Family Man

Abstract

Chapter 5 discusses how Franklin was not a model husband or father, though he dutifully provided for his wife, Deborah Read Franklin, and his three children (Francis and Sarah with Deborah and William, from a previous relationship). He flirted with a number of other women throughout his long life. But Franklin recognized the importance of marriage to civil society and wrote about it for humorous and serious purposes under another alias in his newspaper. His aliases included Anthony Afterwit. He also affirmed the equality of women in ways that were untypical of his time. Although Franklin was unconventional in his roles as husband and father, he was swimming in domestic currents that Protestantism had prompted with its reform of marriage as a secular institution.