This study examines childbearing practices in rural Hungarian society during the interwar period, drawing on E. P. Thompson’s concept of the moral economy and Tamás Hofer’s theories of the peasant family. It analyses six abortion trials to understand how both formal and informal power structures influenced reproductive choices. Based on criminal court records, it identifies patterns of shame, female networks, secrecy, and testimony distortion that aligned with community norms. The paper argues that childbearing was not solely individual or marital, but was shaped by a collective moral order. This order influenced how unwanted pregnancies were managed, how access to illegal procedures was viewed, and how their criminalisation was understood – always within a framework prioritising respectability, which was essential for livelihood and marriage opportunities. The case studies highlight that women – and sometimes men – wielded informal influence in these decisions, often balancing between offering assistance, aiding concealment, and protecting themselves from repercussions.

The study examines the pathways of social mobility through an analysis of the occupations of the fathers and, where applicable, fathers-in-law of Reformed clergy, and then looks at the emergence of female teachers, which shaped prevailing trends at the time. The first part of the study, focusing on the Danubian Church District, confirms the phenomenon observed elsewhere: during the interwar period, the proportion of second-generation clergymen diminished. This decrease can be explained not only by the growing disillusionment of first-generation clergy but also by their deteriorating living conditions. The analysis of the occupations of their fathers and fathers-in-law concluded that more than a third of clergymen became sons-in-law to men from their own or a similar social group, and for about 20-25% of them marriage resulted in upward mobility from their original social layer. However, the multi-generational examination also reveals that a larger part of the village clergy came from insular environments, which affected the extent of their social involvement within their small communities.

The study examines the life stories of 106 pastors and teachers based on autobiographies by individuals working in the Felsőbaranya Protestant Diocese (Baranya County) for various lengths of time. Focusing on the career-shaping breaking points and the individuals’ responses to these, the analysis reveals that most of these people wished to graduate as clergymen; the teaching degree integrated into their training was a primary goal only for the offspring of peasant parents.While families of clergymen aimed to safeguard their social status, for teachers and urbanites it was an opportunity for advancement in life. Since in many cases this goal was not attained, it is justifiable to suggest that the relationship between clergymen and teachers was not without tension, which was further aggravated by the increasing burdens associated with teaching. In the period under scrutiny here, both pastors and teachers served far away from their birthplaces, which made both their integration into local communities and their influence on their spiritual life very difficult. At the same time, this change explains why moral teachings and their long-suffering earthly representatives had such little effect on deep-rooted and complex problems of local societies.

The study explores the process of demographic transition and its possible interpretations from the perspective of the history of globalization. The descriptive part of the study focuses on changes in Central Europe, as well as recent and new research findings which suggest an incomplete period of decrease both in birth and mortality rates. The author then moves on to examine the interpretations of the reasons for this phenomenon, highlighting their social and economic diversity, and especially the role of cultural diffusion. The third part is dedicated to current research trends, which stresses the increasing necessity of connecting macro- and micro-level research. Based on this, the author states that even though joint meetings, problem statements and debates exist, most of the heroic results of the last four decades was individual achievement rather than the result of collaboration between disciplines. The historic portrayal of society evidently does not lend itself to a priori approaches, since the grand overarching models omit exactly those local characteristics and nuanced transitions, which do not necessarily affect the summary findings, but often reveal details which gain significance under the minute scrutiny of historians. In the latter case, however, the global perspective is at risk, whereby the fixity of the interpretation of findings only allows the extrapolation of the particular with relative certainty. From a global angle, the theory of demographic transition denotes the sum or a shared set of possible demographic behaviors. Thus it is an ideal type, which reflects an easily defined transformation, while acknowledging a number of variants of local factors. The variants—that is the characteristics of various local processes—do not emerge out of the comparison of settlements located far away from each other, outside the possible boundaries of cultural diffusion. They become understandable by connecting both the similarities and differences arising from a closely reflective shift in scale.

The study is based on the comparative analysis of the birth control practices of the Protestant Hungarian population of the Ormansag region and the Lutheran German population of the Volgyseg region. The main research questions concern the regional and ethnocultural characteristics of parenthood in these regions. Besides the birth registers as the traditional primary source for family reconstruction, the study is also based on family books compiled by German researchers for some individual settlements. The geographical scope is limited to seven settlements in Ormansag, and three in Volgyseg. Similarly to the Hungarians in Ormansag, the German population of Southern Transdanubia also displays low fertility rates, which suggests the presence of conscious birth control well before the demographic transformations. The changes associated with the economic restructuring between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century affected both the Hungarian and the German groups in a similar manner; and the decreasing tendency also continues well into the last three decades of the nineteenth century. The findings of the study suggest that birth control is a practice employed in response to a crisis situation, which in this case appears as a regional characteristic. While higher fertility rates among older German women are certainly in correlation with ethnocultural factors, this phenomenon is of a secondary significance in this particular region.

The study is a preliminary report of a research project on the one-child family system that became prevalent in the Ormánság region of Hungary as a result of family planning becoming increasingly wide-spread in the inter-war years. This most telling evidence for the widening practice of family planning is analysed from a number of angles and placed in the context of the period’s social processes. The study is not wholly without previous foundations; preceding studies helped make this subject one of the most frequently studied questions of Hungarian historical demography. For example, this present research project also builds on the conclusions of Rudolf Andorka’s work on the subject. The project picks up where Andorka left off and it covers the period from 1895 onwards, primarily based on public records providing data about heterogeneous social groups. The one-child policy of Ormánság families was one of the most important questions and the centre of attention in the so-called ‘one-child discourse’ between the world wars. Koloh’s new study juxtaposes some of the statements of this discourse with actual demographic statistics from the region. The figures in the report are based on family reconstitution, which is one of the most valuable tools for this nominative analysis. It is important to stress that the report is preliminary, because calculating the age-specific fertility rate and the average birth intervals of women having children in the Vajszló registry district has been completed for only 111 families so far. The paper also entails an analysis of the distribution by number of children, concluding that the single-child strategy was a decision based on a new kind of appreciation of children rather than the result of financial considerations.