To better form a normal personality. Discourses on the education of children in parenting magazines (1945-1958)

Abstract

The main purpose of this article was to analyze the discourses
about the socio-emotional development of children published in
Portuguese parenting magazines, between 1945 and 1958, period
when experts, such as doctors and psy experts, became
increasingly concerned with the socio-emotional well-being of
children. The analysis shows that magazine contributors
constructed socio-emotional development of children as fragile,
with its normality constantly threatened by parents’ improper
attitudes and behaviors. We argue that it constitutes a powerful
argument in favor of a growing intervention of psy experts in
family life that played, in the second half of the 20th century, a
key role in parenthood and childhood government.