To Hanus and Mechthild Papousek

Over the past quarter century the topic of the “woman as mother” has achieved a recognizable if somewhat isolated place in sociohistorical research (Welter, 1966; Bloch, 1978; Badinter, 1980; Treckel, 1989; Todd, 1980; Nash, 1981; Wilson, 1984; Dixon, 1988; Lewis, 1989; Atkinson, 1991). Separate from this history, another topic of research has been able to establish itself: the “history of childhood” (van den Berg, 1956; Ariès, 1960; DeMause, 1974; Peeters, 1975; Arnold, 1980; Borstelmann, 1983; Schlumbohm, 1983; Boswell, 1988; Shahar, 1990). Parallel to these concerns there has developed a further branch of research that aims to pursue historically the relationships between parents and children (Hunt, 1970; Demos, 1970; DeMause, 1974; Greven, 1977; Kagan, 1977; Ozment, 1983; Pollock, 1983; Houlbrooke, 1984; Ottmüller, 1991).

In reviewing literature in these areas it is noticeable that there is a lack of reciprocal permeation. The history of the woman as mother has left virtually no mark on the history of the parent–child relationship, in which a distinction is seldom made between father and mother (Crawford, 1986), and which fails to give even the slightest of hints that a history of the woman as mother might prove a sensible object of research. On the other hand, in studies of the woman as mother, points of contact with the history of childhood are scarcely detectable.