Maternal Feminism Research Articles

Toward A Christian Maternal Feminist Theology

Toward A Christian Maternal Feminist Theology

Motherhood and Suffrage in Early Twentieth-Century Canadian Women’s Journals

Maternal feminists of Canada's early women’s movements used their publications to define who should be a Canadian citizen and who deserved the vote. To this end, maternal feminists created an exclusionary concept of motherhood that reached from the domestic to the national sphere in order to justify their own enfranchisement and sense of belonging at the expense of marginalized groups—namely women who did not or could not bear sons, women who could not meet popular child-rearing standards, Indigenous women, and immigrants who were not perceived to be white. The exclusionary rhetoric and ideologies put forward by early twentieth-century Canadian women’s journals not only cut off marginalized groups from enfranchisement and national belonging but also further entrenched the social, racial, and gender divides that alienated these groups in the first place.

Feminist Mobilizations for Peace: The Bulgarian Branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (1918–1952)

The article discusses the feminist mobilization in the first half of the 20th centuryby example of the Bulgarian branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (1918–1952). On the basis of archival documentation and data from the periodicals, the ideology, social foundations and activities of society are reconstructed. The study analyzes the profile of this formation, situated between transnational, social and maternal feminism, pacifism and nationalism.

Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights by Gabriela González

Reviewed by: Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights by Gabriela González Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights. By Gabriela González. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xviii, 261. Paper, $38.95, ISBN 978-0-19-090962-8; cloth, $115.00, ISBN 978-0-19-991414-2.) Against a backdrop of western expansion, legacies of conquest, and the modernization of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, Gabriela González illuminates a binational history of human and civil rights struggles led by ethnic Mexicans. Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights chronicles how fronterizo activists in Texas from varying class backgrounds drew on the promises—and paradoxes—of modernity to inform their cultural, political, and economic agendas. Though activists' goals varied, they shared a vision for the uplift of ethnic Mexicans, particularly the poor and working class who experienced dispossession and proletarianization following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. As the author shows through bilingual archival research, "redeeming" Mexican people and culture in modernizing states was a complex task, which led some reformers to reinscribe racial and class hierarchies, while others looked to more radical politics. The first half of Redeeming La Raza examines activists who centered Mexican nationalism to discredit the "so-called Mexican Problem" by advocating for cultural redemption and searching for or imposing social stability among Mexicans between 1900 and 1929 (p. 58). Chapter 1 tackles these strategies in the context of gente decente (decent people) reformers, including the influential Idar family from Laredo, Texas. The second chapter shows the era's ideological diversity, as González traces the transnational work of liberals and anarchists who sought social change benefiting the Mexican masses. Chapter 3 centers on Leonor Villegas de Magnón, a fronteriza who organized and led medical and economic assistance initiatives during the Mexican Revolution. The second half of the study focuses on activism between 1930 and 1950. Chapters 4 and 5 show how reformers varied in gender and class consciousness. While the Munguías (chapter 4) fought for the uplift of Mexican people, they abided by traditional gender norms: Jose Rómulo Munguía Torres worked in the world of civic engagement and Carolina Malpica de Munguía in education. Emma Tenayuca (chapter 5) worked to improve the condition of working-class people as a communist organizer who fought for labor rights. The final chapter connects the legacies of gente decente reform efforts to the founding and development of LULAC. Throughout the chapters, González traces the evolution, transformation, and, at times, refusal of gente decente ideologies that animated transborder activism in the early twentieth century. She also gives critical attention to gender and its intersections with political development and involvement. González weaves the biographies of men and women enveloped in struggles for rights, and she shows, for example, how activists used "maternal feminism" (p. 3). Maternal feminism acknowledged the patriarchal ordering of society, while allowing women possibilities for organizing outside the home. González contributes to histories of race and ethnicity in the United States. Drawing on Benedict Anderson's work, González argues that "la raza" served as an "imagined community," a constructed, unified ethnic platform that [End Page 414] activists used to further their struggles for human and civil rights (p. 193). One limitation also rests at the nexus of race and ethnicity. Though the idea is not central to the project, Redeeming La Raza makes use of "Jaime Crow" as a Spanish-language transposition of the anti-Black Jim Crow era (p. 10). "Jaime Crow" is not explored for its connections to the nation's legacies of anti-Blackness, but rather serves as a nonanalytical, descriptive term. Further analysis and explication of the regional connections between such racial and ethnic projects are especially important for expanding histories of the U.S. South and Southwest. Overall, Redeeming La Raza is an excellent text that will be of great interest to borderlands and Mexican American historians. Those who research histories of civil rights, modernity, class, race, ethnicity, gender, and culture in a Mexico and/or U.S. context will also find it to be an invaluable addition to studies...

Between mother and daughter: Brown erotics and sacred notes

ABSTRACT In this short essay, I offer an alternative ontology and epistemology of the term “lesbian” vis-à-vis my relationship with my brown Pakistani mother. I bring into this reading a number of variables ranging from the geographic, historical, biopolitical, and economic to the embodied, affective, esthetic, and immaterial. In recounting formative moments of my childhood – Quranic pedagogy alongside classical voice, singing and dance lessons – I re-read the spaces that produce homosociality and homoerotics as sites of brown maternal knowledges and feminist transgressions. This essay uses memory to examine the different ways that lesbian, both as a term and a mode of being, is not necessarily attached to sexual identity and practices. Analyzing how desire and secrecy are mediated by global capital, postcolonial respectability, nation, and compulsory heterosexuality, brown erotics and sacred notes offers a close look into the nuanced relationality between a brown mother and brown daughter, and takes seriously questions of what constitutes living a feminist life, and being and becoming a lesbian.

The peculiarities of ideology of the first-wave feminist movement in Alberta: maternal feminism, Anglo-Canadian nationalism, and eugenics

This article examines certain ideological peculiarities of the first-wave feminist movement in the Canadian province of Alberta, and intertwinement of Anglo-Canadian nationalism, maternal feminism and eugenics in the ideological basis of the feminist movement in the early XX century. The author examines the fusion of the questions of gender and nationality in ideology of the feminist movement, and analyzes the formation and realization of a particular feminist agenda in Alberta, which was based on the specific ideology of maternal feminism. Paying special attention to similarity of the ideology and objectives of the Anglo-Canadian nationalistic and feminist movements in the province, the author notes the causes for rapid success of the feminist movement by pivotal goals of the agenda. The scientific novelty of this research is substantiated by the fact that the author is first within the Russian historiography to explore the intertwinement of nationality and gender in ideology of the feminist movement in Alberta. The conclusion is drawn on the interinfluence of Anglo-Canadian nationalism, maternal feminism and eugenics in the ideological basis of the first-wave feminist movement in Alberta, as well as placing in the agenda the question of equal rights of men and women as an important aspect in preservation of Anglo-Canadian ideals for the future generations in Alberta.

Ladina Social Activism in Guatemala City, 1871–1954

In her beautifully researched Ladina Social Activism in Guatemala City, 1871–1954, historian Patricia Harms opens the windows wide on the world of ladina women's organizations from the outset of the Liberal Party's consolidation of power to the overthrow of the October Revolution's reformist government. The book is primarily an analytical narrative that restores to the historical record the ideas and actions of urban, mainly middle-class ladina women who created maternalist feminist circles. The book, in its introduction, seven chapters, epilogue, informative notes, and useful appendixes with brief biographies of the largely unknown women who formed the core of the women's movement, looks at Guatemala City's ladina women–centered literary circles, journals, and organizations. Above all, Harms examines the intense dynamics of ladina women's mobilizations and ideologies during the period of the reformist October Revolution, from 1944 to 1954. In her introduction, Harms underscores that knowledge of women's history—making visible the invisible—is a prerequisite to, not a substitute for, gender analysis.Harms looks at three broad periods: the development of the Liberal Party and its discourses of progress, order, and secularism between 1871 and 1930; the Jorge Ubico dictatorship between 1930 and 1944; and the ten years of the October Revolution, from 1944 to 1954. The first of these periods saw the birth of a protofeminist consciousness that was articulated in two journals, La Voz de la Mujer and El Ideal, directed to literate urban ladina women and edited by the Lappara sisters, two fascinating women from a poor ladino family in Quetzaltenango. They advocated for a reimagined Liberal Party modernization that included women, poor people, and Catholic workers, and they created a space in which women intellectuals were legitimized to speak and write about civic issues. This important legacy surfaced after the fall of the Manuel Estrada Cabrera dictatorship, when in the 1920s women formed an overtly feminist group, the Sociedad Gabriela Mistral. Although gender roles were not challenged and maternalism remained the unquestioned avenue for women's roles outside the home in moral education and social welfare, the 1920s had many dynamics. Alberto Masferrer's social justice Vitalism and Mistral-inspired theosophy joined in the ideological crucible of maternalism, Catholicism, and liberalism. Out of this came women educators such the remarkable and prolific Luz Valle, who even under the Ubico dictatorship pushed maternal feminist thought to make materialist critiques of social and economic structures.The bulk of the book is devoted to the intense reform years of the October Revolution. The male leadership of the revolution marginalized women, and so has most literature on this period. Harms's important intervention demonstrates women's centrality in the trajectories of both reformism and its opposition. On the progressive side, gains that women made were largely the result of their own activism. They created communal kitchens and day-care centers vital to women workers even before Juan José Arévalo's election, they advocated for and won suffrage for literate women, and in 1947 they organized the first Inter-American Congress of Women, which drew the US State Department's direct attention because of its outspoken opposition to Cold War politics. Harms fascinatingly casts new light on the initiatives of the Alianza Femenina Guatemalteca, known primarily as a women's group formed in 1951 by socialist-leaning urban ladina professionals and artists who supported the revolution. Harms shows that the Alianza Femenina Guatemalteca tried to radicalize the revolution in ways that other progressive groups did not. The group initiated a cross-class alliance that came to include thousands of mainly poor rural and working-class women. Its members sought—without success—to extend suffrage to illiterate Guatemalans, amend the 1947 Labor Code to include domestic workers and pieceworkers, alter the 1952 land reform in the interest of landless rural workers, and arm themselves against the 1954 coup. The Alianza Femenina Guatemalteca stands as a tribute to what could have happened.Sidelining women was the Achilles' heel of reformism, and the absence of a feminist challenge to gender roles left maternal feminism vulnerable to the opposition. The counterrevolutionary movement, and especially the Catholic Church hierarchy, paid close attention to urban women and sought their support as a key part in its strategy. The movement animated a conservative maternalism by claiming that under communism the state would replace the family and the church. Its unmatched hymn was the protection of the traditional woman and of God.Ladina Social Activism in Guatemala City, 1871–1954 is an important book full of exciting information. What Harms leaves unexplored are the serious implications of her observation that ladina feminists turned a blind eye to ethnicity. Throughout these over six decades Mayas formed the demographic majority in Guatemala, the discourse of “el problema del indio” was current, and Mayas worked in the city. Urban ladinas no doubt saw Maya women who worked as maids everyday. Harms's work invites us to consider how feminism can square with racism.

Philosophical Heritage of bell hooks’ Radical Feminism and Cultural Criticism

In Feminist theory: from margin to center, bell hooks puts into question the works by reformist feminists who happens to be mostly white, privileged women. She insists that these reformists do not address the plight of other oppressed women who were subjugated not only by their sex alone but by other factors such as race and class. Consequently, she proposes a cultural criticism that investigates the systems of domination in place through a disruption and deconstruction of cultural productions. This paper aims to critically evaluate hooks’ radical feminism and cultural criticism, and show its philosophical heritage through an engagement with the key ideas of critical theory and postmodernism.
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Suffrage movement in Manitoba and maternal feminism: the activity of Nellie McClung as the leader of the movement

This article discusses the role of Nellie McLung in the suffrage movement of Manitoba and the impact of her activity as the ideological and political leader upon success of the movement in achieving the set goals. The author examines the peculiarities of ideological basis and realization of the suffrage agenda and strategy by female movement in the province anchored by Nellie McLung, as well as analyzes the reasons for success of suffrage movement in Manitoba. The assessment of the role of Nellie McLung in the activity of suffrage movement of Manitoba and consolidation of the ideas of maternal feminism within the Russian historiography has not been previously conducted. The author comes to the conclusion on importance of the role of Nellie McLung as the leader of suffrage movement, who was able not only to distribute the ideas of maternal feminism in the province, but also hold an active campaign aimed at achieving the goals of suffrage movement, turning public opinion towards the necessity for acquisition of electoral right by women.

Pregnancy, Birthing, Breastfeeding and Mothering: Hindu Perspectives from Scriptures and Practices

AbstractThis article looks at the regulations of pregnancy, birthing, breastfeeding in Ayurvedic treatises, and at representations of mothering in Vedic and Puranic texts related to childrearing. Ayurvedic garbha sanskar (educating the mind of the foetus) regulates the pregnancy of women to ensure the safe birthing of superior babies. Breastfeeding is both glorified and strictly regulated in Ayurvedic texts. Several Vedic texts describe a range of rituals to benefit a caste Hindu child’s life from before birth to the beginning of manhood. These rituals are formally conducted by the father, whereas the mother’s role is marginalized. Although these texts scrutinize and discipline maternal bodies, yet there are several interstices where female and/or maternal agency can be performed. Ayurvedic obstetric practices often incorporate the indigenous knowledges of midwives (dais). The scripturally-mandated practice of wet-nursing shifts and complicates biological motherhood roles. The domestic tradition of performing vratas to secure the offspring’s longevity allows mothers to have a more central role in childrearing rituals. I will compare the regulatory texts and the potentially resistant practices from a maternal feminist perspective in order to interrogate the multiple ways in which the Hindu childbearing and childrearing framework is a site of surveillance as well as assertion for mothers.

Responsibility, affective solidarity and transnational maternal feminism

Maternal health has become a top global priority. In contrast to the decline of the maternal subject (Stephens, 2011), and despite previous evidence that maternal health has struggled to find a place on the global policy agenda (Shiffman and Smith, 2007), it is now clear that the promotion of health for mothers and children is a staple of both government and private donor commitments. On humanitarian grounds, it makes sense to focus on maternal health and survival in the Global South. Death related to pregnancy or childbirth is a disheartening example of needless suffering. But beyond the initial impulse to reduce suffering, what motivates and/or requires action for addressing injustice in the form of distributional inequities for maternal and reproductive health? In this article, I make a case for the necessity and validity of transnational cooperation to address maternal mortality and morbidity in the Global South. The first component of my argument addresses the transnational elements of both global interconnectedness and responsibility to act. These elements are drawn from Iris Marion Young’s philosophical justification for North-South responsibility-taking. The second component of my argument adds the concept of affective solidarity to that of transnational responsibility. My argument in this section draws from Iris Marion Young’s earlier work on identity (Young, 1990) and embodiment (Young, 1984) and expands the analysis of affective solidarity as a form of both embodiment and political commitment in order to explain the mechanism for transnational connection and understanding. And the final component of my argument explains how both of these elements – transnational responsibility and affective solidarity – support a theory of transnational maternal feminism.

The Maternal Dilemma And Nuptial Ordeals In Jodi Picoult’s Fiction: The Lens Of Maternal Feminism

Choice is an illusion non-existent in the lives of mothers; and selflessness to them, is not a decision but an encumbrance. This case is proficiently presented by Jodi Picoult in her novel Handle With Care (2009). Dealing with the issues of motherhood and nuptial ties, the novel raises a few important questions in the backdrop of mothering children with special needs. The novel introduces us to a helpless mother fighting for the survival of her dying daughter and gradually moving towards a troubled marriage and dissatisfied relationships. She is committed to saving her daughter’s life by whatever fair or foul means she can think of. This study examines why motherhood, is still the least valued and what are the factors that make motherhood suffer in the hands of other familial roles a mother plays. Another supplementary source My Sister’s Keeper (2008), by the same author, has also been taken into account since it also deals with an identical maternal crisis. Under the theoretical canopy of maternal feminism put forth by Andrea O’Reilly(2007, 2010), an exhaustive critical analysis of Picoult’s plea in question is done.

The Rise of Motherhood: Maternal Feminism and Health in the Rural Prairie Provinces, 1900-1930

This article examines the rise of maternal feminism and the concept of motherhood in the Prairie West from 1900 to 1930. White, middle-class, British women (and male allies) adopted the rhetoric of moral reform, social decline, and Mothers of the Nation to argue that as mothers, their positions allowed them to contribute to the regeneration of the British race in Canada. Further, they justified their claims to political and social rights by referencing their maternal role, arguing that because they were the people responsible for regenerating the British-Canadian population, and providing care for these children, they ought to be awarded equality in the political arena as only mothers would know the best legislation for the well-being and development of children and, by extension, the nation. This conservative ideology of motherhood helped women gain support in the West, to integrate themselves in the public discourse of rights and responsibilities, and advocate for increased medical services in the rural areas of the Prairies. The Grain Grower’s Guide was an important platform for the female voice, and many maternal feminists and their opponents contributed their opinions to the publication, including an extensive campaign for heath and medical care for both mother and child in rural areas of the region. While maternal feminists gained significant success in their fight for medical and health services, these gains applied to a specific, narrow group of women. Women of color, of non-Protestant beliefs, and of the working class were not included in this group. This paper argues that the concept of motherhood became a political category of nation-building in the early 20th century promoted by the state, which maternal feminists employed to gain support from opponents of radical feminism and to advocate for advancements in both political and domestic spheres in the rural Prairie West.

Pedagogical Strategies for the Transformation of Church Cultures: An Examination of a Spiritual Leadership Development Program in Korean Immigrant Churches

How do we teach transformative ideas that challenge the conservative culture of a church? This paper explores the process by which a spiritual leadership education program that empowers lay women was conceptualized and implemented in the context of Korean immigrant Presbyterian churches. It pays special attention to the phases through which the program was developed in order to examine the challenges faced at each phase and the pedagogical strategies employed to counter those challenges. The insights gained through such adjustments will be explored in dialog with inspiration drawn from Septima Clark’s Citizenship School work that paved the way for the civil rights movement and Bonnie Miller-McLemore’s work on a maternal feminist epistemology.

No Keener Revelation

These artist pages present a marked up score documenting the performance of No Keener Revelation: a table top performance for an audience of one at Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse in Madison, Wisconsin.In this maternal feminist performance, Megan Marsh-McGlone and her 10 month old daughter Morgan performed acts of human milk expression and breastfeeding while they discussed topics including: contemporary societal opinions on nursing in public, lactation struggles and failures, maternal mental health, human milk and blood donation, networks of support, postpartum lactating caffeine consumption, and maternal and infant mortality. A score painted with coffee represents Morgan’s sounds and movements within the performance, contributing to the illustration of the work’s maternal performance aesthetic of multiple competing actions, an overwhelming abundance of elements, and simultaneous success/failure.No Keener Revelation was curated by Spatula&Barcode as part of the relational performance work Café Allongé for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s 2013 Wisconsin Triennial.

NATIONALISM, SUFFRAGE & MATERNAL FEMINISM: RACE, GENDER & RELIGION

Abstract:The turn of the nineteenth century was an extremely dynamic and formative time in Canadian history as it defined its “imagined community.” Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities espoused nation and nationalism through his concept as “imagined communities,” both politically and culturally. “National identities are imagined as both intrinsically limited and sovereign. The nation is imagined as limited because, no matter the size or scope, it is finite in its inclusion and there is always “others” beyond its borders.” Through research on suffragist writings from both men and women, suffragist organizations membership, documents written about the future of Canada, and the concept of maternal feminism there remained a majority of people committed to a future “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant” nation. The women’s suffragist movement and “maternal feminism,” intertwined with nationalism, created a reciprocal effect, which established an “imagined community” that included those who belonged and “others” who clearly did not. Suffragist, armed with new found political influence, endorsed policies of assimilation or legislation to keep Canada from accepting people of “degenerating” races or religions. Clearly, nationalism and an emerging Canadian identity had profound influences on the suffragist movement and maternal feminism, causing once a once marginalized gender to now subjugate “others” based on class, race or religion.

Coraline's split mothers: the maternal abject and the childcare educator

Early childhood education and care is, again, a focus of debate in Quebec, Canada. Government-subsidized childcare programs are being cut and the province's plan to open prekindergartens for children in impoverished areas is being met with contention. Invariably, the focus of the debate is on the children's needs, the parents’ needs and society's needs. The educator is rarely mentioned. In this paper, I focus on the early childhood educator's subjective experiences (Chang-Kredl 2013) in a social system that undervalues their work as maternal, endorsing Grumet's (1988) close attention to women's internal experiences as a means of generating social change in education. I compare the social positioning of early childhood educators, in a Canadian context, with the representation of abjected maternal figures in a children's film, namely the split mothers in Coraline (2009). The argument for such a comparison is made through theories of maternal thinking (Ruddick 1995; Mullin 2009) and feminist readings of psychoanalytic theories related to the abject and the monstrous-feminine (Kristeva 1982; Creed 1993).

Empowering Passivity: Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing

Empowering Passivity: Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing

From suffrage to sterilization: Eugenics and the women’s movement in 20th century Alberta.

In the complicated relationship between early 20th-century feminism and eugenics. Western Canada in general and the Province of Alberta in particular provide a unique case study on the history and practice of the sterilization of the feeble-minded. While feminism strove to enable women to control their own reproductive capacities, eugenics attempted to exert control over the reproduction of certain segments of society. Ironically, these movements exerted a significant influence on one another during their respective inceptions and were inextricably linked for more than 50 years. This paper discusses how misunderstanding and panic surrounding mental illness served to unite feminism with the eugenics movement. Specifically, the paper explores how first-wave feminism adopted a maternal ideology that embraced the role of guardians of the race. How these events unfolded within Western Canada and the role that prominent feminists and women's associations played are reconstructed. Ultimately, it is argued that understanding the role that the feminist movement played in the application of eugenics legislation requires consideration of the importance of maternal feminism in the changing relations between the sexes.Keywords: eugenics, feminism, feeble-mindedness, sterilization, AlbertaFirst-wave feminism1 in Canada had its origins in the late 19th- and early 20th century. Women involved in first-wave feminism began to focus on perceived gender inequalities, and one of the primary goals of the movement was to gain women's suffrage. Seeking to extend their role in society beyond the confines of their homes, women also wished to participate more actively in public life. In particular, leaders of first-wave feminism espoused the notion that women, as mothers, were particularly well-suited for improving society. The necessity of bettering society was espe-cially relevant, given early 20th century social and political changes. Motherhood became a social function for women as they tackled issues of poverty, crime, immigration, and temperance.The paradoxical support of negative eugenics, in the form of sterilization, by early 20th-century feminists has been complex and sometimes embarrassing. Negative eugenics, which included the practice of compulsory sterilization, refers to the breeding out of certain characteristics in the population. Francis Galton ( 18221911 ), a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, is credited with being the originator of eugenics, and originally coined the term in the late 1800s (Galton, 1883, p. 17). Galton was initially interested in improving the quality of livestock. However, following the introduction of Darwin's publication of The Origin of Species and the subsequent pursuit of social Darwinism, he shifted his focus to an interest in improving the quality of the human race (Devereux, 2005). The notion of selective breeding posed the possibility of breeding desirable characteristics into the population. However, selective breeding turned out to be more aspirational than practical. Consequently eugenicists shifted their approach; if it was not possible to improve offspring through pairing up distinguished men and women, it was possible to restrict or prohibit the reproduction of individuals with undesirable characteristics. Furthermore, while eugenics was most frequently used in its negative sense to refer to sexual sterilization, it was also an oblique reference to poverty, social problems, class, and immigration issues.With the joint aims of improving society, both eugenics and first-wave feminism were inextricably linked during their respective formative years. Dowbiggin (1997) argued, imperialism, eugenics and maternal feminism frequently intersected (p. 138), as feminists became deeply involved in the eugenics movement (see, e.g., Black, 2003; Devereux, 2005). Indeed, the breadth of support for eugenics in North America has been well documented by contemporary historians (e.g., Kluchin, 2006). …

Cylinders and séances: Elise van Calcar and the spirit of Froebel

This essay discusses the life and work of Elise van Calcar (1822–1904), a writer and maternal feminist who introduced Froebel’s kindergarten in the Netherlands. Van Calcar also was the leader of a Christian branch of spiritualism. The focus is pointed at parallels between her reading of Froebel and of ‘messages’ from spirits in the ‘other world’ with whom she claimed to be in touch during spiritualist séances. Both Froebel’s Romantic pedagogy and spiritualism put emphasis on harmony and synthesis. Each of her projects was an attempt to transcend the dichotomy between the public and the private. Spiritual motherhood ruled the kindergarten and non-conformist religion, alternative medicine and Froebel training were practised at home. Both the kindergarten movement and spiritualism made her promote a ‘natural’ approach. Yet, she never stopped warning of the danger of leaving a child’s moral development to nature. Like a garden a child had to be worked upon.