Changes in east central Europe and Russia in the post-communist period led many parents to perceive new possibilities to take control over childbearing and rearing. Others experienced these changes as threatening to family autonomy. Given the right circumstance, carefully explored in this volume, both opportunities and threats can provoke intense emotions and spur efforts to collectively resist, rebel, and sometimes constructively influence public policy.

The parental prerogatives in contention include the severity and choice of discipline for children, control over children's exposure to new beliefs about gender and sexuality, the division of caregiving time and tasks between parents in a marriage, child custody after a separation or divorce, the options for raising a child with mental disabilities, the acceptance or rejection of vaccinations for a child, the choice to give birth at home or in a hospital, and the option to use new reproductive technology. These are often interconnected and are strongly influenced by conservative and liberal global ideologies that readily flow past national boundaries via NGOs and the internet. The case studies show that the sharing of experiences and information via social media and websites is of central importance in gaining followers, strengthening group ties, and taking coordinated action.

Two of the case studies concern movements in Russia, two in Ukraine, three in the Czech Republic and one each in Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic States. It is surely a credit to the editors’ able and firm hands that these are all very succinct chapters that have quite uniform structure. Each contribution places the movement and the issue in a broad comparative framework, describes the methods of research used, traces the significant cultural and historical context, and indicates the carryovers from the communist past.

Sociological theories regarding social movements are used to explain success or weakness of the groups. Particular emphasis is given to how groups frame their objectives in ways that make them consonant with broader cultural, religious, or political values. Applying the resource mobilization approach leads the contributors to a focus on the financial and human resources available to the movement. Two chapters add insights from the sociology emotions. In his study of an internet forum among Czech fathers who lost child custody battles, Steven Saxonberg argues that the loss of status associated with divorce changes masculine identity to a form that prizes intense anger and confrontational activities. The men assert that their caregiving skills warrant joint custody. This frames their loss as “injustice” and rationalizes blaming women and the state. Saxonberg concludes that the hostile view of women in the context of the Czech Republic is also fostered by the relatively weak feminist movement.

Egle Sumskiene provides a similarly rich application of social science theory in explaining the activism of parents in the Baltic states who are opposed to placing children with intellectual disabilities in state-run institutions. Families who cared for these children at home endured sharp stigmatization in the Soviet period. Fear, loneliness, and vulnerability became powerful emotional levers propelling them to join or establish NGOs. Professional organizations have taken on their cause, but Sumskiene notes that this came at the cost of fading parental involvement and direct influence.

Many groups fear the corrupting influence that comes with outside financial and other resources. Skepticism about the state and NGOs is a widespread sentiment. Parent loyalties and activities center far more on private than public spheres, and much of the interaction and information sharing is in virtual spaces. According to Katalin Fábián and Elżbieta Korolczuk, parental movements consequently often appear “apolitical, at least in part because activists view the state and party politics as representing the interests of the elite rather than the common people” (343). The book challenges “the conventional social science view that has persistently depicted social movements and civil society in east central Europe and Russia as weak, passive, and overly professionalized” (337).

Distrust enhances the appeal of the nation as an enduring and idealized community, which Fábián and Korolczuk see as also fostered by “transnational neoconservative ideas and networks” (344), including those from the United States. Tova Höjdestrand's chapter on an initially isolated Russian parent movement shows how changes in the political regime can result in a movement taking on new significance. These parents saw a threat to their children from western-supported human and child rights campaigns and saw a corrupt Russian state as part of the problem. What seemed like paranoia became politically correct with regime change in the past decade.

The contributors’ research entails content analysis of movement publications, websites, and media reports, interviews with relatively small numbers of leaders and participants and, in many cases, participant observation. Consistent with the aim of giving attention to neglected manifestations of activism, four of the chapters are devoted to fathers’ groups. This is valuable new research and very fruitful application of theory. Testing the proposed explanations, however, will entail deeper comparisons between successful and failed parental movements and more comprehensive data.

Case studies in this volume already provide promising comparisons. In her chapter on Hungary, Fábián shows how home-birth advocates successfully rely on international networks and savvy pictorial images in domestic media. In contrast, Ema Hrešanová describes a natural childbirth movement in the Czech Republic that, hampered by physicians and biomedicine, gained little success. Gender inequality, according to Iman Karzabi, is largely unchallenged in the state-supported movement to increase Ukrainian fathers’ involvement in family life. Pelle Åberg and Johnny Rodin argue that positive media attention to “daddy schools” in St. Petersburg is potentially having an impact on public policy despite a lack of state support. These informal discussion groups draw inspiration from progressive Swedish organizations.

These valuable case studies show how initially amorphous groups can be empowered by finding or being given greater cultural, financial, or political footing. Understanding the causes and consequences seems all the more important in light of the election of Donald Trump.