ABSTRACT
Growing numbers of women attended postsecondary school, especially normal school; entered professions, becoming lawyers, doctors, and journalists; read and wrote for the feminine press; and participated in public culture in new ways. Shifts in woman’s position in society challenged the status quo and positivist conceptions of order. Horacio Barreda was one of many members of the Mexican elite who interpreted the changes in women’s roles through the lens of positivism. The organization of filial, fraternal, and conjugal relations, as they existed among the Mexica of old, exerted an influence on private life, affirming the idea of domestic subordination on the basis of age and sex, which provided for the order and stability of the family. During the colonial period, the Latin influence, obeying the double force of the history of feudal and Christian morality, perfected the institution of the Mexica family.
