Scientific Motherhood

Scientific motherhood refers to a practice of mothering informed by expert knowledge. The practice evolved as medicine and science replaced other traditionally feminine domains of knowledge including practices related to fertility and birth. The movement to scientific motherhood redefined the child and child raising. The movement also altered women's identities from producers to consumers of mothering knowledge.

Industrialization and urbanization in the late 1800s reorganized the Western family from a site of production to a site focused on consumption. An educated, white, male upper class drove the rise of positivism and modern medicine. Women, as the keepers of the private sphere, were confronted with elevated expectations regarding household maintenance and child rearing.

Before industrialization, children were conceptualized as miniature, untamed adults. From an early age, each child made significant contribution to the family as she or he worked alongside siblings and adults. In the postindustrial period, the child became a project, a work site, and a vocation for women.

Scientific motherhood developed in parallel with the rise of domestic science. Although germ theory via domestic science education elevated the expectations for housework, science and medicine replaced a long history of women's knowledge in relationship to mothering. New levels of intensity developed around researching and enacting “the good mother.” Expert knowledge became the domain of men in white coats.

Psychology's efforts to be recognized as a science played an important role in transforming the field of raising children into a science. By the end of the 19th century, early psychologists, mothers' movement leaders, and leaders in domestic science began to frame childhood as serious business requiring professional training. Research institutes and government conferences became centers for studying and doing something about the child. Women's magazines and child-raising books and manuals became central mechanisms for spreading the new behaviorist theories on the subject. The early tone was one of restraint and regularity.

The orientation of the expert advice changed when Benjamin Spock popularized a child-centered approach with the publication of The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care. Against the backdrop of behaviorism, Spock's ideas were revolutionary. If sales are an indicator of reception, it appears that parents around the world were pleased with the new message from the science of child development. The book went through seven editions, was translated into 39 languages, and sold more than 50 million copies. Earlier parents had been told that holding a crying child only spoils him or her. Spock encouraged parents to go with their instincts, cuddle the crying child, be flexible, more focused on the individual needs of each child, and have fun parenting.

The struggle between child-centered, permissive parenting and more restrictive parenting did not end with Spock. Parents today often find themselves caught between experts and the politics of gender and science. They might read attachment-oriented books such as The Baby Book by Martha and William Sears. This approach draws on non-Western child-rearing practices such as the “family bed” that emphasize physical and emotional closeness between parent and child. At the same time, parents may reference Richard Ferber's Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, which emphasizes child independence and self-comfort. This formula provides for progressively increased lengths of letting the child cry to train the child to fall asleep on her or his own.

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