Protected Children, Regulated Mothers : : Gender and the "Gypsy Question" in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1956 / / Eszter Varsa.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Central European University Press eBook-Package 2021
• VerfasserIn: Varsa, Eszter,
• Place / Publishing House: Budapest ;, New York : : Central European University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (256 p.)

Protected Children, Regulated Mothers examines child protection in Stalinist Hungary as a part of twentieth-century East Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European history. Across the communist bloc, the prewar foster care system was increasingly replaced after 1945 by institutionalization in residential homes. This shift was often interpreted as a further attempt to establish totalitarian control. However, this study—based on hundreds of children's case files and interviews with institution leaders, teachers, and people formerly in state care—provides a new perspective. Rather than being merely a tool of political repression, state care in postwar Hungary was often shaped by the efforts of policy actors and educators to address the myriad of problems engendered by the social and economic transformations that emerged after World War II. This response built on, rather than broke with, earlier models of reform and reformatory education. Yet child protection went beyond safeguarding and educating children; it also focused on parents, particularly lone mothers, regulating not only their entrance to paid work but also their sexuality. In so doing, children's homes both reinforced and changed existing cultural and social patterns, whether about gendered division of work or the assimilation of minorities. Indeed, a major finding of the book is that state socialist child protection continued a centuries-long national project of seeking a “solution to the Gypsy question,” rooted in efforts to eliminate the perceived “workshyness” of Roma.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- TABLE OF CONTENTS -- LIST OF FIGURES -- LIST OF TABLES -- ABBREVIATIONS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- Chapter 1 CHILD PROTECTION IN EARLY STATE SOCIALIST HUNGARY -- Chapter 2 “THE MINOR WOULD HINDER THE MOTHER IN FINDING EMPLOYMENT”: CHILD PROTECTION REGULATING WOMEN’S LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION -- Chapter 3 “SHE OCCUPIED HERSELF WITH MEN”: CHILD PROTECTION REGULATING THE SEXUAL MORALITY OF LONE MOTHERS AND SINGLE YOUNG WOMEN -- Chapter 4 “MAKE THEM EXPERIENCE THE GOOD TASTE OF PRODUCTIVE WORK”: RESIDENTIAL CARE AS AN INSTITUTION OF EDUCATION -- Chapter 5 “HE WAS THREE YEARS OLD BUT COULD NOT SPEAK AND HAD NO EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO ANYBODY”: STATE CARE AS DISCOURSE ON STALINIST POLITICAL TERROR IN SOCIALIST HUNGARY -- CONCLUSION -- APPENDIX -- BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX