Resumo

GONZALEZ PEREZ, Teresa. El aprendizaje de la maternidad: discursos para la educación de las mujeres en España (siglo XX). Convergencia [online]. 2008, vol.15, n.46, pp.91-117. ISSN 2448-5799.

Throughout the history of the western world, we have considered that the roles of wife and mother should be necessary taken by women. In this way, the correlation between woman-mother has been transmitted and perpetuated over centuries as an unchangeable principle. Women were educated since childhood for home, marriage, and motherhood. This domestic trilogy confined them to a private and exclusive life. Motherhood and the continuation of the species represented women's "supreme mission", their only destiny and recognized means of self-realization in cultural terms. The confluence of the approaches of the worlds of medicine, religion and education, or in other words, medical, moral or pedagogical discourse maintained the traditional model which promoted the woman-mother model and thus it was necessary to educate women in that way. Girls and women were educated beginning at a very young age in what was considered to be their exclusive mission, beginning with what was perceived to be their lack of abilities and ignorance of skills. Motherhood has had its own history -one that is constantly transforming itself, one that has never been static, or universal or atemporal.

Palavras-chave : girls; little women; education; home; motherhood.