By 1911 some Irish couples were limiting fertility. Marital fertility fell slowly after independence. The gap between family size in Northern Ireland and Ireland and between Catholic and Protestant families widened. The Irish Free State introduced legislation restricting access to information and prohibiting the sale and importation of contraceptives, legislation that reinforced Catholic teaching. Although similar legislation existed in other countries, it had much less impact than in Ireland. The near-universal practice of religion by men and women meant that Catholic teaching could be enforced in the confession box, and this teaching, combined with the valorisation of large families by Irish society, provided uncaring husbands with a licence to procreate, irrespective of the health or the wishes of their wife. Before the 1960s there was little information available about the ‘safe period’, a church-permitted method of regulating fertility, which was promoted by Catholic organisations in other countries. By 1961, despite marrying at a later age, Irish couples had the largest families in the western world, their fertility was seriously out of line with Catholics elsewhere.

The economy grew in the 1960s; access to education expanded, and there was a belated marriage boom. The Pill had a special significance for Ireland, given the absence of other legally permitted forms of reliable contraception. It gave women the initiative with respect to contraception. This was the decade of Vatican II. The Catholic church was wrestling with contraception, in the face of growing non-conformity among Catholic couples. In Ireland information was finally becoming available about the ‘safe period’. Dublin maternity hospitals contending with rising numbers of young mothers with uncontrolled fertility, opened ‘fertility guidance clinics’. Initially they only offered church-approved methods of family planning, but by the mid-sixties they were prescribing the Pill. Irish theologians were active in the emerging debate as to whether the contraceptive pill was compatible with Catholic teaching, and use of the Pill spread quietly in Ireland. Family planning was being discussed on Irish television and in print media, especially by women’s magazines, but hopes of a more liberal future were dashed in 1968 when Humanae Vitae reaffirmed traditional teaching.