Upper class women had more children.
Women did not have a choice between having children or not. They also could not overrule her husband if he chose to expose a newborn. Many female infants were exposed by their families because they could not carry on the family name and they also required a dowry at the time of their marriage.(12) Eva Cantarella in Pandora's Daughters, states:
The earliest power that the father could exercise over a filias familias was that of exposure. At birth, in a highly symbolic rite, newborns -- male and female -- were deposited at the feet of the father. He -- without explanation or justification -- either recognized the child as his by picking it up, or withheld his recognition by leaving it where it was. The recognized child became a member of the familia; the unrecognized child was abandoned to the river or left to die by starvation.(13)
Most of the exposed were girls, but some were sickly or weak-looking males.(14) On an Oxyrhynchus Papri, a letter from a husband to a wife instructs her to let the infant live if it is a boy; [but] "if it is a girl, expose it."(15) It was as simple as that. This practise of exposure greatly reduced the female population, as did the neglect of girls. Augustus was so concerned with the decline in Roman population, particularly in the aristocracy, that he passed both the Julian Laws in 18 BC and the Papia-Poppaean Laws in 9 AD. These laws placed penalties on celibacy and not marrying, and rewarded marriage and having children. Neither set of laws really helped to greatly increase the population of Rome.(16)
Although the role of women in ancient Rome was primarily child-bearing, women also played an important role in raising the children.(17) This differed greatly from the Athenian tradition which placed both the cultural and educational aspects of raising boys exclusively in the hands of men. In the Roman world, women were encouraged to teach their children Roman culture.(18) When the boys grew up, the mother would spend both her money and time to advance their political careers.(19)Even the girls would receive this sort of home education because they would be expected to teach their own children one day.(20) In The Elements of Oratory, Quintilian reports that Cornelia, mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, played a major role in their education and cultivation.(21) Roman women had children, but they were not exclusively "tools of reproduction"(22) -- they "were also a fundamental instrument of the transmission of a culture ... [and] it was their job to prepare them to become cives romani ... "(23) Who were they preparing to become Roman citizens? Were only the males given citizenship, as was the case for centuries in Athens? This is a difficult question to answer.
In the introduction of As the Romans Did, Jo-Ann Shelton discusses how the Romans "took the remarkable action of granting Roman citizenship to every free person within the borders of the Roman Empire."(24) It does not sound as if women were excluded. In Women and Politics in Ancient Rome, Richard A. Bauman says that "the public position of women was so unfavourable that it has even been doubted whether they were Roman citizens. The doubts are unfounded ..."(25) So it seems that they had a higher position than Athenian women, who were not considered citizens. They did have something in common: neither was allowed to vote or to participate in political activities. This applies primarily to the Republican Period, since the kings made the decisions during the Monarchy and the Emperor had the final say during the Roman Empire. In Augustus' time, the assemblies began to fade into the shadows. Regardless of the laws, inscriptions uncovered in Pompeii from the first century AD prove that women had an interest in politics. An example, painted on the side of a house states: "Nymphodotus, along with Caprasia, asks you to vote for Marcus Cerrinus Vatia for the aedileship."(26) Another, found on the side of a wine shop reads: "Caprasia along with Nymphius -- her neighbors too -- ask you to vote for Aulus Vettius