Paper short abstract:

The presentation discusses the shame of domestic violence and poverty experienced in Finnish homes after the WWII. For decades this subject has been kept silent and left in the margins of history writing and public remembering.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation discusses the shame of domestic violence and poverty experienced in Finnish homes after the WWII. For decades this subject has been kept silent and left in the margins of history writing and public remembering. However, only recently the difficult war and post-war memories of women and children have reached publicity. The memories have opened up new perspectives to long-lasting consequences of war and cultural trauma. The traumatic experiences that the Finnish men faced at the front often showed their presence in acts of violence towards the other family members during the post-war era. Domestic violence was so shameful that it was not revealed outside home. Furthermore, material poverty caused by the war made the lives of families even more difficult. Typically, many children were not able to educate themselves because they were obliged to work in the farms of their families already at the early age.

Material of this research consists of personal written narratives about shame, domestic violence and poverty in post-war Finland. The narratives were written in 2015-2016 mostly by women and men who were children in the post-war era. The main research questions are: How has shame been addressed in families during the post-war Finland? How the difficult memories of domestic violence, poverty and shame are narrated about today? The analysis is based on the narrative research methods and concepts of shame and cultural trauma.