"Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother"

Republican Motherhood

Rosemarie Zagarri's 1992 article re-imagines the intellectual roots of the concept of Republican Motherhood. Taking Linda Kerber's original conception as a starting point, Zagarri examines the roots of Republican Motherhood in early America in the Scottish Enlightenment. She specifically pinpoints key ideas in Scottish Enlightenment theory -- including "a sociological understanding of the family, a four-stage theory of history, and a characterological concept of 'manners'" (193) -- as intellectual underpinnings of Republican Motherhood. In so doing, Zagarri expands and deepens Kerber's original thesis, in which Republican Motherhood was created out of whole cloth as a gender-specific outcome of the revolutionary era.

Rosemarie Zagarri

1992

journal article

eng

Zagarri, Rosemarie. "Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother." American Quarterly, 44 2 (June, 1992): 192-215.