Varsa, E. (2021). Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the ‘Gypsy Question’ in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1956. CEU Press

Abstract

This article reviews Eszter Varsa's book Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the ‘Gypsy Question’ in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949-1956. The volume scrutinizes everyday practices of child protection institutions in postwar Stalinist Hungary embedded in the politics and social tensions of the emerging state socialist regime, such as catch-up industrialisation, women’s rising employment rate and an accompanying restructuring of the relationship between paid work and care work, state intervention in the private realm and an assimilationist policy towards those identified as ‘Gypsy’, meanwhile providing  a comparative international  perspective. In this regard, Varsa’s book dovetails with ongoing academic discussions of recently renewed political interest in children and parental practices evidenced in the collection of articles in this special issue.