Beyond the Welfare State: Some Notes on Child – and Elderly Care in Rural Austria During the First Decades of the 20th Century
Beyond the Welfare State: Some Notes on Child – and Elderly Care in Rural Austria During the First Decades of the 20th Century

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with aspects of the history of social welfare in the European rural countryside, a topic which has received little attention by historians. It explores child and early youth care, as well as elderly care strategies and practices in Austrian peasant societies during the first decades of the twentieth century, pointing out that official as well as public interest in social welfare prioritized children and early youth over old age, and urban areas over rural ones. The paper argues that in the regions under examination child- and elderly care systems operated “beyond the welfare state” system, as the title goes, while also existing parallel to its early manifestations, and sometimes (as far as laws are concerned) in a relationship with it. Foster care was the primary mechanism for taking care of out-of-wedlock children, who constituted valuable labor force for peasant households. Provision of food and shelter to the elderly (usually former rural servants), by rotating peasant households, remained a fundamental mechanism for taking care of the aged poor well into the twentieth century. In contrast to the welfare provided by the mature twentieth century welfare state, these forms of social welfare were largely associated with social discrimination and feelings of shame, during a period of apparent transition to a new era of social welfare.

• Details
• Contents