Argentine Motherhood in Comparative Perspective- Karen Mead

8/8/2019 Argentine Motherhood in Comparative Perspective- Karen Mead

1/26

JOURNALOF WOMENS H ISTORY120 AUTUMN

2000 JOURNALOF W OMENS H ISTORY, VOL. 12 N O. 3 (AUTUMN)

T

BENEFICENT MATERNALISM:Argentine Motherhood in Comparative Perspective,

18801920

Karen Mead

This article places an important Argent ine voluntary association, the

Beneficent Society, within the international context of womens ma-

ternalist activism. M ead focuses on the efforts of elite womens asso-

ciations to influence government assistance to poor women and

children, arguing that such influence depended not only on govern-

mental structure, but also on womens ability to take advantage ofprevailing cultural and nationalist concerns. Comparing Argentina

with France and the United States, Mead weighs the importance of

Catholicism, medical corporations, immigration, and differences

among local groups of maternalists in explaining the success of the

Beneficent Society before 1920 and its subsequent marginalization.

he Beneficent Society . . . is an imp regnable fortress against which all

hostile actions must fail.1 Argentine president Carlos Pellegrini thusdescribed the nations most prominent association of women in 1892, to

the d isapp ointm ent of an ambitious p hysician wh o had hostile action very

mu ch in mind . Although little know n ou tside Argentina, the Beneficent

Society (Sociedad de Beneficencia) merits attention for its welfare activ-

ism, as well as its political cond uct, which lent the agency an au ra of im-

pregnability in the contentious arenas of social policy and public health.

The history of the organ ization between 1880 and 1920 suggests how Ar-

gentine women attempted to take advantage of structural opportunities

to participate in the state-building efforts that characterized the era, aswell as how they u sed available notions of gend er to enhance their ma-

terna list prerogatives.

I use the term maternalism here to refer broadly to any organized

activism on the part of wom en w ho claim that they p ossess gendered qu al-

ifications to understand and assist less-fortunate women and, especially,

children. Out of a potentially vast array of organizations that fit th is de-

scription, I focus on those that sought a relationship with governm ent as a

means to enhan ce their effectiveness. Such organizations came into their

own during the late nineteenth century in a number of Western nationsand have received the attention of historians interested not only in w omen,

bu t also in the architecture of so-called w elfare states.2 Early attemp ts on


2/26

KAREN MEAD2000 121

the p art of Seth Koven and Sonya Michel to generalize across geograp hi-

cal boundaries celebrated the ways in which matern alist ideologies chal-

lenged the sup posed bound aries between p ublic and private during the

years betw een 1880 and 1920. By u sing the pr ivate virtu es of dom estic-ity to legitimate womens pu blic relationsh ip to p olitics and the state, ma-

ternalists played an imp ortant role in determining how the state defined

the needs of mothers and children as w ell as in creating institutions and

program s to address those needs.3

What emerges less clearly in comparative literature about mater-

nalism, although it is often p ronounced in case stud ies, is the imp ortance

of sociocultural issues to the strategies and accomplishments of wom-

ens agencies. The Argentine case reflects a similar situation in the North

Atlantic region d ur ing this period of rapid social and econom ic changeassociated with industrialization and the geographic mobility of capital

and labor. Maternalists demanded the expansion of governm ent respon-

sibility, which in some measure required redefinition of the nation and a

reassessment of citizens relationships to the state. Womens efforts to

influence social policy were shap ed n ot only by ava ilable political oppor-

tun ities, bu t also by their ideas about gender and th e modern nation.4 The

particular ways in wh ich w omen accomm odated their agendas to larger

nationalisms and mad e themselves necessary to m odernization projects

helped d etermine which wom ens groups achieved nationally influentialroles. In Argentina, wom en w ith the greatest impact on social policy and

endur ing constructions of gender were those who convincingly embraced

national progress, as the ad ministrative elite defined it, and app lied th em-

selves to maintaining social order in its wake.5

The equation of women w ith social order r aises questions that p re-

occupy a less optimistic current of maternalist historiography. Which

group s controlled th e way maternal values were celebrated in p ublic, and

to what extent did em ph asis on wom en in the family promote or preclude

feminist politics with a greater emp hasis on w omens social equality andeconomic independence?6 A related question concerns the relationships

among maternalists and their beneficiaries. Was maternalism a subset

of paternalist ph ilanth ropy, which functioned as a deliberate depoliticiz-

ing strategy vital to the p ositive forms of pow er exercised by the mod ern

state, as cynical analysts have asked ?7

To assess these questions in the Argentine context, I compare the

Beneficent Society to an alogous womens associations in France and the

United States d ur ing the same p eriod . I initially chose these two coun-

tries as exemp lars of d ifferent forms of govern ment w ithin the Koven andMichel parad igm ou tlined below. Yet the m ore satisfying elements of the

comparison come from the usefulness of these nations as alternate loca-


3/26


tions of Catholicism, on the one hand , and massive imm igration, on the

othertwo imp ortant variables in u nd erstand ing the rise of the Beneficent

Society and its emu lators. Organ izations in France and the United States

also illustrate the w ays that d istinct m aternalist currents within the samenational setting might d ivide in response to government action.

Koven and Michel have claimed that maternalists were more likely

to achieve organizational strength and influence over social policy in

weak states (those with limited federal governm ents) than in strong

states (those more bureaucratic and interventionist).8 Critics of this the-

ory complain that the labels weak and strong are too simp le to cap-

ture the differences between national political systems.9 Here, I follow

Koven and Michels model, but d efine weak and strong states accord-

ing to their links to corporate group s that sought to d efine social policyreligious establishm ent, and the medical profession. I compare the poten tial

for womens influence in Argentina to that in France, which possessed a

centralized pu blic health bureaucracy and robust Catholic Church, and

the United States, which had fragmented Protestant congregations and

private enterp rise med icine. Interesting in itself, this comparison also pre-

sents the Beneficent Society in different terms than those used by many

Argentine historians.10

Contemporary observers always m entioned the socias (Beneficent

Society members) elite status. In 1912, for example, as French plenipo-tentiary minister Fouqu es Duparc sough t in his month ly dispatch to ex-

plain the societys unusual prestige, he allowed th at it was deserved both

for the social rank of the mem bers and for the results they obtained from

the hum anitarian and econom ic points of view.11 Yet class alone cannot

explain the achievements or flaw s of the Beneficent Society. Many nat ions

had rich, politically active w omen, bu t only in Argentina w as a volun tary

womens association brough t into the Ministry of the Interior as an ad -

ministrative agency of a repu blican governm ent.

We may begin to u nd erstand more completely the ascendancy of theBeneficent Society and other maternalist groups by acknowledging the

political opportunities available in a new government dedicated to the

establishm ent of national culture in m odern Argentina. Not on ly did am-

bivalence about Argentinas Spanish Catholic past complicate this objec-

tive, bu t so did the arrival of large nu mbers of European imm igrants, Italian

and Span ish m en for the most part, whose presence seemed to threaten

Argentine elites cultural hegemony and undermine local family struc-

tures. Socias influ enced p olicy d ebates of the early 1880s because of their

class, bu t they could n ever have maintained such influence without stra-tegic manipu lation of gend ered ideas, which respond ed to elite anxieties

about national cohesion.


4/26


5/26


became skilled in using Rivadavias name to defend the agency from at-

tacks, placing themselves in th e mainstream of nationalist liberalism.

By th e 1870s, the Beneficent Society had established an Asylum for

Insane Women (Hosp ital Nacional d e Alienadas), Childrens Hospital (Hos-pital de N ios), and several orphanages. Socias attention to institution-

build ing intensified after 1876, when the agency surrend ered ninety-eight

girls schools to the Argentine Department of Education. In 1880, when

vexing questions about the nations political organization were settled,

the city of Buenos Aires became the nations capital. As the govern ment of

the Province of Buenos Aires abandoned the city for a new capital at La

Plata, provincial leaders ceded a variety of functions and agenciesin-

clud ing the Beneficent Societyto the new nat ional governmen t.

In explaining the elevation of the Beneficent Society to the Ministryof the Interior, Minister Anton io del Viso did not refer d irectly to socias

willingness to volunteer their labor bu t stressed that their ad ministrative

efficiency was th e best guaran tee that the m onies of the N ation would

be jud iciously ap plied to their compassionate destination.15 In add ition,

the society had no formal ties to the Catholic Chu rch, which w as impor-

tant to secularizing forces in the new governm ent. The w omen were well-

organized, experienced, and p laced a p remium on w orking cooperatively

at a time when m en involved in organizing p ublic health services were

comp etitive, vying w ith each other for ad ministrative p ositions and care-less with governm ent monies.

Within a few years, however, the countrys most prestigious pub-

lic health professionalsusually referred to as higienistas (hygienists)

organized Asistencia Pblica (Public Assistance), which would become

the other p rimary health an d welfare agency in the capital. Frustrated by

the governm ents unwillingness to elevate Asistencia Pblica from the level

of municipal government, its leaders sought alliances with the men of

the national governments Department of Hygiene in repeated attemp ts

to assume command of Beneficent Society establishments and the rela-tively hand some budget Congress voted to them each year. In th is com-

petitive climate, the society not only retained autonomy over its internal

affairs, but also continued to expand the number and size of establish-

ments it constructed and administered as the governm ents agent. Socias

control over not on ly asylums but also med ical facilities chagrined public

health officials who w ere not em ployed by the Beneficent Society.

Immigration into the country produced exponential population

growth , however, leaving man y ill, aband oned , and destitute peop le for

these agencies to attend . In Buenos Aires alone, there were nearly ten timesas man y people in 1914 as there were in 1870, and one-half again as many

arrived and left before census takers could count them.16 Following a


6/26

KAREN MEAD2000 125

financial crisis in 1890, private agencies proliferated in response to the

misery of the u rban p oor, but w retched cond itions ran ahead of institu-

tional responses. In this shifting environm ent, the Beneficent Society re-

tained control of key health and welfare institutions for wom en, and shapedthe gender ideas of their day, claiming particular virtues on behalf of them-

selves and their clients.

Catholicism, Medicine, and the State in France and Argentina

Critics of the Beneficent Society and other womens voluntary asso-

ciations in Argentina often stressed th eir religion, leveling th e charge of

Catholicism as if it w ere a self-eviden t accusation of conservatism an d ig-

norance.17 Perhaps because the assum ed connections between the Chu rchand women are so prevalent in the period literature, modern literature

contains no analysis of a key aspect of the Argentine setting: Argentine

women w ere able to exercise influence over social policy because the Catho-

lic Church in Argentina was so feeble. Comparison with France on this

point is instructive.

For most of the nineteenth century, French governments were con-

tent to leave edu cation of girls (especially in the countryside) and training

of female teachers to the Catholic Church. Given the absence of profes-

sional opportunities for women, they flocked into the new noncontem-plative teaching and nu rsing ord ers that the Church had begun to organize

in 1796. The number of female religious increased from th irty thousand to

somewhere between one hun dred thirty thousand and one hund red fifty

thousand dur ing the last half of the centu ry.18 These numbers were impor-

tant not only because nu ns were the only persons trained to perform es-

sential tasks in hospitals and asylum s, bu t also because the vast majority

of women with any formal education were most familiar with Catholic

notions of family and society.

The Catholic concept central to all charitable endeavors is that ofcaritas, the unifying love that bind s human s to God and each other. In an

organic society conceived as a collection of families bound together in a

hierarchy that was d ivinely ordained, caritas obligated more fortunate fami-

lies to love and share their material blessings with the poor, Chr ists earthly

representat ives. These ideas fit smoothly with bourgeois womens dom es-

tic and reproductive interests, and shaped these womens und erstand ing

of their responsibilities in an increasingly combative industrializing so-

ciety.19

Encouragement of private ph ilanthropy w as an economical way forgovernment to extend social assistance, and , by the 1860s, state subsidies

to both secular and religious establishm ents reached their zenith.20 Official


7/26


sup port extended to small asylum s organized by laywom en as well as to

large charity hospitals. When republicans gained control of the French

governm ent after 1870, they w ere not withou t concern for p oor w omen or

worker families, but they explicitly rejected caritas as an organizationalprinciple for social assistance in a modern society bound by cash, self-

interest, and the m arket, not familial ties.21 Republicans were less inter-

ested in subsidizing asylum s than in bu ild ing and staffing secular girls

schools.

The overriding d evelopm ent that shaped all app roaches to gend er in

the early d ecades of the Third Repu blic, however, was the falling national

birthra te. After the d isastrous Franco-Prussian War, this crisis of dep opu-

lation ap peared as an issue w ith serious ramifications not on ly for French

virility but also national security. Questions of maternity riveted the at-tention of male political and religious leaders in a way that marginalized

women from p olicy d ebates.22 Catholic clergy found French w omens de-

clining fertility a serious matter indeed, and the m ost conservative among

them thou ght the only way to strengthen the family w as to reject indus-

trial developm ent and urban life altogether. More useful to th e govern-

ment, however, were French hygienists who set out to improve fertility

and decrease infant mortality among working women without reducing

the availability of female labor or overly restricting em ployers p reroga-

tives.23

As the governm ent of the Third Repu blic moved against the Catholic

Church, it pu t w omen wh o were involved in trad itional Catholic charities

on the d efensive withou t provid ing significant opportun ities for women

with a more secular approach to social relations. Women remained vital

to philanthropic networks bu t rarely achieved official governm ent p osi-

tions. Men set themselves the tasks of reducing infant mortality and im-

proving fertility rates of w orking w omen by legislating matern ity leaves,

more abundant health care, and financial sup port to prevent child abandon-

ment.24 The dozens of maternal and infant charities in Paris, for example,were controlled and inspected by employees of the governmental agency

Asistance Publique (Public Assistance, greatly envied by Argentine hy-

gienists), wh ich coordinated all pu blic health in the capital and through-

out m uch of the nation.

Many Catholic women w ere inspired to organize during this period ,

but they did so in op position to government p olicy and were thus anath-

ema to rad ical repu blicans.25 At the same time, however, anticlerical legis-

lators who feared the connections between women and the black p eril

of the clergy were no more sympathetic to feminists who elaborated pierc-ing critiques of contrad ictory republican adherence to both ind ividual lib-

erty and gender hierarchy.26 Although un willing to imagine females as


8/26

KAREN MEAD2000 127

citizen-voters, lawmakers were open to improvement of womens legal

position within the sexual division of labor, particularly if it enhanced

their effectiveness as mothers. Many feminists astutely cooperated with

this political line, advocating significant improvements to marr ied wom-ens rights.27 Their influ ence, how ever, did not extend to other policy

realms.

Although many among the Argentine administrative elite studied

Frances example, there was no institu tion in Argentina as strong as those

in France. The most im portan t d ifference was in each coun trys respective

Chu rch history. Until the late eighteenth centu ry, Argentina had been on

the fringe of the Spanish Empire, and the Catholic Chu rch w as more thinly

represented there than in other areas of the Americas. The w ars of inde-

pendence had created important d ivisions among what clergy there were,and Rivadavias efforts to eliminate the influence of the regular orders

widened those differences. Rosass cynical use of the Cath olic Church as a

political weap on brou ght it to its nadir in Argentine history. The Chu rch

worked to rebu ild itself after mid-century by m inistering to th e dom inant

classes and had as yet no pastoral mission am ong th e poor. While ind i-

vidu al elite families practiced charitable giving to depend ents and alms-

seekers, there w as little trad ition of organized lay charity. The Beneficent

Society was an obvious exception, but it only began to expand these ac-

tivities after mid -centu ry, along w ith a han dful of small private womensassociations. Many proposed public and private welfare projects foun-

dered over lack of fun ding, build ing m aterials, and convents to train staff

for the establishm ents.28

While the Argentine medical corporation w ould eventually attach it-

self to the state in the man ner of Asistance Publique in France, it was still

in the early stages of this process, whereas the French had been at it in a

serious m anner since the seventeenth century. Great progress was m ade

in u niversity ed ucation and professionalization d ur ing the 1870s in Ar-

gentina, but in public health virtually everything remained to be done.Hygienists eager to p romote th is work admired Asistance Publique for its

scientific achievements, control of Parisian health care providers, and in-

fluence over national organization of medicine.29 Yet the new Argentine

governm ent d isapp ointed these men by denying them sweeping control

of the French model and fun ding the Argentine Asistencia Pblica on ly

through the municipal bud get of Buenos Aires.

During th e 1880s, the oratory of Argentine legislators (many of whom

were p hysicians) rang w ith the same impassioned anticlericalism as that

of French rad ical repu blicans, bu t, in fact, local clerics w ere on the defen-sive and without popu lar supp ort. There was no institutional level at which

local Catholic hierarchy could effectively resist secularization of educa-


9/26


tion, civil registries, or marriage. Nor could it restrict laywomens entrance

into social work or organ ize rival projects.

The financial crash of 1890 created considerable hardship for the work-

ing classes in cities and served as a catalyst for the organization of severalprivate char ities that greatly expand ed their assistance to wom en and chil-

dren in th e following years. These organ izations were explicitly Catholic

in orientation, and, while many liberal legislators objected to the subsi-

d ies that th e Argent ine Congress voted to these agencies, they w ere polit-

ically feasible because the local Chu rch was w ithou t significant p olitical

pow er in the 1890s, and therefore nonthreatening. Laywomen were vital

to the functioning of Catholic charities because the Chu rch h ad so few t ies

to the p oor.

In contrast to French wom en, Argentine matrons could carry ou t theirspiritual obligations in explicit support of the state. They used the ideas

associated w ith caritas to justify their desire to leave their own hom es and

intervene in those of other women. Yet they claimed tha t the social con-

d itions that w arranted this activity w ere only temp orarythe incip ient

d ifficulties of an as yet imperfect but eagerly aw aited liberal order. Encyc-

licals of Pope Leo XIII du ring th is period sou ght to reposition the Catho-

lic Church in a capitalist world in which the Mother Catholic Church

could guaran tee social peace to the Father state.30 Prominent Argentine

Catholic womens associations adop ted a p arallel argumen t by offering toease the situation of poor Argentine and immigrant wom en until men in

the government could straighten out the econom ic and political details.

The Seoras of Saint Vincent de Paul, for example, although they

formed the largest of the Argentine womens associations and the one with

the closest ties to the Church, did not advocate the restoration of a golden

age, Catholic or oth erwise. In its explanation of social questions, their lit-

eratu re called upon th e thou ght of Herbert Spencer, the British sociologist

who interpreted m arket relations in terms of evolu tionary theory and be-

lieved that those who could not comp ete should perish according to thedictates of natu ral selection. The seoras (often referred to as vicentinas),

believing that it was u nw ise for the state to care for the poor wh o, by vir-

tue of being poor, were obviously unfit, offered to intercede with com-

passion in the struggle for life, between the d agger of the victor and the

chest of the vanquished .31 Vicentinas carried this secular und erstanding

of governm ent-pop ulace relations, their Catholic ideals of the p erman ence

of family bonds, and an insistence on the need for imp roved hygiene into

the hom es of poor w omen to w hom they d istributed d onations. They also

built asylums and workshop s, which the government subsidized. For staff,they relied on the management and nursing skills of French Sisters of

Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, recruited from Europe as were the or-


10/26

KAREN MEAD2000 129

ders that staffed m ost local hospitals.32 The beneficent had little desire for

Argentine girls to become nu ns.

As Argentine w omens associations expanded their mem bership af-

ter 1890, and applied themselves more consciously to class conciliationafter 1900, the Beneficent Society became increasingly important to its sup -

porters in governm ent as an exemplar of proliferating activism. Yet the

events of 1890 had proved an imp ortant tu rning p oint for the society as

well. As they beat back repeated attempts of male-run agencies to take

over their institutions, socias used the press to make known their opinions

and expand the image of wom en.

Althou gh the sharpening econom ic d ifficulties of 1889 and 1890 in-

tensified h ygienists efforts to relieve the Beneficent Society of its admin-

istrative responsibilities, ultimately, the crisis worked to the societysadvantage, as its spokespersons attributed to socias and their clients the

characteristics most critically absent from m ale conduct of public life. Tra-

ditionally feminine abnegation an d self-sacrifice, for example, became spe-

cific virtues that enabled poor wom en to stretch inad equate incomes far

enou gh to hold families together in an age of materialism, just as the so-

ciety held the national family together despite governmental financial

profligacy.

The biggest showdown between higienistas and socias was over the

Casa de Expsitos, an establishment w here parents could leave unwantednewborns w ith total anonym ity. Hygienists wanted access to the institu-

tion in ord er to study qu estions of illegitimacy, child aban donm ent, and

especially critical in the late 1880srising infant m ortality rates, which

defied th eir notions of progress. In 1888, the society had defend ed its right

to adm inister the hom e by arguing that socias maternal instincts were more

app ropriate to the care not only of orphaned inm ates but also of troubled

wom en w ho m ight reclaim their children in the futu re.33

National Depar tment of Hygiene physicians were not persuad ed by

this argument, however, and redoubled their efforts to reorganize the hom ealong the lines consecrated by the experience of what has occurred in

France, wh ere anonymou s adm issions were no longer allowed .34 In her

official response to the Department of Hygiene, society president Isabel

Hale de Pearson d id not argue w ith its technical precepts (many of which

the hom es doctors had sup ported ) and agreed that speaking of the French

mod el was the equivalent of saying th at the p rescriptions correspon d to

the most ad vanced p rinciples of science, but warned that the d epartments

prop osed implementation policies w ere impractical.35

Forced by th e govern ments financial crisis to resort to public solici-tation of donations for the Casa de Expsitos, socias were met with a gen-

erous response, not only from large donors bu t also from scores of people


11/26


who contribu ted fifty centavos at a time. When, after increasing pressure

from the Depar tment of Hygiene, the society offered to resign control of

the hom e, daily Argentine newspap erLa Prensa pu blished the resignation

letter wherein socias spoke of their efficiency, economy, and patriotism.They claimed that recent public response to the homes plight demon-

strated that they had the confid ence of the people in their honest admin-

istration and econom ic man agement.36 The governm ent had little choice

but to agree, und er the circum stances, and refused their resignation.

As socias came to d escribe their clients w ith the same characteristics

tha t they claimed for themselvesabnegation, self-sacrifice, willingness

to work hard , and sou nd econom ic man agement skillsthey described la

mujer argent ina (the Argentine woman) in term s that addressed the con-

cerns of a nation und ergoing econom ic depression. As prosperity returnedin the mid -1890s, the Beneficent Society continu ed to refine and d issemi-

nate their vision of the Argentine woman , app lying th e same virtues not

only to economic situations but a lso to the strength of character necessary

to maintain Argentine culture at the family core. Increasingly, however,

their vision respon ded more consciously to anxieties raised by imm igra-

tion.

In France, the depopulation crisis compelled doctors and politi-

cians to initiate a corrective intervention into p oor w omens family lives

to prevent squand ering of the nations pop ulation.37 Many of these menassigned a key role to the hou sewife/ moth er in maintaining family life in

a growing nation, and worked toward securing state protection for the

family as a means of defend ing social order. But French legislators never

consulted women to refine their knowledge of family needs, and many

dismissed as antimod ern th e social vision of Catholic women.38

In Argentina, wom en retained greater control over the d iscourse of

motherhood not only because of structural differences but also because

questions of nat ionalist anxiety were d ifferent than those in France. Popu-

lation growth was strong (local hygienists were smu g abou t the fact thatFrench wom en in Argentina d emonstrated high birthrates in contrast to

French wom en at home), bu t there were doubts abou t the societys futu re

as many people came and went, abandoning w omen, children, and the

elderly and leaving them ou tside the p rotective reach of family networks.

The Beneficent Society argued that (with their help) Argentine women

had the strength and virtue to hold familiesand thus the nationtogether

and that they already knew how to do these things because they were

women. Neither hygienists nor clerics were in a position to challenge such

claims, and thou sands of relatively privileged w omen followed these ideasinto action.

The government of the French Third Repu blic worked to w rest caritas


12/26

KAREN MEAD2000 131

from the hands of wom en and perfect techn iques of pop ulation manage-

ment th at correspond ed to a m odern class society bound by econom ic re-

lations. In contrast, as the Argentine elite observed the growth of a

prosperous, but increasingly cosmopolitan, society that exhibited whatthey perceived as unbridled materialism, the oligarchy sought to in-

vent a society bound by familial solidarities, with a particular emphasis

on filial loyalty to thepatria (fatherland). Women played an integral role

in this society.

Immigration and Maternalism in the United Statesand Argentina

The relationship between w omens activism and the state was m uchdifferent in th e United States than in either Argentina or France. The fed-

eralist structure of the state and unwillingness of most legislators to ex-

pand the pow er of the national government d ur ing much of the nineteenth

century fostered the vitality of womens activism. Early disestablish-

men t of chu rch from state also distingu ished th e United States. The self-

governing congregations typical of U.S. Protestantism were dependent

on lay sup port, and the strength of wom en among the laity allowed them

to expand their social authority.39 After the Civil War, the courts an d po-

litical parties that structured the formal polity w ere ill-equipp ed to ad -dress social conflicts associated with industrialization. Building on the

moral reform impetus of the antebellum period, womens associations took

advantage of many opportunities to improve the delivery of health and

social assistance.40

As a dynamic industrial economy took hold in their region, white,

middle-class women in Northern U.S. cities were in the best position to

benefit from their organ izational experience du ring the Civil War. Wom-

en in many settings in the United States accepted great responsibility for

the w elfare of their comm un ities, and this was now here more pronoun cedthan among African-American w omen.41 But white women in the North

were better placed to influence governm ent policy as well as gain access

to edu cation. The presence of U.S. women in higher edu cation, more than

forty thousand in 1880, was critical to their participation as both volun-

tary and p rofessional social workers.42

As for the m edical profession, its comparative lack of interest in im-

proving maternal and child health through governm ent programs is sug-

gested by th e absence of nat ional infant m ortality statistics at the tu rn of

the century.43 The free-enterprise mod el of health care adop ted in theUnited States accorded little prestige to practice of public medicine and

encouraged ph ysicians to remain independent of the state. Historian Alisa


13/26


Klaus has shown how the structure of the profession not only left room

for a w oman -oriented policy netw ork bu t also allowed w omen far greater

opp ortun ities to practice med icine, both as d octors and nu rses.44

Klaus had also provided key insights into the impact of imm igrationon m aternalism. In the United States as in Argentina, population w as in-

creasing rap idly, but far more growth w as du e to imm igration than repro-

duction of native-born w hites. The fear of race suicide on the par t of the

white midd le class bred their concern for race betterment w ith regard

to imm igrants and nonwh ite peop le. Race betterment w as not as urgent

an issue for U.S. politicians and physicians as was the d epop ulation cri-

sis in France, bu t it was comp elling enou gh to p romote a sup portive po-

litical environment for women dedicated to the cause.45 President Theodore

Roosevelt used the concept race suicide in speeches designed to encour-age white women to adopt certain family values, but the national gov-

ernment took no organized initiative in p romoting such behavior.46 U.S.

women, therefore, encountered fewer obstacles to their own program s than

did their counterparts in France.

Historian Molly Ladd -Taylor has d evised a typ ology that identifies

two p rincipal maternalist app roaches to the situation of poor w omen and

children in the United States.47 Sentimental maternalists were typified

by the N ational Congress of Mothers, which w as a group of wom en w ho

were traditionalists on womens placetheir own and their clientswithin the home an d family. Progressive m aternalists were typ ified by

those associated with Hull Hou se, the Chicago settlement h ouse w here

innovative reform ers created a supportive milieu for activist middle-class

women and their clients among the neighborhoods immigrant commu-

nity. Although progressives also encouraged poor mothers to stay hom e,

they believed in their right to choose between marriage and career, and

un derstood their contributions in terms of professional expertise as well

as feminine capacity for nurtu re.

In sp ite of differences, how ever, both types of U.S. matern alists w eremoved by an ideology wh ose app eal, according to Ladd -Taylor, cannot

be understood apart from the white Protestant alarm over race sui-

cide in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu ries.48 As the popu-

lation became more ethnically diverse, maternalists sought to remind

Anglo-American women of their moral and civic responsibility to bear

(and stay hom e with) children and to teach immigrants American family

patterns.49

Such anxieties were even more pronou nced in Argentina, where im-

migrants formed a larger percentage of the popu lation than in the UnitedStates. Early statesmen had hop ed for northern European imm igrants to

cultivate the vast interior of the country. After the 1870s, however, the


14/26

KAREN MEAD2000 133

majority of immigrants came from southern Europe and a large percent-

age preferred to pursue op portu nities in the boom ing coastal cities rather

than take up agricultural labor. In contrast to U.S. cities, where imm igrant

workers were welcomed pr imarily in unskilled labor and the DemocraticParty, in Argentina, immigrants came to represent a m ajority of commer-

cial and indu strial entrepreneurs as well as skilled and un skilled laborers,

but did not participate in electoral politics because naturalization was

difficult.50 Thus, even before labor conflicts in the twentieth century fo-

cused an ti-imm igrant sentim ent on foreign agitators, nat ive-born elites

were concerned with preserving an Argentine culture that reinforced their

social and political dominance. Metaphorical associations between family

and nation w ere usefu l to a paternalist government in need of an inclu-

sionary d iscourse that might encourage p ermanent settlement and patri-otic sentiment among imm igrants who remained withou t formal political

rights. But the skewed sex ratios resulting from immigration increased

anxieties that real families were not serving as social cement.

Immigrant men comprised the largest group in the adult Argen-

tine p opulation, especially in Buenos Aires. (In Buenos Aires in 1887, for

example, among people fifteen years old and older, there were 38,207

Argentine-born men to 135,792 foreign-born; 51,703 Argen tine-born wom-

en to 69,080 imm igrant women.51 ) Not only were Argentine men d ramati-

cally outnumbered by foreign-born m en, but they were also far less likelyto marry than w ere imm igrants. While several conservative voices argu ed

for the n eed to p rotect Argentine w omen from the foreign hord e, far m ore

concern attached to w orkers of the fu ture. Who w ould inculcate the chil-

dren of foreign men with a love for Argentina?

Women thus created a crucial role for themselves in defining the Ar-

gentine national family. Refashioning traditional ideas about women as

curators of culture (an idea that had often been used to keep them at home),

optimistic sources praised the ability of Argentine women to socialize for-

eign men as well as their children .52 It was easy to blame foreigners for thedisorder of broken families and abandoned relatives, and there was al-

ways imp ressionistic evidence to confirm these fears. A seven-month -old

baby named Gu ido, for examp le, was admitted to the Beneficent Societys

Casa de Expsitos when his parents returned to Italy. At the p ort, the ships

captain had refused to allow Gu ido on board because he had the measles;

his parents left him behind .53

Members of voluntary associations were well aw are, how ever, that it

was imp ossible for m ost poor w omen to benefit from m ost of the aspects

of traditiona l Hispanic family life that they th emselves enjoyed . The idealArgentine family they champ ioned w as therefore something of a hybrid

that revolved around womens service. They praised clients who were


15/26


mostly female heads of household struggling to maintain familial rela-

tions in the midst of un precedented social and geograph ic mobility.

The hom e as a theoretical locus of Argentine pat riotism offered sp e-

cial advantages in this coun try w here a short and tempestuous p oliticalhistory p rovided little material for un ifying national myths. Yet the Be-

neficent Society, in particular, could claim a long, apolitical, institutional

patriotism. As early as th e 1880s, French traveler Emile Daireaux had left

Argentina with an image ofporteas (Buenos Aires wom en) as paragons

of patriotism. He asserted that th e history of theportea was tantamount

to the h istory of national sentimen t in the Argent ine Repu blic. This na-

tional sentiment is born of her an d in her. It is she who makes it the reli-

gion of her children, and one could add that it is the only religion she

cares to teach them.54The concept of the Argentine hom e elaborated by w omens agencies

was elastic and inclusive, encouraging all women to elect this w ay of life.

Authentic argentinidad (Argentineness) was defined by society spokes-

women in d escribing clients lives and drawing attention to th e intimate

sphere of action in w hich p atriotism w as reproduced as a female virtue.

In 1907, at the Beneficent Societys ann ual public aw ard s ceremony, Presi-

dent Etelvina Costa d e Sala invoked womens historic abilities to sup port

their dependents. The traditional organization of the Argentine family,

constituted exclusively on selflessness and preserved through all of ourtransformations, is the prop itious environment in wh ich ou r [clients] have

developed th eir exceptional virtues. Daughters raised in the ambience com-

mon to all our old homes, from the most hu mble to the most lofty, know

that the idea of self-sacrifice to alleviate the pain of loved ones is the legiti-

mate and natu ral fruit of so mu ch shared affection.55

Socias insisted that the Argentine family w as a naturally occurring

ph enomenon w hich had shap ed their lives and tau ght them the value of

love and self-sacrifice in holding families and the nation together. Their

message was heard, however, by man y sup por ters who appreciated theirefforts in hopes that they could reduce social disorder attributed to imm i-

gran t w orkers. At the sam e ceremony, Minister of Foreign Relations and

Religion Estanislao Zeballos equated the Beneficent Society w ith the pa-

triotism of the nations first call for national ind ependence in May 1810.

Now the great Argentine social task is to lose no time in the form ation of

our character, because we are constructing a nat ion on the tragic fact that

all of our glorious traditions from the year 10 are disappearing as we

assimilate the traditions, beliefs, interests, qualities, and passions of the

races that arrive from abroad in successive waves and absorb our man -ners, instead of us being able to absorb them! . . . It is the imm aculate tra-

d ition of May tha t the Sociedad de Beneficencia represents: love, virtue,


16/26

KAREN MEAD2000 135

and patriotism!56 The ceremonys aud ience, pr imarily wom en from other

benevolent agencies and governm ent officials, respon ded with enthu sias-

tic app lause. According to one reporter, Dr. Zeballos had know n how to

interp ret the feelings latent in all of their sp irits.57 By 1910, the Argentinestate had gone some d istance toward the centralized, interventionist mod el

that legislators had wanted from the start. The Beneficent Society enjoyed

a secure niche w ithin th is governm ent, embod ying the ideals of woman-

hood they had worked to associate with the prop agation of Argentine cu l-

ture.

Women who received financial assistance and p ublic recognition from

the society almost always worked for income in ord er to maintain d epen-

dents, and merited financial aid in socias eyes because the w ork available

to them w as insu fficient and/ or ill paid. The society exerted p ressure whenpossible to open new opportunities for womens employment outside

the home.58 Even more energetic measures were taken in this regard in

the training p rograms and hom es for working women th e Seoras of Saint

Vincent d e Paul sponsored. Withou t criticizing prevailing economic doc-

trine or the patriarchal family, the beneficent championed the efforts of

wom en w ho w ere not served by these systems yet still encouraged their

filial loyalty to the fatherland. Although the practical considerations of

these beneficent maternalists led them to endorse work for women in a

way that scand alized m any w ho saw female factory labor as a disturbingtrend in mod ern life, as a group , they were unlikely to approve such em-

ployment unless it was a dire necessity. They did not, for examp le, und er-

stand womens econom ic par ticipation in the life of the nation as ground s

for legal changes in w omens status or political rights. As a d ifferent ap -

proach to maternalism emerged, however, such issues began to divide ac-

tivist women.

Progressive Maternalists in Argentina

By the end of the nineteenth centu ry, a small number of female col-

lege graduates began to p rodu ce a second stream of maternalism in Ar-

gentina. Imm igrant wom en were an importan t presence in this group not

only because imm igrants were well represented more generally in th e ur-

ban middle class but also because immigrant families apparently were

more willing to send their daughters to college. Argentines were also vital

to the group , how ever, and , when they definitively separated from other

maternalists in 1904, these women emp hasized edu cation rather than n a-

tional origins with their organizations name: Asociacin UniversitariasArgentinas (Association of Argentine University Women).Universitarias

(as these women were often referred to) quickly tired of the prevailing


17/26


ideology ofla mujer argentina. Although most w ere not as bold as Alicia

Moreau de Justo, the socialist feminist who spearheaded campaigns for

womens rights and democracy throughout much of the twentieth cen-

tury, they were anxious to u ncoup le successfu l motherhood from the ideaof cultural curator and distingu ished them selves, as she did, from w omen

impregnated by a sp irit so Span ish, claiming instead to be penetrated

by the spirit of European and Am erican civilization.59

Much like U.S. progressives, Argentine universitarias differed from

local sentimentalists primarily in their desire to create professional employ-

ment for th emselves in social service. The feminism several universitarias

endorsed was consistent with a maternalist desire to app ly nurtu ring ma-

terna l qualities to social qu estions of the d ay. As a group, they d id not em-

brace suffrage or equ al rights, bu t rather a d iscourse that harmon iouslyblend ed hom e, motherhood , and social justice.60 Yet the issue of middle-

class employmen t had a significant ly different imp act in Argent ina.

In the United States, progressive maternalists were the first women

to gain federal employment with the creation of the Childrens Bureau

in 1912. This achievement an d all futu re bureau w ork relied on close re-

lationships w ith w omens private associations, whose support remained

important even as the bureau created new opp ortun ities for female em-

ployment w ithin government.61 In Argentina, universitarias also began with

the support of the beneficent, who were just as enthused as themselvesabout the spread of domestic science. But the desire ofuniversitarias to

create employment for themselves based on scientific expertise was ill-

received by sentimentalists in Argentina, not only because it threatened

their governm ent positions but also because it was subversive to the gen-

der ideology upon wh ich those positions rested .

Universitarias sought employment in a w elfare system that relied heav-

ily on women whose comp etence was rarely considered in the econom ic

terms that d etermined m ens wages. This was obviously the case with th e

ad ministra tive labor of the Beneficent Society. More extensively, how ever,the largest pu blic hospitals, and man y p rivate ones, relied on the nu rsing

skills of European religious w omen wh ose vocation enabled them to w ork

for a nom inal salary. Cecilia Grierson, perhaps the best-know n universitaria,

railed against this situation and its Europ ean m odels. She regretted that

France, which we so love to imitate, has perhaps on e of the worst forms

of nursing assistance, and was indefatigable in her efforts to establish a

professional nursing school in Buenos Aires.62 Althou gh the Escuela de

Enferm eras (School for N urses) eventu ally came un der the aegis of Asis-

tencia Pblica, medical directors of that agencys hosp itals rarely sent theirlay staff there for training because they were unwilling to raise nurses

wages.


18/26

KAREN MEAD2000 137

Although individu al wom en m ight enter male professions, the cre-

ation of new realms for female employment was limited. Thus Grierson,

also Argentinas first female medical doctor, could h ave made her living

as such, but was un able to raise nu rsing to a professional status either forherself as an instructor or as a category of respectable employment for

poor and m idd le-class wom en. Similarly, when universitarias called atten-

tion to factories emp loying wom en and children in violation of legal hours

and safety stand ard s and offered to p lace themselves in charge of inspec-

tion and application of penalties, Department of Labor officials snubbed

them. They might volunteer their time to inspect and denounce infrac-

tions of the law just like any other person, but the d epartm ent would

not pay them to d o so.63

The econom ics of womens voluntary labor w as bolstered by the elabo-rate gend er ideology that the Beneficent Society for years had embodied.

Womens work was vital to the social fabric, but its value was great be-

cause, by d efinition, wom ens work was performed in service to others.

The Beneficent Society and its emulators among Catholic agencies encour-

aged the waged emp loyment of poor w omen w hose families were depen-

dent on their incomes, but they were less enthusiastic about w aged labor

for middle-class women seeking a measure of independence for them-

selves. The Beneficent Society d id not obstru ct the careers of women w hose

training took p lace in their hospitals, but they d id nothing to assist themor promote new professional opportunities for women in their institu-

tions, wh ich they clearly had the power to d o.

Nor w ere the beneficent generous with federal fund ing for new p ro-

grams.64 Under such circumstances, universitarias grew increasingly res-

tive and began to define themselves in more explicit contrast to their

forebears. Universitarias rejected Catholic morality as the basis for ad mis-

sions to institutions or for the routinization of daily life among institu-

tionalized w omen and children. They also emphasized d istinctions in class

terms, contrasting the beneficent w ith midd le-class women like themselvesentering professions with a measure of the legitimate aspiration to be-

come self-sufficient, to erad icate from w omans spirit that false shame of

work.65 To the more trad itional, it was not w ork bu t self-sufficiency that

vied with the ideal of the Argentine wom an as the cohesive force in the

household and n ation.

As universitarias distanced themselves from the patronage of other

womens associations, they grew closer to male hygienists who shared

their p rofessional interests. No doubt, scientific congresses were more sat-

isfying to universitarias than their encounters with the beneficent. But, evenif the men who heard their papers admired the intellectual prowess of

universitarias, they w ere less willing than the beneficent (perhaps because


19/26


of their history w ith them ) to share jobs they considered theirs.66 Women

seeking entry into social work p rofessions were thus ideologically stranded

with a scientific d iscourse that alienated other m aternalists, and a claim to

nu rture that, in the opinion of hygienists, qualified them to volun teer butnot take on paid p rofessional roles.

Moreover, while the social turbulence associated with an organized

working class had once raised h opes for achievement of class conciliation

among w omen of different backgrou nd s in the hom e, by 1910, politicians

and even the clergy sought a greater role for themselves. Universitarias

were drawn to the rights-based discourse of socialists, but the Socialist

Party d id not fully end orse the econom ic indep endence for women that

universitarias wanted for themselves, although it sheltered some of their

projects.67 At the same time, important Catholic prelates who sought lead-ership of a new social Catholicism moved to capture the leadership of

several associations that layw omen had created. In the future, priests wou ld

seek to control the u nionization an d evangelization of working w omen.68

Teodelina Alvear d e Lezica, a leader of two Catholic group s, saw the benefit

of a form al alliance amon g imp ortan t womens associations, which could

preserve and enlarge their p rerogatives. How ever, her p roposal was re-

jected by the Beneficent Society, whose first loyalty was to the govern-

ment it served .69

In many w ays, the Beneficent Society remained an impregnable for-tress, bu t one th at w as increasingly less central to the defense of the state.

When Hiplito Yrigoyen became presiden t in 1916, he donated his salary

to the society, continuing the courtly gesture he had begun in the 1890s

when he w as a normal school teacher. This personal donation, however,

symbolized the increasing d ependence of the society on elite generosity.

Expansion of their bud get and official comm itment to new p rojects was

not forthcoming. With the cooperation of scientifically trained women,

the society might have comp eted m ore successfully for new fun ding. With

the cooperation of the Seoras of Saint Vincent de Paul, the society m ighthave used grassroots Catholic sup port to leverage more political influ ence.

As it was, each grou p of women labored in a separate sphere, and , by the

1930s, the state had become a surrogate father through the services of

(male) physicians, whose loving attention to babies and their mothers

was free of unw anted advice from w omens groups.70

Conclusion

Argentine maternalists greatly expanded social assistance for womenand children between 1880 and 1920, making themselves a cond uit through

which state resources could flow to these groups. Withou t the Beneficent


20/26

KAREN MEAD2000 139

Society it would have taken mu ch longer to organize quality med ical care

for ind igent women and children. Along with Catholic associations, socias

offered other kinds of aid to working-class women as well, and their

maternalist vision w as mu ch m ore generous than the biosocial evolu tion-ary functionalism of the eras lead ing hygienists with which it competed.

Although Argentine anticlericals tended to d ismiss religious women

as slaves of the Catholic Chu rch, for the tu rn of the century there is more

evidence to suggest that wom en used Catholic ideas to expand their range

of useful activities into areas tha t the local clergy regard ed as second ary.

Thousands of middle-class women who wished to participate in mater-

nalist action w ere welcomed in such Catholic charities as the Seoras of

Saint Vincent de Paul by laywomen more energetic than their spiritual

advisors. Their allegiance did not represent an overt rejection ofuniversitariaprograms, but, rather, the inconceivability of joining those women who

were tru ly privileged by u niversity education. The increasing imp ortance

of Catholicism to national mod els of motherhood was disturbing to uni-

versitarias, but it was not the only thing to prevent cooperation.

In Argentina, possibilities for alliance were more limited than they

were in the United States, in part because of structural d evelopm ent. Ma-

trons of the Beneficent Society show ed considerable p olitical creativity in

expanding their responsibilities and prestige w ithin a w eak government

during the 1880s and 1890s. The Argentine govern ment was weak, how -ever, because it was new, not because it was committed to a limited, feder-

alist structure. As the state bureaucracy solidified , male hygienists acquired

the organizational mom entum to control fun ding for new endeavors. They

could not d islodge the Beneficent Society, but, as a perm anent fixture in a

now strong governm ent, the society w as no m ore open to the creation

of positions for educated w omen than were male-run agencies.

The beneficent were unable to adjust their notions of female gender

to include professional expertise, in contrast to the way they had earlier

expanded them to claim econom ic efficiency. This failure limited th e abil-ity of other women to follow them into government, limited their own

potential since their organization came to appear archaic amid increas-

ingly innovative hygienists, and , perhaps, limited the ways in wh ich w om-

en of the popular classes might claim the right to state assistance.

If, as sociologist Lisa D. Brush has suggested, m aternalism is femi-

nism for hard times,71 then it seems pru dent to remember that, between

1880 and 1920, women in Argentina (like women in France) stood a far

better chance of receiving a hear ing if they d eman ded it on behalf of their

citizen children rather than themselves. All maternalists recognized thison one level or another, and yet they were unable to cooperate to their

mutual advantage. Although the entrance of middle-class men into the


21/26


un iversity and the p rofessions provided the basis for alliances between

all manner of men, it seemed to h ave had the opposite effect on w omen in

pu blic life. Maternalism d id not cause th is, but its espou sal of depend ence

and protection continued to direct womens attention away from eachother, in sp ite of its glorification of the p otential they shared.

N OTES

Support from a Mellon fellowship and the Womens Studies Program at Wash-ington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, as well as the enthusiastic participa -tion of the stud ents in my Women and the State class encouraged m e to writethis article. I wou ld like to than k John Chasteen, Stacey Robertson, Joan Sup plee,Liann Tsoukas, Devaughn Williams, and the editors of and anonymous readersfor the Journal of Womens History for their perceptive suggestions that have im-proved th is manu script.

1Quoted in Emilio R. Coni,Memorias de un Mdico Higienista: Contribucin ala historia de la higiene pblica y social argentina (19671917) (Buenos Aires: TalleresGrficos A. Flaiban , 1918), 312.

2Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: MaternalistPolitics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York: Rou tled ge, 1993); Gisela Bockand Pat Than e, eds.,Maternity and Gender Politics: Women and the Rise of EuropeanWelfare States, 18801950s (London: Routledge, 1991); and Linda Gordon, ed.,

Women, the State, and W elfare (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).

3Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, Womanly Dut ies: Maternalist Politics andthe Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the UnitedStates, 18801920,American Historical Review 95, no. 4 (1990): 1076108.

4See Miriam Cohen and Michael Hanagan , The Politics of Gend er and theMaking of the Welfare State, 19001940: A Com parat ive Perspective, Journal ofSocial History 24, no. 3 (1990): 46984.

5On Argentine notions of progress during this period, see Karen Mead,

Gendering the Obstacles to Progress in Positivist Argentina, 18801920, His-panic A merican Historical Review 77, no. 4 (1997): 64575.

6Lynn Y. Weiner, Defining the Issues,Journal of Womens History 5, no. 2(1993): 96131, esp. 96. Weiner s ar ticle w as p art of a larger section entitled , Ma-ternalism as a Paradigm , a d iscussion am ong several historians.

7Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, trans. Robert Hu rley (New York:Pantheon, 1979), 55.

8Koven and Michel, Womanly Du ties, 109394.

9

See Jane Lewis, Womens Agency, Matern alism, and Welfare, Gender andHistory 6, no. 1 (1994): 11723.

10For examp le, Carlos Correa Luna,Historia de la Sociedad de Beneficencia, 2


22/26

KAREN MEAD2000 141

vols. (Buenos Aires: Sociedad de Beneficencia d e la Cap ital, 1923). Interp retationsof the society as backward are Hctor Recalde,Beneficencia, asistencialismo estatal y

previsin social, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor Amrica Latina, 1991); andEmilio Tenti Fanfani, Estado y pobreza: Estrategias tpicas de intervencin, 2 vols.

(Buenos Aires: Centro Editor Amrica Latina, 1989). For beneficent societies aspart of the modern apparatus of power, see Eduardo O. Ciafardo, La prcticabenfica y el control de los sectores pop ulares d e la ciudad de Buenos Aires, 18901910,Revista de Indias 54, no. 201 (1994): 383408.

11Fouques Duparc to Minister of State, 5 July 1912, Nou velle serie, vol. 3,fol. 154, Archives d u Ministre d es Affaires Etran gres, Paris, France.

12Actas, 16 June 1902, leg. 13, fol. 37, Sociedad de Beneficencia, ArchivoGeneral de la Nacin (hereafter SB/ AGN), Buenos Aires, Argentina.

13For late-nineteenth-century opinions of Bernardino Rivadavia, see V. F.Lpez,Historia de la Repblica Argentina, 10 vols. (1893; reprint, Buenos Aires: J.Roldan, 1911), vol. 9; Nicols Avellaneda, Escritos literarios (Buenos Aires: LaCultura Argent ina, 1915), 3846; and Bartolom Mitre,Ensayos histricos (BuenosAires: La Cultura Argentina, 1918), 20013.

14Ministerio de Relaciones Esteriores y Culto, Decreto organizando laSociedad de Beneficencia y nombrand o socias, in Documentacin histrica de laSociedad de Beneficencia, 18231909 (Buen os Aires: Imp. y casa editora de Juan A.Alsina, 1909), 5. See also Correa Luna,Historia de la Sociedad, vol. 1, chap . 1.

15

Argentina, Memoria presentada al Honorable Congreso de la Repblica Argen-tina por el Ministro del Interior Dr. Don Antonio del Viso, correspondiente al Ao de1880 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta d e La Tribuna Nacional, 1881), xvi.

16The 1869 censu s of Buenos Aires record ed nearly 177,000 inhabitan ts; the1914 census recorded nearly 1.5 million.

17Moderate examples includ e Memoria presentada al Honorable CongresoNacional en el Ao 1887 por el Ministro del Interior Dr. D. Eduardo Wilde (BuenosAires: Imprenta de La Tribuna Nacional, 1886), 4856; and Ernestina A. Lpez d eNelson, Nuevos ideales filantrpicos: No el arte de curar, sino la ciencia de

prevenir, Boletn Mensual del Museo Social Argentina 3, nos. 2526 (1914): 6479.An extreme examp le is the d rawings in th e liberal newspap erEl Mosquito, 9 Sep-tem ber 1883, 1.

18See Claud e Langlois,Le Catholicisme au feminin: Les congrgations franaises suprieure gnrale au XIXe sicle (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1984), 3068; and StevenC. Hau se, with Ann e R. Kenney, Womens Suffrage and Social Politics in the FrenchThird Republic (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 259.

19Bonnie G. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of NorthernFrance in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981).

20Rachel G. Fuchs, Poor and Pregnant in Paris: Strategies for Survival in the Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 100.See also Rachel G. Fuchs, Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in


23/26


Nineteenth-Century France (Albany: State Un iversity of New York Press, 1984); andDonzelot, Policing of Families.

21Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, 159. For constraints on ind ividualist p oli-

tics during th e Third Repu blic, see Karen M. Offen, Depop ulation, Nationalism,and Feminism in Fin-de-Sicle France,American Historical Review 89 (June 1984):64876, esp. 66571. See also Jud ith F. Ston e, The Republican Brotherhood : Gen-der and Ideology, in Gender and the Politics of Social Reform in France, 18701914,ed . Elinor A. Accamp o, Rachel G. Fuchs, and Mary Lynn Stewart (Baltimore, Md.:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 2858.

22Offen, Depop ulation; and Alisa Klaus,Every Child a Lion: The Origins ofMaternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States and France, 18901920 (Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell Un iversity Press, 1993), 9193.

23

On legislative en thu siasm for hygienist expertise, see Rachel G. Fuchs,The Right to Life: Paul Strau ss and the Politics of Motherhood, in Gender and thePolitics of Social Reform, 82105.

24See Jane Jenson , Representations of Gender: Policies to Protect WomenWorker s and Infants in France and the Un ited States before 1914, in Women, theState, and Welfare, 15287. See also Mary Lynn Stewart , Women, Work, and the FrenchState: Labour Protection and Social Patriarchy, 18791919 (Kingston, Canad a: McGill-Qu eens University Press, 1989).

25Steven C. Hause, with Anne R. Kenney, The Developmen t of the Catho-

lic Womens Suffrage Movement in France, 18961922, Catholic Historical Review67, no. 1 (1981): 1130.

26See Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes To Offer: French Feminists and theRights of Man (Cambr idge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), chap . 4; Stone,Repu blican Brotherhood , 2858; and Offen, Dep opulation, 66476.

27Offen, Depopu lation.

28For an account of the first hospital sisters in Buenos Aires, see Olga M.Garca de DAgosino, La Municipalidad , el Hosp ital General de Hom bres y lasHerm anas de la Caridad, inII Jornadas de la Historia de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires

(Buenos Aires: Inst ituto H istrico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1988), 28399.

29Ernest Allen Crider, Mod ernization and Human Welfare: The AsistenciaPblica and Buenos Aires, 18831910 (Ph.D. diss., Oh io State University, 1976).

30Quod apostolici mun eris (1878), and Rerum novarum (1891), both inThe Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII, pref. John J. Wynne (New York: BenzigerBrothers, 1903); and Mary E. Hobgood , Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Theory:Paradigms in Conflict(Philadelph ia: Temple University Press, 1991), chap . 2.

31Las Conferencias de Seoras de la Sociedad de San Vicente de Paul en la Repblica

Argent ina. En el 25

aniversario de la fundacin del Consejo General, 18891914 (BuenosAires: Comp aa Sud -Americana de Billetes d e Banco, 1914), 3537.

32In 1907, there was one small community of German nuns, one commu-


24/26

KAREN MEAD2000 143

nity to run the Irish orp hanage, one larger compan y of Span ish Siervas de Mara,wh ile there were twelve French ord ersmost nu merous and most important innu rsing/ adm inistrative worksand a somewhat lesser nu mber of Italian orderswhich had the largest num ber of schools and centers of religious propagand a. See

Pedro Santos Martnez, Religin e imm igracin en 1907: Un informe d el Arzo-bispad o d e Buenos Aires,Archivum: Revista de la Junta de Historia Eclesiastica Ar-gentina 16 (1992): 12744, esp. 14043.

33Reclamacin de la Sociedad de Beneficencia, La Prensa, 14 October1888, 1.

34Presidente d e la Comisin to Presidenta [Isabel Hale de Pearson], April1891, Casa de Expsitos, leg. 101, fol. 178, SB/ AGN .

35Hale de Pearson to Minister of the Interior, 20 April 1891, reprinted in

Intendencia Municipal, Patronato y Asistencia de la Infancia en la Capital de laRepblica: Trabajos de la Comisin Especial (Buenos Aires: Establecimiento El Cen-sor, 1892), 345.

36Sociedad de Beneficencia, Origen y desenvolvimiento de la Sociedad de Be-neficencia de la Capital, 18231912 (Buenos Aires: Establecimiento Tipogrfico M.Rodrgu ez Giles, 1913), 280.

37Donzelot, Policing of Families, 25.

38Rachel G. Fuchs, France in a Comparative Perspective, in Gender andthe Politics of Social Reform, 15787, esp . 161.

39This section of my argument follows that of Kathryn Kish Sklar, TheHistorical Found ations of Womens Power in th e Creation of the American Wel-fare State, 18301930, inMothers of a New W orld, 4393. See also Lor i D. Ginzberg ,Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Class, and Politics in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven , Conn .: Yale Un iversity Press, 1990).

40See Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins ofSocial Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1992).

41

See Eileen Boris, The Power of Motherhood: Black and White ActivistWomen Redefine th e Political, in Mothers of a New World, 21344, Eileen Boris,What about the Working of the Working Moth er?Journal of Womens History 5,no. 2 (1993): 1047; Linda Gordon , Black an d White Visions of Welfare: Wom ensWelfare Activism, 18901945,Journal of A merican History 78, no. 2 (1991): 55990;and Darlene Clark Hine, We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible: The Philan-thropic Work of Black Women, in Lady Bountiful Revisited: Women, Philanthropy,and Power, ed. Kathleen D. McCarthy (New Brunsw ick, N.J.: Rutgers Un iversityPress, 1990), 7093.

42Sklar, H istorical Found ations of Womens Power, 62.

43Klaus, Every Child a Lion, 13; and Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Do-minion in American Reform, 18901935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991),5860.


25/26


44Klaus,Every Child a Lion, 4387.

45On the eugenic sensibilities of the Progressive movem ent, see Alisa Klaus,Depopu lation and Race Suicide: Maternalism and Pronatalist Ideologies in France

and the United States in Mothers of a New W orld, 188212.

46Ibid., 190.

47A concise statement of this typology is Molly Ladd-Taylor, TowardDefining Maternalism in U.S. History,Journal of Womens History 5, no. 2 (1993):11013.

48Molly Ladd-Taylor,Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 18901930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 5.

49Ladd-Taylor,Mother-Work, qu otation on 5, 4963. Klaus also stresses the

importance of race suicide and scientific motherhood with more emphasison the work of public health doctors in Klaus,Every Child a Lion, 3141, 13957.See also Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History ofWelfare, 18901935 (New York: Free Press, 1994), 4649, 8488; and Joanne L.Goodwin, An American Experiment in Paid Motherhood: The Implementationof Mothers Pensions in Early-Twentieth -Centu ry Chicago, Gender and History 4,no. 3 (1992): 32342.

50See Samuel L. Baily, The Adjustment of Italian Immigrants in BuenosAires and New York , 18701914,American Historical Review 88 (April 1983): 281305.

51Buenos Aires, Comisin Directiva del Censo, Censo general de poblacin,edificacin, comercio e industrias de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: CompaaSud-Americana d e Billetes d e Banco, 1889).

52This optimism was especially prevalent around the 1910 IndependenceCentenn ial. See, for exam ple, Roberto J. Payr, Cr iolla, inLa Nacin: 1810, 25 de

Mayo 1910 (Buenos Aires: La N acin, 1910), 17174.

53Actas, 16 November 1903, leg. 13., fol. 256, SB/ AGN .

54Emile Daireaux,La vie et les moeurs a la Plata, 2d ed . (Paris: Hachet te, 1889),199.

55A repor ter from a journal d evoted to social welfare recorded the event inLos premios la virtud ,Anales del Patronato de la Infancia 15 (May 1907): 14248,quotation on 143.

56Ibid., 147.

57Ibid., 148.

58For an account of the Beneficent Society pressuring commercial estab-lishments to hire young wom en to spare them from sweated labor in their homes,see, for exam ple, Sociedad de Beneficencia,Boletn de la Unin Industrial Argen-tina 109 (23 April 1889): 23. Thanks to Fernando Rocchi for br inging th is to myattention.


26/26

KAREN MEAD2000 145

59Alicia Moreau ,Emancipacin civil de la mujer(1918), translated in KatherineS. Dreier, Five Months in the Argentine from a Womans Point of View, 1918 to 1919(New York: Fred eric Fairchild Sherm an, 1920), 24447.

60Asun cin Lavrin, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argent ina, Chile,and Uruguay, 18901940 (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 2632.

61On cooperation am ong w omen of d iverse social ranks, see Molly Ladd-Taylor, My Work Came out of Agony and Grief: Mothers and the Making of theSheppard Towner Act, in Mothers of a New World, 32142.

62 Cecilia Grierson, Escuelas de Enfermeras, Argent ina M dica 5, no. 13(30 March 1907): 209.

63El trabajo d e las mu jeres y de los nios. Gestiones d e las Universitarias

Argentinas,La Prensa, 10 October 1909, 8.64In 1918, six thousand pesos of government subsidies went to th e progres-

sive maternalists, wh ereas nearly seven hundred thou sand went to sentimental-ist associations. The budget for the Beneficent Societys governm ent facilities wasover four million pesos. See Emilio R. Coni,Higiene Social, A sistencia y previsinsocial: Buenos Aires caritativo y previsor (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Emilio Spinelli,1918).

65Ernestina Lpez, La m ujer argentina y la obra social, inLa Nacin, 15161, quotation on 152.

66See Lavrin , Women, Feminism, and Social Change,1068.

67See Asuncin Lavrin, Women , Labor, and the Left: Argentina and Chile,18901925,Journal of Womens History 1, no. 2 (1989): 88116; and Mara Silvia DiLiscia and Ana Mara Rodrguez, El Socialismo y la Iglesia. Aportes sobre lacondicin femenina, 19181929, in La Mitad del Pas: La M ujer en la sociedadargentina, ed. Lid ia Knetcher an d Marta Pan aia (Buen os Aires: Centro Editor d eLatino Amrica, 1994), 34153.

68Sand ra McGee Deutsch, The Cath olic Church, Work, and Womanhoodin Argen tina, 18901930, Gender and History 3, no. 3 (1991): 30425.

69Actas, 31 Augu st 1914, leg. 18., fol. 222, SB/ AGN . See also Karen Mead ,Oligarchs, Doctors, and Nuns(Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Bar-bara, 1994), chap. 8, esp. 36668.

70Lavrin, Women, Femin ism, and Social Change, 124.

71See Lisa D. Brush, Love, Toil, and Trouble: Motherhood and FeministPolitics, Signs 21, no. 2 (1996): 42954.

Documents

Argentine Motherhood in Comparative Perspective- Karen Mead