The Mother at Home

John Stevens Cabot Abbott (1805 – 1877) was an American historian and pastor. But he became most famous as a pedagogical writer owing to the success of this little work, The Mother at Home. 

As Abbott writes in the preface, 

“The Mother at Home [was] written simply with the view of affording to mothers in the common walks of life, plain and simple instruction in respect to the right discharge of their maternal duties, and, at the same time, some practical aid in leading the minds of their children to proper views of their obligations to God, to their parents, and to one another. 

If a parent reads and explains the Mother at Home to her children, they will derive great benefit from the exercise, as they will thus be taught to realize something of the nature and the weight of the responsibilities, the duties, and the cares which such a trust as that which is committed to a mother necessarily brings. They will thus the more readily acquiesce in the measures adopted for their good, and submit to the authority which ought to be exercised over them; and they may be expected also to imbibe, in some degree, the Christian spirit which the book inculcates.”