Motherhood Quote by John Dewey

Dewey refuses the sentimental postcard version of nature. Calling it both "mother" and "habitat" sounds comforting at first, then he twists the knife: sometimes it is "a stepmother and an unfriendly home". The line works because it collapses two stories we like to keep separate. One is the romantic fantasy of nature as benevolent provider. The other is the modern, managerial confidence that nature is just an environment to be engineered. Dewey’s phrasing suggests neither stance survives contact with reality. Nature is origin and enclosure, nourishment and constraint, intimacy and indifference.

The "mother/stepmother" pivot is doing more than adding nuance; it’s a moral correction. A mother implies care, obligation, a relationship that centers human needs. A stepmother, in cultural shorthand, implies conditional welcome and unpredictable severity. Dewey isn’t endorsing the fairy-tale cruelty so much as he’s warning against anthropomorphizing the world into a dependable parent. Nature doesn’t owe us anything, yet we cannot exit it. That tension is the engine of Dewey’s pragmatism: human intelligence develops not in abstract contemplation but in coping with a world that pushes back.

Placed in Dewey’s era of industrial acceleration, urbanization, and Progressive-era faith in science, the quote reads like a check on triumphalism. Yes, humans can remake conditions; no, we don’t get to repeal droughts, disease, storms, or the unintended consequences of our own tinkering. The subtext is an ethic of humility: adapt, experiment, learn - but stop mistaking your home for a cradle.