Strong families and declining fertility : a comparative study of family relations and reproductive careers in Soviet Ukraine

This dissertation focuses on the role of family and social relationships in individuals’ reproductive careers during the fertility decline in Soviet Ukraine from around 1950 to 1975. These three decades after the Second World War signified the end of the First Demographic Transition in Ukraine and other European republics of the Soviet Union, and some even define the period after the 1960s as the start of a latent depopulation in this part of Europe. However, this fertility decline that had already begun to manifest itself in the early 1920s gained speed within only a few generations as those who were born in families of six siblings in the 1920s and 1930s had only two children themselves in the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s. Previous research has discussed these demographic changes on a macro-level for the Soviet and post-Soviet periods by typically linking these changes to the processes of modernisation and transformation. However, this singular focus on structural changes ignores the fact that relationships between people also adjust to politico-economic changes according to the social and family values that al- ready exist in society. As a result, old and new social (in)equalities, both outside and within the household, (re-) emerge alongside the politico-economic modernisation, which, in tandem, contribute to the formation of different demographic realities on a micro-level and different fertility trends on a macro-level. In this respect, social relationships should be seen as playing an intermediary role in the interplay between the formation of interpersonal inequalities and the politico- economic reality. Because they surround our everyday lives and choices, social relationships form a coherent social structure that helps us to interpret, to under- stand and to adjust to everyday reality, including state legal regulations, political ideology, and economic crises. The primary aim of this dissertation is to study the effects of family relationships and their