Many Boston mothers of the 1830's avidly read Abbott's The Mother at Home in hopes that this book would guide them in the proper rearing of their children. This was an age of certainty about how mothers should act if they were to raise their children to be Christian men or women. The instruction given was simplistic and free of anxieties about which psychologic approach or school of thought was correct. The mother was told that she alone was the most powerful influence in the formation of her son's character. A pious, faithful mother, free from what in that Calvinistic society were considered sinful attributes (indolence, permissiveness, and wastefulness) could expect her son to be a credit to society. But if a mother who lacked these "good" qualities, her son might become as great a profligate as did Lord Byron. Abbott sternly warned:
Byron had a mother just the reverse of lady Washington [sic]; and the character of the mother was transferred to the son. We cannot wonder then at his character and conduct, for we see them to be the almost necessary consequences of the education he received, and the scenes witnessed in his mother's parlor. She would at one time allow him to disobey with impunity; again she would fly into a rage and beat him. She thus taught him to defy all authority, human and devine; to indulge without restraint in sin; to give himself up to the power of every maddening passion. It was the mother of Byron who laid the foundation of his pre-eminence in guilt.
Converting Consumerism: A Liturgical-Ethical Application of Critical Realism
