The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

An average woman bore 7.04 children in 1800 but only 3.56 in 1900. By later standards the rate was high, roughly equaling the mid-twentieth-century baby boom, but it brought the United States into line with other nineteenth-century nations.