First published in 1985, this book brings together recent work on women and children from the nineteenth-century to the present. The contributors explore in different ways, and from different points of view, the way in which issues of language have been - and are still - central to the history of women and their relation to domestic and educational practices. A crucial issue is the contrast between what it spoken about girls and women, and what girls and women can speak about. The contributors relate this theme specifically to women´s position as mothers and the education of girls and women.