Selective pronatalism in childcare and reproductive health policies in Czechoslovakia

ABSTRACT

The paper discusses how selective pronatalism has been incorporated into childcare and reproductive health policies in the socialist state of Czechoslovakia (1948–1989). It answers the question of how pronatalist framing has been used to categorise ‘others’, whose procreation has been deemed undesirable. It pays attention to the ways limitations on women’s bodily and social citizenship were used as a tool of selective pronatalism, as well as how the pronatalist framing was linked to the framing of women´s interests, to determine whether and how women´s interests were present in the debates on reproduction and childcare. It considers both childcare and reproductive health policies to show how a healthy and able population was to be secured in the socialist state of Czechoslovakia. Based on the framing analysis applied to major policy texts and political discussions preceding legislative changes, the paper analyses the development of abortion policies, policies regulating the use of assisted reproduction technologies, prenatal screening, policies of childcare and family support, and the framings that contributed to their development. By linking the analysis of debates on childcare and reproductive health policies, we argue that although pronatalist framing has been used several times in support of women´s interests, it has always been patriarchal and exclusionary.

KEYWORDS:

• Pronatalism
• policies
• women
• reproduction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See conceptualisation of reproduction by Almeling (2015).

2. Because vacuum extraction was considered a minor procedure, women were only offered anxiolytics and analgesics (Ministry of Health, 1983).

3. The average brutto salary was 2 765 CZK in 1982.

4. Czechoslovak Women’s Council was an umbrella women’s organization with some representatives from the Central Trade Union Council, the Central Cooperative Council, and political parties. It was dissolved after the communist takeover in February 1948. The National Women´s Front brought together women´s sections in political parties in parity representation.

5. Lists of workplaces and work positions were specified by decrees.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation under Grant number [17-04465S]; institutional support [RVO 68378025], project Childlessness and one-child families: explaining the low fertility rate in the Czech Republic.