The Mother's Book, By Lydia Maria Child

During a time period in which advice literature on child rearing often prompted parents to use harsh means to raise their children, Lydia Maria Child’s The Mother's Book stands out. Unlike other advice literature books from the 1800’s, it offers sensible advice without the need for severe punishments. In fact, in an excerpt of The Mother's Book, included in the book Going to the Source, Child provides her suggestions for handling teenage daughters, and states that what a mother needs is “a ready sympathy with youthful feelings” rather than “unnecessary restraint and harshness.” (GS, 171) However, even though the document does supply information about raising teenage girls, it does not provide information about raising girls who are not teenagers
Without a doubt, the lack of information about the aforementioned concepts gives rise to various questions.
Although The Mother's Book does not acknowledge certain topics, it does offer an abundance of details about how mothers should raise their teenage daughters. The first piece of advice that Child has for mothers is that in order to “encourage confidence towards herself” all they need is “a ready sympathy with youthful feelings” rather than “unnecessary restraint and harshness.” (GS, 171) In other words, for a teenage daughter to feel comfortable speaking with her mother, the mother should sympathize with her daughter’s feelings instead of being harsh towards her. However, Child also advises mothers to not indulge their children, because of the “fear of weaning the[ir] affections” (GS, 171) This statement reveals the key ingredient of Child’s advice: moderation. Overall, Child does not have anything against a mother loving her daughter, but she wants to convey that being loving should not equate to being lenient. Besides offering details about how to raise teenage
There are varied ways one can find those answers. For starters, one can read the The Mother's Book in full-length because some of these questions such as, how were younger daughters raised, how boys were expected to behave, how would were the expectations for boys compare to how girls were expected to behave, and how did the expectations for girls change as they became older, will more than likely be answered at some point in the book. However, to find the answers to other questions such as, what was the parenting advice was for fathers during this time, and how parenting advice for fathers compared to the mother’s advice during the 1800’s, another book about child rearing written in the 1800’s may be more beneficial. Lastly, creating inferences may be another way to answer questions. For example, for the question: why did the author choose to focus only on teenage females in her excerpt, a possible answer may be that that author chose to highlight teenage girls because few other books did, this would make sense because in the 1800’s females were not viewed as important as males, and Child was also “an outspoken advocate for the rights of women.” (GS,