According to Hays, there are four historical stages of development in the cultural notions of appropriate mothering in America in 17-20th centuries. In the middle ages, children were viewed as demonic and mothering was viewed as affection mixed with aggression and fear, with mutual obligations mixed with the pursuit of personal advantage. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a value was placed on children, with an emphasis on their innocence, manifested by the separate spaces and activities provided solely for them. This change occurred only in Europe though, as in New England it was believed that mothering should be guided by the Bible, and that children should be shaped by punishment, religious instruction and work. By the 19th century, mothering was influenced by the revolutionary era, and it was believed that mothers should be educated for their role and be "scientifically trained" in reason and overcoming passion, and thus her natural instinct as a woman was no longer adequate for mothering. The last stage, through the early 20th century, shed the idea of rigid scheduling and training, and instead placed emphasis on developing the child's inherent goodness. Mothering focused on developing the child and fulfilling the child's desires.
In Crittenden's view, the main indicators that mothering is devalued in the United States are that stay-at-home mothers are viewed as doing nothing all day long, and their hard work is dismissed as a job in itself. Further, the traditional economic thinking of our society dismisses a housewife's work as she does not bring in any capital, and in every major institution, caregiving on a resume is in fact penalized. Thus, America's business, government and law do not reflect the proclaimed value of child rearing and motherhood. I agree with Crittenden's view that mothering is highly devalued in the US. Mothers who make the sacrifice of quitting their jobs in order to raise a child are later given less societal respect because they "don't work" and "do nothing". While US morals claim to place a huge importance on family values and mothering, the women who do stay at home are seen as inferior to those with jobs that bring money into the home.
According to Collins, the two types of mothering that Black women tend to display are the controlling type and the expressive type. In relation to "motherhood as a symbol of power", the first views motherhood as burdensome and believes it makes them partners in their own oppression by stifling their creativity and ability to work. The latter sees motherhood as a form of self-actualization, and see the values of mothering as a means toward social activism.
According to Edin and Kefalas, the poor women's attitudes on and experiences with marriage and childbearing are that one should wait until they have completed their education and have a job before getting married and especially before having children, with a stress on economic independence as a factor in saving a marriage. However, some of the young poor mothers expressed childrearing as providing them with a sense of purpose in their already spiraling, volatile adolescent lives. Edin and Kefalas state that society must provide these young women with more access to jobs that provide economic independence to lower the rate of teen pregnancy amongst the poor and lift them out of poverty. I agree with this statement, for the lives of these young mothers must be straightened out long before they even become pregnant. None of them wished to have a baby so young, and thus the education system must be fixed, and the women must see their futures as hopeful, with the possibility of acquiring a rewarding job, in order to keep them on track and avoid falling into drugs and early sexual relationships.

According to Hafner-Eaton and Pierce, some prefer to give birth at home with the assistance of a midwife for various reasons. These include the increase in obstetrical attempts to manage childbirth in a "medicalized manner", that home births have lower intervention, complication and mortality rates than hospital births, that midwifes focus on the mother as a whole being, viewing birth as a natural function for a woman, and accordingly that midwifes have a special body of knowledge that obstetricians do not have, achieved through experience and familiarity with the female body. I believe that the best setting for giving birth is wherever the mother feels most comfortable. If knowing that she has immediate medical help in case of a sudden emergency is reassuring to her, then the hospital is probably the best setting, but if comfort, both physical, mental and emotional is more important, then birth at home is the best setting. I was unaware of the popularity of giving birth at home, but now see the appeal in giving birth with the assistance of a midwife instead.
The legal ties between parents and children have changed over time as the law progressively views children more and more as distinct individuals. It still though, views the authority of parents as sacred, and while the law controls education and will take a child away from abusive parents, the general rights of parents are constitutionally protected. Adoption laws have changed starting in 1926 when Parliament in England enacted the Adoption of Children Act; before that, adoption was not recognized. Until 1976, parents with children already were not allowed to adopt. Colonial America passed its first adoption law in Massachusetts in 1851, and by the end of the century adoption laws were recognized nation wide, with little emphasis on blood relations. Historically, the function of adoption was mainly economic-it allowed farming families to pass on their property to their own child, even if adopted; it also allowed for family names to be continued, even if the couple was unable to give birth to a biological child. Today, it is more socially acceptable for a single women who becomes pregnant to keep her baby, yet the desire to adopt is still high, so couples have even transcended stereotypical boundaries of race and are adopting children from other countries.
According to Sharon Hays, the conservative and liberal views of welfare differ vastly. Conservatives stigmatize welfare recipients as lazy, permiscuous and pathologically dependent, and believe that the welfare system perpetuates poverty and promotes the increase of dependence on welfare. Liberals instead argue that any problems of morality within poor families are the result of economic hardship, not the cause, and thus that welfare reform needs to focus on providing better economic care to the poor. The main differences between the requirements introduced by the welfare reform of 1996 and the earlier welfare policies include that earlier policies were marked by the War on Poverty, and the formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization, that equalized aid, created federal poverty programs and Medicaid. 1996 on the other hand, was marked by the renaming of welfare as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and the establishment of the Personal Responsibility Act, which demanded that mothers participate in the paid labor force, and was unsympathetic to the idea that women and children deserved any special protection. The two contradictory visions represented in welfare reform are the liberal feminist individualism view (the Work Plan) and the family values view (the Family Plan) of welfare. The Work Plan presents work requirements as a way of rehabilitating mothers into productive members of society, while the Family plan uses work requirements as punishment for mothers who fail to get married and stay married. The contradictions inherent in welfare reform thus tells us that the values of our society are declining in regards to family and community values, highlighted by unsupervised teens, abortion rates, drug abuse and declining civic engagement.
According to Block, Korteweg and Woodward, countries such as Norway understand poverty as caused by economic and structural factors rather than bad behavior, and thus take a more comprehensive government approach to combating poverty. The prevailing theory of why poor people are poor in the United States is that it is due to personal moral failings, and that people can overcome and avoid poverty through hard work alone. This theory operates as a self-fulfilling prophecy because due to our poorly funded programs which only reach a fraction of the poor, those who need the assistance and do not receive it must break laws to keep their families together, and are thus forced to act in a way that makes them appear to "lack moral character". According to the authors, in order to make the American Dream more accessible to the poor, we must recognize that the war on this "lack of morality" violates our society's fundamental values, and must focus on what policy changes will revise the American Dream to apply to all our citizens. We need universal health care and universal availability of quality child care and preschool programs, as well as affordable housing opportunities, and overall create policies that target the poor more directly.
According to Clawson and Gerstel, we can improve the child care system in the U.S by taking cues from the success of the European systems and following their various models. This includes making child care programs publicly funded and universal, as well as available to all social classes, paying staff about the same as public school teachers, making hours equal to that of the school day. Additionally, parents must be given a significant period of paid parental leave, with the option to share it between both the mother and father. I feel these are important changes that need to be addressed, as the short term difficulties and costs will be far succeeded by the long term positive effects on our children.

According to Felson's article, there exist two perspectives to understanding violence against women- the gender perspective and the violence perspective. The first claims that violence is a form of sexism and study violence against women separately from violence against men. They argue that men assault women in order to maintain their dominance and that most women, due to inferiority, do not report the incidents or get blamed in some way for it. The latter sees theories of violence and crime as a better way to interpret violence against women instead of theories of sexism. It says that separate from gender, men who batter their wives typically commit other crimes as well, and are selfish not sexist. Felson uses evidence acquired from surveys that depict husbands are no more controlling than wives and that perhaps women just find other methods to get their way while men typically resort to violence. My view is that violence against women is a combination of the two perspectives and it is not possible to really distinguish the two. While I do agree with the violence perspective a little more, I feel that since gender issues are so ingrained in our society and ideology, sexism does always play a role, even if it is subconsciously.
Jones's answer to the question posed in her title "Why Doesn't She Leave" is that in most cases that is not such a simple solution. In America's judicial system that was organized by men and is mostly run by men, many of the odds work against women who actually try to take legal action against their assaulters. The system, involving hospitals, courts and social services, often does not work quite to systemically, and actually pursuing action in the system to gain justice proves fruitless and worthless. While some may claim that women don't leave abusive situations because of low self-esteem or psychological problems, Jones states that in fact the odds are against women who try to take legal action. I agree with this opinion entirely, for if a women was guaranteed justice in the system, there would be no women still in abusive relationships. The reality is that often times women come out even more vulnerable and marginalized when they try to take action against their assaulter. This definitely relates to the gender perspective cited by Felson, as the sexist ideal that women are inferior is here shown to be evident in the legal system and society in general. Since men know that the system is in their favor, they may be more inclined to think they can get away with abusive behavior and thus see it as more acceptable and not worthy of punishment or blame.
According to Ptacek, their are many denials and justifications that men use to explain their abusive behavior. The main ones include denial of responsibility, denial of wrongness, the socially approved rationalization of violence, and a neutralization of the harm inflicted. Many contradictions lay in the explanations offered by men. These include that alcohol impairment is a legitimate excuse for abuse, that verbal aggressiveness from a women deserves physical aggression in response, that sexual frustration legitimizes violent action, as does a women not knowing when to be silent, and a women cheating. These last three definitely pertain to the gender perspective on violence. Here men are taking a sexist view that they are entitled to sex and submission, and are taking advantage of their greater strength to assert dominance over their female partner. While these men could fall under the violence perspective as being more violent men in general, aside from abuse against women, there is an overarching idea of male superiority in all of the men's accounts.