Educating argentinian parents: an analysis through childcare handbooks written by Aráoz Alfaro and Garrahan

This article discusses the relationship between child medicine and psychological knowledge in Argentina, focusing on the dissemination of scientific knowledge about child’s development and upbringing. Childcare drew on the psychology of development to guide parents about moral and spiritual education and through such councils, took part in the production of a certain type of subjectivity considered normal and healthy. Two manuals published during the first half of the 20th century are discussed. They show similarities and differences in the way in which medical discourse conceived child’s development and sought to intervene in its course. In the first moment, children care should ensure both survival and physical health, while in the second moment parents were supposed to ensure child’s happiness and full development of their personality. These differences are linked to socio-political changes that took place in the first half of the 20th century and had a strong impact on the childcare itself, which was reconfigured to promote guidelines adapted to the psycho-social and emotional traits of the child