Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Fri 14 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

All days
Go back

Thursday 13 April 2023 11.00 - 13.00
O-6 FAM04 Family, Childhood and Care. Changing Concepts of Normality and Deviance
E43
Network: Family and Demography Chair: Volker Hess
Organizer: Anelia Kassabova Discussants: -
Laura Hottenrott : "Every Pregnancy, even the First, should not be Left to Chance". Pregnancy between Individual Decision and State Control using the Example of the GDR
In the GDR, legal abortion as a "last resort" (ultima ratio) had a firm place in family planning enshrined in law since 1972. Since then, an abortion could take place in a clinic during the first 12 weeks without any further requirements. Performance and aftercare of the abortion were treated ... (Show more)
In the GDR, legal abortion as a "last resort" (ultima ratio) had a firm place in family planning enshrined in law since 1972. Since then, an abortion could take place in a clinic during the first 12 weeks without any further requirements. Performance and aftercare of the abortion were treated the same as sickness in terms of insurance law and a right to free contraceptives was established.
However, this was preceded by two decades in which the handling of unwanted pregnancies can be described as extremely restrictive and ethically questionable due to the restriction of abortion to medical indications.
The introduction of the 1972 law remained accompanied by critical voices until the end of the GDR. Programmatically postulated as an act of equality and self-determination for women, the practice of abortion in particular is viewed in retrospect in a decidedly ambivalent manner: unintentionally pregnant women were hardly given any counselling and there was no deeper social debate about abortion either before or after the introduction of the time limit regulation. Especially in the context of institutional child-care, statements of contemporary witnesses range between the two poles of "forced adoption" and "forced abortion". Both violated the law in the GDR.
The practice of family planning and especially the handling of pregnancies in an institutional context is still largely unexplored, also due to limited access to archival files. Focusing individual cases, this article examines the relationship between individual decision-making and state control in the 1960s to 1980s (body politics). (Show less)

Anelia Kassabova : (In-)Visibility of Institutions for "At-risk" Children in Socialist Bulgaria
On the basis of (photographic) archive material on "Mother & Child" homes, aspects of bio- and gender politics in socialist Bulgaria are thematised, using the concrete example of the “Mother and Child” Home in the city of Stara Zagora. It was founded in 1954 for children aged 0 to 3 ... (Show more)
On the basis of (photographic) archive material on "Mother & Child" homes, aspects of bio- and gender politics in socialist Bulgaria are thematised, using the concrete example of the “Mother and Child” Home in the city of Stara Zagora. It was founded in 1954 for children aged 0 to 3 years of different categories: Foundlings, orphans, children born out of wedlock, children of sick or socially disadvantaged parents, and became specialized in the so called “children with defects”, i.e. children with disabilities. In 1975, a boarding house for mothers with pathological pregnancies was opened at the centre and operated until 1982.
The analysis of policy strategies, the expert (gynecologists, neurologists, psychiatrists) debates and discourses on biosocial concepts, e.g. of normal and abnormal, norm and deviance, and concepts of the cultural value of the individual, of vulnerable groups will pose questions about what was considered ethical and unethical, by whom, and when. The practices and language in the field of medicine are analysed in the context of how these were perceived and enacted by individuals, groups, institutional actors.
The focus on biopolitics will highlight the complex interplay of political and economic rationalities, the complexity of population politics and their interplay with fundamental values relating to topics, such as sexuality, marriage, bodily integrity and vitality, and definitions of life. (Show less)

David Peace : ‘A Child of Misfortune’: Eugenics and Children Reception Centres in Post-War Britain
In the immediate post-war period two schools of psychiatric thought formed in the UK linking the causes of adult neuroses with behavioural developments during childhood and adolescence. Stemming from the Maudsley Hospital and the Tavistock Clinic, these two schools of thought can be understood as either ‘psychoanalytic’ or ‘eugenic’. This ... (Show more)
In the immediate post-war period two schools of psychiatric thought formed in the UK linking the causes of adult neuroses with behavioural developments during childhood and adolescence. Stemming from the Maudsley Hospital and the Tavistock Clinic, these two schools of thought can be understood as either ‘psychoanalytic’ or ‘eugenic’. This paper explores how these opposing descriptions of the link between child behavioural developments and adult neuroses impacted the formation of post-war social policy. It looks at the controversial establishment of children reception centres to separate infants from ‘problem families’. It highlights how the experiments at one of the early reception centres, the Caldecott Community, were planned and designed by members of the British Eugenics Society, most prominently the psychiatrists Hilda Lewis and Carlos P. Blacker. The purpose of these experiments was to observe how environmental factors, such as ‘adverse home conditions’, could lead to the development of adult neuroses and to examine the role of ‘hereditary susceptibility’. The paper also explores how reception centres were criticised by psychiatrists at the Tavistock Clinic, such as John Bowlby, who argued for the effects of ‘maternal deprivation’ on the formation of adult neuroses. The paper concludes, that despite sustained criticism from some psychiatrists, eugenics remained influential in post-war Britain and continued to exert influence on both social policy and psychiatric epidemiology. It contributes to emerging scholarship that not only assesses the role of children in post-war psychiatric experimentation but also highlights the underexplored continuation of eugenics in the decades after 1945, which will have significant implications for our understanding of post-war histories of social policy and psychiatry not only in the UK but across Europe. (Show less)

Julia Reus : Morally Depraved? Insights into Institutionalized Childcare Following Incestuous acts in Westphalia/West Germany (1950s–1960s)
I would like to contribute some research findings from my PhD on „Kinship, Sexuality and Deviance. Incest discourses in West Germany“ to the panel on institutionalized childcare in the second half of the 20th century. In my PhD, I investigate the social, academic and legal perceptions of kinship, family ... (Show more)
I would like to contribute some research findings from my PhD on „Kinship, Sexuality and Deviance. Incest discourses in West Germany“ to the panel on institutionalized childcare in the second half of the 20th century. In my PhD, I investigate the social, academic and legal perceptions of kinship, family and sexuality through the lens of discourses on incestuous relationships in the Federal Republic of Germany after 1949. Incestuous relations and sexual acts between close kin were not only socially stigmatized, but also criminalized in some constellations. Although minors were not criminally liable, they were often brought into institutionalized care following suspected or confirmed incestuous acts or intrafamilial sexual harassment.
I will be exploring individual case files from childcare institutions in Westfalia (1950s–1960s), in which the residential education for girls was the result of incestuous acts in the family perceived as violation and/or sexual deviance. I am interested in how these intra-familial sexual actions combined with contemporary perceptions of gender roles, sexuality, and family to affect the subsequent institutional childcare. Consequently, I will analyze their impact on individual professionals and carers’ evaluations of character, behavior and required educational measures for the minors. Thus I hope to highlight the ambivalences of institutional childcare and educational intervention as youth welfare as well as the tension between protection, coercion and social normativity in these frequently denominational institutions, as well as the impact of individual agency on their official aims. (Show less)



Theme by Danetsoft and Danang Probo Sayekti inspired by Maksimer