Protected Children, Regulated Mothers

Eszter Varsa is post-doctoral researcher in the ERC project ZARAH: Women's Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Transnationally, From the Age of Empires to the Late 20th Century at Central European University, Vienna.

Parts of the questions posed to the author of the book: "The issue of childhood in the broader social and political contexts of Eastern, Southeastern, and East Central Europe continues to be an insufficiently researched topic, while childhood in state-socialist/Stalinist Europe is even more so. Which official childhood narrative do you try to counteract in Protected Children, Regulated Mothers? Were there any attributes specific to Hungarian state actors’ attempts to exercise control over the Roma by placing their children in temporary state care? How was child protection supposed to balance the responsibilities for reproductive work but also impose paid employment for Romani mothers?"https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/protected-children-regulated-mothers-a-conversation-with-eszter-varsa/

• 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