Republican Motherhood - Long-term Influence

Long-term Influence

Although the notion of republican motherhood initially encouraged women in their private roles, it eventually resulted in increased educational opportunities for American women, as typified by Mary Lyon and the founding in 1837 of "Mount Holyoke Female Seminary", later Mount Holyoke College. The ideal produced women with initiative and independence; as Kerber says, it was "one side of an inherently paradoxical ideology of republican motherhood that legitimized political sophistication and activity." Educated Northern women became some of the strongest voices and organizers of the abolitionist movement, which blossomed in the 1830s and 1840s. Working on civil rights for enslaved people caused women to want more power for themselves, giving rise to the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, and the women's rights movement in the United States. They worked for suffrage, property rights, legal status and child custody in family disputes. The movement likely owes a debt to the emphasis on republican motherhood of fifty years before.