Mothering Mexico: The Historiography of Mothers and Motherhood in 20th-Century Mexico

Abstract

This essay explores how both scholars have understood the category of motherhood in 20th-century Mexican history. From the self-sacrificing, long-suffering icon of ‘traditional’ motherhood to the ‘modern’ mother who used up-to-date child-rearing techniques, mothers and mothering has had a tremendous symbolic value to various parts of Mexican society. The discourse of motherhood was deployed in multiple ways, by multiple actors since Porfirian times and throughout the postrevolutionary era. A robust scholarship has developed around the concept of mothers, motherhood and maternity.