Mother Goose and More: External Resources

Children appreciate Mother Goose rhymes for their playful sounds, rhythms, and language, and for the sometimes silliness of their stories. Adults, on the other hand, have often created or interpreted these rhymes in far more serious fashions. Histories of Mother Goose, as referred to in this site, most often attribute their origins to common folk who, as budding satirists and critics, cleverly disguised their social and political commentary about those who oppressed them in these brief rhymes that also entertained young children. More recently, especially during the social unrest of the late 1960s, modern writers such as Eve Merriam used updated versions of the traditional rhymes to point to the violence, injustice, and corruption in society at that time. Subsequent versions of Merriam's Inner City Mother Goose unfortunately are as clear-sighted in their views of contemporary issues and concerns.

Some look at even the original versions of Mother Goose rhymes and point to their relevance to contemporary social issues. For these readers, “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe,” for instance, conjures up concerns about birth control, child abuse, single parenting, poverty, and housing for the poor. For those who read Mother Goose in this way and use the rhymes as introductions to or commentary on social issues, we have provided links to a number of websites that provide information on these topics.

Older readers might indeed use Mother Goose to draw attention to such issues, but we must caution against destroying the pleasure young children take in hearing and chanting what to them are basically ridiculous mini-stories or pure nonsense.