True to her nature
Subtitle: changing advice to American women
By: Maxine L. Margolis.
Publisher: Waveland Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Prospect Heights, Ill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 180
Subjects: Women -- United States -- History.; Women -- United States -- Social conditions.; Homemakers -- United States -- History.; Women -- Employment -- United States -- History.; Sex role -- United States -- History.
Description: From colonial times to the present, advice givers from Cotton Mather to Dr. Benjamin Spock and Martha Stewart have offered a litany of opinions on proper child care and good housekeeping. Drawing on sermons, child-rearing manuals, and women s magazines, author Maxine L. Margolis explores changing ideologies about middle-class women s roles and asserts they can only be explained within a larger material context. Variables such as household vs. industrial production, the demand or lack of demand for women s labor, and the changing costs and benefits of rearing children have been instrumental in influencing views of women s true nature and proper place. This provocative and persuasive analysis suggests there are well-defined material causes for attitudes toward women s employment and housework, changing advice on child rearing including the discovery that fathers are parents too and the rebirth of feminism.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-171) and index.