From The New Yorker: Wilder Women.

William Holtz points out that Laura had been so harried by poverty and hardship-doing some of the man’s work that Almanzo couldn’t manage, in addition to her own-that she might not have had much left to give, except the example of self-denial. Rose herself could be grandiose and domineering. There is nothing explicit in their letters (few of Laura’s survive, one a belated paean of gratitude) to suggest that Wilder merited the accusations, even though she accepted Rose’s extravagant gifts and literary labors on her behalf with a sense of entitlement that was more like a child’s than like a mother’s. Rose, in her less aggrieved moments, could admit that Mama Bess, through no fault of her own, had the wrong daughter. Whatever their disappointments, they kept them from each other.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie rose wilder The New Yorker