SOURCE: "Ellen Key and Swedish Feminist Views on Motherhood," in Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 4, Autumn, 1984, pp. 351-69.

In the following essay, Lundell explores the role of mothers in Swedish feminism and in Key's writings.

During the nineteenth century the concept of family and the role of woman as mother changed in Sweden as in most other countries in Europe. As the century progressed, more and more literature and public discussions dealt with the joys of motherhood and means of promoting motherhood and motherliness. A "cult of motherhood" aimed primarily at middle class women flourished together with a "cult of true womanhood." Motherhood was regarded as woman's most natural, highest, and noblest state. Failure to succeed in motherhood meant failure as a woman. But as Eleanor Riemer and John C. Fout point out in European Women: A Documentary History 1789-1945, proponents of the motherhood cult who claimed to uphold...