Final answer:
The Cult of Domesticity enforced beliefs that women's roles should be limited to the domestic sphere, emphasizing a moral and supportive role within the family, especially among middle-class white Protestants in the early 19th century.
Step-by-step explanation:
The predominant cultural tradition that implied women were inferior to men and advocated for their activities to be restricted to home and family in the US was known as the Cult of Domesticity. This ideology, taking shape in the early 1800s, suggested that women and men occupied completely different 'spheres' of life. Men belonged to the public world of work and politics, while women should reside in the private world of home and family. True Womanhood within the Cult of Domesticity was a concept that women should be pure, pious, and deeply involved in the domestic arts, like needlecraft, and that their primary obligation was to provide a moral compass within the household.
The Cult of Domesticity was particularly aligned with middle-class, white, Protestant values during a time when the nation was grappling with the effects of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, ultimately leading to the first emergence of female wage laborers.