she had the chance. With regard to her own prospect of marriage, Brown believed that it was best to remain single because single women experienced greater levels of independence than married women. Upon meeting Samuel Blackwell, her opinions began to waver in favor of marriage. The two married on January 24, 1856, and they had seven children, two dying in infancy. Blackwell continued her career until domestic responsibilities and her disagreement with many aspects of the women's rights movement caused her to discontinue lecturing. Writing became her new outlet for asserting social change for women; in her works she encouraged women to seek out masculine professions and men to share in household duties, yet she retained the belief that women's primary role was care of the home and family. Inspired by yet critical of the writings of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, who she considered to be the most influential men of her day, Blackwell published several works in the fields of theology, science and philosophy. She believed both Darwin and Spencer employed a tainted version of the scientific method, one that embraced a solely masculine vantage point. Blackwell instead asserted that in order to understand women in society, women themselves ought to conduct the study of women, which Blackwell termed the "science of Feminine Humanity." Perhaps her most notable work was published in 1875, The Sexes Throughout Nature, in which she presented a quasi-scientific theory arguing that the sexes are different but equal by way of natural evolution. She knew she would be considered presumptuous for criticizing evolutionary theory, but wrote that "However great the disadvantages under which we [women] are placed, these will never be lessened by waiting." Darwin had written a letter to her in 1869, thanking her for a copy of her book, Studies in General Science. She also wrote a novel, The Island Neighbors, in 1871, and a collection of poetry, Sea Drift, in 1902. In 1860, at the last National Woman's Rights Convention held before the outbreak of the Civil War, Antoinette engaged in the heated debate about divorce with her colleagues and contemporaries, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was opposed to an easy divorce arguing, "the married partner can not annul his obligations to the other… All divorce is naturally and morally impossible." Antoinette, a staunch abolitionist and suffragist, contrary to the hopes of her friends and fellow suffragists, supported