Women's Agency Quotes
There was a movement to pay married women who were housewives to compensate them for the time they spend in, if nothing else, educating and bringing up male children who were educated. It was they who transmitted the values and many experts agree have more to do with a child’s education than the schools do. So this important and critical societal task was not remunerated as were all others. At the time, even many of the feminists held the view that society would be better off if women were homemakers and brought up the children. However, without any pay (and at the time few or no rights to a husbands earnings of assets) she was bound to be a second class citizen. That idea of housewife compensation obtained almost no support, and the only way for women to gain some kind of position and equality was to work outside the home—the condition that became the norm about 30 years after this was written.
This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.
At the beginning of the United States, the Founding Fathers had seen fit not to restrict a woman’s right to birth control and abortion, both of which were prevalent in Colonial America albeit not very reliable or safe. The first efforts to control abortion were in the 1820s and 1830s. Storer was the first anti-abortion activist. His major issue was that abortion diminished America’s fertility rate and with the high fertility of the immigrants, the native Americans would be overwhelmed.
