Gender In The Mother's Book By Lydia Maria Child

The view of gender is a part of a society women and men are needed to form a perfect and functioning society. Generally, women are needed to bare and raise children and men are needed to care and protect those who need it. While there has been changes in the way that gender is viewed and treated, for the most part the way gender is viewed has stagnated. In the nineteenth century there were clear cut boundaries between what was expected of girls versus what is expected of boys. Girls were taught from a young age to care for a house and children. In the Mother’s Book by Lydia Maria Child women are counseled to give their daughters “A knowledge of domestic duties… Every one ought to know how to sew, and knit, and mend, and cook, and superintend a household” ( , 168). These girls are allowed to have an imagination but are taught to keep it reined in. They are cautioned to not be “saucy slut[s]” ( , 171), as that is not how a good girls acts. Also these girls are cautioned not to be greedy or rude, in one common children’s primer story, in the Busy Bee, depicts a …show more content…
In the story one daughter is depicted as a nice girl who always helped others, was polite and always spoke kind, the other one was a crass and unhelpful person and would often do things similar to boys. The end of the story the mother brings both girls in for a special dinner, with a different meal for each girl based on