Anyone else bothered by the morals in the Little House books?

[MoyaPechal]

We're reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and I forgot how much they made me want to scream sometimes as a child. I thought maybe I was just remembering them that way because I was a child when I read them, but no. Blonde hair is better than brown hair! Even thinking about disobeying due to unforeseen extreme circumstances means you get yelled at! You have to give all of your new special beads to your baby sister who can't even wear them or else you're selfish! Everything is so over-the-top authoritarian and if Laura doesn't act like a perfect saint with no material attachments, she gets called naughty and bad. It's honestly kind of dreadful. I want my daughter to share things and be kind and I set that example. But the message that if you don't willingly and cheerfully give up everything you want/have, then you're a bad person is really bothering me.

[maize]

I agree with you about a lot of this.

You can either not read them to your kids/not give them to your kids to read or go ahead and read them and discuss the things that need discussion.

I did rather like Farmer Boy.

[MoyaPechal]

22 minutes ago, maize said:

I agree with you about a lot of this.

You can either not read them to your kids/not give them to your kids to read or go ahead and read them and discuss the things that need discussion.

I did rather like Farmer Boy.

My daughter really likes the books, so we're just discussing things as they come up. I know people really were expected to act like this back then, but it's infuriating haha. My daughter was genuinely horrified by the description of what people used to do on Sundays. No coloring books in the pews back then!

[MoyaPechal]

2 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I grew up reading these books and loved them. I read the first one to my DD and was shocked. I know they are considered almost Scriptural in the homeschool world but I never forced them on my DD because of the issues you raised. 

LIW and her daughter were both very critical of the New Deal and those books were written with the goal of promoting individualism. Some might say that they are propaganda. LIW's daughter was a strong libertarian. I don't think I'd go far enough to claim they are propaganda but they are definitely a romanticized telling of LIW's traumatic childhood. Charles Ingalls had many issues. He dragged his family from place to place because he couldn't settle down. His children all suffered long term health consequences because of childhood malnutrition caused by his irresponsibility. 

Ohhhh I never knew about that agenda. That makes a lot of sense! And yeah I can't believe that every time they start to settle into a place, he forces them to move again. At least in the big woods, they were near family.

[Garga]

I read them as a kid and gobbled them up and loved them.

I read one of them aloud to my kids and was pretty horrified at various things in the books.  It’s been a few years, so I don’t remember things specifically, but I do remember thinking that I didn’t like Ma at all and hated her parenting style.

I never bothered to read more to the kids and they never even noticed.  They’re boys, so they weren’t as interested in reading them as girls might be.

 

[historically accurate]

I loved them as a kid, but I noticed a lot of problems with them reading them as an adult.

I did read them to the kids, and we ended up with lots of discussions. They loved all things pioneer for a while, so the LIW books simply became one more "pioneer" book as we dug deep into that time period. We visited all of the LIW sites over the years on our travels which was kind of cool. 

[Gobblygook]

These are the books that turned me into a reader. I devoured them in elementary school! We lived within driving distance of several of their homes and visited them on family vacations. I have such good memories of reading those books.

Several years ago, I read Little House in the Big Woods to my kids. It went fairly well, although I did edit a bit on the fly. My kids showed no interest in the other books and I didn’t read the others to them because they weren’t that interested and there are SO MANY good books to read and just not enough time. Another childhood favorite, Anne of Green Gables, has become a favorite of my daughter, as well, though. 

[Hillcottagemom]

My kids didn't enjoy the Little House series but, like many others have said, I loved them as a kid and didn't notice the problematic elements back then. We just read Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park. It's set during the same time as the LH books, but the protagonist is a girl whose mom was Chinese and whose father is white. At the end of the book, Park says that this story was her answer to the Little House books, which she also loved as a child. 

[madteaparty]

I’m bothered by a couple of things including how boring these books are. 

[Terabith]

I loved them as a child, but when I started reading them to my kids, I found them pretty problematic.  I had to do a lot of editorializing, and we kind of gave up when we got to the part of On the Banks of Plum Creek where Laura was forced to give away her doll.  That was the last straw.  

Farmer Boy is a lot better.  

ETA:  And that doesn't even get into the stuff about how awful Pa is and the attitudes towards Native Americans.  LOT of editorializing.  I think they're kind of like Doctor Doolittle books:  great stories that I could never hand to a child to read independently.  

Edited January 22, 2021 by Terabith

[wendyroo]

I am concerned by some things in the books, but my kids LOVE them. Like insanely love them. In the last year we have read through ALL of them back to back to back. When we finished The First Four Years, all four of my kids were in favor of starting back at the beginning, but I put my foot down - it was time to move on. My 7 year old actually chose to independently read The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Really, regardless of my qualms, Little House books rank #2 in my kids' hall of fame, right below Thornton Burgess animal stories. So, as I trudged through reading them I was mindful of some of the problematic themes. Some I just outright edited - I changed words, omitted sentences, truncated quotes. Others I left as written, but took the time to discuss with the kids.

I guess, in the end, I'm glad I read them to the kids. They clearly resonated, painted a picture of life in a different time and place, give us all shared vocabulary and context, and led us to some important discussions about various issues. I would not be comfortable with any of my kids reading them independently. My oldest is only 11, and most of my kids have mental health and neurodevelopmental challenges that make flexible thinking and perspective taking difficult. For now I need to be careful with books that have likable, admirable characters espousing views that are immoral by today's standards. That's not to say that my kids are not exposed to those types of multi-faceted characters, but so far I need to be part of the reading process to help them see the different points of view.

[BakersDozen]

There are things in the LH series that bother me but we read them and discuss those things. I still find them to be most enjoyable as do my children. If there are uncomfortable situations/topics I don't gloss over or skip them as the lessons learned for how not to be/believe are strong. Mostly I don't try to read the books from my adult POV rather that of a child's and that's where the loveliness and richness of the books lies, I believe.

[Garga]

34 minutes ago, df3121 said:

One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. I mean, I'm truly not sure why that is so hard for you to understand. 

Much of what you're so upset that she left out, is inappropriate for a children's book! Just because she sanitized her life's story doesn't make it less accurate regarding the era. 

Especially when historians have confirmed the details. 

At any rate, this seems to be some sort of issue for you, so I'd say it's best to end this here. 

There is a bit of Libertarian propaganda in the books. 

These books are a mixture of things: how things were done in the past, past attitudes toward various people groups, a watering down of the darker things in life for children to read.  They are meant to tell Laura’s life, but they are also meant to be fiction, so I’m ok with embellishments and made up scenes.

But also, they were written to influence children (and probably any parents reading the books to their children) toward a specific political way of thinking. Maybe it’s not a lot, but it’s there and it seems that it was somewhat deliberately done.

Here’s an article about it, one of many:  https://www.history.com/news/little-libertarians-on-the-prairie-the-hidden-politics-behind-a-childrens-classic

[daijobu]

5 hours ago, MoyaPechal said:

We're reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and I forgot how much they made me want to scream sometimes as a child. I thought maybe I was just remembering them that way because I was a child when I read them, but no. Blonde hair is better than brown hair! 

Have you got to the part where the Native Americans are evicted from their lands?  Ma has some choice words to describe them!  

Still I didn't mind so much because I think it's apparent this reflects the attitudes of people from a long time ago.  I appreciate the honesty, and it's remarkably how attitudes have changed.  Does anyone remember how in the Beverly Cleary books, Ribsy is fed horse meat?  HORSE MEAT people!  How weird is that, and it wasn't that long ago.  

OTOH, I think attempts to update or sanitize books is a disservice.  I remember reading some Fudge book to the kids and we were cruising along with a vaguely 1970s vibe, when at a birthday party some character receives a Walkman for a present.  And I'm think Walkman?  And I'm looking it up in Wikipedia, and sure enough Walkmans weren't released until 1983, and so what kind of seer is Judy Blume?  Turns out, some well-intentioned people decided they needed to update her books for a new generation of readers.  And of course, ironically, but the time we got to reading it, not only was it anachronistic, but also out of date once again!  (My kids didn't even know what Walkmans were.)  

[Terabith]

9 hours ago, wendyroo said:

I am concerned by some things in the books, but my kids LOVE them. Like insanely love them. In the last year we have read through ALL of them back to back to back. When we finished The First Four Years, all four of my kids were in favor of starting back at the beginning, but I put my foot down - it was time to move on. My 7 year old actually chose to independently read The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Really, regardless of my qualms, Little House books rank #2 in my kids' hall of fame, right below Thornton Burgess animal stories. So, as I trudged through reading them I was mindful of some of the problematic themes. Some I just outright edited - I changed words, omitted sentences, truncated quotes. Others I left as written, but took the time to discuss with the kids.

I guess, in the end, I'm glad I read them to the kids. They clearly resonated, painted a picture of life in a different time and place, give us all shared vocabulary and context, and led us to some important discussions about various issues. I would not be comfortable with any of my kids reading them independently. My oldest is only 11, and most of my kids have mental health and neurodevelopmental challenges that make flexible thinking and perspective taking difficult. For now I need to be careful with books that have likable, admirable characters espousing views that are immoral by today's standards. That's not to say that my kids are not exposed to those types of multi-faceted characters, but so far I need to be part of the reading process to help them see the different points of view.

Wendy, have your kids read The Birchbark House series?  It has a lot of the flavor of the Little House books, but it's from the perspective of members of an Ojibwe tribe and family.  My kids loved it, and I didn't have the same issues of values held by admirable characters that were immoral by today's standards.  It was from the perspective of people who are definitely the underdogs, in comparison to the white colonizers, but they were far less ethically problematic, and my kids really enjoyed them, up there with Thornton Burgess and E. Nesbit books and My Side of the Mountain (and for one child, the Oz books).  I highly recommend them.  

[Matryoshka]

12 minutes ago, df3121 said:

The Birchbark House is a series?! What are the others?

https://www.goodreads.com/series/96975-birchbark-house

[Ausmumof3]

I don’t think the books necessarily give that approach to parenting a tick of approval though.  They seem to me like a story of how things were more than a story of exactly how things should be.  I always got the feeling that Laura had a preference for Pa over Ma somehow.  And you get little glimpses of the disagreements between the parents and where Laura feels that they are being unfair.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Although the books were perhaps meant as moral lessons when they were written, I have never read them that way, either as a child or an adult.  They are an embellished snapshot of life on the frontier amongst still-strongly-puritanical Americans.  It doesn't bother me to read them at all, it's just, "Oh, how curious that people lived that way once."

 

The books that get our eyes rolling are the McGuffey Readers.  I have not found a better set of graded readers that prepares children to read classics, but as we open them each day, my kids and I say, "I wonder what badly behaved child is going to die or kill someone by accident this time...😂"  We just read the lesson about bats this week with one of my kids, and the little, vaguely accurate science lesson ends with a fable about a bat pretending to be alternately a bird and a mouse in order to escape from an owl and a cat.  The fable ends with the line, "The meaning of this fable is that a person playing a double part may sometimes escape danger; but he is always, like the bat, a creature that is disgusting to everybody, and shunned by all."  🤣🤣🤣  We laughed ourselves silly with that one.  And lest we fear the books are wholly devoid of educational fodder, by older dd suddenly said, "Oh!  Like Snape!"

 

[Matryoshka]

As an adult, I have mixed feelings about the books.

I absolutely loved them as a kid.  And I even loved them again when we listened to the audios as a family (helpful because we could discuss things as they came up).  And they had fiddle music.

But having read biographies about LIW, I fully acknowledge that they were written expressly with propaganda in mind.  All the messages of self-reliance and no handouts skip that the family could not have done any of that moving without free land from the government, and the gov't also paid for Mary's 7 years of boarding school.  I am not one of those who thinks Rose ghost-wrote these, but I do think her editing very much helped shape the narrative.  Rose was an acolyte of Ayn Rand, and the royalties from these books went in large part to fund libertarian politicians over more than one generation (Rose's protégé inherited the royalties from her and himself ran for president on the Libertarian ticket).

And I still love the books.  As someone said upthread, it's hard to disentangle from things you loved as a child.  Sigh.

[MoyaPechal]

Oh don't get me started on what Ma and Pa say about the Indians. My daughter gets really sad because we've read a lot of nice books about Native Americans. 

She loves these books but I'm not sure I'll buy the rest. We're definitely having a lot of discussions about how people treated the Natives and about how some of the parenting decisions are unfair.

[dirty ethel rackham]

I loved these books as a child and credit them for making me a reader as well.  We didn't have lots of books in our house, but my best friend had this series and they lent the books to me.  I devoured them.  I do remember being bothered by the parenting, but it really wasn't that far from my own parents' attitudes ( or at least, I internalized them that way.)  I always saw Pa as the fun parent and Ma as the law.  I know that wasn't accurate, but I felt Ma's constant disapproval through the pages of the book.  I remember being horrified by the attitudes toward the Native Americans, but I did get the sense that Laura felt differently about them than her parents.  I also remember having the sense that Pa had some respect for them, but was clueless about how his actions affected them.  In the Long Winter, he was the only one who was willing to listen to the warnings from the Native Americans who tried to warn them about the upcoming winter.  I also got the impression from that book that community caring for each other was essential for survival.  So, if their goal was to promote individualism, it had the opposite effect on me.  

I think I may have verbalized some of these "puzzling things" to my best friend's mom and I think she may have offered some criticism to the ideas presented.  She was way more progressive than my parents.  

When reading aloud to my kids, I started with Farmer Boy, since my oldest was a boy.  My oldest was like me in seeing them as a product of their time, not internalizing their attitudes.  I did some editorializing when I encountered problematic areas.  My middle child would often express his feelings about some of these issues and that often led to some interesting discussions.  My youngest daughter was way more bothered by these themes and challenged me having this as part of our homeschool plan. 

I have to acknowledge the conflict between my childhood memories of falling in love with these books and seeing them through modern eyes.  

[J-rap]

I'm another one who devoured the series as a kid.  Probably the first real chapter books I read and absolutely loved.  After that, I only wanted to read pioneer books!  I didn't pick up on any of the issues you mention.  My kids read some of them, but they weren't required reading and I didn't read them again.  I don't think they loved them as much as I did though.  I should read them again as an adult.  It's always kind of shocking what I didn't pick up on years ago, that now seem to have glaring issues.

I've thought that with movies too.  We'd sometimes rent movies as a family that both my dh and I had watched in the 70's thinking they were fun and family-friendly, but soon realize we definitely didn't want our kids watching them!

 

[Terabith]

6 hours ago, df3121 said:

 

The Birchbark House is a series?! What are the others?

Birchbark House, Game of Silence, The Porcupine Year, Chicakdee, Makoons

[AnneGG]

My dad read the series aloud to me when I was in 1st grade. I always thought I loved the books, but maybe it was just the memory of him reading to me. When I tried to listen to the audiobook with DS I had to turn it off. I was stunned at how horrible it was. We do like the Little House picture books. 
 

Everyone seems to like Farmer Boy, I may add that to our read aloud list next year.