Planning the African Family in the 1960s and 1970s

FAIN: FT-259563-18

Emily Callaci
University of Wisconsin System (Madison, WI 53715-1218)

Research and writing leading to publication of a book on family planning in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s.

The history of contraception, population control and family planning is a story of global unevenness. Historians have characterized this global history as a story of extremes: of reproductive freedom, upward mobility and empowerment in some parts of the world, and of racism, vulnerability, population control or coercive sterilization in others. Yet neither narrative of feminist liberation nor of coercive population control captures the history of Africa’s encounter with the global family planning movement. My book, Planning the African Family, tells the story of how African doctors, nurses, social workers, politicians, and patients in the 1960s and 1970s used the resources of family planning in creative and often unintended ways, improvising in the context of scarcity to deliver health and to build health systems.