Emotional thoughts...

"Rose Wilder Lane Rant / Prairie Fires"

https://www.reddit.com/r/littlehouseonprairie/s/GVhDw1H6j2

It feels like another possible way to see Rose Wilder Lane is this: it really had a big impact on her when her parents' homestead burned down when she was a kid. She felt it was her fault, but her parents did not take that seriously. They weren't exactly kid gloves types of people. Her feelings were not taken seriously because that was not valued in their household. 

It was difficult for her to take other people's feelings seriously, too. I wouldn't really say she had no conscience. I would say she had a troubled relationship with her conscience and with how she was supposed to process her emotions. People have those same problems nowadays, too.

When people have problems processing emotions from their own traumatic experiences, blaming the big external forces, like the corrupt government, becomes a big outlet for some of them. I'm not saying that the government shouldn't be criticized, but sometimes I feel like there's a loss of perspective, especially when people start aligning themselves with truly bad people and wanting to put those people in charge. Well, maybe I'm actually talking about what's been happening nowadays now.

Laura had a better relationship with her father and she had siblings (Rose didn't have any) and I think Laura's parents actually seemed to take her feelings more seriously, for whatever reason. I mean they still had their rules and there was still the spare the rod, spoil the child mentality, but it just seemed like there was more nurturing in her upbringing. 

I'm not sure if Almanzo and Laura would have had kids in those circumstances if they had been born in a different time. Everybody just had kids back then. And then the kids were just supposed to adapt to whatever their parents needs were. Some of Laura's schoolmates had tons of children. She just had one at age 19 and then another one died and then that was enough childbearing for her.

Rose also had a baby who died and then she always wanted to adopt boys. She never seemed to want to adopt girls. Interesting. Patriarchal culture worked its way well into her brain.

But there was a strain in the family of making sure the girls got educated. If not college degrees, then at least learning how to read and think about ideas and things like that was something they obviously valued.