Sob a lente de uma médica nos alvores do Estado Novo - apontamentos de puericultura

• Autor(a) principal: Henriques, Hélder
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Marchão, Amélia, Campos, Sergio Luís Mocito, Pimenta, Jussara Santos
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Educa (Porto Velho)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unir.br/index.php/EDUCA/article/view/5135
• topic: Estado Novo. Infância. Cuidar. Puericultura; 370; Estado Novo. Childhod. To take care. Childcare.; Estado Novo. Infancia. Cuidar. Cuidado de niños.

The present study, which is part of the research line developed by the authors of this work “Childhood: policies, institutions and education”, took as object of study the book “Let’s take care of little children. Notions of Childcare”, written by the physician Emília Augusta de Sá Vargas Morgado, published in 1942. Such serious analysis as an interpretive observation of a social-historical nature and critical sense, understands the book as a memory that allows us to comprehend and interpret the human being and the world in multiple dimensions (political, historical, social, economic, cultural, etc.) and studied here around two main objectives: to understand the importance of family, and, in concrete, women’s role in the education of younger children during the Estado Novo in Portugal and to discuss the development of childcare as a state instrument capable of intervening in the private sphere of families, as trying to fight child mortality. In the context of the developed historical socio-political matrix, it concludes on the preponderant role of the Estado Novo in relation to what was important to spread out to preserve a healthy and morally adequate childhood, based on medical, psychological and pedagogical knowledge, here embodied in what childcare is concerned. The fight against the strong problem of infant mortality was assumed by the Estado Novo with the strategic goal of entering into the private sphere of families and to contribute to the normalization of individuals since their birth.