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215 Publications
Involved Fatherhood Ideals and Practices in European Post‐Socialist Societies
This thematic issue examines how involved fatherhood is negotiated across post‐socialist Europe, where expectations of paternal engagement remain unevenly institutionalised and practiced. Bringing together seventeen contributions covering eleven post‐socialist countries and a 16‐country comparison, the issue analyses how fathers navigate tensions between traditional breadwinner norms and emerging caregiving ideals. The articles reveal substantial cross‐national and social variation shaped by welfare re…
Topics: Care, Parenting, Social Policy
Comparing childcare policies in Lithuania and the Czech Republic
This chapter compares Czech and Lithuanian childcare policies. Through contextual analysis, we uncover the causes of their variations. In Lithuania more mothers with small children are employed, more fathers take parental leave, and more small children attend formal childcare. Czech policies provide a long paid leave centered on mothers and discourage fathers from caregiving. Paradoxically, Lithuania manifests fewer egalitarian attitudes than Czechia, indicating that gender equalizing policies have only limite…
Topics: Gender, Care, Parenting, Social Policy
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
Involved Fathers and Intensive Parenting in Czechia: Norms and Fathers’ Contextualised Practices
Intensive parenting norms that emphasise high parental investment to optimise child development are increasingly prevalent in advanced economies. Although motherhood has been widely studied, fatherhood remains underexplored, especially in contexts like Czechia, where support for shared childcare between parents is limited. Using data from the Czech ISSP 2022 and qualitative interviews with Czech middle‐class fathers and mothers (2022–2024), this study examines how intensive parenting norms shape the views …
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…
Review [Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the “Gypsy Question” in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1956. By Eszter Varsa. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2021.]
Topics: Gender, Historical Sociology, Care, Parenting, Family, Social Policy
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
Fragile Pronatalism and Reproductive Futures in European Post‐Socialist Contexts
This editorial seeks to define fragile pronatalism by highlighting why pronatalism in the examined Central and Eastern European post‐socialist countries should be considered fragile. Moreover, it aims to map desirable future changes in fertility policies in the region. Following a brief presentation of the articles contained in this thematic issue, our concluding thoughts complete this editorial.…
Topics: Parenting, Family
Rodičovské plány a cesty k rodičovství gayů a leseb
Through a qualitative analysis of interviews with 52 men and women with non-heterosexual identities, the article deepens the understanding of parental intentions and the formation of pathways to gay and lesbian parenting in the Czech Republic. The article explains the reduced parental intentions and postponement of gay and lesbian parenting in the contexts of heteronormative, biologizing and gendered discourses of parenthood and the lack of legislative recognition of homoparental families in Czechia. The analy…
Topics: Gender, Parenting, Family, Sexuality
The role of experts in forming family policy under an adversarial subsystem in the Czech Republic
Topics: Gender, Parenting, Social Policy
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
Childlessness and Barriers to Gay Parenthood in Czechia
This mixed‐methods article focuses on childlessness and barriers to parenthood among non‐heterosexual men in Czechia. On the quantitative sample of 419 men (165 gays, 125 bisexuals, and 129 heterosexuals with same‐sex romantic/sexual attraction), recruited on a representative online panel, we map the parenting desires, intentions, and perceived barriers to parenthood. Our analysis identifies a substantial group of gay men without parenting desires and intentions compared to heterosexuals and bisexuals, a…
Topics: Gender, Parenting
Child and Family Support Policies Across Europe: National Reports from 27 Countries
Topics: Care, Family, Social Policy
Bezdětní a postoje k rodičovství
Fenomén bezdětnosti je jedním z rysů demografického vývoje evropských populací. V mezinárodním kontextu se Česká republika řadí k zemím s nejnižším podílem bezdětných žen v populaci. Podle projekcí bude nejvyšší, téměř pětinový podíl trvale bezdětných v generacích narozených v polovině 80. let, v dalších generacích by měl postupně klesat na 11 %, podíl žen se dvěma dětmi se sníží na 45 až 47 %. Monografie přináší výsledky výzkumu bezdětných jedinců a p…
Topics: Parenting
Dynamický pohled na bezdětnost perspektivou kvalitativního longitudinálního výzkumu
Perspektivou longitudinálního kvalitativního výzkumu článek přispívá k porozumění růstu bezdětnosti v ČR skrze zachycení zkušeností a identit bezdětných a osvětlení mechanismů, které vedou k dlouhodobému setrvávání v bezdětnosti či změnám reprodukčních identit a plánů. Výzkum vychází z analýzy zpravidla po 11−12 letech opakovaných problémově orientovaných rozhovorů s ženami a muži, kteří byli v 1. vlně rozhovorů bezdětní a bu preferovali trvalou bezdětn…
Topics: Parenting
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
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
The diversity of pathways to childlessness in the Czech Republic: The union histories of childless men and women
Despite the fact that not having a partner is a strong predictor for remaining childless, few studies have explored the heterogeneity of partnership trajectories among childless persons. This article fills the gap in knowledge about the pathways to childlessness in Central Europe by exploring the within-group diversity of partnership trajectories among childless persons between the ages of 18 and 40 under state socialism and during the post-1989 transformation in the Czech Republic. Based on data from the Gend…
Topics: Family
Gendered visions of family life and parenthood among Czech young people: restricted or transforming imaginations?
This article explores young people’s imaginations of their future family life. Based on qualitative research among young people in North Bohemia, it considers social reproduction and change within the domain of gendered labour and parenting. This is done on the backdrop of post-1989 transformation of Czech society, where drives towards individualisation and diversification of the life course stand against discourses and policies supporting separate gender roles. Through the analytical lenses of gendered rela…
Topics: Gender, Value Orientations, Parenting, Family, Social Policy
Kdo plánuje jedináčka a kdo chce zůstat bezdětný? Faktory ovlivňující nízké reprodukční plány mužů a žen
Remaining childless or having just one child are two different experiencesand each is attached to a different social status. However, they canalso be viewed through a unifying lens as phenomena that contribute to lowfertility. Theories that seek to explain low fertility often attribute both phenomenato the same causes. This article examines what factors are connectedto a person’s intention to remain childless or to have just one child andwhether it is possible to consider intentions to remain childless or ha…
Topics: Parenting
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