Caroline and Charles Ingalls \u2013 the real Ma and Pa<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nEvery few years in homeschooling circles, people seem to grasp onto one book or another and it becomes the thing to do to sing its praises. Fourteen years ago, when I started the homeschooling adventure, it was Peter Rabbit and all things Beatrix Potter. Moms gushed about tea partied in their gardens and how they were bringing this beloved classic to life.<\/p>\n
These days the fad seems to be the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Moms everywhere I go seem to be gushing about the manliness of Pa and the virtues of Ma. Caroline Ingalls is held up to be a sort of paragon of motherhood and a model for us all to follow.<\/p>\n
Yesterday at co-op, I said something about needing to clean my house when an acquaintance of my said knowingly, \u201cYou know, Ma didn\u2019t clean her house every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was momentarily confused. Ma? Was she talking about her own mother? Her grandmother?<\/p>\n
She must have seen it on my face, because she said with a tinkling laugh, \u201cYou know\u2026Ma Ingalls?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom Little House on the Prairie<\/em>?\u201d I asked skeptically, but then she nodded her head with a smile.<\/p>\nFirst of all, I\u2019m pretty sure that she\u2019s wrong and Ma cleaned that tiny cabin every single day except Sundays. Can you imagine the mess of all of those children and a farmer husband in one room? You\u2019d have to sweep it out, at a bare minimum, every day. Plus, there\u2019s absolutely nothing in those books that leads me to believe that that woman ever<\/em> slacked off and let things slide.<\/p>\nMa freaking Ingalls. To be honest with you,\u00a0I never liked Ma. She\u2019s right up there with my least liked literary characters, and is one of the moms I most don\u2019t want to be. Have these people even read these books? Ma was the reason I stopped reading them when I was a child, and is one of the reasons\u00a0why we hurry past\u00a0them when we cover Westward Expansion in American History. (There are other books. I promise.)<\/p>\n
So why don\u2019t I want to be like Ma? Here\u2019s a few of my top reasons (but certainly not the whole list)<\/p>\n
1. Can we start with the fact that she was a racist? Ma hated Indians. Hated them<\/em>. Even when they saved the Ingalls\u2019 skin, and Pa and Laura begged her to be nice to them\u2026she hated them.\u00a0\u201cWhy don\u2019t you like Indians, Ma?\u201d Laura asks. \u201cI just don\u2019t like them; and don\u2019t lick your fingers, Laura,\u201d Ma said.<\/span><\/p>\nYou can talk to me about how she was a product of her time..blah, blah, blah\u2026but we\u2019re not talking about then, are we? We\u2019re talking about the people who absolutely adore and admire her now. She was a big old racist. We can debate over whether or not that was okay when she lived, but it\u2019s absolutely a moral failing today.<\/p>\n
2. Does she ever hug those kids? Does she ever just snuggle up and love on them? There are all kinds of stories about her teaching and training them, and worrying about their morals and manners, but there\u2019s not a whole lot of cuddling going on in the Ingalls household. It\u2019s surprising to me how many attachment parenting moms, who believe so strongly in the value of physical closeness and affection, idolize this woman who seems to embody the opposite of what they espouse. I want to be the mom who loves on my children and lets them smoosh into me for comfort. I don\u2019t want to be like Ma.<\/p>\n
3. She flipped out over hair ribbons. Do you even remember her reaction when Mary and Laura switched ribbons so that they could each try out a new color and Ma acted like the world was ending and she was the worst mom ever<\/em>? Seriously. They were hair ribbons. Did it really matter that the girls wanted to wear each other\u2019s for the day? Who did it hurt? Nobody. Who ended up getting hurt? The feelings of the two little girls who just wanted to swap. (If you don\u2019t think they cared, remember that Laura wrote about the incident in her memoirs. She cared. I promise.) I don\u2019t want to be like Ma. I don\u2019t want to waste time worrying about the small stuff.<\/p>\n4. How have they forgotten CHARLOTTE!?!?<\/h1>\n
Do you remember Laura\u2019s doll Charlotte? Her ONLY doll? The one that she took immaculate care of? (P.S. My kids don\u2019t have any toys that they take care of\u00a0the way that Laura did Charlotte. It\u2019s clearly time for a toy purge around here.) What happened to that doll? Do you remember?<\/p>\n
Another family came to visit with their young daughter who unraveled Charlotte\u2019s hair and loosened one of her eye buttons, and then threw a major temper tantrum when it was time to go because she wanted to keep Laura\u2019s doll. And then? Ma made her give Charlotte to that bratty kid.<\/p>\n
Then, later in the story, Laura found Charlotte frozen in a muddy puddle all bald-headed, one-eyed, and with half of her mouth gone!!!!!<\/p>\n
(I\u2019d like to add that I am not a fan of the other girl\u2019s mom either. Who lets their kid behave this way? Why not send the beloved doll back or pass it on to someone else when it was obvious that her own child didn\u2019t want it?)<\/p>\n
I could go on, but after Charlotte, what\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not trying to say that I think Ma Ingalls was a horrible woman. I\u2019m sure that she was a fairly typical woman in her time. I think that she was absolutely doing the best she could in amazingly difficult circumstances. (The isolation and constant upheaval by themselves would be enough to level most of us.) I just don\u2019t think she\u2019s the amazing example of motherhood these women are holding her out to be. (Laura skipped her mother\u2019s funeral for a reason.) There is much in her example of sheer will and determination to succeed and survive that we can benefit from today. Her relationship with her husband is a testament to the bond of marriage. But the exemplar of all things woman? I just don\u2019t see it. I don\u2019t understand the infatuation with Caroline Ingalls. (From the books. The TV show Ma is a whole different woman.)<\/p>\n
While we\u2019re all free to pick our own heroes and set them upon our own pedestals, she\u2019s never been, and never will be, one of mine. When looking for heroic motherhood, I look a little closer to home\u00a0\u2013\u00a0The Blessed Mother is the girl for me. All others don\u2019t even\u00a0come close.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 Every few years in homeschooling circles, people seem to grasp onto one book or another and it becomes the thing to do to sing its praises. Fourteen years ago, when I started the homeschooling adventure, it was Peter Rabbit and all things Beatrix Potter. Moms gushed about tea partied in their gardens and how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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