Pregnancy in the "olden days"

Factual Questions
1

So I was thinking. Back in the long-ago times when birth-control was less safe and reliable than today, (or the use of it was less widespread) you’d maybe see lots more pregnant women around. Disregarding the Victorian-era notion that it was unseemly to appear on the street heavily pregnant, how much of the female population would be noticeably pregnant at any time? Would I, if I was transported to a crowd in say 1780’s New York, immediately notice a surprising number of pregnant women, compared to what I was used to seeing now?

Twiddle

2

The number of babies each woman had in her lifetime has come down a lot in the last 100 years or so. Off the top of my head, in the US it would be a 50%+ reduction. Say it used to be 5 per woman and is now 2. So yes, you’re right.

http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/fertility.html

3

And I suspect that “unseemly to appear visibly pregnant in public” was something done mainly by the upper classes, who could afford it.