Why was motherhood barely mentioned as a discrete role in eighteenth-century sermons? And why, beginning in the 1830s, did it become the foucs of attention in domestic manuals and other forms of popular literature addressed to middle-class women? Maxine L. Margolis examines these and other questions about the changing roles of middle-class women. Her conclusion is that "we have come to think of as inevitable and biologically necessary is in great measure a consequence of our society's particularly social and economic system." She cites the influence of such variables as household versus industrial production, a manufacturing versus a service-oriented economy, the demand or lack of demand for women's labor, the economy's need for "high quality" employees, and the changing costs and benefits of rearing the middle-class children who would become those employees. This convincing analysis asserts that there are well-defined material cuases for ceontempoary attutides toward women and work, for new ideas about child rearing, for the changing nature of housework, and for the revival of feminism. -- From publisher's description.