Sleeping Beauty Awakes: Self-Interest, Feminism, and Fertility in the Early Twentieth Century

Nancy Folbre Sleeping Beauty Awakes: Self-Interest, Feminism, and Fertility in the Early Twentieth Century Never before, in any society, had the pursuit ofwealth been legiti­ mated, much less celebrated,for everyone. — ROBERT HEILBRONER (1999: 312) THE STORY OF THE RELATIO NSH IP BETW EEN CAPITALISM AND THE pursuit of individual self-interest has focused, for the most part, on men in search of money. A gendered perspective reveals a more compli­ cated narrative. The pursuit of wealth was, to use Robert Heilbroner’s word, “legitimated” for men far earlier (and with far greater enthusi­ asm) than for women. A moral double standard can be traced particu­ larly clearly from Adam Smith (who questioned the benevolence of the butcher and the baker but never that of the wife and mother) to Alfred Marshall (who feared that wage employment would tempt women to neglect their family duties) (Folbre and Hartmann, 1988; Pujol, 1992). Ideologies of gender mediated and slowed the advance of individual­ ism: legitimation of the female pursuit of wealth did not unfold rapidly in capitalist countries until the latter half of the twentieth centuiy. Differences in sequence and timing are overlaid by gendered twists in the plot. The liberation of self-interest took place in the realm of sex as well as money. Here, too, a moral double standard ruled, with social research Vol 71 : No 2 : Summer 2 004 343 significant economic and demographic consequences. Women’s lack of control over reproductive outcomes enforced their economic and sexual subordination. It also slowed the decline of marital fertility. As women gained economic and political autonomy, their collective strug­ gle for individual rights took a different shape than men’s, with more emphasis on sexual liberation and more immediate implications for demographic change. Early feminist efforts to claim women’s rights to the pursuit of sexual self-interest represent an important episode in the evolution of individualism. Margaret Sanger is best known to scholars as an early advocate of birth control. Indeed, she is said to have invented the term. But she was also a utopian feminist who believed that women had only to be liberated by birth control in order to lead mankind to a happier world. Her optimism blossomed most luxuriantly in her 1922 book, The Pivot ofCivilization. Through sex, mankind may attain the great spiritual illu­ mination which will transform the world, which will light up the only path to an early paradise. . . . If I am criticized for the seeming “selfishness” of this conception it will be through a misunderstanding. The individual is fulfilling his duty to society not by self-sacrifice but by self-development . . . . This is fundamentally the greatest truth to be discovered by womankind at large. And until women are awakened to their pivotal function in the creation of a new civilization, that new era will remain an impossible and fantastic dream (Sanger, 1922: 271-272). Until women are aw akened. . . . Sleeping Beauty needed more than just a kiss. She needed a diaphragm. In this paper I describe the ideas o f two early twentiethcentury advocates o f birth control—Margaret Sanger in the United States and Marie Stopes in England—to illustrate a larger argument: fem inist efforts helped transform the boundaries o f appropriate 344 social research self-interest for women in ways that both reflected and encouraged the dem ographic transition to lower fertility. Sanger and Stopes provide a particularly vivid exam ple, because their philosophiz­ ing was linked directly to their political demand for reproductive choice. But many o f their predecessors and successors in the strug­ gle for women’s rights also argued that women could and should be ju st as self-interested as men. J. A. and Olive Banks argue that feminists played little role in prom oting birth control in the Anglo-American world (Banks and Banks, 1964). Angus McLaren persuasively argues just the opposite (McLaren, 1978). I am less concerned here with the mechanics of demo­ graphic cause and effect than with the emergence of historical changes in gendered concepts of self-interest. The Western cultural tradition seldom condemned men’s efforts to postpone or avoid fatherhood, whether through abstinence, delayed marriages, prostitution, or use...