Working-Class Fatherhood: Masculinity, Railroad Work, and the Social Question in Argentina’s Early Twentieth-Century Illustrated Magazines

Abstract

This article examines depictions of working-class fatherhood featured in Argentina’s most widely circulated illustrated magazines at the start of the twentieth century. As a case study, it looks at images of railroad workers in general and locomotive personnel (enginemen and firemen) in particular. It seeks to recapture the significant role that the commercial press played in both building an imaginary of modernity in the world of labor and furthering discussions on the social question, namely on the hardships and precarity of the living and working conditions of these railroad workers and their families. The study also hopes to help expand insight into an insufficiently explored aspect of worker masculinity: fatherhood. It reflects on the place of men in family life and sheds light on prescribed norms around the responsibilities and rights of fathers in working-class families in early twentieth-century Argentina.