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Belief in Motherhood Versus Its Results
Gilman contrasts society's near-religious reverence for maternal instinct with the actual evidence — high infant mortality, poor child health — and argues that most children are, in practice, raised by mothers acting as untrained domestic servants, not as trained caregivers.
Reverence for maternity versus documented outcomesInfant mortality and child health as evidenceMothers as untrained "domestic servants by trade"Separating the roles bundled into "home and family"The shift from dependence to independence as a needed rearrangement