Republican motherhood

"Republican motherhood" is a 20th-century term for an 18th-century attitude toward women's roles present in the emerging United States before, during, and after the American Revolution.

With the growing emphasis being placed on republicanism, women were expected to help promote these values; they had a special role in raising the next generation.

[2] However, as the nineteenth century drew closer, many Protestant ministers and moralists argued that modesty and purity were inherent in women's natures, giving them a unique ability to promote Christian values with their children.

[4] Prior to the Revolutionary War it was a common belief that women were inferior to men so instead of being educated, they were expected to be caretakers of their husbands, homes and children.

The idea that women were best suited in these roles was based on the essentialist assumptions that they are biologically predetermined to be intimate and concerned observers of young children.

Benjamin Rush was also well known for his speech in which he outlined the reasons he believed women should be able to have equal access to an education and the importance of subjects outside the realm of just becoming a wife.

By the late 19th century, such schools were extending and reinforcing the tradition of women as educators and supervisors of American moral and ethical values.

The historian Jan Lewis subsequently expanded the concept in her article "The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic," published in the William and Mary Quarterly (1987).

"[10] In other words, contrary to the traditional sexual hierarchy promoted by his contemporary Robert Filmer and others, Locke believed that men and women had more equal roles in a marriage.

The ideal produced women with initiative and independence; as Kerber says, it was "one side of an inherently paradoxical ideology of republican motherhood that legitimized political sophistication and activity.

In her book Gender in History: Global Perspectives, Merry Wiesner-Hanks details the "model marriage" through the eyes of Classical Romans as "one in which husbands and wives were loyal to one another and shared interests, activities, and property.