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The impulse behind the reverence for mother and the nostalgia regarding childhood and home also stemmed from a desire to reinstate authority and simplicity in a complex, shifting world. Competition between the sexes and the assertiveness of women were part of a modernity that Baptists dreaded and built defenses against while, at the same time, embracing. On the part of the more thoughtful, however, the changes had implications more devastating than the loss of the image of Mother standing at the door of a country cottage. The destructive element they feared was a separation of the interests of the sexes or a

war between the sexes."
Different spheres of operation (male, economic; female, domestic) were gradually accepted during the 1880-1920 period, when many Texans moved from a rural to an urban setting. But at some level, they asserted, the interests of the sexes must coincide--specifically, in their offspring--or civilization was endangered.
The world can still go on while nations war against nations,
a minister warned,
“but when in every house there is war declared between man and woman there comes the end, with the race wiped out and the devil in possession of the planet.”

BS , May 23, 1895, p. 5.

Another insisted that the sexes must finally have a basis of respect for one another; cynicism about the opposite sex would end in
hatred for the whole race and the God who made them.

BS , March 2, 1893, p. 3.

Baptist women's liberation did not reach the point of denying an organic connection with men or disclaiming the satisfaction derived from having children. They modified the paternalistic model of marriage by making their influence felt and by claiming the role of a partner. In the final analysis, however, they accepted male authority, but they did so more on a voluntary basis than from fear and awe. Their ideological and emotional bias in favor of order and tradition kept them committed to monogamous marriage, the most advantageous arrangement they could conceive for channeling sexual attraction along a civilized course. Divorce remained infrequent and was acceptable only on the basis of the unfaithfulness of one of the partners, with equal disfavor shown toward either the man or woman who broke the marriage vow.

Motherhood remained a strong ideal through the end of the period, and women remained basically committed to nurturing and teaching children. There was a growing acceptance of a woman's remaining childless and unmarried, but the majority still took delight in rearing children and those children praised the influence of their mothers. Their passive-aggressive model of mothering often developed into the currently unfashionable excesses of "martyrdom" and involvement in adult children's lives, but a strong commitment to authority—to respect for self-denial and for one's elders—cast those parental admonitions in a different light. "Mother's apron strings" were seen as a lifeline rather than a noose.

Most women differentiated between their organic connection to their husband and children and their arbitrary consignment to household drudgery and isolation. They felt increasing freedom to simplify household tasks so they could take on wider religious, educational, and civic responsibilities (and, no doubt, to experience more leisure). Although sacrifice for one's children was still a commendable act, "self-sacrificing traditions" of domestic life were expendable. Movement to urban areas decreased the amount of time women spent gardening and keeping livestock, giving them greater mobility; those who could afford it simplified their routines even further with electricity and labor-saving devices. Some cautioned that women needed discipline and confinement to remain properly religious, but most gladly reduced their household servitude. These emancipated daughters' struggle with "the dear old crones" who thought they should still be curing hams and knitting socks was illustrated in a delightful allegory related by Waco pastor J. M. Dawson:

Such women [dear old crones] are in truth like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her ducklings to the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is left but baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to it, and walk about with anxious quack trying to induce them to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far-off the delicious drippings of the new dam which has been built higher up to catch the water, and they smell the chick weed and the long grass that is growing beside it and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on baked mud and to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And they leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to seek for new pastures—perhaps to lose themselves on the way; perhaps to find it. To the old mother one is inclined to say: "Ah, good old mother duck, can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the water back into the dried up pond. Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was there, but it is gone forever and would you and yours swim again, it must be in other waters." New machinery, new duties. BS, June 19, 1913, p. 3.

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Source:  OpenStax, Patricia martin thesis. OpenStax CNX. Sep 23, 2013 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11572/1.2
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