2 - Labor of Love: Mothering as a Dimension of Domesticity

Summary

WITH A NEW FOCUS on the child and childhood as a distinct temporal realm and a foundational phase of human development, Enlightenment thought emphasized women's roles as mothers. In this chapter, we focus attention on their importance in creating strong emotional ties, starting at conception. While the critical literature has illuminated the emotional and the educational dimension of childhood, women's role in constructing a multisensory environment that stimulated the productive cultural socialization of the child has remained underilluminated. However, eighteenth-century pedagogues like Campe and Ewald made it a point to argue that mothers not only influence directly, through what they teach and through their emotion work, but also more indirectly, through their creation of a enriching, holistic environment. My emphasis on the effects a child's environment can have brings more nuance to the conventional focus on pedagogy and the analysis of emotions. The material objects of childhood—toys, musical instruments, and books—aid in the cultural imprinting of the child. As these objects and their uses also structure the physical spaces the child inhabits, they contribute to the environment and “feel” of the atmosphere of home, where mothers lay the all-important foundation for further formal educational practices within the family and beyond.

Women's role as mothers was a central dimension and a powerful theme in the discourse of domesticity around 1800. Herder refers to maternal love and tenderness as the spark of the divine that elevates humanity. In tandem with an increasing valorization of childhood as a distinct phase of human development, the discursive attention on mothering increased. In addition to fostering the all-important emotional bonds with their children, mothers were to create the multisensory cultural learning environment that socializes each child. As part of the practical embodiment of Enlightenment principles, mothers were to establish an affirming, blissful home, which was considered to be imperative for the child's comprehensive socialization. As discussed below, Campe and Ewald consider the child's mind to be highly impressionable and thus place particular emphasis on the learning environment.

As the Enlightenment increasingly focused on the child to pursue its future-oriented ideal of perfectability, educational formation (Bildung) within the cultured middle class became a precondition for social change.