Abstract
Discourses of love, care and maternalism affect the everyday lives of children enrolled in early childhood education. These discourses bear witness to the ontological transformation that has occurred since the Romantic era that birthed the kindergarten movement to today. Reflecting on historical discourses of love, care and maternalism from the Romantic era, this article considers how the historical development of these discourses affects our professional understandings of love, care and maternalism in early childhood education.
Keywords
Introduction
Emerging findings from neuroscientific research affirm the foundational role loving interactions play in the physical, emotional and cognitive development of young children (Fredrickson, 2013; Gerhardt, 2004; Maselko et al., 2011; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000; UNICEF, 2008). In light of the rapidly growing amount of time young children spend in early childhood education (ECE) institutions, just how the field meets the love-needs of young children is a growing area of interest among child psychologists and child rights activists (Fredrickson, 2013; UNICEF, 2008). While care is a common focus in the field, love is often overlooked, construed as private and relating to romantic or familial relations. This is interesting in light of the abundance of discourses of love in the kindergarten movement between the 18th and 20th centuries that birthed today’s field of ECE. Despite this abundance, the relationship between pedagogy and love within ECE today is not clear. Historically, the field of ECE is related to women’s plight for social equality. Discourses of love in ECE are therefore connected to discourses of care and maternalism and involve a tension between the feminist plight for equality and freedom from preconceived notions of a woman’s ‘natural’ role as caretaker, and the ever present needs of children to be loved and cared for within the predominantly female-driven field of ECE.
I suggest in this article that the field of ECE has a professional responsibility to engage in more reflection on discourses of love, care and maternalism in order to achieve a more conscious understanding of the relationship of early childhood pedagogy and love and the ways in which children’s need for love is or can be provided in ECE institutions. In this article, I address the abundant and foundational discourses of love, care and maternalism from the kindergarten movement’s infancy (Fröbel, 1980; Montessori, 1912; Pestalozzi, 1951).
The aim of this article is to contribute to the field’s reflection through making some historical connections between discourses of love, care and maternalism from the kindergarten movement era and current discourses of the same. Through contrasting current discourses with historic discourses, I seek to shed new light on some current modes of understanding the highly relevant concepts of love, care and maternalism in ECE.
Thinking with Kögler
When we reflect on discourses of love, care and maternalism today, our understandings are influenced by socio-historic practices that each individual is entangled in and that necessarily inhibit understanding, even as they act as a foundation from which to understand. In order to wrestle with the problem of our inherent limitations, Kögler (1999) divides understanding into a three-fold structural complex, each of which acts as both enabling and limiting:
A hermeneutically based discourse analysis
Kögler describes discourse analysis as an ethnology of the culture to which we belong (Kögler, 1999). This requires an attempt at becoming ‘exterior’ to one’s own culture. Within a culture, discourses represent ‘the totality of statements that, through the regulative function, that is, through a common ontological premise that functions as an engendering rule, are joined together and linked to a coherent meaning context’ (Kögler, 1999: 181). The ontological presuppositions of concepts
Discourses of love, care and maternalism in early childhood education
This discourse analysis of love can be seen in light of the birth of the scientific method in the West and a general tendency towards
The field of ECE has its roots in the Romantic era, localized in Western Europe and characterized by ontological presuppositions that I will show differ from prevalent assumptions of today. Because our current ontological assumptions differ from those present in the Romantic era, the discourses imbedded within the tradition of ECE, such as love, care and maternalism, may no longer be immediately intelligible to us, as they were for the field’s pioneers. Exactly what constitutes ‘the Romantic era’ is disputed among academics (Löwy and Sayre, 2001). I base my view of Romanticism on Löwy and Sayre’s (2001) analysis of Romanticism as a worldview, rather than an isolated period of time or a specific philosophical movement. Löwy and Sayre (2001: Loc 344) explain, ‘Romanticism represents a critique of modernity, that is, of modern capitalist civilization, in the name of values and ideals drawn from the past’. This worldview grew partly out of disenchantment with the rationalist ideals of the Enlightenment, but first and foremost, the Romantic worldview was (and still is) a reaction against modernity.
The individual in the Romantic era
In the Romantic era,
The kindergarten movement era
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827), Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852) and Maria Montessori (1870–1952) were three pillars of the early kindergarten movement era. Each of these educators focused on love, care and maternalism in varying degrees (Fröbel, 1980; Montessori, 1912; Pestalozzi, 1951). Their focus on these aspects was not expressed as juxtaposition to learning, as is often the case today. Love, care and maternalism were the very fibre of these education systems, the foundation upon which learning occurred (Fröbel, 1980; Montessori, 1912; Pestalozzi, 1951). These educators were each influenced by Romanticism and successively by each other (Kilpatrick in Fröbel, 1980; Pestalozzi, 1951; Signert, 2007).
The term ‘kindergarten movement’ refers specifically to the development of Froebel kinder-gartens from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century (Allen, 1982). I use the term both specifically and broadly, referring also to the kindergarten movement as an
The modern history of the kindergarten movement in many ways began with Pestalozzi, a Swiss pedagogic reformer active towards the end of the 18th century. His pedagogic philosophy and practice was developed as a reaction against the educational system of his time, which was punitive and excluded poor children (Pestalozzi, 1951). One of the six principles he based his schools on was that ‘love for those we would educate is “the sole and everlasting foundation” in which to work’ (Kilpatrick in Pestalozzi, 1951: viii). Pestalozzi’s religiosity reflected his era, bearing signs of humanism and mysticism. He saw God, nature and man as bound together by love: ‘Love is the bond that ties the globe together’ (Pestalozzi, 1951: 93).
Pestalozzi’s educational philosophy, referred to as
Teaching, by itself and in itself, does not make for love, any more than it makes for hatred. That is why teaching is by no means the essence of education. It is love that is its essence. Love alone is the eternal effluvium of the divinity that is enthroned within us. It is the central flow point from which the essentials of education flow. (Pestalozzi, 1951: 33)
Pestalozzi located the source of this love for the child in the maternal. His influential novel,
Froebel was a German pedagogic philosopher embodying Romanticism. He was influenced both by Pestalozzi’s educational ideas and Rousseau’s (Johansson, 2007) image of the naturally unfolding child (Froebel, 2005; Kilpatrick in Pestalozzi, 1951). Froebel’s philosophic and pedagogic writings, like Pestalozzi’s, were strongly coloured by his religiosity and mystical view of God and man, presenting a view of nature and man as being a reflection of and part of divine unity (Fröbel, 1980; Froebel, 2005). For Froebel, we find within man and nature echoes of the divine. The goal of education for Froebel was therefore the maximum unfolding of the child’s inner nature. Froebel was responsible for the growth of the kindergarten movement, which he described as
Although Froebel idealized the maternal, his call to procure an education for work with young children was initially addressed to men. When he received little interest, he addressed his call to both men and women. It was then women who responded with enthusiasm (Allen, 1982).
Froebel’s pedagogical writings (Fröbel, 1980; Froebel, 2005) are addressed consistently to both mothers and fathers. The maternal role, however, is attributed with a special significance.
It is first and foremost the mother who perceives the child’s elevated being. For the husband as well, the wife is seen as the protector of the spiritual, things like care and caretaking have through the history of mankind always been close to the female mind. (Fröbel, 1980: 35)
From a socio-historic perspective, until the end of the18th century, the father was looked upon as the children’s over-looker and had responsibility for their education. Allen (1982) emphasizes that Froebel’s assigning of value to the woman’s perception of the child and her caregiving role for her children should be seen in light of the patriarchal society his observations were a part of. The categorization of care and motherly love as a woman’s work that we today perceive as oppressive was, at the time, progressive in that a mother’s work in childrearing was given a unique value in relation to the father’s (Allen, 1982).
Although today’s society is considered patriarchal by many, the society that Froebel voiced his opinions within was far more oppressive towards women. Froebel assigned value to women and women’s work that was utterly absent in society (Allen, 1982). Although the problems associated with maternalist discourses, including low remuneration, are important discussions, I agree with Allen that the feminist response to discourses of maternalism could be nuanced by emphasizing the, at that time, radical value assigned to the caretaking role which, as I see it, lies at the core of Froebel’s maternalism.
For Froebel, the professional kindergarten teacher embodied characteristics of love, care and maternalism. In the early days of the kindergarten movement, ‘the kindergarten teacher’ was a term that had not yet been filled with meaning. When Froebel described the qualities a kindergarten teacher should possess, therefore, he was describing what he considered important for the profession as he envisioned it. The qualities described include the love of children, love of singing and a love of play and occupation (Fröbel, 1980).
By the late 19th century, the Romantic era was reaching its end and discourses of scientific rationalism were rising. The pedagogic philosophy of Maria Montessori epitomizes this crossroads. Montessori was educated as the first female doctor in Italy. From both a visionary and scientific perspective, informed by research within the field of biology and relying on empirical observations, she developed a pedagogic philosophy and system that embraces both Romanticism and modern scientific instrumentalism (Korsvold, 2005). Montessori’s personal background was deeply religious and, in the spirit of Romanticism shared by Froebel and Pestalozzi, her religiosity veered towards the mystical. Throughout Montessori’s writings, love is given a central role in her concept of ECE (Montessori, 1912; 1946/1989; 1966; 1949/1967). Her concept of love was described both from the viewpoint of the teacher’s love for a child and the child’s love for the teacher (or parent/caretaker). The teacher’s love for a child, Montessori describes, goes beyond material and physical care, towards spiritual servitude (Montessori, 1949/1967).
Often, when we speak of love for children, we refer to the care we take of them, the caresses and affection we shower on those we know and who arouse our tender feelings… But I am speaking of something different. It is a level of love which is no longer personal or material. To serve children is to feel one is serving the spirit of man, a spirit which has to free itself. The difference of level has truly been set not by the teacher but by the child. It is the teacher who feels she has been lifted to a height she never knew before. The child has made her grow till she is brought within his sphere. (Montessori, 1949/1967: 283)
Montessori’s elevated view of the child is apparent in this passage. Children are described as being ‘love teachers’ (Montessori, 1956/1970: 25). The child’s deep love for their teachers, parents or caretakers is described as being instructive. Montessori emphasizes the degree to which children follow us, desire our presence and call for us – even cry for us. She points our attention towards how adults often respond to children’s calls and cries less as calls of love and more as cries of irritation, looking past the love that is the source of their irritation and focusing on ways to correct undesired behaviours. The irritation, Montessori tells us, is about what they do not have: comfort from the one they love. Children as love teachers remind us how to love, through their spontaneous loving of us and the world around them (Montessori, 1956/1970). In both the teacher’s love for the child and the child’s love of the adult, it is the child itself that is the source of love (Montessori, 1949/1967). Love is considered a permanent force in mankind that should be ‘treasured, developed and enlarged to the fullest possible extent’ (Montessori, 1956/1970: 295).
Montessori’s view of the maternal was scientific, romantic and religious. A portrait of Raphael’s …not only social progress, but universal human progress, and are closely related to the elevation of the idea of motherhood, to the progress of woman and to the protection of her offspring…in Raphael’s picture, we see humanity offering homage to maternity,-maternity, the sublime fact in the definite triumph of humanity. (Montessori, 1912: 82)
Madonna della Seggiola (Raphael, 1513–1514) Galleria Palatina, Florence.
Montessori describes maternalism from a spiritual perspective that considers all humanity to be interconnected. From this perspective, maternalism is perceived as a gift that we in turn show our indebtedness and respect to. Montessori did not consider maternalism to be an exclusively female, or even an exclusively human, concept. She states that the ‘maternal instinct is not confined solely to females, although they are the procreatices of the species and play the greatest role in protecting the young, but it is found in both parents and at times pervades a whole group’ (Montessori, 1966: 201). Rather than idealizing the ‘beautiful mother’, Montessori seems to interpret this image as homage to the androgynous protective and nurturing qualities of the maternal instinct itself.
Is the concept of love referred to in newer neuroscientific research the same love Pestalozzi speaks of as ‘the essence of education’ (Pestalozzi, 1951: 33), or Montessori’s love that ‘serves the spirit of man’ (Montessori, 1949/1967: 283)? Whereas discourses of love within science recognize love as something concrete and beneficial, the spiritual discourses of love seem to emphasize love as transformative and universal. Our conceptualizations of love are plastic and are in many ways shaped by our socio-historic situation and our individual life history. It seems that, in any case, the love neuroscience describes and the love Montessori and Pestalozzi describe have in common the fact that love, although unseen, has a fundamental value in the lives of children. From each of these perspectives, teachers, through their involvement with children, are also involved with love. These views differ in that the scientific view is founded not only on experience, but also on the scientific method. Pestalozzi and Montessori’s concepts of love were garnered from inward modes of knowing, feeling and experience. In fact, the writings and pedagogic systems of Pestalozzi and Montessori seem to share a common mystical concept of love. The term mystical is difficult to define, but it involves receptivity to inward experience (Underhill, 1990). Weber described the mystical concept of love as an abstraction of brotherly love characterized by the impersonal devotion to anyone as other (Symonds and Pudsey, 2006). Montessori illustrates this concept when she describes a ‘love which is no longer personal or material’ (Montessori, 1949/1967: 283). Pestalozzi expresses a mystical concept of love when he stated ‘Love alone is the eternal effluvium of the divinity that is enthroned within us. It is the central flow point from which the essentials of education flow’ (Pestalozzi, 1951: 33). The immaterial, unseen, but experienced had not only a legitimacy in the discourses of Pestalozzi and Montessori, but they were also privileged over the seen and the material world.
In summary, the discourses of love, care and maternalism from the kindergarten movement era which I have presented seemed to be based on a distinctly spiritual concept of love that also encompasses discourses of professionalism. These discourses were encompassed within each other in the kindergarten movement era and seem to privilege the unseen and inward modes of knowing. These discourses were perhaps made possible by the Romantic, philosophical decision to interpret the Christian worldview through feeling and experience, rather than distilling it into rational thought (Wainwright, 2009).
Scientific rationalism and the rise of out of home child care
Returning to the early 1900s, changes were taking place in the lives of the general population, in other words, a paradigm shift was underway. For children, this period marked the beginning of what Selma Sevenhuijsen (2003) refers to as the relocation of care. The relocation, or the branching out of child care, mixed the private sphere with the professional sphere. Because the professional sphere by this time was so heavily influenced by scientific rationalism, the process of relocating care also bears witness to what could be called the dislocation of love. Within ECE, the spiritual concept of love as universal that flourished in the work of the kindergarten movement’s pioneers were losing their voices to the rising field of psychology that gained influence within the field of ECE (Bloch, 1992).
In the face of secularism and science, the inward ways of knowing that Pestalozzi, Froebel and Montessori drew on had lost authority. Bloch (1992) links a turning away from discourses of love that existed in a more introspective mode of inquiry and mode of knowing about children, represented in Froebel’s kindergarten movement to 20th century scientific programmes developed by various psychologists and scientists, such as John Dewey and G Stanley Hall (Bloch, 1992). It is further suggested that acceptance of this turning away from intuitive knowledge about the child, towards scientific knowledge about the child, was accepted by female practitioners partly due to the social legitimacy and professional status a scientific grounding afforded the field of ECE (Bloch, 1992). Professionalism in ECE was already then associated with scientific knowledge and a turning away from the intuitive modes of knowing represented by Froebel, Pestalozzi and Montessori.
In the early 1900s, the field of psychology began describing ‘child rearing as a science’ (Bigelow and Morris, 2001: 26). The field was highly influenced by behaviourism. Behaviourism is a branch of psychology that seeks to be more ‘scientific’ than traditional psychology, aiming to gain knowledge based only on behaviour that can be seen and observed. Behaviourist ideas also penetrated universities, as ECE became focused on scientific modes of understanding children and child development (Bloch, 1992). The scientific rational discourse of care, influenced by behaviourism, was propagated in the USA through government manuals. The manuals dismantled the idea of motherly intuition, warning mothers against using their own judgement regarding their infant’s wellbeing or health and imploring them to consider the physician to be the mother’s guide (United States Department of Labor, 1929).
The information spread was intended to ensure the health of the general population and included some basic health measures and information. However, the discourse of care that it propagated was that of care as emotionally detached, favouring the seen over the unseen. The advice given included regimented plans for when young children should sleep, eat, play, defecate, urinate, exercise – even when to drink water (Holt, 1910). Behaviourist theories at this time represented an extreme version of scientific rationalism. The
Due in part to the fatal effects of the scientific rationalist discourse of child care, in 1950, the World Health Organization (WHO) requested a review of studies of maternal deprivation in young children separated from their mothers either due to illness, hospitalization or economic circumstances (Bowlby, 1965; Bretherton, 1992). The review was undertaken by John Bowlby (1907–1990), who went on to form his highly influential attachment theory. Bowlby’s attachment theory, while providing a counter-discourse to behaviourism’s discounting of the child’s emotional needs, described a child that was entirely dependent on precisely its mother for care. This exclusivity has been criticized for lending scientific support to a traditional family structure in which the father earns money and a mother stays home caring for children.
Some current discourses of love, care and maternalism
Discourses of love today are rare in ECE, but they are slowly growing, perhaps partly a result of the focus on the role of love in child development within the growing field of neuroscience. UNICEF (2008) base their concern for the wellbeing of young children involved in full-day ECE on research within neuroscience that links love with physical, cognitive and emotional health. Unlike discourses of love from the Romantic era, these discourses rely on what can be seen and scientifically observed rather than on inward experience.
Although discourses of love are emerging, discourses of care are a more common subject of focus and study within the field. Because the subject is so common, I will not present an exhaustive account of current discourses, but rather focus on those that I consider problematic in relation to the field’s perception of love, care and maternalism as threats to professionalism. I will consider some of these discourses in light of the historical discourses already discussed.
Care ethics and the natural threat to professionalism
Nel Noddings (1984) conceptualizes care from a feminine perspective, building on Gilligan’s (1982) feminist ethics of care. Noddings (1984) focuses on care as an ethical responsibility. Some characteristics include
Ailwood (2008) explains that some teachers attempt to refuse the discourse of the natural, ‘pointing out their years of university education and the need for ECE teachers to be recognized as professionals. For these women,’ argues Ailwood, ‘the naturalization of their work undermines their struggle for professional status’ (Ailwood, 2008: 162). As I explained earlier, Ailwood (2008) refers to Froebel’s portrayal of women as crucial for a healthy childhood, suggesting this portrayal has contributed to the establishment of maternalism as a basis for being a good ECE teacher. This maternalistic basis, Ailwood (2008) argues, is responsible for kindergarten teachers’ low status today, resulting in low remuneration.
Hoagland (1990) also problematizes maternalistic discourses focusing on Noddings’ use of the mother–child dyad as an example of caring. The unidirectional care a mother gives to a child can, according to Hoagland, serve to perpetuate oppressive institutions (Hoagland, 1990). The threat of women’s return to a subservient role in society seems to stand in the way of a more broad appreciation of the qualities at play in the maternal dyad as suggested by Noddings. The maternal dyad, which was exalted by Montessori as being a humane love (Montessori, 1912), is today perceived from one feminist point of view, as an oppressive type of love, reinforcing a woman’s perpetual role of unidirectional caregiver (Hoagland, 1990).
Can a general resistance to discourses of maternalism be considered in light of a resistance from mothers themselves, both mothers who are teachers and mothers who are parents of children in child care, to acknowledge that their children are not being cared for or loved by them while their children are in kindergarten? Page’s (2010) PhD study that asked mothers whether or not they wanted professional caretakers to love their children.Though mothers did want their children to be loved by their new caretakers, feelings of guilt for putting their children in day care were also experienced as a part of the decision-making process of enrolling their children into child care institutions. The ambivalence of society’s relationship to the mother–child dyad is evident in a recent news article that featured Italian Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Ronzulli (Rettman, 2010). Ronzulli took her one-month-old infant to work with her on the day she was voting on a bill that sought to improve conditions for mothers to work outside the home. Images of her spread worldwide. Ronzulli explained why she brought her daughter with her to work:
It was not a political gesture. It was first of all a maternal gesture – that I wanted to stay with my daughter as much as possible, and to remind people that there are women who do not have this opportunity, that we should do something to talk about this. (Rettman, 2010) (Figure 2)
Ronzulli with her infant (Vincent Kessler/Reuters/NTB scanpix).
Ronzulli brought her daughter to work with her on the day she was voting to improve conditions for women to work outside of the home
The needs of mothers and children today are a part of both the private and the professional sphere. ECE brings the needs and values of the private realm out into the professional sphere, mixing the private with the professional. Love, care and maternalism are biologically and socially connected to women and children, both groups that have been historically oppressed. Neither the maternal work performed by women, nor the maternal needs experienced by young children, seems to have been considered necessary to articulate into theoretical professional knowledge when branching out care to meet the best interests of society.
Conclusion
In this article, I have tried to contrast historical and current discourses of love, care and maternalism in ECE. I found that discourses of love, care and maternalism from the kindergarten movement era were based on a spiritual worldview that was a reaction to the rising tide of modernity and privileged the unseen over the seen. The lack of current discourses of love in ECE seemed to involve the privileging of the seen in today’s society and the resistance to discourses of care and love that link the caretaker to an exclusively female figure. The rise of modernity, the plight for gender equality and behaviourism were social practices I found to be linked to the development of discourses of love, care and maternalism in ECE.
The socio-historic situation a kindergarten teacher exists in will exert influence over her perceptions of phenomena. In the kindergarten movement’s infancy, discourses of love, care and maternalism were overlapping and connected to discourses of professionalism. This is no longer the case. The aspect of maternalism that seems to represent the greatest problem for the field of ECE is the identification of love, care and the maternal instinct as natural female principals. Historical discourses of love, care and maternalism present us with an image of the maternal as the epitomic vessel for love towards children, an image that reflects the social and ideological conditions of the times in which the discourses were fostered. Trying to become exterior to my own culture in order to analyze current and historic discourses has been challenging. My own values and goals have inevitably colored the process. Though we cannot ever become truly exterior to our own culture, I argue that reflecting on discourses of love, care and maternalism is integral to our ability to meet the love and care-needs of the children enrolled in ECE and to the development of our professional identity as ECE practitioners. How we define ourselves as professionals is dependent on the ways we perceive ourselves as care providers and the complex role our social identity as females plays in the role of caregiving.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.