As anyone who has watched television in recent years can attest, we live in the age of Viagra. From Bob Dole to Mike Ditka to late-night comedians, our culture has been engaged in one long, frank, and very public talk about impotence—and our newfound pharmaceutical solutions. But as Angus McLaren shows us in Impotence, the first cultural history of the subject, the failure of men to rise to the occasion has been a recurrent topic since the dawn of human culture. Drawing on a dazzling range of sources from across centuries, McLaren demonstrates how male sexuality was constructed around the idea of potency, from times past when it was essential for the purpose of siring children, to today, when successful sex is viewed as a component of a healthy emotional life. Along the way, Impotence enlightens and fascinates with tales of sexual failure and its remedies—for example, had Ditka lived in ancient Mesopotamia, he might have recited spells while eating roots and plants rather than pills—and explanations, which over the years have included witchcraft, shell-shock, masturbation, feminism, and the Oedipal complex. McLaren also explores the surprising political and social effects of impotence, from the revolutionary unrest fueled by Louis XVI’s failure to consummate his marriage to the boost given the fledgling American republic by George Washington’s failure to found a dynasty. Each age, McLaren shows, turns impotence to its own purposes, using it to help define what is normal and healthy for men, their relationships, and society. From marraige manuals to metrosexuals, from Renaissance Italy to Hollywood movies, Impotence is a serious but highly entertaining examination of a problem that humanity has simultaneously regarded as life’s greatest tragedy and its greatest joke.

The decline of the British birth rate was arguably the most important social change to occur in the last decades of the nineteenth century, but historians have shown remarkably little interest in the phenomenon. Most of the work done on the question has been by sociologists and reflects their assumption that the progressive adoption of birth control was largely a matter of the lower classes aping the behaviour of their ‘betters’.

Originally published in 1978, this book argues against this interpretation. It contends that the great interest of the nineteenth-century birth control debate is that it reveals that there was not a growing consensus of opinion on the question of family planning but rather two cultural confrontations – the struggle of the middle-class propagandists of both left and right to manipulate for political purposes working-class attitudes towards procreation, and, on a deeper level, the clash of the differing attitudes of men and women towards the possibility of fertility control.

The purpose of this study is to place the idea and practice of birth control in their social and political context, and four major factors are focused upon to this end: the first is that the birth control issue played a key role in the confrontation between Malthusians, socialists, eugenists and feminists. Secondly, the whole question of contraception led to a conflict between doctors, quacks, midwives and ordinary men and women seeking to control their own fertility. Thirdly, men and women belong to different sexual cultures and necessarily respond in different ways to the possibility of family regulation, and finally, despite the claims of some that birth control was an innovation, it was the pre-industrial forms of fertility control – including abortion – which brought the birth rate down.

The decline of the British birth rate was arguably the most important social change to occur in the last decades of the nineteenth century, but historians have shown remarkably little interest in the phenomenon. Most of the work done on the question has been by sociologists and reflects their assumption that the progressive adoption of birth control was largely a matter of the lower classes aping the behaviour of their ‘betters’.

Originally published in 1978, this book argues against this interpretation. It contends that the great interest of the nineteenth-century birth control debate is that it reveals that there was not a growing consensus of opinion on the question of family planning but rather two cultural confrontations – the struggle of the middle-class propagandists of both left and right to manipulate for political purposes working-class attitudes towards procreation, and, on a deeper level, the clash of the differing attitudes of men and women towards the possibility of fertility control.

The purpose of this study is to place the idea and practice of birth control in their social and political context, and four major factors are focused upon to this end: the first is that the birth control issue played a key role in the confrontation between Malthusians, socialists, eugenists and feminists. Secondly, the whole question of contraception led to a conflict between doctors, quacks, midwives and ordinary men and women seeking to control their own fertility. Thirdly, men and women belong to different sexual cultures and necessarily respond in different ways to the possibility of family regulation, and finally, despite the claims of some that birth control was an innovation, it was the pre-industrial forms of fertility control – including abortion – which brought the birth rate down.

As anyone who has watched television in recent years can attest, we live in the age of Viagra. From Bob Dole to Mike Ditka to late-night comedians, our culture has been engaged in one long, frank, and very public talk about impotence—and our newfound pharmaceutical solutions. But as Angus McLaren shows us in Impotence, the first cultural history of the subject, the failure of men to rise to the occasion has been a recurrent topic since the dawn of human culture. Drawing on a dazzling range of sources from across centuries, McLaren demonstrates how male sexuality was constructed around the idea of potency, from times past when it was essential for the purpose of siring children, to today, when successful sex is viewed as a component of a healthy emotional life. Along the way, Impotence enlightens and fascinates with tales of sexual failure and its remedies—for example, had Ditka lived in ancient Mesopotamia, he might have recited spells while eating roots and plants rather than pills—and explanations, which over the years have included witchcraft, shell-shock, masturbation, feminism, and the Oedipal complex. McLaren also explores the surprising political and social effects of impotence, from the revolutionary unrest fueled by Louis XVI’s failure to consummate his marriage to the boost given the fledgling American republic by George Washington’s failure to found a dynasty. Each age, McLaren shows, turns impotence to its own purposes, using it to help define what is normal and healthy for men, their relationships, and society. From marraige manuals to metrosexuals, from Renaissance Italy to Hollywood movies, Impotence is a serious but highly entertaining examination of a problem that humanity has simultaneously regarded as life’s greatest tragedy and its greatest joke.

The decline of the British birth rate was arguably the most important social change to occur in the last decades of the nineteenth century, but historians have shown remarkably little interest in the phenomenon. Most of the work done on the question has been by sociologists and reflects their assumption that the progressive adoption of birth control was largely a matter of the lower classes aping the behaviour of their ‘betters’.

Originally published in 1978, this book argues against this interpretation. It contends that the great interest of the nineteenth-century birth control debate is that it reveals that there was not a growing consensus of opinion on the question of family planning but rather two cultural confrontations – the struggle of the middle-class propagandists of both left and right to manipulate for political purposes working-class attitudes towards procreation, and, on a deeper level, the clash of the differing attitudes of men and women towards the possibility of fertility control.

The purpose of this study is to place the idea and practice of birth control in their social and political context, and four major factors are focused upon to this end: the first is that the birth control issue played a key role in the confrontation between Malthusians, socialists, eugenists and feminists. Secondly, the whole question of contraception led to a conflict between doctors, quacks, midwives and ordinary men and women seeking to control their own fertility. Thirdly, men and women belong to different sexual cultures and necessarily respond in different ways to the possibility of family regulation, and finally, despite the claims of some that birth control was an innovation, it was the pre-industrial forms of fertility control – including abortion – which brought the birth rate down.

The decline of the British birth rate was arguably the most important social change to occur in the last decades of the nineteenth century, but historians have shown remarkably little interest in the phenomenon. Most of the work done on the question has been by sociologists and reflects their assumption that the progressive adoption of birth control was largely a matter of the lower classes aping the behaviour of their ‘betters’.

Originally published in 1978, this book argues against this interpretation. It contends that the great interest of the nineteenth-century birth control debate is that it reveals that there was not a growing consensus of opinion on the question of family planning but rather two cultural confrontations – the struggle of the middle-class propagandists of both left and right to manipulate for political purposes working-class attitudes towards procreation, and, on a deeper level, the clash of the differing attitudes of men and women towards the possibility of fertility control.

The purpose of this study is to place the idea and practice of birth control in their social and political context, and four major factors are focused upon to this end: the first is that the birth control issue played a key role in the confrontation between Malthusians, socialists, eugenists and feminists. Secondly, the whole question of contraception led to a conflict between doctors, quacks, midwives and ordinary men and women seeking to control their own fertility. Thirdly, men and women belong to different sexual cultures and necessarily respond in different ways to the possibility of family regulation, and finally, despite the claims of some that birth control was an innovation, it was the pre-industrial forms of fertility control – including abortion – which brought the birth rate down.