The Century-Long Battle to Disprove the Myth That All Women Want Children

The concept of maternal instinct had figured prominently in scientific theories since the time of Charles Darwin. Late 19th-century psychologists believed women possessed a unique need to create and care for offspring. In the late 1800s, experts attempted to use biology to shore up this theory, positing that maternal instinct was located in the female reproductive organs.
Hollingworth wasn't buying it. "There is no verifiable evidence to show that a maternal instinct exists in women of such all-consuming strength and fervor as to impel them voluntarily to seek the pain, danger, and exacting labor involved in maintaining a high birth rate. We should expect, therefore, that those in control of society would invent and employ devices for impelling women to maintain [the] birth rate."

She believed the circulation of the myth was itself one of these devices. Other ways society pressured women into having more children included the promotion of the idea that only abnormal women don't want babies; stigmatization of interests other than the maternal as dangerous, melancholy, or degrading; female sterility as grounds for divorce; limited education opportunities for women; and the widespread depiction of the "sacredness and charm of motherhood" in art, literature, and music.
Additionally, contraception was illegal and considered obscene, and dissemination of any family planning information was outlawed. Hollingworth was writing in the same year that Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the US, which police immediately shut down.

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