An Upward Look For Mothers

An Upward Look for Mothers is a devotional and reflective book by Isla May Mullins, the American Baptist writer who lived from 1869 to 1936 and who produced a substantial body of religious, devotional, and inspirational writing across the first three decades of the twentieth century. Mullins was the wife of Edgar Young Mullins, the prominent Southern Baptist theologian who served as president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1899 to 1928, and her writing was widely read in Southern Baptist and broader American Protestant circles during the period.

The book belongs to the substantial body of early twentieth century American Protestant devotional literature aimed specifically at women and particularly at mothers. The genre had developed across the late nineteenth century as American Protestant publishing recognised the substantial market for religious and inspirational reading among Protestant women whose roles in the home, the church, and the community gave them substantial influence on the religious and moral formation of children and the broader culture of their families. Various publishers produced extensive literature aimed at this audience including devotional books, magazines, advice manuals, and inspirational biographies.

Mullins wrote in the broadly hortatory and inspirational mode that the genre favoured. The book is essentially a sustained meditation on the spiritual and moral resources that Christian mothers need in order to carry out the work of raising children in a Christian household, with attention to the various practical challenges, emotional difficulties, and spiritual questions that mothers face across the years of raising a family. The treatment combines specific practical counsel with broader religious reflection in the manner that the devotional literature of the period favoured.

The book reflects the assumptions of early twentieth century Southern Baptist and broader American evangelical Protestant culture about the family, about gender roles, about religious life, and about the various other subjects that the devotional treatment addresses. Modern readers will find various aspects of the cultural assumptions dated, particularly around the specific roles assigned to mothers and the broader gender division of religious and family labour that the book takes for granted.

The book is of interest now to historians of early twentieth century American Protestant devotional culture and of the broader literature aimed at American Protestant women during the period. It pairs naturally with the various other Mullins family writings and with the broader Southern Baptist devotional tradition of the period.