The article explores meanings and maternal practices associated with the parenting style that middle class professional women define as “natural”. It describes the repertoire of maternal care practices that this parenting style implies, and analyzes the typical care situations that derive from it. Also, it identifies the role that men play in this parenting style from the perspective of female-mothers. The article is based on an ethnographic study of parenting and breast-feeding groups, carried out in Santa Fe city (Argentina). It adopted various techniques for data collection: field notes from workshop meetings, semi-structured interviews with mothers, and the follow-up of the documents and public speeches of the groups dedicated to research this topic.   According to our findings, we maintain that the ways in which the women of professionalized middle classes who participate i...

The article explores meanings and maternal practices associated with the parenting style that middle class professional women define as “natural”. It describes the repertoire of maternal care practices that this parenting style implies, and analyzes the typical care situations that derive from it. Also, it identifies the role that men play in this parenting style from the perspective of female-mothers. The article is based on an ethnographic study of parenting and breast-feeding groups, carried out in Santa Fe city (Argentina). It adopted various techniques for data collection: field notes from workshop meetings, semi-structured interviews with mothers, and the follow-up of the documents and public speeches of the groups dedicated to research this topic.   According to our findings, we maintain that the ways in which the women of professionalized middle classes who participate i...

Este artículo se propone explorar los significados y prácticas maternales asociados al estilo de crianza que las mujeres estudiadas definen como «natural», mediante la descripción del repertorio de prácticas maternales de cuidado que supone, el análisis de las situaciones típicas de cuidado que se derivan de ella y la identificación del rol que tienen los varones en este estilo de crianza desde la mirada de las mujeres-madres. Se vale de una etnografía de rondas de lactancia y crianza llevada a cabo en la ciudad de Santa Fe (Argentina), donde se recolectaron tres tipos de información: notas de campo sobre los encuentros en talleres, entrevistas semiestructuradas con madres, y seguimiento de los documentos y discursos públicos de los grupos dedicados al tema. Reuniendo los hallazgos de nuestro estudio, sostenemos que, frente a un contexto institucional de mercantilización de ...