Projektování sociálního rodičovství : osvojení, pěstounská péče a SOS dětské vesničky v socialistickém Československu

• Authors: Frank Henschel

Title variants

EN

Designing a social parenthood system : adoption, foster care, and SOS children´s villages in socialist Czechoslovakia

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

CS

a2_Pro „problémové děti“, včetně dětí romského původu, byla pokládána za vhodnou pěstounská péče, obnovená zákonem v roce 1973. Nakonec autor přibližuje historii SOS dětských vesniček v Československu, které jako hybridní forma kolektivní a pěstounské péče sehrály v reformě náhradní péče specifickou roli. O tomto konceptu, založeném na křesťanské výchově a ústřední roli matky, se vedla koncem šedesátých let vypjatá diskuse. Prosadit se jej podařilo v atmosféře liberalizace za pražského jara 1968, a to zejména díky osobnímu nasazení několika expertů, kteří založili sdružení, vybrali velkou sumu peněz, rychle zorganizovali stavbu dvou vesniček a zajistili jejich fungování. Ačkoliv po vydání zákona o pěstounské péči převzal vesničky pod svou správu stát, jejich průkopnické zavedení ve východním bloku i tak ilustruje, jak zásadní změnou prošel systém náhradní péče v Československu během čtyřiceti let socialistické vlády.

EN

a1_The author examines how an institutional system of substitute care of minors was built in socialist Czechoslovakia and how it was implemented in practice, including discussion of experts accompanying these processes. He claims the ruling regime was neither striving to destroy the family as the cornerstone of the society, not trying to place as many children as possible under a collective long-term substitute care system. Since 1945, however, state authorities in cooperation with experts launched a children care project which showed some social engineering elements and in the framework of which politicians and experts created new standards of children care and education. The substitute care system was always pursuing multiple objectives, as had to deal with social, medical, and ideological issues. Many documents of relevant ministries openly declared an intention to educate a "new, socialist individual"in state-supervised institutional facilities in the 1950s, and collective care of children in children´s homes was a standard type of care of biological or so-called social orphans at that time. Czechoslovak authorities later made step-by-step modifications of the system to expand the porfolio of substitute care options. Under the pressure of experts in pediatrics, pedagogics, and child psychology, including JIří Dunovský or Zdeněk Matějček, who initiated a discussion of the "childern´s issue" in the 1960s, using results of their research projects to point at psychic, emotional, and social damage to children in collective facilities, the authorities reacted by facilitating the adoption process, establishing family-type children´s homes, and a de facto restoration of foster care.

EN

a2_The experts were participating in these reforms very intensively, pursuing a nuclear family with a traditional role assigned to mother as an ideal. As to "problematic children", including those of Romany descent, foster care restored by a legal act in 1973 was considered suitable. In the end of his wrk, the author describes the history of SOS children´s villages in Czechoslovakia a hybrid form combining collective and foster care, which played a specific role in the substitute care reform. The concept, which was based on Christian education and the central role of mother, was heatedly discussed in the late 1960s. It was possible to implement it in the liberalized atmosphere of the Prague Spring, thanks mainly to personal efforts of several experts, who established an association, collected a fairly large sum of money, quickly organized the construction of two villages, and arranged their operation. Although the state took them over after the foster care act had come into power, their groundbreaking introduction in the Eastern Bloc still illustrates the fundamental changes of the substitute care system in Czechoslovakia during the forty years of the socialist rule.

Keywords

CS

sociální pomoc; rodinná politika; pěstounská péče; dětské domovy

EN

social support; family policy; foster home care; children's homes

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 582-610
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Frank Henschel

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic

unknown

Blanka Medková

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic