When Is Fertility Salient to Religion? Colonization and Counterculture in Frontier Utah

Jason P. Bonham, University of Chicago

Fertility research often concludes that declining religious parity is owed to increasing secularization. Such models risk ignoring the dynamic nature of institutions while simultaneously displacing religion from its fundamental role of social organization. Instead, I advance a framework that emphasizes religious fertility patterns as emergent phenomena of social need, group objectives, and resources. In this model, changing fertility illustrates the evolving intentions of religion and their relation to broader society. Utilizing the Utah Population Database, a dataset of Latter-day Saint religious genealogies matched to census, health, and vital records, I present a demographic analysis of maternal parity in 19th and early 20th century Utah according to individual religious ceremony participation and community religiosity. Here, population fertility decreases across all commitment level subgroups, yet paradoxically in a manner that actually widens differences between most committed and less-committed or non-Latter-day Saint sub-groups. Thus, Latter-day Saint declining fertility better reflects an adaptable religious identity, built through the pragmatic alignment of social restraints and group objectives, supported through community approaches. A discussion concerning a more flexible framework to advance religion and fertility examinations ends this presentation.

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 Presented in Session 114. Transformations of Religious Influence: Propagation, Conflict, and Cultural Negotiation