Okezi T. Otovo. Progressive Mothers, Better Babies

Progressive Mothers, Better Babies: Race, Public Health, and the State in Brazil, 1850–1945, examines the transformation of public health-care delivery in Brazil from the final decades of the nineteenth century under the slave system through the First Republic (1889–1930), an era known for attempts to establish the institutions of civil society, culminating in the presidency of Getúlio Vargas in the mid-twentieth century (1930–1945). More specifically, Okezi T. Otovo locates her study in the maternalist movement in the northeastern state of Bahia. Although conceptions of maternalism changed over this time, particularly as maternal care within the individual family and/or close community gave way to the oversight and regulation of the state, Otovo notes the correlation of changes in official discourse with evolving racial practice. She argues that twentieth-century science “modernized racial discourse and adapted it to fit the aspirations of a nation recently emerging from slavery and monarchy” (12). Such adaptation continued throughout the nearly one hundred years covered in the book. Moreover, the language of race that persisted into the mid-twentieth century continued to carry the baggage of slavery and a family model based on conceptions of motherhood and child care reminiscent of a much earlier era.

Economic history · Health care · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Presidency · Public health · Race (biology) · Sociology · State (computer science) · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Medicine and Tropical Health · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Medicine