Talking about family behavior, and especially about the relationship between mother and child, or between these children and their parents, will always be an extremely delicate topic.

The family composition has undergone, during the last centuries, immense transformations that have reflected not only on the infants, but, above all, on the family structure as a whole.

Understanding the mother-child relationship

If we make a chronology of women's participation in the labor market and their participation in the family, we will realize that they have gone through many transformations and many roles throughout history.

But who is this woman who, throughout history, due to social and cultural norms, has not been able to fully exercise her role? Who, in modernity, needed to be a mother, a wife, and a wage earner? What implications, responsibilities, conflicts, and pressures did you have to go through to be recognized?

Winnicott's studies on the theory of the good enough mother, a theory that suggests that the mother tries to be perfect and, as a consequence, ends up suffering because her expectations are always frustrated, can give us some clues to the understanding of these consignments.

Winnicott and the mother-child relationship

We also know that the author delimited paternal and maternal functions, where the genitor's would be to introduce the child to the universe of work, and the genitor's would be to be a good housewife. Through this cut, Winnicott gives us components to analyze this mother, not only under the psychoanalytic viewpoint, but also under an anthropological and historical context in antiquity until the 18th century.

If before the eighteenth-century boom in England, known as the Industrial Revolution, women had the exclusive role of taking care of domestic chores and raising children, leaving the economic burden to the father, who worked outside and brought food to his family's table, after the boom, in the wake of the rise of capitalism, several profound changeshave occurred in the world of work and, automatically, in the family routine.

Work dignifies, gives us the possibility of innumerable conquests, brings development to society, gives us a unique feeling of freedom, satisfaction and above all self-realization. But, on the other hand, even understanding that this new system required the presence of these mothers in the labor market, significantly transforming the course of history, work outside the home brings us aA very important question to be discussed here: could this mother be considered negligent because of the needs imposed by that economic and social conjuncture?

Women and the mother-child relationship

In order to answer this question we need to know a little about the situation not only of women, but also of children within a historiographical cut. We need to know, here, that the valuation of the relationship between mother and child during human history has not always been linear. If we think about how children and their parents related to each other in ancient times, alluding to Ancient Greece and Rome, we will see, for example, the role of the "pater" or "pater familia", an unquestionable authority in this social organization.

The child, in turn, saw in them his reference, his safe port for the needs that ranged from the most basic to the most complex needs. And it is no wonder that, in this period, the child had such a high degree of dependence, after all, according to the Athenian philosopher Aristotle, he was seen as a totally incapable being, and this period known as childhood was seen as something evil and extremely disastrous. And why not associate this childhood with a disease? Yes! A disease for the Greeks!

This disease, if not "cured", could lead the city state (polis) to ruin, since a badly educated child would automatically become a morally fragile one. And, being morally fragile, it would pose a future danger to Athenian Democracy. The child was not considered a citizen, had no identity, therefore no cognitive ability to decide and not even to think for himself, a position that, if he was lucky, he could acquire in adulthood only if he was the son of Athenians.

Woman, wife and mother

Her mother also had no political or legal rights. In this period, the genetrix had little or almost no influence over her offspring in regard to their education and upbringing. For the male children, who were born in a more affluent position, some kind of pedagogue, also called "nurturer", was assigned, who would play a crucial role in their development. What would then be left to this mother?

We know that she was much closer to her female daughters who saw in her a mirror to become future housewives and consequently good reproducers, administrators of their homes, of their slaves and of the "upbringing" of their children. During the period known as the medieval period, the situation of children and their mothers did not improve. Paternal authority continues to prevail and the condition of a woman and wife, in some ways, was similar to that of her children: to be submissive under the guardianship and authority of a man.

This mother, once again, is unable to do her job or did it for a short time due to two reasons: the first is related to the low life expectancy of these newborns. Extremely fragile physically, to stay alive, in the medieval times, was a great lottery due to the terrible conditions, especially for those children most in need.

The mother-child relationship and affection

This high mortality rate ended up influencing this mother to not exercise effective affection, since it was unlikely that the child would survive. The child, besides being doomed to a fate, on top of that had in his mother a cold and distant figure.

Secondly, but no less important, was the reduced time that these children spent with their parents, since if the family was not able to support them, these children, from 7 to 10 years old, would have a certain destiny: to be delivered, as apprentices, to families to learn a trade. Already in the transition from the medieval to the modern age, from the 17th century on, we can observesome sensitive, but discrete, changes associated with family and childhood.

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Already able to breathe easier, without the shadow of death hanging over her rooms or her children, like the Black Death and so many other diseases, the mother appears in a scenario quite different from the previous one. With the new European economic order, capitalism also brings with it a new social class: the bourgeoisie. And in this new system it is imperative that the child is cared for and seen, after all, he or she ends up being, in this context, a fundamental piece in several aspects, mainly as the representatives of future generations.

Mothers and the Industrial Revolution

That apathetic, distant, and hopeless mother is now seen by the European society of the 18th century as the one who exudes love for her offspring, the one who is almost sanctified, the one who generates life, that emblematic figure and, as said before, a personification of the Virgin Mary herself, encouraging her to internalize this care for her children.

Now, let's not be naïve in believing that this change of perspective happened by a mere recognition of what it is to be a mother. Let's remember that this historical period is permeated with major changes, such as the advent of the Industrial Revolution, then a considerable population increase since the end of the Middle Ages would lead to a future increase in labor and a whole Enlightenment and Renaissance philosophy that evoked anthropocentrism, individualism, and so many conceptions that changed the thinking of modern man.

This woman, who was only a reproductive woman, went through a metamorphosis, occupying positions previously unimaginable. She joined the ranks of the labor market, and, even though she earned infinitely less than the male figure, she saw in her work a need to not only help provide for the family, but, perhaps, she didn't even know about this uncontained desire for a pseudo-independence.

Protection and the mother-child relationship

All eyes were on the woman, coercing her to exercise, in an impeccable way, her role as an affectionate mother, concerned with the welfare of her children, since she was created for this purpose and it was her "nature" to care for, protect, and watch over the well-being of her offspring.

We imagine that this coercion must have shaken those less economically favored mothers who found themselves in a very delicate situation, after all they needed to work in order to make a living.

In upper middle class families this mother has a new social role in the lives of her children: to educate in letters. Many mothers were the first teachers of their curious little ones. Society counted on this mother to faithfully fulfill her social role to the point that many women, who had a different behavior, were marginalized by society and seen as a person ofabnormal behavior.

Final considerations

Did the women of the past have a sense of failure, of powerlessness because they were considered not good enough for their children? Were these children emotionally affected by the socio-cultural context of the time in which they lived?

We will know little, because as said before, the child and the woman had very specific and limited roles and were not characters of interest to the academic society.

What we do know, for sure, is that during the historical trajectory both played essential roles in the development of society, especially through the recent studies of micro history analyzing the "marginalized", breaking with the established and transforming history and psychoanalysis itself in a space of permanent deconstruction.

This article was written by Fernanda Assunção Germano ( [email protected] ), Sociologist, Historian, and Integrative Therapist.

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