Surprising Allies

The Knowlton Trial in England in 1877 had an immediate effect on family formation.  It was about the criminalising of publishing information on contraception, or artificial limitation of the family, as it was called then. Immediately after, age of marriage began increasing in English-speaking countries. What is surprising is that Charles Darwin, despite being an anti-Churchman did not approve of this development. Darwin and the Knowlton Trial, Peter Foreshaw Brooks over at "Persistent Ruminator."

[Darwin] would prefer not to be a witness in court. In any case CD’s opinion is strongly opposed to that [of Bradlaugh and Besant]. [Darwin] believes artificial checks to the natural rate of human increase are very undesirable and that the use of artificial means to prevent conception would soon destroy chastity and, ultimately, the family.

So also Francis William Newman, the agnostic younger brother of Cardinal John Henry Newman. 

 Newman, also writing entirely from a foundation void of orthodox religion, felt this was misguided. He argued that a large amount of poverty can be attributed to vice and social problems, not the mere size of population. He then laid out how he thought the neo-Malthusian view would exacerbate these problems. He worried that an expansion in birth control would result in an increase in men’s demands of women’s sexual access (an argument Louise Perry and others make today) and would lead to more behaviour focusing on achieving short term pleasures over long run fulfillment.

Charles Darwin, pro-natalist. 

*********** 

Dave Barry is perhaps a less-surprising pro-natalist. Sex