Between Optimism and Warning: Czechoslovak Expertise on Collective Childcare in the Transnational Context of the Cold War

Kateřina Lišková will present (in Czech) at the seminar of the Center for Theoretical Study, Charles University and Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. 
The presentation explores the ambivalent role of Czechoslovakia in transnational Cold War discussions about childcare and maternal employment. While socialist countries in East-Central Europe developed an approach of "informed optimism" toward collective childcare in the 1950s, Czechoslovak experts broke ranks in the early 1960s. The internationally successful documentary Children Without Love (1963) dramatically warned against the harmful effects of institutional care, temporarily excluding Czechoslovakia from transnational expert networks in this field. The talk analyzes how local scientific and film productions could shape – but also disrupt – global discussions about childhood, motherhood, and women's work during the Cold War.