Theoretically, during the physiologically limited child-bearing period, a woman would get 37 children, if she gave birth to one child every ten months over a period of 31 years.
Even if she gave birth to a child every 15 months throughout her reproductive period, she would produce a total of 25 children. Such a phenomenon, however, is quite rare.
Present-day newspaper stories of a stray instance of a woman giving birth to her twenty-first child seem to be highly exaggerated. At the most, 13 to 14 children per woman may be considered to be a physiologically reasonable number.
There is no evidence, however, that any community has ever reached that average. In the Hutterite community a religious sect living on the borders of the United States of America and Canada.
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Where culture places a high positive value on having children and where any form of birth control is considered to be sinful it was observed that a woman in 1950 could, on an average, produce 12 children, if she was married during her eighteenth year and had lived with her husband up to the end of her reproductive period.
It has also been observed that in Cocos Islands, women, who were married between the ages of 14 and 15, had, on an average, given birth to 10.8 children by the time they were 45 years old; those who got married at the age of 16, had, on an average, given birth to 10.3 children; and those who got married at the age 17, 18 and 19 had, on an average, given birth to 9.3, 8.8 and 7.3 children respectively.
These illustrations indicate that even amongst communities where intentional contraception is not practiced, no community has, on an average, attained the biological maximum of producing children.
There is, thus, a gap between fecundity, and actual fertility, even though occasional instances are found of prolific women producing the number of children, which approximates to the maximum biological capacity.
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Fertility, obviously, cannot be unlimited because of the operation of physiological, social as well as cultural factors, which act as limiting influences.
It is worth noting at this point that unrestricted Indian fertility where contraception is not practiced on a large scale is low as compared to that of other Eastern and Western communities.
In India, it has been observed that women who have passed through the entire reproductive period in the married state, that is, whose marriages were consummated by the time they were 15 and who remained married up to the end of the reproductive period have borne on an average six to seven children.
Chandrasekharan has pointed out several examples of unlimited fertility in different countries. For instance, in England and Wales in the 1911 Census, it was observed that the average number of children born to women, who were married between the ages, 15 and 19 during 1861-1871, was 8.4.
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According to the 1941 Census of Canada, rural women in Quebeck, who were married before attaining the age of 20, were on an average, also found to have given birth to 9.9 children.
Women in the Muslim countries were found to have had, on an average, 8.3 children. According to the 1940 Census of Brazil, it was found that women who had their first child between the ages of 15 and 19, had, during their reproductive life (without regard to the changes in marital status) borne, on an average, 8.8 children.
The examples of the Hutterite community and the women of Cocos Islands have already been cited. Indian fertility has been kept at a lower level than the fertility of other countries where contraception is not practiced, mainly because of physiological, social and cultural factors.