La celebrazione della maternità nella pedagogia di propaganda fascista fra ideologia e realtà

This paper presents an analysis of the fascist ideology of motherhood, to find at that time the roots of the present crisis of the family and the parenting relationships. Mussolini, in accord with the positivistic thesis about a biological inferiority of the woman, celebrated the role of the “oblative mother”, oblivious of herself and totally devoted to the care of her husband and children, to found a totalitarian state on the patriarchal family. The celebration of the so called soldier’s mother was supported by a “differential pedagogy” that, through national organizations, promoted a strict gender education since early childhood. However, the fascist image of the mother and bride did not exist in reality, but as a mere rhetorical and propagandistic exercise. Mussolini’s totalitarian program was the laboratory of the authoritarian view of the parental authority that today is conceived as an educational responsibility of the parental figures, replacing the fascist ideology of the mother with the idea of a really generative mother.