W trosce o "dzieci jutra"; amerykańskie inicjatywy opieki nad niemowlętami w II Rzeczypospolitej

W trosce o "dzieci jutra"; amerykańskie inicjatywy opieki nad niemowlętami w II Rzeczypospolitej

Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska

Caring for the „Children of Tomorrow“: American Child Welfare Initiatives in the Second Polish Republic

The article is devoted to the child welfare initiatives that the voluntary and humanitarian organizations from the Unites States began in post-World War I Poland. The main emphasis is put on the most salient of these initiatives: the re-organization and opening of infant welfare stations by the American Red Cross (ARC). In the early 1920s, ARC established, modernized and equipped about 70 stations in Polish cities and towns, offering a multifold program of child welfare. The program included the oversight over infant feeding practices, regular weighting and measuring of children in order to ensure its proper physical development, instructions about child rearing offered to infants’ mothers as well as public health nurse visiting.
The American infant feeding and child rearing ideals and norms that the American Red Cross aimed to transfer to postwar Poland were however not always encountering the acceptance and understanding of Polish mothers and Polish medical personnel. In poverty-stricken post-war Poland, impoverished mothers treated ARC infant welfare stations mainly as the best source of pure and affordable milk for their undernourished children. The medicalization of infant feeding and child rearing, which constituted the pinnacle of the ARC child welfare program, was thus frequently meeting opposition of local mothers accustomed to wielding control over the feeding of their children.

Prace Analityczne

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