Birth control cultures in Poland (1945-1989)

„Kultury planowania rodziny w Polsce 1945 – 1989” to dwuletni naukowy projekt badawczy, realizowany w Instytucie Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.

 Badamy historię kulturową planowania rodziny w PRL, rozumiejąc je jako dyskurs i praktykę na pograniczu polityki populacyjnej, wiedzy eksperckiej i popularnej oraz konkretnych doświadczeń związanych z  kontrolą urodzeń.

Interesują nas różne aspekty tego zagadnienia:

• ewolucja państwowej polityki ludnościowej i jej interakcje z działaniami Kościoła Katolickiego
• sposoby tworzenia i popularyzacji wiedzy eksperckiej na temat planowania rodziny
• a także przekonania i doświadczenia osób, które w tym okresie zdobywały wiedzę na temat życia seksualnego, ról płciowych, antykoncepcji, przerywania ciąży i innych zagadnień określanych jako „planowanie rodziny”

W badaniu zastosujemy różne metody badawcze, odpowiadające poszczególnym aspektom problemu: badania literatury, dokumentów państwowych i kościelnych z tego okresu, a także wywiady pogłębione.

ENG

Contraception and abortion continue to be the subjects of social and political controversy in Poland. A close examination of how these issues were dealt with in the recent past can shed new light on the history of Polish state-socialism, the democratic transition and current debates on contraception, abortion and in-vitro fertilization. My project focuses on birth control cultures in postwar Poland (1945-1989), defined as an intersection of population policies, expert and lay knowledge about contraception and abortion and people’s family planning experiences.

I am interested in ways in which communist authorities and state institutions on one hand and the Catholic Church on the other, were trying to convince people—directly or through specific organizations funded for that purpose—to have certain number of children. I examine how the population policies these institutions promoted were shaped, communicated and how they changed over time, looking for discrepancies and also meeting points between the state and the Catholic Church in defining and executing their population policies.

Second, I examine the knowledge and experiences of Polish women and men related to birth control. Through the study of the literature, general and professional press, propagandistic materials about birth control and interviews with men and women about their experiences, I seek to evaluate how population policies shaped Poles’ sexual relations, perceptions of sexuality and the body, information about birth control people received and, most importantly, how they made their decisions regarding family planning.

While the history of contraception, abortion and, generally speaking, of reproduction during the state socialist period has received increasing academic attention over the recent years, most studies focus on short periods and isolated institutions or cases. The advantage of my study is that it focuses on the whole socialist period, so I will be able to research on if and how birth control cultures changed over time. Another advantage of this study is that it examines intersections and divergences of state and Catholic Church’s population policies and publications, by far mostly approached separately. Also, by employing oral history as a method of historiographic enquiry, I will be able to produce insights to a largely unexplored terrain of people sexual and reproductive experiences during the second half of the 20th century.

Projekt finansowany ze środków przeznaczonych na program finansowania badań naukowych i innowacji UE "Horyzont 2020" na podstawie umowy Nr 665778 o dofinansowanie działań "Marie Skłodowska-Curie".