- Home
- Publications
- Search
Publications
105 Publications
Some babies are better than others. Selective Pronatalism, Ethnicity and Sexuality Politics behind the Iron Curtain
This chapter focuses on the reproductive policies – regulation of abortion, sterilization, and financial support to families – in socialist Czechoslovakia, to show how ethnicity represented one of the main dividing lines between those deserving and undeserving to reproduce.…
Topics: Gender, Care, Parenting
Navigating Intensive Motherhood: Inventiveness and Agency Among Low-Income Single Mothers
This article explores how the ideology of intensive motherhood is reflected in, and shapes, the experiences of low-income single mothers in Czechia. By focusing on this group, the study advances understanding of the diffusion of the intensive motherhood ideology and the intersectional aspects of social reproduction. We demonstrate that, while intensive motherhood norms influence maternal practices in Czechia, low-income single mothers respond with inventive adaptations and reframing that reflect their specific…
Topics: Gender, Care, Parenting
Exceptional and Decent People: Mothering and School Choice in the Reproduction of Social Inequality
This article explores how primary school choice varies for differently situated mothers through an analysis of interviews with Czech middle- and working-class mothers. Combining Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, Foucault’s technologies of the self, and the concept of intensive parenting, we examine how school choice is becoming parents’ identity work in a diversified primary school system, guided by intensive parenting norms. We argue that school choice reinforces parental guidance of children towards a part…
Moral work of precarious caregivers: The case of the Czech Republic during the COVID-19 pandemic
This article explores how family caregivers employed in precarious jobs reconstruct their moral selves in line with and in resistance to neoliberal ideals of responsibility and autonomy. The analysis of semi-structured interviews with parents and people providing care to a close relative, all working in precarious forms of employment and living in low-income households, shows that in a familialist and neoliberal context, precarious, nonstandard forms of employment and caregiving mutually reinforce each other. …
Topics: Gender, Care, Work
Intensive mothering—Different repertoires, same goal
Intensive parenting has become the dominant standard in economically advanced countries and has recently spread across various socioeconomic and ethnic groups. However, more knowledge is needed to understand its variations and how sociocultural conditions in different countries facilitate these variations. This article examines the various forms of intensive mothering in Czechia. Drawing on a constructivist grounded theory approach to analysing semi-structured interviews with mothers in Czechia, we argue that …
Topics: Gender, Care, Parenting
Obedient mothers, healthy children: communication on the risks of reproduction in state-socialist Czechoslovakia
The article analyses medical communication in popular media relating to the risks in reproduction in the state-socialist Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989 and shows how it used emotions as an instrument to control women’s reproductive behaviour. In particular, we use an approach inspired by Donati’s (1992) political discourse analysis and by Snow and Bedford’s (1988) framing analysis to explore communication on the risk of infertility in the abortion debate, the risk of fetal abnormalities in the pren…
What happened to my time during the COVID-19 lockdown? Parents’ subversive temporal regime strategies and their potential beyond the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted individuals to devise new temporal strategies in various spheres of their lives as a result of the spatial regulations imposed during the first lockdown. We apply Lisa Suckert’s theoretical model of ‘the capitalist time regime’ in the analysis of 68 interviews with parents of schoolchildren in seven European countries conducted during the first COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020. We examine actors’ agency and capability to govern time during the pandemic and the extent to w…
Czech Parents Under Lockdown: Different Positions, Different Temporalities
Using an intersectional approach, we explore how parents in the Czech Republic coped with the increased demands of childcare and how their perceptions of childcare changed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on Nancy Fraser’s theory of the social contradiction of capitalism, we address the question of whether the pandemic situation can be viewed as an opportunity to increase recognition of care. Qualitative interviews with parents from various socioeconomic backgrounds conducted from spring 2020 to su…
New Technologies, Older Workers in Banking and Nursing
The article examines how technological change and organisational restructuring interacts with population ageing and policies that extend working life, and how older workers understand these trends. Using organisational and contextual approaches and qualitative research on nurses and bankers in Czechia, we investigate older workers' experiences with digitalisation. The age disadvantage older workers experience in digitalising workplaces is produced by three processes: responsibilisation, production of insecurit…
Topics: Digitalization, Gender, Technology and society, Age and Aging
Obedient mothers, healthy children: communication on the risks of reproduction in state-socialist Czechoslovakia
The article analyses medical communication in popular media relating to the risks in reproduction in the state-socialist Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989 and shows how it used emotions as an instrument to control women’s reproductive behaviour. In particular, we use an approach inspired by Donati’s (1992) political discourse analysis and by Snow and Bedford’s (1988) framing analysis to explore communication on the risk of infertility in the abortion debate, the risk of fetal abnormalities in the pren…
Topics: Gender, Parenting, Public health
Women and employment: advances and challenges in policies for women's labour-force participation in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean in the context of the post-pandemic recovery
The purpose of this document is to provide inputs and contribute to reflection for decision-making in the field of equality in employment between men and women. It aims to be a document of proposals and measures of public policies that can be taken into consideration, both in the 27 countries of the European Union (EU27) and in their relationship with their partners in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), to increase women's participation into the labour market in a stable and equitable manner.…
Topics: Economy, Gender
Gender a změny v dělbě práce v domácnostech s dětmi v době pandemie covidu-19
The article ties in with the scholarship on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on gender equality. Based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with parents of children under 12, we examine the processes that led to the increase or dismantling of the gender division of labour in families during the first nationwide lockdown. Using the concepts of path dependency and ‘doing’ and ‘undoing’ gender, we explain the strategies couples with children used to adapt to the enormous increase in reproductive wor…
Topics: Gender, Work, Parenting
„Všichni tím volantem nakonec musí točit stejně“: gender, věk a tělesnost v práci řidičů veřejné dopravy
Topics: Gender, Age and Aging
Péče jako individuální odpovědnost a prohloubení ekonomického znevýhodnění sólo matek v pandemii covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic had a particularly severe impact on people in a vulnerable position, such as solo mothers living alone with their children. In this article I use an intersectional approach in order to understand how their different positions in life affected their ability to cope with the crisis situation. I present a longitudinal qualitative study of the situation of solo mothers in the Czech Republic during the Covid-19 crisis, based on repeated interviews with women from three Czech regions. The preli…
Topics: Gender, Care
Cash for Care as Special Money: The Meaning and Uses of the Care Allowance in Close Relationships in the Czech Republic
Investigating what happens when money in the form of a cash-for-care benefit enters family relationships, this article examines long-term family care in the Czech Republic where a “care allowance” was introduced in 2007. It compares two qualitative studies: one of adult children providing care to their parents and the other of mothers caring for a disabled child in both cases, the adults are entitled to the benefit. The studies used narrative and in-depth interviews with forty-eight informal caregivers. Da…
Topics: Gender, Value Orientations, Care, Age and Aging
Why Women Leave Earlier: What Is Behind the Earlier Labour Market Exit of Women in the Czech Republic
Topics: Gender, Age and Aging
Child and Family Support Policies Across Europe: National Reports from 27 Countries
Topics: Care, Family, Social Policy
Extension of Working Lives in the Czech Republic: Employee Situation. Policy brief DAISIE project
Topics: Gender, Social Policy, Age and Aging
Extension of Working Lives in the Czech Republic: Employee Situation
Topics: Gender, Social Policy, Age and Aging
Children of the state? The role of pronatalism in the development of Czech childcare and reproductive health policies
The chapter explores how pronatalism has influenced the formation of reproductive and care policies in Czechia. It shows that the pronatalist framing has been selective in the historical as well as the present-day debates on reproduction. Although pronatalist framing presents itself as resting on statistical evidence of decreasing, low, or insufficiently rising fertility, the analysis shows that how the situation at a given time is defined has been more important than the actual birth rate (trend) itself. It a…
Topics: Gender, Care, Social Policy
Muži a ženy pečující o seniory v rodině
Current data show that most elderly care in the Czech Republic, as well as worldwide, is provided by family members and in most cases women. Men also provide care, but they are less likely to do so, the intensity of the care they do provide is not as great, and the care activities they engage in are of a different type than those performed by women. This article seeks to answer two questions: What share of Czech women and men are caring for an elderly member in the family? Do the experiences of sons and daught…
Topics: Gender, Care, Age and Aging
Disentangling the link between having one child and partnership trajectories: a mixed-methods lifecourse research
This article explores the relationships between partnership trajectories and having an only child. Few studies have focused on one-child families, even though in many countries having just one child is the main factor driving sub-replacement fertility levels. Little is known especially about how non-progression to a second child relates to partnership trajectories. This article contributes to filling these gaps by using a mixed-methods life-course research. We combine sequence and regression analyses of survey…
Topics: Gender, Parenting
Selective pronatalism in childcare and reproductive health policies in Czechoslovakia
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 wome…
Topics: Gender, Parenting, Family, Social Policy
Discourses on Abortion and their Impact on Institutions in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic in the Second Half of the 20th Century (1950–2003)
Topics: Gender, Historical Sociology, Parenting, Sexuality, Public health
Příspěvek na péči jako „zvláštní peníze“: chápání a užívání příspěvku na péči v blízkých vztazích
The paper presents the comparative results of two qualitative researches on long-term informal family care in the Czech Republic: one researching the life strategies of women caring for their elderly parents and the other researching women caring for a child with a disability. The interviews with the two groups of caregivers make it possible to compare the ways in which people in different caring situations interpret and use the same state benefit intended for people who need personal long-term care. The analy…
Topics: Gender, Intergenerational Relations, Care, Age and Aging
Page 1 of 5
