Politicizing Family in Post-War Research on Family Planning
Published by Elisa-Maria Hiemer within a Special Issue of Central Europe
After the massive losses experienced during World War II, political post-war narratives created the image of the Polish nation as one family to which every man and woman should contribute. The state, in turn, took care of ‘its family’ by implementing social welfare measures. The present article will focus on individual actors and the extent to which socialist paternalistic attitudes influenced visions of the family at both the institutional and personal level. Mikołaj Łącki (1888–1969) was the head of the statistics department at the Institute of Mother and Child in Warsaw between 1951 and 1961. By examining materials held in the State Archive in Warsaw, the article scrutinizes Łącki’s legacy and his belief in building a health care system that would form the basis of a new Polish nation. His documents contain surveys about abortion, contraception methods and miscarriages. These sources are of particular interest as they reveal the extent of biased data collection and the impact of the political agenda on official data. In order to contextualize his work and the meaning of the surveys, the article begins with an analysis of the changing notion of ‘family’ and how the state reflected this in its social welfare policies.
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