This book tells the story of a society reversing deeply held worldviews and revolutionizing its demography. In parts of eighteenth-century Japan, couples raised only two or three children. As ...villages shrank and domain headcounts dwindled, posters of child-murdering she-devils began to appear, and governments offered to pay their subjects to have more children. In these pages, the long conflict over the meaning of infanticide comes to life once again. Those who killed babies saw themselves as responsible parents to their chosen children. Those who opposed infanticide redrew the boundaries of humanity so as to encompass newborn infants and exclude those who would not raise them. In Eastern Japan, the focus of this book, population growth resumed in the nineteenth century. According to its village registers, more and more parents reared all their children. Others persisted in the old ways, leaving traces of hundreds of thousands of infanticides in the statistics of the modern Japanese state. Nonetheless, by 1925, total fertility rates approached six children per women in the very lands where raising four had once been considered profligate. This reverse fertility transition suggests that the demographic history of the world is more interesting than paradigms of unidirectional change would have us believe, and that the future of fertility and population growth may yet hold many surprises.
Human biological fertility was considered a important issue to anthropologists and colonial administrators in the first part of the 20th century, as a dramatic decline in population was observed in ...many regions. However, the total demise of Melanesian populations predicted by some never happened; on the contrary, a rapid population increase took place for the second part of the 20th century. This volume explores relationships between human fertility and reproduction, subsistence systems, the symbolic use of ideas of fertility and reproduction in linking landscape to individuals and populations, in Melanesian societies, past and present. It thus offers an important contribution to our understanding of the implications of social and economic change for reproduction and fertility in the broadest sense.
This contemporary account of male fertility provides a much needed bridge between those seeking to understand the subject from an evolutionary and biological perspective and those with clinical ...responsibility for the investigation and treatment of infertility. Accordingly, the first half of the book deals with the evolutionary aspects of male reproduction and sperm competition, sperm production and delivery in man and other animals, spermatogenesis and epididymal function, sperm transport in the female tract and the apparent decline in human sperm count. The second part of the book puts greater emphasis on clinical problems and opens with a discussion of intracytoplasmic sperm injection, its value and limitations. This is followed by a review of modern developments in the genetics of male fertility and proceeds to a further chapter on the role of surgical procedures used in the treatment. Semen analysis is critically reviewed and the molecular techniques now being used in preimplantation diagnosis and in the study of mitochondrial inheritance are fully described. Taken together these chapters, written by an international team of authors, illustrate the breadth of vision needed to tackle the problem of male fertility.
Between 1800 and 1975, sexuality in the West was transformed. Hera Cook shows how the growing effectiveness of contraception gradually eroded the connection between sexuality and reproduction. The ...increasing control over fertility was crucial to the remaking of heterosexual physical sexual behaviour and had a massive impact on women's lives. Dr Cook charts how, why, and when attitudes towards sex changed from the repression of the nineteenth century to the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
Environmental degradation has been found to have a significant impact on human health. Although scientists and clinicians are at the forefront of understanding these complex links, it is also ...necessary to investigate the potential insights that the humanities can provide. Building on existing scholarship, this study argues that African indigenous knowledges are replete with mechanisms for understanding the nature of the problem and in procuring lasting solutions. Specifically offering an in‐depth content analysis of Ifá religious corpus among the Yorùbá of Southwestern Nigeria, this study argues that Ifá corpus contains significant historical references to epistemological sources for understanding the relationship between environmental degradation and (in)fertility. I demonstrate that Odù Ọ̀sá Méjì, an Ifá corpus, explains the interlayers of Yorùbá notions on environmental degradation, drought, forest burning, displacement of animals, and famine as causes of health‐related issues such as decrease in sperm count and quality, absence of menstruation, post‐term pregnancies, and decreased lactation. Relevant metaphors and hermeneutical tools are employed to uncover valuable insights from Ifá corpus on the nexus between a healthy environment and human fertility.
What progress has been made in fertility preservation (FP) over the last decade?
FP techniques have been widely adopted over the last decade and therefore the establishment of international ...registries on their short- and long-term outcomes is strongly recommended.
FP is a fundamental issue for both males and females whose future fertility may be compromised. Reproductive capacity may be seriously affected by age, different medical conditions and also by treatments, especially those with gonadal toxicity. There is general consensus on the need to provide counselling about currently available FP options to all individuals wishing to preserve their fertility.
An international meeting with representatives from expert scientific societies involved in FP was held in Barcelona, Spain, in June 2015.
Twenty international FP experts belonging to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, ESHRE and the International Society of Fertility Preservation reviewed the literature up to June 2015 to be discussed at the meeting, and approved the final manuscript. At the time this manuscript was being written, new evidence considered relevant for the debated topics was published, and was consequently included.
Several oncological and non-oncological diseases may affect current or future fertility, either caused by the disease itself or the gonadotoxic treatment, and need an adequate FP approach. Women wishing to postpone maternity and transgender individuals before starting hormone therapy or undergoing surgery to remove/alter their reproductive organs should also be counselled accordingly. Embryo and oocyte cryopreservation are first-line FP methods in postpubertal women. Metaphase II oocyte cryopreservation (vitrification) is the preferred option. Cumulative evidence of restoration of ovarian function and spontaneous pregnancies after ART following orthotopic transplantation of cryopreserved ovarian tissue supports its future consideration as an open clinical application. Semen cryopreservation is the only established method for FP in men. Testicular tissue cryopreservation should be recommended in pre-pubertal boys even though fertility restoration strategies by autotransplantation of cryopreserved testicular tissue have not yet been tested for safe clinical use in humans. The establishment of international registries on the short- and long-term outcomes of FP techniques is strongly recommended.
Given the lack of studies in large cohorts or with a randomized design, the level of evidence for most of the evidence reviewed was 3 or below.
Further high quality studies are needed to study the long-term outcomes of FP techniques.
None.
N/A.
Not Just Later, but Fewer Hellstrand, Julia; Nisén, Jessica; Miranda, Vitor ...
Demography,
08/2021, Letnik:
58, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
With historically similar patterns of high and stable cohort fertility and high levels of gender equality, the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland are seen as ...forerunners in demographic behavior. Furthermore, Nordic fertility trends have strongly influenced fertility theories. However, the period fertility decline that started around 2010 in many countries with relatively high fertility is particularly pronounced in the Nordic countries, raising the question of whether Nordic cohort fertility will also decline and deviate from its historically stable pattern. Using harmonized data across the Nordic countries, we comprehensively describe this period decline and analyze the extent to which it is attributable to tempo or quantum effects. Two key results stand out. First, the decline is mostly attributable to first births but can be observed across all ages from 15 to the mid-30s. This is a reversal from the previous trend in which fertility rates in the early 30s increased relatively steadily in those countries in the period 1980–2010. Second, tempo explains only part of the decline. Forecasts indicate that the average Nordic cohort fertility will decline from 2 children for the 1970 cohort to around 1.8 children for the late 1980s cohorts. Finland diverges from the other countries in terms of its lower expected cohort fertility (below 1.6), and Denmark and Sweden diverge from Finland, Iceland, and Norway in terms of their slower cohort fertility decline. These findings suggest that the conceptualization of the Nordic model of high and stable fertility may need to be revised.
This book offers an original interpretation of the history of falling fertilities in Britain between 1860 and 1940. It integrates the approaches of the social sciences and of demographic, feminist, ...and labour history with intellectual, social, and political history. It exposes the conceptual and statistical inadequacies of the orthodox picture of a national, unitary class-differential fertility decline, and presents an entirely new analysis of the famous 1911 fertility census of England and Wales. Surprising and important findings emerge concerning the principal methods of birth control: births were spaced from early on in marriage; and sexual abstinence by married couples was a far more significant practice than previously imagined. The author presents a new general approach to the study of fertility change, raising central issues concerning the relationship between history and social science.
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