Investing in Infants: Child Protection and Nationalism in Transylvania during Dualism and the Interwar Period

Abstract

The high infant mortality rate of illegitimate children in Dualist Hungary urged politicians to create a modern state child welfare system for the protection of abandoned children whose upbringing became a national matter. Their main concern was providing adequate nutrition for infants and increase their chances of survival. The article examines how demographical concerns and national-political ideals influenced the evolution of the child welfare system in multi-ethnic Transylvania, first as part of the dual monarchy and after the First World War as a province of Romania. The Hungarian state children’s asylums offered a variety of nursing programs for abandoned infants, where the foster-care system often resulted in their Magyarization at a later age. During the First World War, the new objective was the protection of infants together with mothers and the promotion of breastfeeding in order to ensure the viability of the Hungarian nation. National arguments were used in both time periods to support infant protection initiatives. In interwar Transylvania, the urban-rural ethnic distribution influenced the development of infant protection facilities: all state investments were channeled toward the “authentic” Romanian countryside, while in the “foreign” urban environment ethnic minorities focused on their own institutions.