Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Hardcover)

~ Matthew Connelly (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Passionate and troubling, this study by Columbia University historian Connelly (A Diplomatic Revolution) tells the story of the 20th-century international movement to control population, which he sees as an oppressive movement that failed to deliver the promised economic and environmental results. According to Connelly, some proponents of the movement thought it was the key to women's health and well-being; others saw it as a way to eliminate the poor population; still others believed it would protect the environment. But Connelly also shows how larger economic and social contexts shaped the movement. For example, during the 1930s international Depression, ordinary people increasingly felt that couples planning families should focus on financial considerations; at the same time, as the state offered increased economic aid, it became acceptable to believe the state should also have a role in regulating reproduction. Far from disinterested, Connelly challenges many of the population control movement's claims: to those who argue that the slowed population growth in Asia has helped save the planet, Connelly notes tartly that if Asians have 2.1 children, but also air conditioning and automobiles, they will have a much greater impact on the global ecosystem than a billion more subsistence farmers. Ambitious, exhaustively researched and clearly written, this is a highly important book. 22 b&w illus. (Mar.)
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Review

This is history written from the heart. The story it tells is of misplaced benevolence at best and biological totalitarianism at worst. Deeply researched and elegantly written, it is a disturbing, angry, combative, and important book, one which raises issues we ignore at our peril.
--Jay Winter, Yale University (20080325)

Matthew Connelly bravely and eloquently explores the dark underside of world population policies. It is a clarion call to respect individuals' freedom to make their own reproductive choices.
--William Easterly, author of The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (20080505)

One of the most gifted historians of his generation has given us an exciting and thought-provoking new way to understand the making of the ever-globalizing world of today.
--Akira Iriye, author of Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (20080515)

Connelly raises the most profound political, social, and moral questions. His history reveals that the difference between population control and birth control is indeed that between coercion and choice.
--Mahmood Mamdani, author of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (20080520)

This is a superb global history. By focusing on NGOs and transnational networks, the United Nations and nation states, Connelly has given us an important new way of seeing world politics.
--Emily Rosenberg, University of California, Irvine (20080518)

Passionate and troubling...Connelly tells the story of the 20th-century international movement to control population, which he sees as an oppressive movement that failed to deliver the promised economic and environmental results...Ambitious, exhaustively researched and clearly written, this is a highly important book. (Publishers Weekly (starred review) 20080529)

[A] disturbing and compelling global history of population control programs...Drawing from records in more than 50 archives in seven countries, including those from Planned Parenthood and the more recently opened Vatican Secret Archives, Connelly provides extensive examples of movements to adjust populations...The world population growth is slowing and the age of population control appears to be over for the moment, but Connelly writes that his book is not just about history: It is a cautionary tale about the future.
--Lori Valigra (Christian Science Monitor 20080524)

[A] voluminous history of global population policy.
--Elizabeth Pisani (New Statesman 20080814)

Highlight[s] the importance of knowing who speaks for whom...Fatal Misconception describes a historic clash of opposed interest groups wrestling to impose their own population policies on the developing world.
--Michael Sargent (Nature 20081017)

Connelly's book is an excellent work of reference on the history of the population-control movement...It gives important insights into the emergence and the workings of the population-control lobby.
--Frank Furedi (Spiked Review of Books 20080602)

The shocking theme of Connelly's book is how Western governments--and most especially successive U.S. administrations--supported a policy which would have appalled them if it had been imposed on their own families.
--Dominic Lawson (The Independent 20081201)

A devastating account of the population-control movement; he demonstrates, detail by shocking detail, how a movement that believed it was acting from the highest humanitarian ideals became responsible for callous abuses of human rights on a global scale, ruining millions of lives in a grotesque eugenic experiment.
--Dominic Lawson (Sunday Times )

Connelly decisively confronts the historical baggage of reproductive rights by detailing the confluence of social Darwinists, Malthusians, racist eugenicists, public health advocates and feminists who coalesced around the century-long effort to control world population.
--James J. Hughes (Times Higher Education Supplement )

Mr. Connelly's story is a global one, partly because so many of the groups seeking to influence the reproduction of others were transnational, but also because often it was those in one country who wished those in another to have fewer children...Mr. Connelly's most devastating critique of population control is not that it destroyed lives, or was based on imperialist or eugenic ideas, but that it did not work. (The Economist )

Though painful to read, [Fatal Misconception] contain[s] many valuable lessons for anyone who cares about making development programs work, both technically and politically.
--Helen Epstein (The New York Review of Books )

This book provides the best historical record yet of how our culture was shaped by the acceptance of birth control.
--Patrick Carroll (Catholic Herald )

The subject of population control--perhaps the most ambitious social engineering project of the 20th century--has been somewhat neglected by historians...Fatal Misconception is a welcome contribution to the field, original and thought-provoking.
--Clive Cookson (Financial Times )

[This] brilliant new history of the population control movement is useful not simply on its theme but for the light it sheds on the political corruption that inevitably accompanies these world-saving enthusiasms...As Connelly lays out in painstaking detail, population control programs, aimed chiefly at developing nations, proliferated despite clear human rights abuses and, more importantly, new data and information that called into question many of the fundamental assumptions of the crisis mongers.
--Steven F. Hayward (Claremont Review of Books )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1 edition (March 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674024230
• ISBN-13: 978-0674024236
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #484,406 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough and Fair, April 13, 2008

By	R. Ladouceur - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Though science is a progressive activity, social policies defended as "scientific," when examined in hindsight, often reveal themselves to be based on little more than ephemeral cultural beliefs. Historical analyses of social policies 50 years on almost always uncover strong, sometimes fatal, nationalist, class, race, or gender-biases. Yet, our faith in progress drives us to believe that the mistakes of the past were due simply to inadequate data or poor modeling, not a general and unavoidable gulf between what is knowable scientifically and what is necessary to function communally and politically.

Nicolas D. Kristof, in his review of Matthew Connelly's "Fatal Misconception," (NYT: March 23, 2008) expresses this faith (and error) when he asserts, "The family planning movement has corrected itself, and today it saves the lives of women in poor countries and is central to efforts to reduce poverty worldwide."

Connelly does not dispute that the ability to control fertility is a welcome and empowering development. However, he makes a strong case that it has been "the emancipation of women, not population control, that has remade humanity." Connelly ably defends his central thesis - "the great tragedy of population control, the fatal misconception, was to think one could know people's interests better than they knew it themselves" - and alerts us to the continued universality and threat of this misconception. International population control efforts of the 1960s and 70s are often characterized today, particularly by feminist scholars, as extensions of imperialist policies. But Connelly's warning that "the spirit of empire lives on when people are unaccountable to those they claim to serve" is something I think we would all do well to contemplate.

Connelly's book is thoroughly researched and extremely well written. Highly recommended.

38 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Narcissistic and flawed. , July 2, 2008

By	bookscdsdvdsandcoolstuff "bookscdsdvdsandcool... (USA) - See all my reviews

In as much as hysterics over global population have been with us a LONG time, and in as much as hysterics over a coming ecological meltdown have been with us for quite some time as well, this book provides a decent overview of what the author seems to regard as extreme views in the population debate.

However, that said, this book's author takes a tone that is inappropriate for a dispassionate scholarly work. One reviewer of the book, Dr. Jay Winter of Yale said that Dr. Connelly's work was "disturbing, angry, combative, and important." With all due respect to Dr. Winter, I only agree with first three descriptors.

The central thesis of this book is this: population growth is not the problem the doomsday prophets proclaim that it is, because access to voluntary contraception and abortion has successfully put the breaks on growth. Therefore, imperialistic and immoral programs of forced "population control" are totally unnecessary.

However, the population controllers are only one of the villains in this narrative. While, on the one hand, the vicious and evil population controllers are painted as imperialistic and repugnant, on the other hand, Dr. Connelly paints an equally "disturbing" picture of the evil, myopic, and power obsessed Catholic Church. The "disturbing, angry," and "combative" tone are evident throughout the book when addressing these two opposite, and in the author's mind equally destructive, agendas.

However, history ought not be angry, combative, and emotionalistic. Rather, scholars like Dr. Connelly should first seek to UNDERSTAND who and what they are writing about before putting pen to paper, and when they do finally getting around to telling their story, a dispassionate and removed scholarly tone is far more appropriate. Dr. Connelly has failed miserably in this task, and the entire work crumbles as a result. As a staunch and orthodox Catholic, I have difficulty believing that the population controllers are as evil as Dr. Connelly seems to want to pretend. My personal experience with those who advocate population control is that they seem to be good people who are perhaps easily scared by prophesies of coming environmental and/or demographic disaster due to some imagined population "bomb." More often than not their views are "theological" in that they have bought into an ideological scientism that is neither especially logical, nor open to rational argumentation.

It seems that Dr. Connelly wants to demonize both positions because he seems to want to paint himself as above the fray. When one reads a text critically, the hand of the author tends to emerge. This author engages in a kind of "all knowing" critique of opposing views in the population debate that is both narcissistic and off-putting. Furthermore, the data do not support what he has to say.

I cannot speak for those who advocate population control. However, if Connelly was as "fair" to them as he was to the Catholic position, then they surely do have reason to criticize this work. Take Connely's two pages on Humanae Vitae as an example. There are so many fallacies that totally ignore contemporary scholarship on the encyclical, and contemporary practice of natural family planning, that it is amazing that the work is the result of a professor at a school with the reputation of Columbia.

Consider the following fallacies:

Connelly seems to believe that the Church teaches we should all have as many children as biologically possible. This is false. Parents should consider grave reasons to space or limit the size of their families. For those living in poverty, grave reasons certainly can include the inability to feed or educate or nurture children.

Connelly seems to believe that the natural methods of contraception the Church advocates all need Basal thermometers, are all very onerous, and all even require rectal temperatures. (HE ACTUALLY SAYS THIS). He did NO research into this topic.

On the contrary, the FACT is that Mother Theresa of Calcutta and her nuns achieved a 90% effectiveness rate (higher in many cases than artificial contraception in practice) after having taught women the Billings ovulation method of natural family planning. The billings ovulation method requires neither a thermometer (Basal or otherwise) nor literacy, as one does not even need charts! The 90% effectiveness rate was achieved by using clinical experience rules derived from observation of mucus signs to predict fertile phases. Dr. Connelly did NO research on Mother Theresa's nuns, even though the study of their success with Billings was widely publicized.

Connelly seems to believe that natural methods are ineffective because men in poor countries are incapable of continence for one or two weeks out of every month. I find this amazing. Not only does Mother Theresa's experience belie this claim, the claim is downright bigoted. Most of the world's poor are people of color and are front continents like Africa and South America. The idea seems to be that these folks are animalistic and unable to control themselves. This is silly.

It is especially silly since we know that among American teenagers, the pill is only 50% effective in preventing conception. Why? Because kids don't take their pills accurately. The 99% effectiveness statistic artificial methods advertise are "perfect use" statistics, that rarely, if ever, hold up in the field. Given the fact that artificial contraceptives give people license to have sex during the fertile time of a woman's cycle, and give the fact that in the field these methods often fail, it should come as no surprise that Mother Theresa's effectiveness rate was HIGHER than artificial methods for the poor in India trained by her.

In fact, Dr. Connelly ONLY did research in the Vatican Secret Archives. He consulted no Ob-gyn's or other medical professionals familiar with natural family planning, nor any contemporary philosophers or theologians who are familiar with the nuances of Church teaching. Dr. Connelly's resulting analysis of the Catholic Church is simplistic, error ridden, emotionalistic, and judgmental. The key word that jumps to mind here is narcissism. Only a narcissist seeks to condemn others before trying to understand their position, especially in a so called "academic" work. However, this work is not an academic work. It is simply a screed in favor an agenda.

For a better look at population figures, and the negative ramifications of population control, an excellent work is Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits This book was not carefully written or thought out.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars International Organizations = Interest Groups, July 6, 2008

By	James A. Stever - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The author makes a compelling case that population control groups are accountable to no one. Driven by their own particular ideologies, they operate with little regard to either the welfare of individuals within nation states or the overall interest of the countries they seek to influence.
The larger point is that international organizations behave in similar fashion to interest groups: i.e., controlled by elites and driven by narrow ideologies.