In simple terms, Neo-Malthusians are Malthu-sians who believed that population could be controlled and that control could provide a key to the creation of a more perfect society. They were strong advocates of some forms of birth control, but they also generally were anticlerical, antimystic, and freethinkers. They strongly believed that developments in science and technology would make the world a better place to live and human nature could at least be manipulated by human effort. They provided the dominant intellectual justification for contraception in the British Isles and ultimately were more influential there than in the United States.
Part of the reason is that the United Sates, at least at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was far behind the British Isles in industrialization and was more optimistic in the long run. The birth control movement in the United States initially was also strongly influenced by utopian socialists, and it was transmitted to future generations through radicals and reformers including feminists. Neo-Malthusians were also influenced by perfectionism.
