The Concept of Sentimental Boyhood
The Emotional Education of Boys in Mexico during the Early Porfiriato, 1876–1884
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Abstract
This article explores the popularization of the concept of sentimental boyhood during the anticolonial insurrections in the Ten Years’ War (1868–1878) and the Caste War (1847–1901) in Cuba and the Yucatán Peninsula in the early 1870s. The concept was popularized as childhood advocates articulated a uniquely Mexican emotional standard in the process of child-rearing, promoting the individual cultivation of honor, the management of anger, and the use of fear as discipline. Beginning in the 1870s, Mexican educators popularized theories of boyhood drawing on European notions of boyhood, including work by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. While educators promoted Rousseau’s and Pestalozzi’s “sentimental notions of boyhood” in rural Yucatán, pedagogues in Mexico City advocated the use of fear to instill obedience among boys.
Contributor Notes
Carlos ZÚÑiga Nieto is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development in Berlin, Germany. This article draws from author’s PhD dissertation, “Violent Passions: Childhood and Emotions in the Making of Modern Mexico, 1870–1910” (Columbia University, 2016). E-mail: cgz2@columbia.edu