The Swedish Experiment in Family Politics: The Myrdals and the Interwar Population Crisis.

Abstract

This devastating account of work of Gunnar and Alva Myrdal is a monumental case study in uses and abuses of social science. It portrays how these two young scholars used power of ideas to help engineer a new domestic order in Sweden. The book focuses on Myrdals' unique fusion of socialism and feminism with nationalism and pro-nationalism in their joint 1934 book, Crisis in Population Question turning issue of Sweden's declining birthrate into the most effective argument for a radical socialist remodeling of society. The author uses interviews with many of figures involved and extensive archival research (including restricted materials held by Sweden's Social Democratic Party) to weave an uncommonly personal account of triumphant social engineering. The work of Myrdals covered every major area of family policy and planning from a marriage loan program to maternity relief. Using theories and research of a then new science of demography, Myrdals did not so much demonstrate interpretation of facts and values as blue distinction between them in order to insinuate ideological claims and policy mandates. provides careful historical documentation of social welfare and policy in Sweden, indicating uneven path to brave new middle way. There was renewed emphasis on domesticity and traditionalism in 1950s, and only in 1980s was Myrdal truly completed. For that revolution was less a tribute to Myrdals' perspicacity than to a concurrence of circumstances: weak and inconsistent data, confusion over cause and effect, and avoidance of controls in experimental settings. Swedish experiments in marriage and family yielded a variety of results: a triumph of feminism over socialism; of reason over tradition, central government over regionalism, urban multi-family dwellings over suburban single family models, therapeutic over moral; and finally state over family. Because Swedish model is widely regarded and emulated, this critique is of immediate significance. It offers general reader remarkable insight into nature of Scandinavian social life; and to specialist in demography, economy, and sociology, a perspective on how social science can become itself problem rather than provide solutions in contemporary post-industrial life. Allan Carlson is president of Rockford Institute, and a member of National Commission on Children. He is author of Family Questions: Reflections on American Social Crisis.