In the Little House books, Laura Ingalls was very proud of the fact she taught three terms of school in South Dakota, which was one term more than her mother Caroline had taught. But why did Laura only teach those three terms?
In These Happy Golden Years, Laura stops teaching because she is going to marry Almanzo Wilder. And during that era, only single women were permitted to be teachers, so once Laura was a married woman, she could no longer teach. Once a woman got married, she was expected to stay home, tend the house and have children. And people of the era believed that women could not do that as well as be a devoted school teacher.
Today, married women can be teachers. But for Laura to stop teaching when she became married was expected at the time.
