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

## TL;DR

The paper examines how Czechoslovak documentaries from the 1960s and 1970s portrayed family care for children with disabilities, reflecting societal values and challenges.

## Contribution

It reveals how mental deprivation theory shaped public and family care ideals, influencing current barriers to deinstitutionalization.

## Key findings

- Documentaries reflected a blend of biopower and patriarchal values in caring for children with disabilities.
- Deprivation Theory led to contradictions in medicalizing public child care.
- Ideals of family versus institutional care persist as obstacles to modern reforms.

## 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.