Scientific motherhood updates at the Gota de Leche in Santiago of Chile

Abstract

This paper seeks to account for the elaboration and actualization of the ideal of the so-called scientific motherhood in the Gota de Leche in Santiago of Chile. Aiming at the capacity of a medical and charitable institution founded in 1901 by the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia, to produce a woman-mother subject, based on the implementation of practices of medical-scientific care by the health team. From ethnographic research we will distinguish some aspects that show the construction of the ideal of scientific motherhood, based on the discourses that emerge from the childcare booklets elaborated by pediatricians of the institution, and the discourses of the current health team. We propose that the ideal of scientific motherhood, leads to the deployment of a device from the medical discourse that pretends to be transformative with regards to the suffering of women-mothers, but that invisibilize the structural inequalities faced by women living in poverty.