Family Care for Children with Disabilities in Czechoslovak Documentaries in the 1960s and the 1970s

Abstract

This article discusses the approaches to family care for children with disabilities depicted in documentaries produced by prominent film directors in the 1960s and 1970s, the period explored as re-establishing patriarchal order in socialist Czechoslovakia. Interpreting the documentaries in the context of public campaigns on child welfare reveals mental deprivation as a central concept that brought together the biopower of institutions and patriarchal values. The success and dissemination of Deprivation Theory is shown to have resulted in multiple internal contradictions in the medicalization of public care for children that was initiated in the late 1940s. The article traces the grounding of the dichotomy of public care versus family care by re-constructing the social ideals around child development and family care. These ideals remain one of the obstacles to the deinstitutionalization of care for children with disabilities to this day.