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Soviet Immigrant Mothers' Perceptions Regarding the First Childbearing Year: The 1950s and the 1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Jean M. Ispa
Jean M. Ispa*
Affiliation:
Department of Child and Family Development, University of Missouri
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Extract

From the 1950s to the 1970s the views of sex roles in general and of childbearing in particular that were held by women in the United States changed considerably. Some evidence also indicates modest changes in ideas about sex roles occurred in the Soviet Union over these decades, but there is less reason to expect that similar changes took place in attitudes specifically towards childbearing. This article explores areas of stability and change between these two decades in Soviet women's emotional responses to pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care and their sources of advice and support during the transition to motherhood. Similarities and differences between two cohorts, one composed of women who gave birth in the 1950s and one composed of women who gave birth in the 1970s, are discussed in terms of the prevailing family ideologies and social and economic conditions of the two decades.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , Summer 1988 , pp. 291 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1988

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