances for menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. Throughout the eighteenth century, women's printed pocketbooks were self‐conscious of, and began to make more obvious, their potential to assist the safe delivery of children. The first mass‐produced tool for predicting childbirth, Anton F.A. Desberger's Schwangerschaftskalender (1827), translated into English as the Marriage Almanack in 1835, presupposed a female readership familiar with women's pocketbooks' self‐conscious capacity to assist family planning.