Motherhood In The 1800's

As time progressed, the roles of men and women were more defined by what usefulness they had and what society found appropriate. Women were not allowed to obtain education, travel, or go out in public

After marriage, the husband was considered lord and master of the family. But not all the women were meek and submissive. By the 1700's, the woman’s status had rapidly improved in colonial America. A wife and child made as much as a man did. Although women did not have equality with men, their status greatly improved from their status in Europe. A woman’s station in life was determined by the position of their husbands or fathers. The women of the poorest families, compiled to work in the fields, stood at the bottom of the social ladder. One of the surest signs of the accomplishments a family had made, was the exemption of their women from the fields. Before 1740, girls were trained in household crafts and the practical arts of family management. But afterwards they began to study subjects that required reading and studying such subjects as grammer and arithmetic. The women of the upper classes occupied themselves mainly with planning the work of the home and with supervising the domestic servants. Along with these tasks the women also baked, nursed, and sewed. But there were many social restrictions placed on the women of that time. One such restriction was that a wife, in absence of her husband, was not allowed to lodge men even if they were close relatives. For

Women did not have an easy life during the American Colonial period. Before a woman reached 25 years of age, she was expected to be married with at least one child. Most, if not all, domestic tasks were performed by women, and most domestic goods and food were prepared and created by women. Women performed these tasks without having any legal acknowledgment. Although women had to endure many hardships, their legal and personal lives were becoming less restricted, although the change was occurring at a snail’s pace.

Women were considered to be the “weaker vessels ,” not as strong physically or mentally as men and less emotionally stable. Legally they could neither vote, hold public office, nor participate in legal matters on their own behalf, and opportunities for them outside the home were frequently limited .

Women, like black slaves, were treated unequally from the male before the nineteenth century. The role of the women played the part of their description, physically and emotionally weak, which during this time period all women did was took care of their household and husband, and followed their orders. Women were classified as the “weaker sex” or below the standards of men in the early part of the century. Soon after the decades unfolded, women gradually surfaced to breathe the air of freedom and self determination, when they were given specific freedoms such as the opportunity for an education, their voting rights, ownership of property, and being employed.

“Rich married when they were teenagers. Poor women worked from a really early age. They were treated as adults from age 11 and they married at age 20” (C N). Once again, women didn’t get to choose what they wanted to do someone or something decided for them. In this case it would be their wealth that decided it for them. Women in the early ages had to grow up faster than we do today. Today, 20 is pretty young to get married, and some woman in the early ages got married before then. After they were married it only got worse. “Marriage often plunged a woman into being an estate manager. Marriage among landowners was arranged. Women then not only had to take care of her land, but her husband’s as well” (Dean 61). Before marriage women had to do inside work for her family and sometimes work in the fields, but once she got married, she had to take care of her own house and not only her fields but her husband’s as well. Women didn’t even get to pick who they married most of the time because it was arranged. “Women weren’t allowed to marry without parents consent. They weren’t allowed to own a business, get a divorce, or own property unless they widowed, and they couldn’t inherit land if they didn’t have brothers” (C N). So, a woman’s parent also got to choose what went on in a woman’s life and how she

In the mid to late 1700's, the women of the United States of America had practically no rights. When they were married, the men represented the family, and the woman could not do anything without consulting the men. Women were expected to be housewives, to raise their children, and thinking of a job in a factory was a dream that was never thought impossible. But, as years passed, women such as Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Blackwell began to question why they were at home all day raising the children, and why they did not have jobs like the men. This happened between the years of 1776 and 1876, when the lives and status of Northern middle-class woman was changed forever. Women began to

Over the course of history, women have fought and struggled to gain independence and rights for themselves. Starting all the way back at the beginning of time it has seemed to be that men have always been more superior than women. This co-existing issue has made women bundle down to the bottom of the “social ladder” which refrained them from freedom. Beginning back in the early 1800’s before laws and amendments were made women had close to no rights or freedoms. As the 1800’s went on several movements and marches started to happen as change did as well.

Surely the new republic would benefit from having its women play more active roles throughout society”(Bonnie and Ruthsdotter). Based on this connection, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her four friends she invited to tea, soon will start the movement, starting with the Seneca Falls Convention. The Seneca Falls Convention was the start of a 70 years movement to change the lives of the American women. The idea of women voting was very radical, even for a group of women coming together to find a way to finally get the rights they deserve. When leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton, so much as, mentioned the idea of voting even her fellow leader Lucretia Mott

However, one thing women could not do is they could not hold an office. The woman in the house was essentially the housekeeper. She cooked, cleaned, and raised children. The freedom of the woman depended upon the wealth of the family. Often times higher status women were not tasked with as many household oriented chores.

Men and women back in the 1800’s had very different rob roles compared to the job roles both genders have now in this day and age. Men in the 1800’s had to do more of the physically demanding jobs such as having to build houses, crafting tools and milled flour. While on the other hand the females had to do more of the dainty jobs such as daily house chores eg cooking and cleaning, looking after children, teaching and sewing. Many women were starting to realise that they deserved to have the same political rights as men and that they should be able to vote just like men do too. Women believed that if they were given the same chances and education as men they would be able to achieve just as much as men do if not even better things.

Women were required to resist their interests and focus them on the home and family. Women were not encouraged to obtain a real education or pursue a professional career in fact it was discouraged. After marriage, women did not have the right to own property, keep their own wages, or sign a contract. In fact, women were denied the right to vote. Only after decades of intense political activity did women-half the population- eventually win the right to

During the early 1800's women were stuck in the Cult of Domesticity. Women had been issued roles as the moral keepers for societies as well as the nonworking house-wives for families. Also, women were considered unequal to their male companions legally and socially. However, women’s efforts during the 1800’s were effective in challenging traditional intellectual, social, economical, and political attitudes about a women’s place in society.

Women were controlled entirely by their husbands. According to Smith, women’s “sole purpose in life was to find a husband, reproduced and then spend the rest of their lives serving him” (1). An instance was when a woman wanted to go out instead of being at home; she had to ask permission to her husband to do that or not. Furthermore, all of a wife’s inheritance belonged to the husband when they got married. As stated by Smith, “when a woman was married, all of her inheritance…would belong to her husband” (1).

Mavis E. Mate argues that married women were not only forced to do the work of men in the domestic sphere of their home, but when a women entered marriage, men controlled all the material resources in the family, even any money that she earned through her labour or sales of goods. When a mand and women got married any property or assets that the wife owned were now legally transferred and owned by the husband because he had the legal right to all property and wealth the wife acquired. This exemplifies how married women in the middle ages had no agency because any property or wealth they acquired was legally controlled by their husband and married women had no legal rights over property. Women did contribute to the family’s income through brewing beer and harvesting crops, but all of this money went directly to the man of the household. Even when men gambled or drank all of the money in the household, women had no way to hold men accountable to