It is fucked how much easier it is to get a vasectomy than a tubal litigation.

tell that to any woman in the use asking to be sterilized, crazy the hoops you have to jump through

That's entirely about finding the right doctor. I've known men who were refused a vasectomy because "you'll want kids later and it isn't always reversible" and were asked to get a consent form signed by their wife. Both are things that are common "hoops" women go through when trying to get a conservative doctor to do a hysterectomy or tubal ligation.

My wife actually brought me with her to the doctor's appointment where she asked for her hysterectomy "just in case" and the doctor asked why she brought me with her and I kind of sheepishly answered "moral support." She had seen every other gyno in the area and had problems with all of them, ranging from ignoring her issues to doing a uterine biopsy using a kevorkian punch (look it up, it's designed to be inserted, and then essentially a metal claw on the business end gouges out a piece of tissue to sample) with no pain relief of any kind on the grounds that "it's less painful than childbirth". Most of them were women (including the one that did the uterine biopsy), the one who did her hysterectomy was one of the only men.

Yeah it's still an issue now, but there are more options than back then.

It's very hard to hide birth control and it can be tampered with easily. I've heard of men microwaving their partner's birth control pills, poking holes in condoms, even forcing their partner to remove IUDs.

My eldest aunts ended up being pregnant the same time my grandmother was often.

There's a lot of resentment and grudges in my family tree.

Yeah, I grew up catholic and that's how the big families I knew were. You had kids who were largely raised by their big sisters raising the younger siblings… And no, they weren't ok, they ranged from mad about it to excited to be the mom in such a dynamic

The folks who have large numbers of kids typically start handing off childcare duties to the older ones as soon as they’re physically capable of doing those tasks.

More than once I have heard of the eldest child in these situations running off as soon as they are 18 and going no-contact.

There are certainly people who choose to do this. But in the time period pictured, it is more likely that this woman had no other choice.