Why is birth control called birth control? [Details inside].

Because when birth control was first (“first”, the stuff’s actually been around for thousands of years) getting really started as an industry in the early 20th century, people couldn’t frame it as “that lady should be able to have sex and not get pregnant”, they had to frame it as “it’s better for society if that married couple can limit the number of children they have and how far apart they are, thus being able to more fairly distribute resources – ie, control the number and timing of births”. And actually, ‘birth control’ lost out to ‘family planning’ for quite a while. And the name’s stuck; we probably won’t rename it every few years when our views change.

That term was introduced with the introduction of the Pill. And, along with Family Planning, it was sold to middle class America as a way to control when you’d get pregnant, not as a way to have sex without worry.

Same reason that Sickness Care is called Health Care. It sells better.

For the same reason – as others have alluded – that we call “fishing” that instead of “drowning worms”.

“Birth control” was a short-hand term for medication or a mechanical device that prevented women from getting pregnant. It was catchy and thus, caught on.

@zenvelo; The diaphragm was also considered a method of birth control and was available well before the pill showed up.

@gailcalled Yes, the diaphragm and the IUD, along with condoms, were around, but they weren’t called “birth control”; they were called by their names.

@zenvelo: The diaphragm was my gadget of choice when I got married, very young, in the fifties. You may be right. Who can remember back that far?

After I got engaged, I did have to go to the doctor’s with my mother in tow (how embarrassing) and get an Rx for the diaphragm, I do remember. They were not available to just anyone.

I think @rebbel means that it should be “conception control,” or something to that effect. More literal than ”birth” control.

Oral contraceptives were first marketed in the U.S. around 1960. This was the end of the Eisenhower-era post-war baby-boom 1950s—the world of “Leave It to Beaver.” The fog of deep sexual repression was just starting to lift but euphemisms still trumped explicit terminology. “Birth control pills” or simply “the pill” were easier for the American public to hear and discuss than “oral contraceptives” or “pregnancy preventers.” Even condoms were better known back then as “prophylactics” and a woman with an unwanted pregnancy was said to be “in trouble.”

Margaret Sanger coined the phrase in a 1914 edition of her journal The Woman Rebel. Sanger meant the phrase exactly as it sounds; as a means to control the birth of certain classes of individuals.

also what’s easier to say/sounds better? Birth control or conceiving control?