The history of collective day care centers and their actors in France, a contribution to the question "Early childhood and the social relations of sex"

Abstract

This article, from a corpus of first and second hand documents, contributes to the sociogenesis of collective crèches in France and focuses on “lullabbies”, first job of the nurseries in the 19th century. Under the combined action of men, doctors and philanthropists, and women from the bourgeoisie and aristocratic backgrounds, the crèche became a space for the education of mothers from poor backgrounds as well as their children. Through the child, to reach the mother, then the father… "Reforming morals" and bodies, to transform society in line with the political representations and designs of the privileged classes. The moral qualities of both mothers and lullabies were exalted. Bourgeois women supervise, monitor and train these women, showing the intertwining of gender and class social relations. The social and political project at the origin of the institutionalization of the crèches allows us to approach the way in which the definition of professionalization in the field of early childhood was constructed and whose effects still persist today, beyond the renewal of the formal curriculum of the crèches: the low level of professions mix in the field of early childhood is constitutive of the history of the institution and of gender relations.