Every year, American Mothers Inc., an organization that has long supported and honored moms, gives a “Mother of the Year Award” to one of the nominees from around the country. All the candidates have made a positive impact on their families and communities. Certainly, countless thousands of other mothers deserve such recognition as well.
America will observe its 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in summer 2026. Yet in my mind, that semiquincentennial celebration of our nation properly kicked off on April 19, 1775, with the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Consequently, there’s no better time than now to recognize a woman who best represents American motherhood since the birth of our nation. Furthermore, there’s no better candidate for the “Mother of the American Semiquincentennial Award” than the wife of Founding Father John Adams and a founder of our nation in her own right, Abigail Adams (1744–1818).
Here’s why.
A Loving Guide
Of the six children born to John and Abigail Adams, only four lived to adulthood: Abigail, nicknamed “Nabby,” John Quincy, Charles, and Thomas.Because John was gone from home for long periods of time, both to Philadelphia and to Europe, the husband and wife corresponded frequently. More than 1,100 of these letters remain, treasures containing their opinions on politics, public figures, and their personal circumstances.
What’s also striking is the attention paid to education. Here, Abigail and John often resemble 21st-century parents when discussing which academic subjects and moral principles they wished to see instilled in their children.
In 1782, for instance, Abigail wrote to John from their Braintree, Massachusetts, home, lamenting the lack of notable local schools. She worried over the cost of a boarding school, then added, as many other moms might: “I could not live in the House were it so deserted. If they are gone only for a day, it is as silent as a Tomb.” The next year, she shared her concerns about her sons’ schooling as they grew older: “I have a thousand fears for my dear Boys as they rise into Life, the most critical period of which is I conceive, at the university; there infidelity abounds, both in example and precepts.”
Nearly a decade earlier, when John Quincy was 7 years old, Abigail wrote to her husband that she had retained a tutor for him rather than sending him to a local school for reasons of virtue. “I have always thought it [illegible] of very great importance that children should in the early part of life be unaccustomed to such examples as would tend to corrupt the purity of their words and actions. … These first principle[s] which grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength neither time nor custom can totally eradicate.”
Several months after 10-year-old John Quincy had gone to Europe with his father on a diplomatic mission, Abigail wrote to tell her son how much she missed him, then added: “Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation, unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them. Adhere to those religious sentiments and principles which were early instilled into your mind and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.”
There was in Abigail a bit of the tiger mom, especially regarding her children’s character, but that ferocity was always tempered by maternal affection.
Homemaker and Family Manager
Today, we would call Abigail a stay-at-home mom. And just like so many of today’s mothers who manage everything from family finances to getting kids to the soccer field and caring for an elderly parent, Abigail Adams had her hands full. John’s frequent absences forced her to double up on duties such as directing farm operations and business affairs. Unusually for that day, she also built up the family’s fortunes through overseeing investments.Just like today’s moms, Abigail fulfilled duties and performed chores necessary for the well-being of her family, in particular for her children.
Patriot, Feminist, and Loving Wife
Abigail also served as an example of character for her children in other ways. She was staunchly supportive of the American battle for liberty, teaching her children, as her son John Quincy wrote after her death, “unbounded devotion to the cause of their country.” For her time, she was also a feminist, writing her husband in 1776 that “I long to hear that you have declared an independency” and “would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.” She wished in particular that women receive equal rights to property and education.Abigail’s love for her husband, and his love in return, are well-documented in their correspondence, the observations of friends, and their mutual dependence on each other for advice. She continually referred to John in those letters as “my dearest friend,” and her last words to him before dying were: “Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long.”
Following her death, her son John Quincy wrote, “She had been fifty-four years the delight of my father’s heart, the sweetener of all his toils, the comforter of all his sorrows, the sharer and heightener of all his joys.”
Such a marriage often undergirds strong and admirable parenting.
Failure
John Quincy Adams became the sixth president of the United States, thereby fulfilling his father’s hopes.His three siblings fared less well. Nabby’s husband speculated in real estate and became bankrupt, and Nabby herself died at 48 of breast cancer. While at Harvard University, Charles was disciplined for drinking and streaking naked across the campus. After a wild existence, he became an attorney, married, deserted his wife and children, and was dead at age 30, either from alcoholism or a disease of the lungs. Thomas became a locally successful politician, but was also an alcoholic before dying at age 60.
Some modern biographers and historians have blamed John and Abigail for Charles’s problems, criticizing their standards as too rigid, but as Daryl Austin demonstrates in his article “The Truth About John and Abigail Adams as Parents,” their high expectations and moral precepts were the norm for their day. The spirit of that time, for instance, held that “reason ought to govern the passions, that a well-governed self was temperate and balanced, and that religious piety ought to be infused with a concern for good and virtuous behavior.”
Should the example of the dissolute Charles disqualify Abigail as a mother worthy of our admiration? Not at all. Many women then and now have given the best of themselves to their children, making enormous sacrifices on their behalf, only to see those same children become adults who go astray in a hundred different ways. Some become addicts, like Charles, while others may cut Mom and Dad completely out of their lives for the comparative trivialities of opposing political beliefs.
As Abigail knew well, being a diligent, loving mother entails risks and disappointments.
To Mothers Everywhere
With every visit to my favorite coffee shop, the public library, and my church, I see mothers with their children. Their parenting styles vary, but like Abigail Adams, their love for their daughters and sons is visible, as is their desire to raise them to become good adults.So, here’s to all you good moms, whoever and wherever you are: By your deeds and words, you are shaping not only the future of your children but also the future of our country.
