Sex advice East and West: sex education and family planning in Cold War Austria and Hungary

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article contributes to literature discussing the reemergence of eugenics in post-World War II reproductive and population political contexts by comparing Austrian and Hungarian publications on sex education and family planning between the 1950s and the 1980s. It presents neo-Malthusian ‘population preservation’ in Austria and anti-Malthusian pronatalism in Hungary as affected by and negotiated through the Cold War divide in global population politics. One of the main arguments of the paper is that despite being on two different sides of the Iron Curtain, discourses and policies around sex education and family planning in Austria and Hungary shared remarkable similarities: Echoing sex education discourses of the first half of the 20th century, professionals East and West insisted on the connection between sex, marriage and procreation. Furthermore, the eugenic concepts of ‘quality’ and ‘healthy’ birth in discourses around family planning characterized postwar reproductive politics in both countries. Professionals called for and ensuing policies in the 1970s and 1980s supported an increase in fertility among better educated and financially better-to-do women, while immigrant families in Austria and Romani families in Hungary were targeted by antinatalist discourses and practices. The last part of the paper presents differences in the gendered content of the two countries’ sex education material. These can be partly explained by the different degree of influence of the Catholic Church in Austria and Hungary and the differences in communist and feminist ideologies that shaped discussions around women’s equality.