Getting behind discourses of love, care and maternalism in early childhood education

In the Romantic era, the individual gained a new status. The Romantic worldview involved a strain of philosophy that shifted their attention from understanding religion through rationalism, to understanding religious beliefs through feelings and experience (Wainwright, 2009). This view located the divine within the experiences and feelings of the human being. For the Romantic, reason did not dismantle religion; it directed religious understanding inward, to the individual. Within the individual were intimations of the divine, of the whole. Any individual was therefore rendered of equal value to the next, because each ‘took part’ in the Divine, or the universal whole (Reardon, 1985). This rise of individualism unleashed the energies of oppressed individuals, such as women and children, and seems to have been part of what drove forward both the kindergarten movement and the women’s suffragist movement.

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 era characterized by the growth of idealistic systems of ECE, stretching from Pestalozzi, who inspired Froebel, to Montessori, who built upon Froebel’s ideas.

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 Head, Heart and Hand Education (Brühlmeier, 2010) encompassed the symbiotic nature of intellectual capacities, moral and religious capacities and technical or practical abilities. Pestalozzi emphasized that the capacities for intellectual and practical abilities were only valuable when founded on love, the faculty of the heart (Brühlmeier, 2010; Pestalozzi, 1951). Knowledge, according to Pestalozzi, without love, was more dangerous than ignorance with love (Pestalozzi, 1951).

Pestalozzi located the source of this love for the child in the maternal. His influential novel, Lienhard und Gertrud from 1780, portrayed maternal love as the foundation of the child’s, moral, intellectual and spiritual development (Allen, 1982: 330–331). Pestalozzi advocated the primacy of maternal love, but emphasized that it was a thinking love (Pestalozzi, 1827). Pestalozzi’s pedagogic philosophy institutionalized his concept of love by emphasizing the teacher’s duty to develop an emotional involvement with the children so as to ensure sensitivity towards the children (Steinsholt, 2007). His love-based pedagogy gained international fame in his time and was influential in the international growth of ECE. One of the most influential figures of our modern field of ECE was his pupil, Friedrich Froebel.

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 united by love (Heiland, 1993).

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.

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).

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 Madonna della Seggiola (Figure 1) hung as an emblem in Montessori’s Children’s Houses (Montessori, 1912). She explains that the image symbolizes

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Figure 1. 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).

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 unseen was truly unaccounted for. When these theories were applied to child care, a new discourse of care emerged. The degree to which science took precedence over matters such as love, which were not ‘observable’, is illustrated in Watson’s advice about children that parents should ‘never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap’ (Watson, 1928: 81 in Bigelow and Morris, 2001: 27). Babies cries were scientifically described as either relating to actual physical needs, such as pain caused by intrusive objects or wet bedclothes (Holt, 1910). If a baby cried for any other reason, it was termed a cry of indulgence or a bad habit, such as the desire to be held, fed at night or rocked (Holt, 1910). Foundling hospitals, such as the hospital where the men who propagated these discourses worked, experienced near 100% mortality rates of infants in their care (Bakwin, 1942). Sick infants and children were touched as little as possible by doctors or nurses, for fear of contamination. After decades, the need for psychological stimulation and babies’ need for individual care and affection, warmth and touch was finally acknowledged. Holding and carrying infants each day became a systematized aspect of the care provided at hospitals (Bakwin, 1942). In some hospitals, women were hired as ‘mothers’ whose job was to hold and ‘mother’ the infants. Far from being a trivial job, these ‘mothers’ were what kept these children alive (Bakwin, 1942).

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.

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 motivational displacement, when one puts another’s needs ahead of one’s own, and engrossment, when one is engrossed in another’s perspective. Noddings continues to theorize ‘ethical care’ as a contrast to ‘natural care’. Natural care refers to the spontaneous desire to care, such as a mother might feel when her baby cries. Ethical caring, on the other hand, refers to the intellectual and ethical capacity to care which one performs, for example in a professional context, even when the natural desire to care is absent (Noddings, 1984). Noddings (1984) emphasizes that she is not elevating ethical caring over natural caring and that indeed ethical caring is dependent on natural caring. Goldstein (1998) supports Noddings’ efforts in separating ‘natural care’ from ‘ethical care’, citing the need to re-theorize caring, as Noddings has done, so as not to allow the common misperception of caring as a ‘desire to nurture children with smiles and hugs’ (Goldstein, 1998: 245) to define care as practised in ECE. Goldstein further suggests this misconception ‘will contribute to the erroneous conception of early childhood educators as somehow not as professional or not as intelligent as teachers of older children’ (Goldstein, 1998: 245). Goldstein’s statement seems to underscore the low status of ‘the natural’ in current discourses about care within ECE academia and the tendency to equate professionalism with intellectual capacities rather than physical acts. This tendency to value intellectual capacities can perhaps be traced back to discourses of scientific rationalism, where intelligence and intellectual choices are acknowledged, while intuitive and emotionally based choices are either unspoken or specifically warned against. Whereas the Romantic view of the natural equated nature with the divine, from a scientific rational perspective, the natural seems to be perceived as yet uncivilized and certainly unprofessional.

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)

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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 – because she wants to spend as much time with her daughter as possible. Ronzulli explains that it was ‘first and foremost a maternal gesture’ (Rettman, 2010). If we consider this image in light of the previous image, we see a maternal dyad in a new discursive situation, within the professional sphere.

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.