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1 results

  • 1 - Fertility, Fruitfulness and Anxious Families

  • Leah Astbury, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Making Babies in Early Modern England
    Published online:
    12 December 2025
    Print publication:
    29 January 2026, pp 17-49
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  • Summary

    The chapter asks how fertility was managed at home in early modern England. Conception and pregnancy were a source of fascination and gossip for elite and middling families, and were seen as having a direct relationship to the godliness of the family line. The stakes, therefore, were high and there was considerable pressure placed on newly married couples to announce that they were expecting shortly after marriage. Medical texts and records of medical practice reveal that men and women often altered their behaviours to ensure they were fertile and able to conceive. Despite this, previous histories have emphasised that early modern people thought only women could be infertile. Challenging this narrative, the chapter finds that although both men and women sought treatments to increase their fertility, male efforts were minimised in paperwork because it was perceived as especially embarrassing and emasculating to not conceive easily.