I've been told that following the Winter War Finnish families had fewer children to avoid loosing more children if another war with the Soviet Union broke out, is this true?

by PowerfulPotatoPunch

I don't know if this is true or not, but it's what has been said on my mother's side of the family. My great grandparents left Finland following the Winter War and this is supposedly why we no longer have many relatives left in Finland. Despite some searches now and then I've never been able to find a source.

Smygskytt

Perhaps your ancestors were among the children evacuated to Sweden during the war. A massive number of Finnish children were sent to safety in Sweden as the war raged on and the government feared for the children's safety during a theoretical Russian occupation.

Here is an English language radio program that deals with it, by the Swedish national radio broadcasting corporation's website: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=1081470

(Hopefully it'll work outside Sweden, but you just tell if it doesn't)

Holokyn-kolokyn

I have to say I haven't heard of such and while I don't doubt many people (not just in Finland) had their doubts about bringing children into the world at war, this didn't seem to have much effect on population growth. Most noticeably, number of births rebounded in 1941 due the short "interim peace" (March 1940-June 1941), which would seem to disconfirm the notion that fear of another war would've been a major factor in a decision to have a child.

However, what did have an effect was that most males were at the front; this depressed fertility rates noticeably (with obvious nine-month lag of course) but also contributed to a post-war baby boom once the men returned. The greatest spike in baby births was experienced exactly nine months after the general demobilization that began in early December 1944, in August and September 1945.

I checked the official statistics at Statistics Finland and here's the results in live births per year for the relevant period.

Year Live births
1931 71 866
1932 69 352
1933 65 047
1934 67 713
1935 69 942
1936 68 895
1937 72 319
1938 76 695
1939 78 164
1940 65 849
1941 89 565
1942 61 672
1943 76 112
1944 79 446
1945 95 758
1946 106 075
1947 108 168
1948 107 759
1949 103 515