ABSTRACT
When women talked about expansion of their activities – through, for example, voting and other political activities – their critics asked: “What will happen to the babies? Who will take care of the babies?” The women answered their critics in several ways. First, they pointed out that the critics weren’t actually concerned about the babies as much as about whether women would continue to work as housekeepers and household nurses, and stay out of lawmaking. As The Revolution editors say: “We never hear men say that washing, ironing, cooking, blacking their boots, splitting kindling wood, building fires, or any other menial service conflicts with maternity.” Why then all the alarm about women obtaining political rights? “There is something very suspicious, to say the least, in all the anxiety men express on this point” (February 17, 1870).
