Undoing the knots. A gender-historical perspective on debates about kindergarten in German-speaking Switzerland (1950–1980)

ABSTRACT

This article discusses how a gender-historical perspective may still be productive in today’s historiography of education. In doing so, it relies on theoretical approaches developed in feminist and gender-historical debates and in debates about the ontological turn in historiography. Categories are thus understood as “world-giving” and changing entities which cannot just be analysed in their varying historical contexts but must be examined and historicised themselves in order to capture their fuzziness and fluidity. Against this theoretical background and on the basis of professional journals of kindergarten teachers and published speeches of seminar teachers, this article analyses debates about kindergarten in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, focusing on the years 1950–1980. In these debates, it examines what “productive work” (Scott) the categories “child” and “mother” did with regard to social and gender order and how they emerged from various knowledges becoming entangled in specific places and times. The allegedly clear “inside-outside boundaries” and “dichotomies” (Haraway) between the categories are questioned by turning to conflicts, to the unresolved, to the paradoxical. Furthermore, the paper reflects on the tasks assigned to kindergarten and the arguments which were put forward to legitimise it within the category-related “meshwork” (Ingold) of knowledges and power. Finally, it is shown how powerfully the categories “child” and “mother” acted in the debates about kindergarten in German-speaking Switzerland when stabilising and perpetuating a strongly gendered social order.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender history
• child
• mother
• kindergarten
• teacher education
• 1950–1980

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Joan Kelly, “Did Women have a Renaissance?”, in Women, History and Theory. The Essays of Joan Kelly, ed. Joan Kelly (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 19–50.

² Karin Hausen, “Die Polarisierung der ‘Geschlechtscharaktere’ – Eine Spiegelung der Dissoziation von Erwerbs- und Familienleben”, in Sozialgeschichte der Familie in der Neuzeit Europas. Neue Forschungen, ed. Werner Conze (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976), 363–93; and Brigitte Studer, “Familialisierung und Individualisierung. Zur Struktur der Geschlechterordnung in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft”, L’Homme. Z.F.G. 11, no. 1 (2000): 83–104.

³ As developments of kindergarten in the various language regions of Switzerland diverged very early and significantly, this article will focus on the German-speaking part, where the notion of kindergarten as a place for free play and a stopgap measure for unattended children was dominant. In the French-speaking part of Switzerland, kindergarten was closely linked to the school system (e.g. in Geneva kindergarten was integrated in the school system as early as 1848), whereas the Italian-speaking part was oriented towards Italy and Montessorian pedagogy. Heinrich Nufer, “Kindergarten”, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version 13.06.2012, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/010401/2012-06-13/, 1–3; Katharina Nuspliger-Brand, “Fröbels Erbe: Kindergarten zwischen Tradition und Fortschritt”, in Kindergarten – eine pädagogische Revolution, ed. Verband Kindergärtnerinnen Schweiz KgCH (Bern: Publikationen Pädagogische Fachstelle, 1999), 21–30, here: 23f.; and Heinrich Nufer, Kindergarten im Wandel (Frauenfeld: Huber, 1978), 42, 59f.

⁴ This may be explained at least partly by the fact that during the investigated period, kindergarten in most of the Swiss cantons was in communal (not national or cantonal) hands and attendance was non-mandatory. In Zurich for example, it was not until 2008 that cantons took charge of kindergarten, although communes had been obliged by cantonal law to provide kindergarten schooling since 1985. As a result, up to the 1970s, cantons showed little interest in research on kindergarten. Karin Manz, “Schulsystem im Wandel”, in Zukunft bilden. Die Geschichte der modernen Zürcher Volksschule, ed. Daniel Tröhler and Urs Hardegger (Zürich: NZZ Libro, 2008), 27–38, here: 29; and Nufer, Kindergarten im Wandel, 61f.

⁵ Nufer, “Kindergarten”, 1–3; Christina Rothen, Stefan Kessler and Lars Heinzer, “Kinder bilden und bewahren. Geschichte der frühen Kleinkinderschulen und Kindergärten in beiden Appenzell”, Appenzellische Jahrbücher (2019): 52–7; Manz, “Schulsystem”, 29; and Heinrich Nufer, “Kindergarten und Kinderhort”, in Kind sein in der Schweiz. Eine Kulturgeschichte der frühen Jahre, ed. Paul Hugger (Zürich: Offizin-Zürich-Verlags AG, 1998), 149–54.

⁶ Nufer, Kindergarten im Wandel, 35; and Heidi Witzig, “Kindheit”, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version 02.12.2008, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/010395/2008-12-02/, 1–10, here: 8.

⁷ Anne-Lise Head-König, “Geschlechtergeschichte. Frauengeschichte”, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version 22.12.2022, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/027814/2022-12-22/; Claudia Opitz, “Nach der Genderforschung ist vor der Genderforschung. Plädoyer für die historische Perspektive in der Geschlechterforschung”, in Was kommt nach der Genderforschung? Zur Zukunft der feministischen Theoriebildung, ed. Rita Casale and Barbara Rendtorff (Bielefeld: transcript, 2008), 13–28; Barbara Duden, “Frauen-‘Körper’: Erfahrung und Diskurs (1970–2004)”, in Handbuch Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung. Theorie, Methoden, Empirie, 3. erweiterte und durchgesehene Auflage, ed. Ruth Becker and Beate Kortendiek (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010), 601–15, here: 611f.; and Joan Wallach Scott, The Fantasy of Feminist History (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2011), 5, 19–22, 48–52, here: 7f.

⁸ For the history of Education: Jane Martin, Gender and Education in England since 1770. A Social and Cultural History (Cham: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2022), 26; Julie McLeod, “Feminism, Gender, and Histories of Education”, in Handbook of Historical Studies in Education, ed. Tanya Fitzgerald (Singapore: Springer Handbooks of Education, 2020), 119–35, here: 130, 133; and see also: Scott, Fantasy, 24.

⁹ Gianna Pomata, “Close-Ups und Long Shots: Combining Particular and General in Writing the Histories of Women and Men”, in Geschlechtergeschichte und Allgemeine Geschichte. Herausforderungen und Perspektiven, ed. Hans Medick and Anne-Charlott Trepp (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1998), 101–24, here: 115, 117.

¹⁰ According to Pomata (“Close-Ups”, 123), it was a matter of “dissolving some false generalisations” by “re-particularising the general”. In this way, a gender-historical perspective should be perceived beyond its field.

¹¹ E.g. Ruth Watts, “Gendering the Story: Change in the History of Education”, History of Education. Journal of the History of Education Society 34, no. 3 (2005): 225–41, here: 234.

¹² Joan W. Scott, “Experience”, in Feminists Theorise the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York/London: Routledge, 1992), 22–40.

¹³ Scott, Fantasy, 9f.

¹⁴ Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto. Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”, in The Cybercultures Reader, ed. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (London/New York: Routledge, 2000 [1985, orig.]), 291–324, here: 295.

¹⁵ Scott, Fantasy, 10f.

¹⁶ Scott, “Experience”, 26; and Scott, Fantasy, 46, 73.

¹⁷ Recently, e.g. Sylvie Steinberg, “Vormoderne Geschlechtsidentitäten in Frage stellen?”, L’HOMME. Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 34, no. 2 (2023): 101–18, here: 110f.

¹⁸ Caroline Arni, “Nach der Kultur. Anthropologische Potentiale für eine rekursive Geschichtsschreibung”, Historische Anthropologie 26, no. 2 (2018): 200–23, here: 206.

¹⁹ Arni, “Nach der Kultur”, 206f.

²⁰ Bruno Latour, Wir sind nie modern gewesen. Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2022), 8f., 14, 19f. Latour conceives of the world as a “Gordian knot”, consisting of entangled networks which are hybrid per se (“nature/cultures”) and are put into neatly separated categories by analysts, thinkers or journalists. He describes the nets as “real” (“like nature”), “narrated” (“like discourse”) and “collective” (“like society”) at the same time (this and all the following German citations in this article have been translated by the author of this article).

²¹ Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003), 6.

²² Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99, here: 595.

²³ Tim Ingold, “Bauen Knoten Verbinden”, ZMK Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturforschung. Textil 6, no. 1 (2015): 81–100, here: 82.

²⁴ Tim Ingold, “Bringing things to life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials”, in ESRC National Centre for Research Methods. NCRM Working Paper Series 05/10, Working Paper #15, 1 July 2010, 1–14, here: 3f., 11f. Referring to the example of a spider web, Ingold elaborates on the difference between a meshwork (lines of flow) and a network (lines of connection): its lines do not connect points but are “spun from materials exuded from the spider’s body and are laid down as it moves about”.

²⁵ Haraway, “Situated Knowledges”, 588.

²⁶ In contrast to the actor-network theory, objects are not attributed agency in Tim Ingold’s logic. He rather points to interaction, i.e. to agency “distributed around all the elements that are connected or mutually implicated in a field of action”. Ingold, “Bringing things to life”, 11f.

²⁷ Arni, “Nach der Kultur”, 206.

²⁸ Julia Heinemann, Margareth Lanzinger and Juliane Schiel, “Von der ‘Aneignung’ zur ‘Rekursion’. Drei Reflexionen zu Caroline Arnis Aufruf”, Historische Anthropologie 27, no. 2 (2019): 281–95, here: 289f.

²⁹ On this problem see: Jeannette Windheuser and Elke Kleinau, “Generation und Sexualität als Herausforderung historischer und theoretischer Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung. Eine Einleitung”, in Jahrbuch Erziehungswissenschaftliche Geschlechterforschung. Generation und Sexualität 16 (2020), ed. Jeannette Windheuser and Elke Kleinau (Opladen/Berlin/Toronto: Barbara Budrich, 2020), 9–21, here: 11.

³⁰ Kirsten Heinsohn and Claudia Kemper, “Geschlechtergeschichte”, in Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, version 1.0, 04.12.2012, 1–15, here: 4, http://docupedia.de/zg/heinsohn_kemper_geschlechtergeschichte_v1_d.

³¹ Scott, Fantasy, 73; and Haraway, “Situated Knowledges”, 588.

³² Joyce Goodman, “The gendered politics of historical writing in History of Education”, History of Education 41, no. 1 (2012): 9–24, here: 11.

³³ Haraway, “Cyborg”, 299.

³⁴ Scott, Fantasy, 72.

³⁵ Haraway, “Cyborg”, 292–5; and Haraway, “Situated Knowledges”, 579, 581, 595.

³⁶ Haraway, “Cyborg”, 294f., 316 (cit.); and Haraway, “Situated Knowledges”, 581, 589.

³⁷ Brigitte Studer, “Neue politische Prinzipien und Praktiken: Transnationale Muster und lokale Aneignungen in der 68er Bewegung”, in 1968–1978. Ein bewegtes Jahrzehnt in der Schweiz, ed. Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl (Zürich: Chronos, 2009), 37–66.

³⁸ Haraway, “Cyborg”, 316.

³⁹ Neil Postman, Das Verschwinden der Kindheit (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1983 [1982, orig.]); and on the reception of Postman in Switzerland see: Witzig, “Kindheit”, 8.

⁴⁰ Shulamith Firestone, “Nieder mit der Kindheit!”, Kursbuch 34 (1973): 1–24; and see also Meike Sophia Baader, “Die reflexive Kindheit”, in Kindheiten in der Moderne. Eine Geschichte der Sorge, ed. Meike Sophia Baader, Florian Esser and Wolfgang Schröer (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2014), 414–55, here: 430.

⁴¹ Katharina Rutschky, “Kinder, wie sie sich nur Erwachsene ausdenken können. Anmerkungen zu dem aktuellen Interesse an Kindern, Kindheit und Kindheitsgeschichte”, päd.extra 1 (1979): 24–7, here: 24f.

⁴² Jens Elberfeld, “Von der Sünde zur Selbstbestimmung. Zum Diskurs ‘kindlicher Sexualität’ (Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960–1990)”, in Sexuelle Revolution. Zur Geschichte der Sexualität im deutschsprachigen Raum seit den 1960er Jahren, ed. Peter-Paul Bänziger and others (Bielefeld: transcript, 2015), 247–83, here: 262.

⁴³ Baader, “Reflexive Kindheit”, 416.

⁴⁴ Witzig, “Kindheit”, 7.

⁴⁵ Nufer, Kindergarten im Wandel, 53, 59; and Miriam Gebhard, Die Angst vor dem kindlichen Tyrannen. Eine Geschichte der Erziehung im 20. Jahrhundert (München: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2020), 165, 169f. Although the Swiss Teachers’ Journal (Schweizerische Lehrerzeitung) saw some authors referring to Piaget in the early 1930s, a patriotic education prevailed over a developmental psychological perspective between 1935 and 1945: Monika Wicki, Gleichzeitig – Ungleichzeitig. Stabilität und Wandel von Vorstellungen über Kindheit, Jugend und Generationenbeziehungen (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), 145, 147.

⁴⁶ Willi Vogt, Die Welt des Kindergartens – eine Chance für das Kind (Zürich: Orell Füssli Verlag, 1972), 51f.

⁴⁷ Katharina Kellerhals, Das Salz in der Berner Bildungssuppe. 165 Jahre NMS Bern (Bern: NMS Bern, 2018), 218. Other controversial topics were programmed teaching and learning machines, which were criticised by the above-mentioned seminar teacher as reducing the influence of the kindergarten teacher, just like the Montessori method had propagated. Referring to Froebel, she points to the steps of child development by imitation and experience.

⁴⁸ Nufer, Kindergarten im Wandel, 53, 59f., 63f.

⁴⁹ This happened without a nationwide or cantonal legal obligation. Karin Manz, “Schulsystem im Wandel”, 29. The first cantonal regulations on kindergarten existed in St. Gallen (1834), Bern and Aargau (1835), Vaud (1846).

⁵⁰ Konrad Widmer, “Vorwort”, in Kindergarten im Experiment. Modelle neuer Kindergärten in der Schweiz, ed. Margrit Stucky (Zürich: Flamberg, 1972), 7–10, here: 7.

⁵¹ The keywords here were equal opportunities and developing the full potential of talents. Nufer, Kindergarten im Wandel, 53.

⁵² However, the project was also designed for the purpose of absorbing all the trained kindergarten teachers when the labour market was subject to a crisis around the year 1974. Kellerhals, Salz, 220.

⁵³ Annemarie Schuh-Custer, “Zum 25jährigen Bestehen der Abteilung III der Töchterschule der Stadt Zürich. Ansprache der Rektorin Dr. Annemarie Schuh-Custer an der Diplomfeier der Frauenbildungsschule (gekürzt)”, in Jahresbericht der Töchterschule der Stadt Zürich, Abteilung III, Schuljahr 1970/71 (1971), 28–32, here: 31 f.

⁵⁴ Schuh-Custer, “Zum 25jährigen Bestehen”, 32.

⁵⁵ Widmer, “Vorwort”, 8.

⁵⁶ Nufer, “Kindergarten”, 1.

⁵⁷ E.g. Schuh-Custer, “Zum 25jährigen Bestehen”, 32; and Rosmarie Kyburz, “Geleitwort”, Kindergarten. Vom Beruf und Wirken der Kindergärtnerin. Monatsschrift für Erziehung im vorschulpflichtigen Alter 60, no. 1/2 (1970), ed. Schweizerischer Kindergartenverein: 1.

⁵⁸ Kyburz, “Geleitwort”, 1.

⁵⁹ Barbara Haug, “Von der Aufgabe des heutigen Kindergartens”, Kindergarten. Vom Beruf und Wirken der Kindergärtnerin. Monatsschrift für Erziehung im vorschulpflichtigen Alter 60, no. 1/2 (1970), ed. Schweizerischer Kindergartenverein: 1–6, here: 1.

⁶⁰ Willi Vogt, Die Welt, 27f., 32, 39.

⁶¹ Willi Vogt, Autoritätskrise in der Erziehung (Solothurn: Schweizer Jugendverlag, 1968), 33, 49.

⁶² Vogt, Autoritätskrise, 50f.

⁶³ Florian Esser, “Fabricating the Developing Child in Institutions of Education. A Historical Approach to Documentation”, Children & Society 26 (2015): 174–83, here: 179.

⁶⁴ Helene Stucki, Die Beziehung zwischen Mutter und Kind in den Phasen der Entwicklung. Vortrag gehalten von Helene Stucki an der 63. Jahresversammlung des Schweizerischen Gemeinnützigen Frauenvereins am 21. Mai 1951 in Bern, Forschungsbibliothek Pestalozzianum, br 241 Za, 30–8, here: 33.

⁶⁵ Stucki, Beziehung, 33.

⁶⁶ Molly Ladd-Taylor and Lauri Umansky, “Introduction”, in “Bad” Mothers. The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America, ed. Molly Ladd-Taylor and Lauri Umansky (New York/London: New York University Press, 1998), 1–28, here: 13.

⁶⁷ Vogt, Die Welt, 91f.

⁶⁸ E.g. Margrit Stucky, Kindergarten im Experiment. Modelle neuer Kindergärten in der Schweiz (Zürich: Flamberg, 1972), 44f.

⁶⁹ Baader, “Reflexive Kindheit”, 427.

⁷⁰ Esther Burkhardt Modena, “Achtung: Subversion! – Antiautoritäre Experimentierkindergärten”, in Zürich 68. Kollektive Aufbrüche ins Ungewisse, ed. Erika Hebeisen, Elisabeth Joris and Angela Zimmermann (Baden: Hier+Jetzt, 2008), 50–9.

⁷¹ Stucky, Kindergarten, 45, 50.

⁷² Vogt, Die Welt, 57f.

⁷³ The psychoboom points to a relatively short period of intense circulation of therapeutic knowledge during the 1960s and 70s. Jens Elberfeld, Anleitung zur Selbstregulation Eine Wissensgeschichte der Therapeutisierung (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2020), 175.

⁷⁴ At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were approaches to a psychoanalytical and psychological pedagogy in Switzerland (Patrick Bühler, “Unterrichten mit Gefühl – Psychoanalytische Pädagogik zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts”, Jahrbuch für Historische Bildungsforschung 19 (2013): 247–61). When psychological knowledge in the late nineteenth century first entered teacher training, there was a strong emphasis on early childhood development (not on the school-aged child) (Michèle Hofmann, “Pädagogische Praxis und Wissen vom Kind. Entwicklungsvorstellungen im Kontext von Schule, Heilpädagogik, Psychologie und Medizin um 1900 in der Schweiz”, in Das Problem Kind Zur Geschichte der Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie der Schweiz im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Mirjam Janett, Urs Germann and Urs Hafner (Basel: Schwabe, 2023), 17–30, here: 22, 27f.). Child psychological knowledge had emerged in the context of the “child study movement” with an empirical orientation (Florian Esser, “Die verwissenschaftlichte Kindheit”, in Kindheiten in der Moderne. Eine Geschichte der Sorge, ed. Meike Sophia Baader, Florian Esser and Wolfgang Schröer (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2014), 124–53, here: 132f.).

⁷⁵ Stucki, Beziehung, 33.

⁷⁶ Ursula Morf-Dietschi, “Mutter-Kind-Beziehung. Konstanten und Wandel im Bild von Mutter und Kind”, in Kind sein in der Schweiz. Eine Kulturgeschichte der frühen Jahre, ed. Paul Hugger (Zürich: Offizin-Zürich-Verlags AG, 1998), 117–25, here: 122.

⁷⁷ Morf-Dietschi, “Mutter-Kind-Beziehung”, 117.

⁷⁸ Esser, “Verwissenschaftlichte Kindheit”, 143, 148; and Morf-Dietschi, “Mutter-Kind-Beziehung”, 120f. In 1958 John Bowlby published “The nature of the child’s tie to his mother”, where he argued that a biologically based system of attachment was responsible for the development of the relationship between mother and child. In 1969 he published his theory of attachment. In Spitz’s case, it was the analysis of a phenomenon he later called “hospitalism” that brought him to the topic of a child’s deprivation of social contact, especially with the mother.

⁷⁹ For example, the prominent Swiss paediatrician and child psychiatrist Marie Meierhofer or the Swiss child psychiatrist and university professor in Zurich Jakob Lutz. Gaby Sutter, Berufstätige Mütter. Subtiler Wandel der Geschlechterordnung in der Schweiz (1945–1970) (Zürich: Chronos, 2005), 75f., 79; and Gaby Sutter, “Mutterschaft”, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version 02.09.2010, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/016101/2010-09-02/, 1–6, here: 3f.

⁸⁰ Helene Stucki, “Wo stehen die Mütter unserer Zeit?”, in Mutter Kind und Spiel. Schriftenreihe der Schweizerischen Vereinigung Schule und Elternhaus, ed. Helene Stucki (Meiringen: Verlag der Kunstanstalt Brügger AG., 1960), 3–13, here: 8f.

⁸¹ Helene Stucki, “Erziehende Frauen in der Dichtung [Fortsetzung]”, Schweizerische Lehrerinnenzeitung 79, no. 10 (1975): 259–66, here: 260.

⁸² Patrick Bühler, “Böse Mütter im Summer of Love. Antipädagogik und Psychotherapie in den Siebziger-Jahren”, in Bewegungen. Beiträge zum 26. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft, ed. Isabell van Ackeren and others (Opladen/Berlin/Toronto: Barbara Budrich, 2020), 599–611, here: 601.

⁸³ Jennifer Terry, “‘Momism’ and the Making of Treasonous Homosexuals”, in “Bad” Mothers (see note 67), 169–90.

⁸⁴ Jane Taylor McDonnell, “On Being the ‘Bad’ Mother of an Autistic Child”, in “Bad” Mothers (see note 67), 220–9, here: 223, 225 (cit.).

⁸⁵ Su Epstein, “Mothering to Death”, in “Bad” Mothers (see note 67), 257–62, here: 257, 259.

⁸⁶ Alice Miller, Am Anfang war Erziehung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 106, 242ff.

⁸⁷ Sutter, Berufstätige Mütter, 281, note 23.

⁸⁸ Stucki, “Mütter unserer Zeit”, 12.

⁸⁹ E.g. Stucki, “Mütter unserer Zeit”, 3, 5.

⁹⁰ Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, “Introduction”, 3, 5; and Esser, “Verwissenschaftlichte Kindheit”, 143f.

⁹¹ Gustav Bally, “Erziehen ohne Muster”, in Die Zukunft unserer Kinder. Aufklärung, Anleitung und praktische Ratschläge für eine zeitgemässe Erziehung, ed. Reinfried Hörl (Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1967), 55–9, here: 58f.

⁹² Meike Sophia Baader, Die romantische Idee des Kindes und der Kindheit. Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Unschuld (Berlin: Luchterhand, 1996), 27; Heiner Ullrich, Das Kind als schöpferischer Ursprung. Studien zur Genese des romantischen Kindbildes und zu seiner Wirkung auf das pädagogische Denken (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 1999), 291f.; and Sylvia Wehren, “Geschlechtliche Differenzierungen im frühpädagogischen Diskurs über die ‘physische Erziehung’”, in Jahrbuch Erziehungswissenschaftliche Geschlechterforschung. Generation und Sexualität 16 (2020), ed. Jeannette Windheuser and Elke Kleinau (Opladen/Berlin/Toronto: Barbara Budrich, 2020), 69–77, here: 70.

⁹³ Gertrud Hess, “Nimmt die Fabel von König Hirsch eine moderne geistige Situation vorweg? Vortrag an der Diplomfeier des Kindergärtnerinnen- und Hortnerinnenseminars”, in Jahresbericht der Töchterschule der Stadt Zürich, Abteilung III, Schuljahr 1970/71 (1971), 24–7, here: 26.

⁹⁴ Helene Stucki, Die Erziehung zum Menschen als Grundlage der staatsbürgerlichen Erziehung (Bern: Karl Baumann, 1935), 4.

⁹⁵ Baader, Romantische Idee, 7, 27.

⁹⁶ Morf-Dietschi, “Mutter-Kind-Beziehung”, 124; and Baader, “Reflexive Kindheit”, 423; on the differences between feminisms based on equality, difference and gender see: Rita Casale and Jeannette Windheuser, “Feminismus nach 1945”, in Erinnern, Umschreiben, Vergessen. Die Stiftung des disziplinären Gedächtnisses als soziale Praxis, ed. Markus Rieger-Ladich, Anne Rohstock and Karin Amos (Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2019), 158–86, here: 158–65.

⁹⁷ Elisabeth Badinter, Die Mutterliebe. Geschichte eines Gefühls vom 17. Jahrhundert bis heute (Zürich/München: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1981).

⁹⁸ Marlis Gerhardt, “Wohin geht Nora? Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Frau”, Kursbuch 47 (1977), S. 77–89, here: 84f. Some strands of feminism took them up to stress an allegedly natural femininity based on a female, menstruating body as a means to emancipation. Gerhardt criticised them harshly for unwillingly reproducing a “patriarchal society” with its dichotomies. On these two strands of the women’s movement, see also: Barbara Rendtorff, “‘mitgedacht’ – Geschlecht als diskursive Figur”, in Differenz, Diversität und Heterogenität in erziehungswissenschaftlichen Diskursen, ed. Barbara Rendtorff and Elke Kleinau (Opladen/Berlin /Toronto: Barbara Budrich, 2013), 13–25, here:17f.; and Lena Jung and Indira Kaffer, “Feminismus und Spiritualität. Die Frauenbewegung im New Age”, in Feminismus in historischer Perspektive. Eine Reaktualisierung, ed. Feminismus Seminar (Bielefeld: transcript, 2014), 254–71.

⁹⁹ Gerhardt, “Wohin geht Nora?”, 84f.

¹⁰⁰ Stucky, Kindergarten, 44.

¹⁰¹ Mica Nava, “‘1968’ and the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain”, Moving the Social. Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements 64 (2020): 35–40, here: 38.

¹⁰² Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, “Introduction”, 13.

¹⁰³ Stucki, “Mütter unserer Zeit”, 11.

¹⁰⁴ Sutter, Berufstätige Mütter, 73–5 (cit. 73). Unlike the double-earner debate, which included all working women, the debate about maternal labour focused on married women with children employed outside the home.

¹⁰⁵ Studer, “Familialisierung und Individualisierung”, 91.

¹⁰⁶ Vogt, Die Welt, 92; Stucki, “Beziehung”, 33; and Stucki, “Erziehung zum Menschen”, 16.

¹⁰⁷ The framework curriculum outlined in 1971 by the Swiss Kindergarten Association gave rise to further discussions about the training of kindergarten teachers. Although it was explicitly based on knowledges from developmental psychology, it largely laid down existing practices in terms of content. Rahmenplan für die Erziehungs- und Bildungsarbeit im Kindergarten, ed. Schweizerischer Kindergartenverein (Schaffhausen: Verlag des Schweizerischen Kindergartenvereins, 1971); Stucky, Kindergarten, 8; Agnes Liebi, “Rahmenplan für die Erziehungs- und Bildungsarbeit im Kindergarten”, Schweizerische Lehrerinnenzeitung 76, no. 1/2 (1972): 22–8; and Nufer, Kindergarten im Wandel, 63f.

¹⁰⁸ And during a period when Swiss women’s right to vote was discussed controversially. After rejecting it in a referendum in 1959 (by 66.9%), Swiss men granted Swiss women full political rights in 1971 (by 57.7%), but not full civil and economical rights. Yvonne Vögeli and Werner Seitz, “Frauenstimmrecht”, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version 04.04.2023, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/010380/2023-04-04, 1–11, here: 4f.

¹⁰⁹ Haraway, “Cyborg”, 316.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrea De Vincenti

Andrea De Vincenti is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Teacher Education in Zurich, Switzerland. She is a trained historian who wrote her doctoral thesis at the University of Bern about knowledges and practices of schooling at the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Today her main research topics are the history of teacher education in the twentieth century, women’s history, gender and feminist history, knowledge history, the history of sex education and curriculum history. She has delivered speeches at international conferences and published papers and books on these fields of research (https://phzh.ch/personen/andrea.devincenti).