Was the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa something of a modern, good mother? The philosopher Élisabeth Badinter thinks so, but it wasn’t that simple.
Feelings also have a story. Élisabeth Badinter, a pioneer of the women’s movement in France, is one of the first to raise this issue. Her book “Motherly Love” from 1980 caused outrage and enthusiasm. In it she describes this epitome of a female natural instinct as a historically relatively recent myth, an invention of modern bourgeois society. Some were outraged by the book, others found it liberating. The history of emotions is now a thriving field of research.