Formar bem as mães para criar e educar boas crianças: as revistas portuguesas de educação familiar e a difusão da maternidade científica (1945-1958)

Este artigo tem como principal objetivo contribuir para a compreensão do processo de construção da maternidade científica em Portugal. Neste sentido, foi analisado um conjunto de artigos (n=628), publicados em revistas de educação familiar, entre 1945 e 1958. A análise realizada permitiu compreender que as revistas analisadas contribuem para a difusão da maternidade científica, ou seja, da ideia de que a aquisição de conhecimento científico sobre a criação e educação das crianças é elemento indispensável ao adequado exercício da função maternal. Observou-se, ainda, a existência de diferentes estratégias de educação para a maternidade, às quais está subjacente um elemento de classe, assim como diferentes níveis de adesão, por parte das mulheres, à concepção de maternidade científica

Gender Roles and Medical Progress

Maternal mortality was the second-leading cause of death for women in childbearing years up until the mid-1930s in the United States. For each death, twenty times as many mothers were estimated to suffer pregnancy-related conditions, often leading to severe and prolonged disablement. Poor maternal health made it particularly hard for mothers to engage in market work. Between 1930 and 1960, there was a remarkable reduction in maternal mortality and morbidity, thanks to medical advances. We argue that these medical advances, by enabling women to reconcile work and motherhood, were essential for the joint rise in married women's labor force participation and fertility over this period. We also show that the diffusion of infant formula played an important auxiliary role

Medicalization of Motherhood: Modernization and Resistance in an International Context

Traditionally, women’s experiences formed the basis of respected mothering practices which were seen as either part of a woman’s innate knowledge, or taught her by herown mother and other female relatives and friends. As scientific and technical expertisegained in prominence throughout the nineteenth century, increasingly womenwere told that they required scientific and medical knowledge in order to raise theirchildren appropriately and healthfully. The ideal model now became the “scientific mother.” This paper analyzes the evolution of scientific motherhood from its earliest manifest in which women were expected to learn from modern scientific and medical knowledge, through the middle decades of the twentieth century during whichmothers were viewed as incapable of such learning and were expected to follow the directions of their physicians, through the end of the century when women demanded recognition of their capabilities. Scientific motherhood affected and was affected byparticular mothers very differently over time and place, across race and ethnicity,shaped most crucially by women’s economic ability, education, and geographic location.It was not equally available to all women, nor was it totally embraced by allwomen. What is critical for this analysis of scientific motherhood in international context is the general trend that, overtime, women’s role in decision-making abouttheir children’s health and welfare was increasingly denigrated as the role of scientifically medically trained men was elevated. The paper traces out a number of thehistorically shifting power and gender relationships as women embraced, resisted,and redefined scientific motherhood

Seeking Perfect Motherhood: Women, Medicine, and Libraries

Knowledge about health and medicine expanded dramatically in the first half of the twentieth century. This expansion raised an important question for women, especially mothers, who are traditionally responsible for the health of their families: where could they learn the most up-to-date information? One possible significant venue was the public library. This close study of five public libraries analyzes the diverse sources of scientific and medical information available in Midwest rural libraries. It documents the critical role that individual librarians played in bringing new sources to their patrons, and discloses that such collections reinforced contemporary medical orthodoxy.published or submitted for publicatio