When former military chaplains began to give marital guidance to troubled couples after the end of hostilities with the Soviet Union (1941)(1942)(1943)(1944) in Finland, new information about the causes and experiences of marital problems and divorces emerged during guidance sessions. Even lengthy marriages were seen to be burdened due to the stress of reunion and men's wartime infidelity, increased inclination to drinking and aggressive behaviour. The article discusses the meaning and construction of marital expectations with respect to the development of post-war marital dissolution, and argues that wives in particular tried to adjust their marital expectations in accordance with the general developments in personal life and society. Especially in the case of older marriages, for the majority of women, divorce was seen more as means of personal survival than of seeking happiness, even in the urban areas. Although contemporaries feared that the marital institution was disintegrating, the majority of wives were willing to work to save, or endure, even troubled marriages.

In post-war Finland thousands of children experienced poor upbringing, neglect and abuse, and had to deal with their experiences without social support from adults. In this article we study how difficult and bitter experiences related to childhood crises are remembered, reinterpreted and reframed in later life and in contemporary Finland. As research material we use both oral and written reminiscences of childhood in the post-war years collected in the period 2014-2016. We argue that in the recollections of difficult childhood coping and resilience emerge as major narrative themes. Although informants in their childhood were forced to suffer in silence, they remember themselves as being resilient and capable of surviving in adverse environments. In their late adulthood public collection of childhood memories has offered them a suitable medium to remember and reframe their experiences as meaningful, by exposing the 'culture of silence' which prevailed in the post-war Finland.

In the post-1945 world, Finnish schools were appointed the new task of fostering democratic values and educating peace-loving citizens. By exploring postwar art and environmental education in Helsinki, understood as means to expand children’s emotional competences, Malinen and Vahtikari provide a unique analysis of the ways educators, children and urban space co-produced the nation in everyday (school) practices. Malinen and Vahtikari show the importance of fully acknowledging the spatial, material and sensory aspects of emotions when discussing children’s emotional formation and historical manifestations of everyday nationalism. To illustrate the adult-children co-creation of different ideas, practices and emotions with respect to the national community, the chapter uses two sets of contemporary sources: educators’ writings and children’s drawings.

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