Research project
A Century of Care: Invisible Work and Early Childcare in central and eastern Europe (CARECENTURY)
How did caretakers rooted in families, communities and societies nurture very young children across historical time? And, how have care practices changed across different peoples, states and political economies in the dynamic 20th century?
- Duration
- 2025 - 2030
- Contact
- Sarah Cramsey
- Funding
- ERC Starting Grant
This ERC-funded project answers these entangled questions with a comparative study of early childcare in central and eastern Europe during the period 1905-2004. While the birthing and nurturing of children seem timeless, caretaking and the often-invisible work supporting it are historically and contextually contingent. The late Habsburg Empire and, after 1918, six of its successor states (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia) offer an ideal laboratory to explore how care related to the very young was impacted by changing political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances in the modern period. Moreso than perhaps any other transnational region in the 20th century, political entities here changed dramatically (from imperial, liberal, fascist and socialist to capitalist, democratic, isolationist and integrationist). In this ethnically and religiously heterogeneous region, early childcare continued during depressions, total wars, genocides, displacements and unsettling revolutions.
This project will be the first to systematically study care practices related to the very young and also conceptualize the historical transfigurations of caretaking regimes in both private and public spheres over transnational space and broad time. CARECENTURY will change the perspective of scholarship on early childcare and the invisible work done by caretakers in central and eastern Europe and offer a new conceptual framework to underpin the history of caretaking more broadly.