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.