Chapter 6

I always found it interesting that it was assumed that women were good teachers because of their “maternal instinct” as if a woman wasn’t placed in such a situation regardless of whether or not they wanted to do such.  Back during the 1820’s when the first traces of a training women to become teachers arose, it was a given that women were to stay home to take care of their own children, so therefore it would make sense to prepare them to take care of all children, and prepare them to be functioning members of society.  I feel this whole argument is extremely faulty and women should have been able to move throughout the educational system’s bureaucracy just as men did.  As I started off earlier, the whole premise that women have this “maternal instinct”, is not something that I feel they’re born with, but rather forced into.  Women have always been placed into the role as caretaker, but I feel that it’s not taken into consideration that they were always forced into this role against their will.  People again, tend to forget that while society continued to become more and more civilized, women tended to want to get out and go to work, start careers, etc. and break away from this idea that they should stay at home because of their “maternal instinct”.  This idea unfortunately kept them grounded for an inordinate amount of time when trying to move up the education system ladder.  As it is probably obvious, my question revolves around the idea of maternal instinct.  In two parts, 1) Do women actually have this maternal instinct or was this view forced upon them due to the oppression they had to deal with? and 2) If they don’t have a maternal instinct, was this just something forced upon them to keep women out of the workplace?