Why were women considered incompetent to vote yet competent to raise children?
Pre-Questions
Before studying the documents below, express your own personal feelings
- How did you develop your morals?
- Where did you learn your behaviors?
Analyze the following documents
Treatise of Domestic Economy
Educator Catherine Beecher declared in her Treatise on Domestic Economy in the 1840s
"The family state...is the aptest earthly illustration of the heavenly kingdom and woman its chief minister. The duties of the woman are as sacred and important as any ordained by man."
Quote from Godey's Lady's Book
Godey's Lady's Book in 1856
"Our homes—what is their corner-stone but the virtue of a woman, and on what does social well-being rest but in our homes?...Must we not trace all other blessings of civilized life to the doors of our private dwellings? Are not our hearthstones guarded by holy forms, conjugal, filial and parental love, the corner-stone of church and state of church, more sacred than either, more necessary than both?...Oh! spare our homes."
The One Who Votes (political cartoon)
You Can't Bear Arms (political cartoon)
Give Mother the Vote We Need It (political cartoon)
To The Men of New Jersey (Document) Anti-Suffrage PDF version (0.1MB)
Song: She's Good Enough To Be Your Baby's Mother And She's Good Enough to Vote With You
Anna Chandler (Paley)
Columbia Single #A-1950 (1/1916)
No man is half so good
No man is better than the wife he loves
Her love will guide him
What 'ere beguile him
She's good enough to love you and adore you
She's good enough to bear your troubles for you
And if your tears were falling today
Nobody else would kiss them away
She's good enough to warm your heart with kisses
When your lonesome and blue
She's good enough to be your baby's mother
And she's good enough to vote with you
Man plugs the world in war and sadness
She must protest in vain
Let's hope and pray someday we'll hear her pain
Stop all your madness, I bring you gladness
She's good enough to love you and adore you
She's good enough to bear your troubles for you
And if your tears were falling today
Nobody else would kiss them away
She's good enough to warm your heart with kisses
When your lonesome and blue
She's good enough to be your baby's mother
And she's good enough to vote with you
She's good enough to give you old Abe Lincoln
She good enough to give you Brandon Sherman
Robert E. Lee and Washington too
She was so true she gave them to you
She's good enough to give you Teddy Roosevelt
Thomas A. Edison too.
She's good enough to give you Woodrow Wilson
And she's good enough to vote with you.
Transcribed by Laura Sproul.
Underlined lyrics are in question.
Post-Questions
- Who had the responsibility to teach moral character and conduct? Why?
- How do the above cartoons and quotes celebrate women (Do not use the document To The Men of New Jersey to answer this question)?
- How do the cartoons and quotes contradict the feelings toward women as expressed in the document To the Men of New Jersey?
- Who has the responsibility to teach moral character and conduct today? Please explain your answer
Answer the central questions, please be specific.
- Why Were Women Considered Incompetent To Vote Yet Competent To Raise Children?