Review: The Mother at Home by John S.C. Abbott
The Mother at Home by John S.C. Abbott<
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Commonplace Entry #1
Commonplace Entry #2
Free Online Copy
Following that bibliographic trail took me next to The Mother at Home by John S.C. Abbott, written in 1833. I have read it before, but it was something like 5-6 years ago — at the beginning of my motherhood journey. There were several times that I realized, “Oh, yes! This is where I got that!” Whether “that” be a quote or an idea or a sentiment. I had completely forgotten everything but the first few pages, which I think I had read more than once, but what he has to say about habits of order and neatness were more strongly put even than Elisabeth Elliot’s statements on the subject and I wonder if it wasn’t this that first sowed the nagging questions that have led me on this many-year search for right understanding and right practice in this area. I am afraid I still have years upon years ahead of me in that search, but I have at least found the path, which is something.
Abbott commends the importance of mothers in the life and disposition of her children, emphasizing it perhaps too strongly at times, yet still those strong statements might be the antidote to the disrespect mothers generally receive for seriously taking their young children “in hand” to raise up in an intentional way. His examples certainly tend toward the melodramatic, but such was the times in which he lived.
Abbott lays out a mother’s authority, a child’s duty of obedience to parents, the mother’s duty for religious training and modeling, and also lays great stress upon a mother teaching primarily through example (being what she wants her children to be), upon happiness being a moral obligation to the Christian (and he firmly answers the typical “but, but” sputterings and also lays out how one trains oneself in happiness), upon courtesy and manners being essential outworkings of kindness and self-denial, and upon the preeminent position prayer must hold in a mother’s life. In all, a highly convicting and inspiring read.
It is short, not difficult to read, and available free online, I highly commend it to you as an edifying read.
