[Diffusion of fertility control practices: moments, mechanisms, and determinants]

"In Brazil and in Bahia, distinct fertility control practices, performed through the so-called traditional techniques, have been socially diffused among the traditional elites and the more highly educated groups of the middle class since the end of the 19th century. These practices have produced a slow but systematic tendency to inter-generational decline in completed parity.... These facts support the hypothesis that the ethical changes involved in the acceptance and legitimacy of those practices were themselves a consequence of their increased prevalence and the consolidation of norms regarding the patterns of fertility control in these social classes.... Once anti-natality has been consolidated as a theoretical and practical reference system for the behaviour of the higher classes, the institutional apparatus of the society turned on the popular classes with lower levels of education and medical care, and diffused fertility control in these groups." (SUMMARY IN ENG)