The main reason to limit the population in a given society is to insure that a balance between the resources available and the number of people is not exceeded. It is fundamental to the survival of a given society that everyone has enough food, housing, and work to maintain certain social standards. This has been done in many ways throughout the centuries. Birth control methods range from religious belief to medical fact to social superstition. In all cases the limiting of newborn has effectively kept people out of anarchy. In looking at the history of birth control, it is easy to imagine why the population must be egulated.
Even today the situation is being recorded and studied to determine where the breakover point for population versus resources exists. If too many people are alive on the planet at the same time it becomes a difficult issue to deal with only the basic fundamentals needed to survive. Food cycles require time to be replenished before they can effectively meet the nutritional requirements otherwise they will be extinguished. Housing can only be provided at a given rate and it becaomes a real problem when real estate gets scarce. Another factor which comes into play is economics.
There are only a given number of jobs available at any given time, so people may become unemployed, thus worsening the issue. As we look further down the road, social problems begin to arise as the fundamental needs fail to be met. Crime become an issue. People’s basic instinct to survive will! make them resort to theft and violence in order to meet the basic survival requirements. In order to prevent this type of social anarchy society has decided that the resource limitations are fixed, so the only other variable is the population. Several methods of birth control have been used to control population.
Early methods were more ritualistic than today and played on the social image for birth control. It was a common practice to make sexual intercourse unpopular by instituting social standards for when and where and by whom it should take place. These constraints were followed by penalties which lowered the womans self-esteem and dorve her away from the social group. Infanticide was also used as a form of birth control for those cases that made it through conception. Several social groups believed that birth could be controlled by magic or ritualistic ceremony.
Not until later, when medicine became more advanced, did the abortion process of today become popular. It was strictly a function of ignorance that caused early doctors and midwives to use herbs, drugs, massaging, water pressure, and other severe methods to cause a miscarriage in the woman. The evolution of pre-conceptive methods became the d! esired birth control device and typically they were a result of preventing the sperm from ever entering the uterus. Things like crocodile dung, honey and sodium carbonate, and different types gum would seal the ervix completely during intercourse.
The more common methods of today are based on the same idea, but our advanced knowledge of manufacturing processes allow us to more effectively address the issue with rubber, spermicidal gels, and oral contraceptives, which actually control the female release of hormones to prevent pregnancy. It is a necessity to control population even more so today than back then. Our current social situation is by far a product of overpopulation and under control. It can only get worse as it has been doing so far.