Sexual Efficiency
Those who favored population growth in the seventeenth century were fascinated by the sexual aspects of the social contract. They favored rules that would promote high fertility and were convinced that monogamy combined with a sexual double standard served this end.
A tract entitled Natural and Political Observations Upon the Bills of Mortality explained the low birth rates typical in London as a result, in part, of the low number of “breeders” there, including men who had moved to the city without their wives and apprentices who were forbidden to marry. The more serious problem, however, was barrenness attributable to female immorality:The intemperance in feeding, and especially the Adulteries and Fornications, supposed more frequent in London than elsewhere, do certainly hinder Breedings. For a Woman, admitting ten Men, is so far from having ten times as many Children, that she hath none at all.55
The theory that female immorality lowered fertility was elaborated by an explanation of the low fertility of foxes and wolves compared to sheep: Canine vixens were promiscuous, while ewes typically shared the services of a single ram.56 Another seventeenth century observer assumed that African women experienced low fertility as a result of promiscuity.57 Once a woman had lost her virtue, her reproductive capacity was compromised. Better for men to fornicate with prostitutes than to ruin maidens who would otherwise become wives and mothers.58
Such theories shaped a distinctly asymmetric sexual contract: Promote marriage and require men to help support their children. Enforce female but not male chastity, punish female but not male adultery. Encourage prostitution within limits. Such rules would serve the greater good, because ‘‘if there were universal liberty, the Increase of Mankind would be but like that of Foxes at best.”59 The ram/ewe model of polygamy might deliver even higher fertility, but it would leave many men without partners of their own. In 1696 Gregory King warned that low fertility rates in London were due to more frequent Fornications and Adulteries, as well as Greater Luxury and Intemperance.60 Private vices, he observed, could lead to public problems.