Feminism by Sara Ruddick - Essay Example

A mother's love led to distinctive ways of thinking and became an important resource to female politics (176).

Representing women, she claimed that a mother who trained his/her child on how to uphold peace was a soldier in her field (Duane and Warren, 89). Children would be taught at home and in schools on how to adopt peaceful methods of conflict resolution. Children would be taught at home and in schools on how to adopt peaceful methods of conflict resolution. She gathered most of her data from military families to prove that mothering was a practice and not an obligation (Page, 177).

 Sara relates goals and practices whereby she argues that maternal practices provided peaceful thinking criteria to children. She criticizes military thought by introducing peaceful maternal care. According to (Duane and Warren, 92), children who knew conflict resolution later became leaders in the society who preached peace and not war. She used feminist-related ethics to cause awareness of peace programs (Ruddick, 15). Mothers were advised to teach their children ways of preventing future wars. She also requested that men on the battlefield should think like fathers and sons, but not soldiers. She also believed that mothers should look at soldiers as if they were their husbands and not as cold-hearted soldiers (Duane and Warren, 92).

When men were on the battlefield, they killed each other leading to the loss of fathers and sons in families that they had left back at home. Women, on the other hand, were left lonely and had the sole duty to take care of the children (Walters, 60). Ruddick used this opportunity to create awareness and bring maternal ethics to various homes. She suggested that the mothers and teachers should coach their children on the available peace programs in schools (Ruddick, 36). They would be ‘soldiers at home' who would lead to a peaceful generation, which would not lead to any deaths (Walters, 82).

She unveiled that the female gender had their role too in the quest for peace just like the male gender, which was well fit for peaceful situations through violence (Walters, 83). However, she claimed that the maternal practice would lead to an increase in female leaders. According to her philosophy ideologies, women leaders would be more sympathetic and their emotions would help them fight for peace. There would be no wars and conflicts in a world where leadership styles were adopted right from childhood behaviors (Duane and Warren, 95). These behaviors would be instilled through a three-way process by mothers and include preserving the child's life, promoting growth through ethical maternal skills, and guiding the child to be socially acceptable. She based her feminist principles on these elements that include resistance, reconciliation, peacekeeping, nurturing, and renunciation (Ruddick, 13).