Hygienic delivery: nature and science in child care manuals published in Brazil

Abstract

This paper intends to discuss the following issues: Which were the
pediatrician’s main motivations in writing baby books during the first decades of the XX century? How did doctors try to make scientific knowledge about maternity and child rearing accessible to the mothers? How did pediatricians seek to provide women with orientations on pregnancy, birth and caring for their babies? In order to comprehend these issues, this study is based on a historical analysis that focuses on baby books published in Brazil between 1918 – when Doctor Moncorvo Filho’s lessons on Child Hygiene taught at the Institute for the Protection and Assistance for Children were joined in a book – and 1968, when the journal Parents and Children, which promoted a major spreading of knowledge on child rearing in Brazil. The analysis is based in Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose’s texts on governmentality and "biopolitics”.