The Making of Rural Maternity: Regulation, Idealization, and Domestication in Central Chile, 1939-1958

Abstract

This article analyze the representations that contributed to the institutionalization of a model of motherhood in rural Chile during the mid-twentieth century. It will examine the discourses addressed to mother-women that appeared in various periodicals which accompanied state-led initiatives for education and agricultural modernization in the rural space. It is proposed that these modernizing discourses established a sexual division of labor that involved the domestication of women and their foundational role in the peasant family. In this sense, motherhood took on special relevance as a reproducer of the labor force. Motherhood was defined through child-rearing based on the integration of scientific knowledge into family health, and the surrounding discourses regulated the specific model of rural motherhood. The research was conducted through an analysis of the Libro del Huaso Chileno (1939-1953) and the Boletín del Plan Chillán (1955-1958).