“Isn’t it time you were finishing?”: Women’s Labor Force Participation and Childbearing in England, 1860–1920

This contribution examines the relationship between women’s labor force participation (LFP) and fertility in three industrial towns of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England from a feminist economic perspective. The study augments existing, statistical, approaches to demographic history by discussing women’s motivations. Women’s LFP influenced their likelihood of family limitation (via effects on both age at marriage and marital fertility). Where women were most likely to be in paid work, they were most likely to limit family size. It is further argued that the diversity of LFP patterns is the principal explanation for the varied patterns of fertility decline in different parts of Britain.