“While the men were busy founding the nation, what were the women up to? Aside from Betty Ross, I don’t remember ever hearing about women as a child.” 

Although there are many books written about the American Revolution, they largely focus on the exploits of the Founding Fathers and other men, giving little consideration to women’s contributions. Having felt alienated from her nation’s history as a child, Roberts wrote Founding Mothers to tell these women’s stories and help young girls, and boys, engage with this element of their history. 

“I came to the conclusion that there’s nothing unique about them. They did—with great hardship, courage, pluck, prayerfulness, sadness, joy, energy, and humor—what women do. They put one foot in front of the other in remarkable circumstances. They carried on. They are truly our Founding Mothers.” 

In some respects, the Founding Mothers were exceptional, both in terms of the remarkable times through which they lived and the contributions they made to American independence. However, Roberts asserts that, on another level, they are not exceptional. Rather, they accomplished the vital but unacknowledged and uncelebrated work that women have done throughout history.

“Eliza possessed money, education, and the confidence of first her father and then her husband. And because she was single or widowed most of her life, her legal rights were considerably greater than those of married women. She also carried far fewer babies than most and lost only one. All of those advantages set her apart from the vast majority of colonial women.”

Roberts is the first to acknowledge that Founding Mothers cannot tell the tales of everyday colonial women. Most women of the period left no written evidence, and accounts of their lives are rare. Instead, the book tells the stories of the remarkable women, those whose circumstances and privileges marked them out as much as their actions and whose relationships with prominent men ensured that their correspondences and other written works were preserved.