Responsible Mothers and Normal Children: Eugenics, Nationalism, and Welfare in Post‐revolutionary Mexico, 1920–1940

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of the eugenics movement in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s and explores the ways in which eugenicists and physicians participated in the creation of a new paternal order focused on motherhood, sexuality, and child welfare. I analyze this transformation as part of a broader process of medicalization and state expansion that recast understandings of reproduction, heredity, childhood, and the female body during the post‐revolutionary period. I argue that eugenics, and the related puericulture movement, played a critical role in the emergence of novel forms of governmentality, the nationalization of women, and the neutralization of anterior forms of patriarchy in modern Mexico. The article contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the meaning of motherhood, the standardization of elementary school education, and the formation of welfare states in Latin America.

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