Abstract

SOSENSKI, Susana. The commercialization of fatherhood in Mexican graphic advertising (1930-1960). Estud. hist. mod. contemp. Mex [online]. 2014, n.48, pp.69-111. ISSN 0185-2620.

This article shows the transformation of advertising representations about paternity in Mexico between 1930 and 1960. Starting in the fifties, a new conception of paternity circulated among, which was detached from masculine archetypes from the thirties, and showed a new style of manliness, centered on the household, on family care, in which children acquired a central role. Visual discourses of mass media during the fifties -including childcare, parenting, and increasing presence of the father in the family actives- reinforced a new construction of masculinity, in many ways deeply linked with the urban middle classes. This article studies the function that advertising had not only in terms of commercializing paternity but also in presenting a modern model for exerting it.

Keywords : Fatherhood; advertising; masculinity; childhood; childrearing.