Population Crisis in Interwar Czechoslovakia: Building up a Healthy Family

Abstract

A population problem represented by the declining birth rate came to the focus of experts’ and politicians’ attention in interwar Czechoslovakia. Significant activities concerning the decrease in quantity and alleged population quality were pursued within the broad spectrum of experts who questioned the nation's future. Drawing from the concept of biopolitics, this article demonstrates through the analysis of medical discourse how medical professionals and social workers together with counseling bureaux, foregrounded the idea of a healthy family, primarily inspired by a (pseudo)science of eugenics, in order to maintain appropriate quantitative and qualitative population development. This article aims to expand the body of knowledge on experts’ attitudes toward demographic trends in interwar Czechoslovakia and to draw attention to two types of counseling bureaux and their role in reproductive policy. While the idea of eugenic premarital bureaux was explicitly linked to the eugenic movement that aimed at discouraging the reproduction of people identified as inferior, the role of counseling bureaux for mothers and children regarding family planning and reproduction remains overshadowed by their mission of medico-social care for children.