In the late 1700’s gender roles were very different than they are now. Men mostly took care of the money and the labor and women took care of the house and kids. It is still somewhat like that today. Usually women stay home with the kids while the men go to work to earn a living for his family, but it is becoming more common for men to be the “stay at home dad”. It isn’t frowned upon today as it would definitely be in the 1700’s. The “Letters of John and Abigail Adams” gave an insight into what the roles were back then and what the men and women really did. The letters showed that the men took care of the business and the work part and the women stayed at home and took care of the kids and the house.
The letters gave …show more content…
From reading the letters I noticed that in the ones that Abigail wrote it was about her health and her kids and in the ones that John wrote was about more of the government and the work aspect of his life. In some letters he didn’t talk much about his family and just what was going on in Philadelphia. He didn’t seem to ask about their well-being much and he talked mostly about congress. For example, John said “Having a leisure moment, while the congress is assembling, I gladly embrace it to write you a line” (Adams). This is the first line in John’s first letter to Abigail in 1774. He later on talked about his first meeting with congress and how it went. In the next few letters that he wrote he talks about independence from England and he very little mentions his kids or his wife. This shows that he is focusing on his work more than his family. In his last letter he brings up how people thought he was more focused on the job more than his family. He said “Do my friends think that I have been a Politician so long as to have lost all feeling? Do they suppose I have forgotten my wife and children?” This quote also proves that he was focused