Main description:

The business of birth control is the first book-length study to examine contraceptives as commodities in Britain before the pill. Drawing on new archives and neglected promotional and commercial material, the book demonstrates how hundreds of companies transformed condoms and rubber and chemical pessaries into consumer goods that became widely available via discreet mail order catalogues, newspapers, birth control clinics, chemists' shops and vending machines in an era when older and more reserved ways of thinking about sex jostled uncomfortably with modern and more open attitudes. The book outlines the impact of contraceptive commodification on consumers, but also demonstrates how closely the contraceptive industry was intertwined with the medical profession and the birth control movement, who sought authority in birth control knowledge at a time when sexual knowledge and who had access to it was contested. -- .

Contents:

Introduction: contraceptive commercialisation before the Pill
1 The dynamics of production: contraceptive manufacturing
2 Shaping markets: packaging, brands and trademarks
3 The print culture of contraceptives: advertising and the circulation of birth control knowledge
4 'As honest as business permits': medical practitioners, birth control clinics and contraceptive efficacy
5 Over the counter and on the high street: contraceptive retailing in the urban landscape
Epilogue -- .