When I began researching my cousin Blanka Buring, I hoped to shine a light on her work in social welfare and child protection. She was active in New South Wales during the mid-20th century — a time when social work was evolving and women like Blanka were stepping into roles that shaped policy and care.
What I didn’t expect to uncover was a much more complicated legacy.
As I dug deeper, I found that Blanka had worked alongside individuals who were known supporters of eugenics — the now-discredited movement that sought to “improve” the human population through selective breeding, institutionalisation, and other harmful policies. It’s possible that Blanka herself shared those beliefs, or at the very least, worked within a system shaped by them.
This discovery gave me pause.
I had wanted to highlight her achievements — her commitment to children, her administrative leadership, her contributions to Australian welfare policy. But I couldn’t ignore the ethical questions that now hung around her story.
🧭 What Do We Do With Ancestors Like This?
I think it’s important that we don’t erase them — but we also don’t put them on pedestals without understanding the full context.
Blanka lived in a time when eugenics was seen by many as progressive science, not yet widely recognised for the dangerous pseudoscience it was. That doesn’t excuse it — but it helps us understand how someone with good intentions might find themselves aligned with very harmful ideas.
💬 Why I’m Sharing This
I’m not writing this post to condemn Blanka, nor to celebrate her uncritically.
I’m sharing it because this is what real family history looks like.
It’s messy. It’s sometimes painful. It challenges how we feel about the people we descend from.
And as a genealogist, I believe we have a duty to tell the truth — even when it unsettles us.
So Blanka’s story remains part of my research.
I won’t centre her as a hero — but I won’t hide her either.
She is, like many of our ancestors, a product of her time, shaped by the ideas around her, and worth studying with both curiosity and care.
— Kylie
Ask Grandma Kylie
Original blog post https://blog.kyliesgenes.com/2023/07/an-interesting-journey/