About the Author

Cokie Roberts is the author of the national bestseller We Are Our Mothers' Daughters. She and her husband, Steven Roberts, co-authored the bestselling From This Day Forward, an account of their enduring marriage (more than 30 years), as well as other marriages in American history.

Roberts's résumé includes such professional distinctions as chief congressional analyst for ABC News; co-anchor of This Week with Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts; news analyst for National Public Radio; and a weekly syndicated newspaper column, which she co-authors with her husband. Her Op-Ed columns have appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post; she has also written for the New York Times Magazine and the Atlantic.

Discussion Questions

1. What inspired you to read Founding Mothers? Why do you suppose the contributions of women in the Revolutionary era have been largely overlooked by historians? Would the founding of the nation have occurred without these women?
2. Which woman would you say had the single greatest impact during the Revolution? How about during the first years of the new government?
3. Despite a lack of legal and social rights, including the right to own property and receive a formal education, how did the women presented in Founding Mothers assert their authority and exercise their intelligence?
4. How did life differ for women depending on where they lived—the North versus the South, the city versus rural areas? How else did geographical circumstances impact their lives?
5. Were you surprised to learn that women often chose to accompany their husbands to army camps during the war? How did Martha Washington, Kitty Greene, and Lucy Knox, in particular, contribute to life at military camp and foster the war efforts?
6. In telling the stories of the women, this book also sheds light on the men of the time. Did seeing the men—including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton—from the perspective of their female contemporaries show you anything new about them?
7. How important was the "civilizing" role that women played in the years leading up to, during, and after the Revolution? Reference examples from the book that illustrate how integral it was for the women to be able to step in and "calm down the men," or even to act as intermediaries, as Abigail Adams did in the dispute between her husband and James Madison.
8. Catharine Macaulay, a vocal proponent of democratic governments, supported the American Revolution. Why did Macaulay, an Englishwoman, take such an interest in the American cause? How did she contribute to it?
9. How did Martha Washington define the role of first lady? Are her influences still evident today? Her political savvy was remarkable, but is there anything that can be learned from her on a personal level?
10. Only the limited number of women with access to the men who were shaping the future of the nation could have matched the accomplishments of Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren. But what about the women who didn't have the advantage of providing direct counsel or publishing their discourses? How did they contribute to the Revolutionary War and the founding of the nation?
11. Cokie Roberts intersperses her thoughts and commentary throughout the book. Does this enhance the narrative? In what ways?