Irina V. Bogdashina

Postgraduate student, Center for Gender Studies, the Russian Academy of Sciences N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology

The Russian Academy of Sciences N. N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology

(Moscow, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/27128407_2021_1_34

Abstract. The article reveals the measures taken by the Soviet state in the 1950 – 1960s in the field of women's health, maternal and child health. Normative legal acts, along with the mass media, determined both permissible and forbidden rules and norms, being a regulator of reproductive behavior. The materials of ego documents from a completely different perspective reveal the real feelings and experiences of women associated with maternal practices. The study of the everyday life and everyday life of women in the aspect of planning pregnancy, bearing and raising children will allow comparing the tasks set by the state and the actual state of affairs in the field of maternal and child health. The conditions of almost constant shortages and unrest in medical and preschool institutions of the city forced women to adapt to the current situation. Combining the roles of a worker, a wife and a mother, city dwellers took on almost overwhelming work, which affected their physical and mental health. The procedure for legalizing abortion gave women the right to decide the issue of motherhood for themselves, but the realities of the non-capital region made their own adjustments in the lives of urban women. Maternal practices, which in most cases still took place in difficult housing and material circumstances, became the concern of women of several generations.
Keywords: motherhood, childhood, everyday life, healthcare, Volgograd, the period of the "thaw".

Full text of the article (PDF)

* The study was carried out according to the research plan of the IEA RAS and the RFBR project 19-09-00191.

For citation: Bogdashina, IV 2021, ‘Motherhood and childhood in difficult material and living conditions of the non-capital region of the 1950 – 1960s (on the example of Volgograd)’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 1 (5), pp. 34–45, https://doi.org/10.22405/27128407_2021_1_34 (in Russ.)

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