»Children Born of War«: The Life Course of Children Fathered by German Soldiers in Norway and Denmark during WWII – Some Empirical Results

2017/04/04 by Mochmann, Ingvill C., Larsen, Stein Ugelvik
#Children #Denmark #German occupation #Norway #Second World War #children born of war #life course analysis #stigmatisation

paper · doi:10.12759/hsr.33.2008.1.347-363

Abstract

This paper will address a particular group of individuals whose rights are often forgotten in the aftermath of wars and conflicts, the so-called “children born of war”. These are children who have been fathered by a foreign soldier and a local woman. In the first part of this paper, evidence from different countries will be presented and different categories of children born of war will be introduced. In the second part of this paper, some aspects of the life course of Danish and Norwegian children fathered by German occupying forces during WWII will be presented based on the results of a questionnaire survey. Finally, it will be discussed whether information accessible so far may be valid for children born of war in different conflicts at different times and to which extent it can serve as a basis for elaborating particular policies which secure the basic human rights of children born of war.

Related

• The Children of the Occupations Born During the Second World War and Beyond – An Overview
• The long shadow of the Second World War: Children of German soldiers and local women born in Denmark during World War II
• The Human Rights of Children Born of War: Case Analyses of Past and Present Conflicts
• Children Born of War - A Decade of International and Interdisciplinary Research
• Children of American Soldiers in Europe: a comparison of British and German GI Children