The Days Before the Pill
With today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse, we have an example of a strip which would be difficult to set in modern times. Connie Poirier and Elly Patterson are having a conversation about the choice of having or not having children. It’s hard to get a grasp on now, but in my grandmother’s time and my mother’s time, there were not as many reliable options as there are today for birth control. As near as I can tell from the number of children in my family’s records per family, there was very little a sexually active fertile woman could do to prevent having babies. The best she could do was slow it down a little. This all changed in the 1960s with the advent of the birth control pill.
Lynn Johnston was born in 1947, so her generation was the first to have the choice of having or not having children. This fits very well with the conversation until we get to Panel 3, for which I will have to ask someone owning a collection if this is a dialogue rewrite. The letters look kind of squeezed together when Elly says, “Your mom must have wanted a large family, Connie.” This is not really a comment someone from Elly’s 1951 generation would say, knowing how ineffective birth control methods were back in the late 1940s and early 1950s when Connie and her siblings would have been born.
If we consider the comic strip to be set in the modern times of 2009, the comparison between Elly and Connie Poirier’s mom could be a case of want and don’t want. Most of the women in my family’s history had large families and also had no choice in the matter. Connie tells us it was the same situation with her mother, but it was not because of the lack of birth control. It was because her father continually impregnated her mother in the hope of getting a boy.
I have seen a modern equivalent of such a desire a few times, but oddly enough it was not the father making those demands. It was the mother. We had some friends back in Dallas, where the mom was obsessed with getting a girl; but she kept having boys. After 4 boys, she gave up. If Lynn had decided to update the strip, she could have gone that way. Instead we have the old tried-and-true of the woman put upon by the man, which is the mainstay of this strip for 30 years.
My favourite part of the strip is the fog which descends on Elly and Connie in panels 1 and 2, lifting in panel 3 so we can see Lawrence and Michael. If I were to rewrite the dialogue for today’s strip it would be:
Elly: Well we found Liz in the swing.
Connie: But where are Michael and Lawrence?
Elly: This darn fog.
Connie: There they are. Quick, let’s run over to them before the fog comes back.
Elly: Made it just in time!
Lynn Johnston was born in 1947, so her generation was the first to have the choice of having or not having children. This fits very well with the conversation until we get to Panel 3, for which I will have to ask someone owning a collection if this is a dialogue rewrite. The letters look kind of squeezed together when Elly says, “Your mom must have wanted a large family, Connie.” This is not really a comment someone from Elly’s 1951 generation would say, knowing how ineffective birth control methods were back in the late 1940s and early 1950s when Connie and her siblings would have been born.
If we consider the comic strip to be set in the modern times of 2009, the comparison between Elly and Connie Poirier’s mom could be a case of want and don’t want. Most of the women in my family’s history had large families and also had no choice in the matter. Connie tells us it was the same situation with her mother, but it was not because of the lack of birth control. It was because her father continually impregnated her mother in the hope of getting a boy.
I have seen a modern equivalent of such a desire a few times, but oddly enough it was not the father making those demands. It was the mother. We had some friends back in Dallas, where the mom was obsessed with getting a girl; but she kept having boys. After 4 boys, she gave up. If Lynn had decided to update the strip, she could have gone that way. Instead we have the old tried-and-true of the woman put upon by the man, which is the mainstay of this strip for 30 years.
My favourite part of the strip is the fog which descends on Elly and Connie in panels 1 and 2, lifting in panel 3 so we can see Lawrence and Michael. If I were to rewrite the dialogue for today’s strip it would be:
Elly: Well we found Liz in the swing.
Connie: But where are Michael and Lawrence?
Elly: This darn fog.
Connie: There they are. Quick, let’s run over to them before the fog comes back.
Elly: Made it just in time!
posted by howard at 10:35 PM
11 Comments:
The preference for sons over daughters is still so prevalent in some societies that governments are trying to take steps to redress the imbalance -- in some areas, parents aren't allowed to learn the gender of their unborn child, just in case they will terminate the pregnancy if they find that they are expecting a daughter.
In less serious news, Connie's liography makes it clear that her older sisters were half-sisters, the product of her father's first marriage. Connie was born four years into her parents' marriage, which seems a long time to wait if her father's sole desire was a son.
I have seen a modern equivalent of such a desire a few times, but oddly enough it was not the father making those demands. It was the mother. We had some friends back in Dallas, where the mom was obsessed with getting a girl; but she kept having boys. After 4 boys, she gave up. If Lynn had decided to update the strip, she could have gone that way. Instead we have the old tried-and-true of the woman put upon by the man, which is the mainstay of this strip for 30 years.
She could even gave twisted that into the means by which Mrs Poirier was martyred; she wanted to have a son but he refused and made her live with nothing but competit-er-uh-daughters.
I will have to ask someone owning a collection if this is a dialogue rewrite. The letters look kind of squeezed together when Elly says, “Your mom must have wanted a large family, Connie.”
The dialogue is not a rewrite. I guess LJ just didn't make her speech bubble large enough to begin with.
Also, I notice that she is randomly pulling strips from the first collection once again. This one originally ran just after the one where she asks Mommy Marian if she and Phil had ever thanked her, and that one had come right after the one where she screeches at a screaming Lizzie to tell her what's the matter (with the motion lines that make it look as if she's shaking her) and then thought bubbles about why babies aren't born speaking English.
Also, the gas-station strip from the other day originally appeared two days after today's reprint. The one in between has Elly thinking that mothers need to teach their sons to do things for themselves, only to tell Michael that she'll fulfill his request for a glass of milk right after she finishes cleaning his room.
forworse,
Connie was born four years into her parents' marriage, which seems a long time to wait if her father's sole desire was a son.
The text from the liography for Connie is:
When his first wife died, leaving him with five half-grown daughters, Emil Poirier had married a woman twenty years younger than himself, hoping that a more youthful woman might give him the sons he wanted. But the only child Lucille bore him, four years after their marriage, was also a girl.
I think the implication is that Lucille had a difficult time conceiving and that is supposed to explain the 4 years.
DreadedCandiru2,
She could even gave twisted that into the means by which Mrs Poirier was martyred; she wanted to have a son but he refused and made her live with nothing but competit-er-uh-daughters.
That could have worked in a certain way. After all, later in Connie’s life, when Greg brings his daughters in the house, the element of competition could have helped to explain their loathing of Connie. But since the new-runs end in “early spring”, we will never get the inside story of Connie and her step-daughters.
aprilp_katje,
The dialogue is not a rewrite. I guess LJ just didn't make her speech bubble large enough to begin with.
So, even back in 1980, Elly Patterson is saying that Connie Poirier’s mother must have wanted a large family, if she had so many kids. Lynn Johnston’s mother had only 2 kids and is Lynn suggesting that her mother chose to only have 2 kids? In my family history, the only moms of that generation who had small numbers of kids, were also the moms who difficulties with bearing children or who had kids who died in childbirth or at a very early age. There was no real choice about the matter.
Also, I notice that she is randomly pulling strips from the first collection once again. Also, the gas-station strip from the other day originally appeared two days after today's reprint.
Both of these strips are very obviously set in a particular time period. I could easily see Lynn Johnston intentionally skipping them for reprint for that reason. It’s been pretty obvious with the recent reprints that Lynn has completely given up any idea of trying to set the story in modern times. Without that guiding principle, then these types of strips are fair game for reprinting. After all, in “early spring” she will go to straight reprints, and it will no longer matter.
Howard, I think your family history is a bit different from many. While birth control was certainly not as reliable before the pill, it was still practiced very regularly. Various forms of condoms and diaphragms, the rhythm method, breastfeeding for a long time, abortion, sexual contact that couldn't result in pregnancy, etc.: there were many methods people used normally before the pill to control the size of their families. Having a large family was a choice, and acknowledged as such.
Clio,
Howard, I think your family history is a bit different from many.
I will have to disagree with you here. As near as I can tell from looking at many other people’s genealogies over the years, my family’s history is very common. A family with 6 kids would not be considered unusual at all in the centuries prior to the 20th and during Connie’s mother’s generation, the average number of children per mom was 3.8.
While birth control was certainly not as reliable before the pill, it was still practiced very regularly.
Certainly. Birth control has been practiced for over 500 years. That does not mean that they were effective, or that a large family was an indication of a woman's choice.
Birth control (which has been practiced for far longer than 500 years) was not completely effective (even the pill isn't completely effective), but it did most certainly prevent many pregnancies and births.
Also: "A family with 6 kids would not be considered unusual at all in the centuries prior to the 20th"
A family with 6 kids would be considered unusually, and extraordinarily, lucky any time prior to the mid 18th century, to have so many of their children survive childhood. Further, a family with 6 kids would not necessarily be considered remarkably large after the 18th century, but it would be seen as relatively large. Many women gave birth 8 times, but until the 20th century, a woman who had 6 children survive birth and young childhood would be a lucky woman.
Many women gave birth 8 times, but until the 20th century, a woman who had 6 children survive birth and young childhood would be a lucky woman.
Mm-hmm. This is why most children's literature of the period (reaching a peak in the Victorian era, which ended in 1901) is obsessed with the afterlife to an extent that seems comic out of context. The possibility of little John or Jenny going to hell was considered a very real one.
Many women gave birth 8 times, but until the 20th century, a woman who had 6 children survive birth and young childhood would be a lucky woman.
Lucky maybe. Unusual, I am not so sure. My base of experience comes from my own family’s geneology, which you have said is a bit different from many. All I can say to that is that I have seen many other people’s genealogies, and they don’t seem very different at all to me.
What seems clear to me from trying to find internet statistics on infant mortality rates to either confirm or deny your statement, is that there is a lack of data. In 1790, the federal government began using the U.S. census, which was an invaluable source of genealogically information for my family, since family wills and the inheritances had a tendency to leave out the black sheep of the family, where the census did not. Even so, when we look at that data, oftentimes it just lists a series of names and lets you guess who is related to whom. As near as I can tell from this source, the infant mortality is more than 10 times higher than the modern age; but the average life expectancy at that time was still in the 40s and the average infant mortality rate at the earliest time was about ¼ of the children. So, 6 out of 8 surviving would be about average for the mid-18th century.
However, to my point about Connie’s mother, using the same source, Connie’s mom would have expected an average of 3-4 kids. Instead she had 6 (or 5 if you go with the liography version where Connie had a different mom from her older sisters). Does that indicate that someone is choosing a large family? Apparently it did to Elly Patterson (or more specifically Lynn Johnston). To my mom, it would have been an odd question to ask.
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