Leta S. Hollingworth was an American psychologist who focused most of her research on giftedness, educational psychology, psychology of women, and the variability hypothesis. She conducted numerous studies to reject the variability hypothesis that deemed women destined for mediocrity and did her dissertation on how women were not mentally incapacitated during menstruation (Held, 2010). Hollingworth also wrote six articles on the social factors that contributed to the social status of women. (1) One being “Social Devices for Impelling Women to Bear and Rear Children,” this article focused on the eight social constructs that motivated and pressured women to have and raise children. Of the eight, seven were first proposed by E. A. Ross in his
(1) The eight social devices were personal ideals, public opinion, law, belief, education, art, illusions, and bugaboos. There were three popular bugaboos which were first termed by Hollingworth (1916) as false ideas or beliefs held by society that were created by medical men. The first was that if pregnancy was delayed until the age of 30, it was more painful and hard. Thus, prompting women to have babies at an earlier age. The second stated that women who do bear children live longer as opposed to women who don’t. The third stated that a child that was raised alone was more likely to become “selfish, egotistic, and an undesirable citizen” (Hollingworth, 1916). Which propelled women to have more than one child so their child would not become any of those things. (1) These eight social devices had been used as a means to confine women to the roles of child bearer and mother by manipulating them into not aspiring for anything more. When a woman went against her designated role they were considered abnormal, selfish, and were destined to encounter the wrath of God in the hereafter. (2) When this article was first published,
There are five types of motives according to the self-determination theory (SDT): intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, introjection, external regulation, and amotivation. These motives run on a continuum with intrinsic motivation being the pursual of one’s own wants and desires, to amotivation being that one has no clear motive. (4) The main point Brenning et al. (2015) make is that there is a link between psychological adjustment whilst pregnant and basic psychological need satisfaction, which contribute to the type of motivation a woman has for getting pregnant. (5) Although, there has been little research on how prenatal psychology has an impact on motivation to have a child. The closest study that has analyzed the relationship between prenatal psychology and motivations, was conducted in Russia in 2016 by Borisenko, Belogay, Morozova, & Ott, which examined reproductive motivations of Russian women. Another similar study was conducted by Kraft, Hatfield-Timajchy, Farr, Jamieson, Harvey, Thorburn, & Beckman (2010), which examined the role motivation to get pregnant plays on contraception use in both men and women. (6) Nevertheless, it can be argued that this study, conducted by Brenning et al. (2015), does not consider the
With the clash of the cultures increasingly challenging our way of living, we must fight even harder to keep our families practicing good morality and traditional values. The census of the 20s shows us that more and more Americans are making the move to the big city and for reasons I don’t quite understand. There are many that embrace the new modern world, but my family members are plain old country folk that enjoy rural living, living on farms or in small towns. And marriage should be considered sacred and children should be considered a blessing from God, not a burden or imposition. In the essay entitled “Birth Control,” by Ella K. Dearborn, written for the Birth Control Review in March 1928, Dearborn opposed certain women having children
Margaret Sanger was, at large, a birth control activist, but this speech was more about the questioning of birth control corrupting morality in women. People must remember, in the day and age where Sanger presented this speech, November 1921, women were considered very far from equal and much closer to servants or maids. In her speech, I saw that ethos was present in the sense that she gave herself credibility. Through Sanger’s detailed words and actions, and her statements including the presence of scientists and, or, professionals, the masses of listening people could infer that she was very well informed and solid in her statements. Though she presented herself as agreeable, Sanger was firm in her beliefs. In addition, Sanger says, “We desire to stop at its source the disease, poverty and feeble-mindedness and insanity which exist today, for these lower the standards of civilization and make for race deterioration. We know that the masses of people are growing wiser and are using their own minds to decide their individual conduct” (Sanger, par.15). To me, Sanger made herself appeal to the audience by using the word ‘we.’ In the practice of ethos, this focused on the author more than...
beliefs of society. If society imposed a law that it was immoral to have children if you are extremely poor because u can not provide for them and the child’s life wont be satisfying, one could argue that with a little time the mother could move out of poverty and thus have a “good” life, or that the child may find life satisfying without much beyond basic necessities. The author claims that mandatory testing will be beneficial because it can help produce healthy children, yet assumes that all pregnant women at risk will get tested. If testing becomes mandatory many woman who avoid testing, either out of the fear of knowing if they have the disease or that they will pressured into terminating the pregnancy, many woman may avoid prenatal care all together, thus imposing more health risks on the fetus and the mother.
While Darwin left the qualities associated with maternity as a given, Gamble describes the results of natural selection in detail. By juxtaposing the “extreme egoism” (86) of males and the “altruism” (86) of females with “the unequal struggle for liberty and justice” (87), Gamble alters the connotations of the qualities of each sex. No longer are men envisioned as physically and mentally superior hunters that provided for families, but instead as tyrannical oppressors in the classic struggle for liberty. Gamble furthers her explanation of male oppression through sexual selection. With this, Gamble turns the connotation of male superiority on its head, suggesting that this supremacy is in fact a societal artifact, not a biological
...nother means of promoting their roles and duties in the realm of the home several women saw this as an opportunity to further their abilities as women. Although women learned skills that would allow them to live happier domestic lives as opposed to men who learned skills that would improve their skills as contributors this did not prevent women from seizing this new opportunity. These beliefs went hand in hand with the ideals of Republican motherhood in that both believed if children were to know and play their part in regards to society women had to educate them but only if women themselves were educated. Benjamin Rush and Judith Sargent Murray both express these ideas in their essays but in different methods.
The Roaring Twenties were known as a time of economic boom, pop culture and social developments. This was a time when women began to break norms, they acted rebelliously such as wearing releveling clothing, smoking, and drinking. These women were known as “flappers” who wanted to change their roles in the 1920’s. Birth control activist, Margaret Sanger sought to change the world where women had access to a low cost, effective contraception pill. In “The Morality of Birth Control” Sanger battled opponents who claimed that contraception would cause women to become immoral. The author uses rhetorical devices such as ethos, pathos, and fallacies to back up her claim while touching on issues in the church, advancements of women, and the source of disease in the world.
Since the sixteenth century, one of the most important roles of mothers, or women in general, was to have children. Although most women accepted this role and believed it was their duty to have children, not every woman was pleased with this seemingly confining role. Within the confines of this role there were also many misconceptions. At the time, most people believed that although male involvement was necessary for the conception of children, women controlled many aspects of the child, including the sex of the child. While it was a common belief that women controlled certain aspects of pregnancy, women really had no control over when and if they got pregnant. Prior to the eighteenth century there was really no indication of widespread use of birth control methods. Without reliable birth control, women would often become a mother within their first year of marriage and continue to have children every couple of years until menopause. Although women during this time period experienced high birth rates, they often did not end up raising nearly as many children as they gave birth to, since the infant mortality rate and death rate were very high. With such a high death rate, birth control was not as necessary as it would be in a more modern...
It is known that many important and influential people held slaves during the time in which our country allowed to do so. It’s less known, or strategically forgotten in our history that it was incredibly common for slave owners to have sexual relationships with their slaves, consensual or otherwise. On the website, American Heritage, Annette Gordon-Reed wrote an article in which she makes a good point, “Speaking of love in the context of a master-slave relationship is even more difficult, given the moral and political implications…” Elaborating on her point, how consensual can it be for a person that “owns” someone’s life, to have a sexual relationship with an individual that is there against their own free will? When does
She then talks about the morality of the women who would partake and how women’s rights have been innovating up until this point and implies that this would be the next great step for the advancement of women’s rights. She presents the idea that primitive forms of birth control are no longer ethical in today’s society as their methods would violate various mores that have been set by present day society by saying that that “primitive men have achieved the same results by infanticide, exposure of infants, abandonment of children, and abortion.” She uses examples of seemingly barbaric primitive methods to exemplify that in present times there is a need for a more civilized and humane method of family planning. By using this extreme example, Sanger effectively appeals to ethos to hopefully persuade the audience by showing how the old methods would themselves be contradictory to the set of morals the opposers are trying so hard to hold on to.
Low, Bobbi S. (2005). "Women's lives there, here, then, now: a review of women's ecological and demographic constraints cross-culturally". Evolution and Human Behaviour 26 (2005) pp. 64-87.
The major biological cause for this difference is the fact that women are seen as biological primary care-takers. Consequently, women develop several hormones and behaviors that enhance their life expectation by means of being more productive for the collective group and also for the type of hormones developed by motherhood. Nevertheless, this primary
Society has seen the male dynamic of superiority, designation as the “bread winner”, or head of household for centuries. Women were specifically assigned to the roles of wife, mother, and nurturer through the process of the sexual or gendered division of labor. However, that has not always been the case. Over centuries of change and shifts in economic development, the roles of women have changed to adapt to their specific roles in society. The status of the individuals in society was defined by sex, age, physical trai...
A house is not a home if no one lives there. During the nineteenth century, the same could be said about a woman concerning her role within both society and marriage. The ideology of the Cult of Domesticity, especially prevalent during the late 1800’s, emphasized the notion that a woman’s role falls within the domestic sphere and that females must act in submission to males. One of the expected jobs of a woman included bearing children, despite the fact that new mothers frequently experienced post-partum depression. If a woman were sterile, her purposefulness diminished. While the Cult of Domesticity intended to create obliging and competent wives, women frequently reported feeling trapped or imprisoned within the home and within societal expectations put forward by husbands, fathers, and brothers.
For thousands of years, people have used various birth control methods to limit the number of children in their families. Birth control encompasses a wide range of devices along with rational and irrational methods that have been used in an attempt to prevent pregnancy. It has been and remains controversial. Today, birth control is an essential part of life. In fact, 99% American women of childbearing age report using some form of contraception at one time or another (NIBH). In his book, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, author Jonathan Eig writes "For as long as men and women have been making babies, they 've been trying not to” (Gibson). He reports that early contraceptive options offered
When one contemplates the concept of eugenics, few think of modern contraception and abortion when in reality they are one in the same. The American Eugenics Society, founded in 1923, proudly proclaimed that men with incurable “conditions” should be sterilized. However these conditions were often none that could be helped, such as, one’s intelligence, race, and social class (Schweikart and Allen 529-532). The purpose of the society was to create the perfect class of men; elite in all ways. Likewise, Margaret Sanger’s feminist, contraceptive movement was not originally founded with this purpose. It was marketed as a way to control the population and be merciful to those yet to be born, again determined also by race and intelligence. The similarities in purpose actually brought the two organizations together to form a “liberating movement” to “aid women” known today as Planned Parenthood (Schweikart and Allen 529-532). The name may sound harmless, but the movement hid a darker purpose, to wean out the lower and less educated in order to create a perfect class.