From polygamous to proletarian

a historical analysis of intensive motherhood as a labor force based on Friedrich Engels

Abstract

The historical process of implementing capitalism has transformed people's lives. The search for economic resources for subsistence has turned the human workforce into an instrument for political, social, and institutional interventions. These changes had reper-cussions on the lives of mothers, who, in order to meet the demands of the home and family, intensified their working hours, which were precarious both in unpaid work—caring for children and the home and in paid work outside the home. Through bibliographic re-search, we sought to provide a historical analysis of the process of establishing intensive motherhood. This article aims to present motherhood as invisible and unpaid work, ba-sed on the studies of Friedrich Engels in his book The Origin of the Family, Private Pro-perty, and the State, and to characterize it under the theory of matricentric feminism, in order to present alternatives to the maintenance of patriarchal motherhood in the pre-sent day.