Strong Families and Declining Fertility: a Comparative Study of Family Relations and Reproductive Careers in Soviet Ukraine

Abstract

What was the role of the family in individual reproductive decisions during state socialism? Can this knowledge help us to understand the persistence of universal marriage, early entrance into parenthood, the emergence of ‘abortion culture’ and the rapid fertility decline after the Second World War in Eastern Europe? Based on first-hand accounts of courtship and marriage, birth control and abortion, childbearing and childrearing, this dissertation examines the role of family and social relationships in personal reproductive decisions and strategies in Soviet Ukraine from around 1950 to 1975. In this light, we will see the crucial role that continuities in local family relationships played in personal responses to the Soviet policies emerging during the Cold War. This research offers new explanations that underlay the similarities and differences in the fertility trends in western and eastern Ukraine during the Soviet time and what implications these processes may have for the demographic developments today.