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Assignment 4

Women are often told how they should raise their children. Often time if a mother does not live up to society expectations they are subjected as bad mothers/unfitted mother only to have their children taking away by social services and placed in an orphanage home. Women continuously fight against political and social structure to keep their children. Only one slip up and their child or children is taken away. Consequently because of the oppression these women faces Davis and Morgan emphasize in their novel about motherhood and how women are seen and treated based on demography and ideology as their core structure. Morgan emphasis that African women were savage and cannibalism; their only purpose for children is to feed the population. Many of these women didn’t take any pride and consolidation in murdering their children. They only purpose of having children was for survival. These women didn’t portray motherly instinct of protection towards their vulnerable toddlers instead they were simply means of nutriment. Similarly, Davis emphasizes that women did not only fought against slavery but fought for the emancipation to free their children. Davis uses Sojourner Truth to illustrate that women were not only workers but breeders. Even though they rear children they were subjected to giving them away. Like cows and dogs after labor they would return to work with their babies placed with another slave child, retired black midwives or sadly lay their new born at the end of the row of corn in the blazing sun. These women did not have a chance to see their babies grow into a man or woman instead like cows and dogs once their babies were wean they are simply sold . Women fought back when they were told their children will be sold. Davis uses the narrative from Uncle Tom’s Cabin of this good Christian slave house keeper who rebelled against the idea that her son will be sold. She believed if she was a good house keeper to her white family her son would be save only to find out that the family couldn’t provide for the house hold and selling a member was urgent. She soon took her son and ran away. She risked being killed only to protect her son. She loved her son even though blacks were portrayed as breeders and emotionless instead she felt like a mother and did what any mother would do, which is to protect. Both authors writes about motherhood but their conclusion and assumption of motherhood were based on social economy and demography.