Fertility

Children No More

 

Much has been said about fallen birth rates and what they mean for the economies of the Western world, especially for consumer and government spending. We are after all economic beings, are we not? We are only economic beings, yes? So whatever lower birth rates entail, it will be economic in nature, or so our wise demographers tell us.

 Less has been said about how lowered fertility has changed the entire tenor of society. One hundred years ago, roughly three-fourths of American households included children, today only 32 percent do. Let’s leave aside for the moment the pressing matter of what this portends for our civilization and simply notice the changes. Do you notice? Does it seem odd? (more…)

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May 7, 2009
Work and Domesticity

Do Men Want Housewives?

  The answer to this question is clear. Yes, men want housewives. But, they also want career wives. The average man wants a woman who can be both. Who in their right mind wouldn't want a woman who could be both, doing all a housewife does and bringing in a decent income too? The problem is there is no such thing. Search high and low. Look east and west, north and south. Comb the face of the planet and you will not find a woman who is both a housewife and a career woman. A person cannot be in two places at once.  The laws of matter make it so. She also cannot devote her mind to two entirely different and entirely absorbing tasks at once. Unfortunately, feminism tells men this dream is possible. Many women tell men this dream is possible. No wonder they are confused. No wonder they are surprised. They sought normalcy and they end up with abnormalcy. Wives who are critical and irritable, undisciplined children or no children, cluttered homes, terrible food, extravagant spending and large credit card bills - these are a few of the signs of abnormalcy. Men want housewives. Men want working wives. But, they want happiness too.

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May 7, 2009
Women and Work / Work and Domesticity

Women and Work

It is an axiom of modern life that women must work. The days of single-income families are irretrievably gone. This statement is repeated so often that very few question its validity. More importantly, very few ask why this is so. Why must women work? What has changed?

There have been significant changes to the American economy in the past 50 years and they have indeed affected the livelihood of the average family. Let’s look briefly at these changes and, as we do, let us ask ourselves, Are they irretrievable? Is there no going back?

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May 7, 2009
Uncategorized

Welcome Message

Dear Reader, Thank you for visiting, and welcome to this website. Domesticity is an ongoing state of war. I know it doesn't sound dangerous, but it is. Home is a jungle. It’s a hurricane at sea. It’s a beast in chains. Think of the dust that blows in from distant deserts and galaxies, settling on tables, floors, walls and papers. There's something reminiscent about each particle. Think of the broken pipes and the leaking roof. They crack their whips. Think of the wolf at the door. He huffs and he puffs. Think of the ambulance at the curb and the sympathy card in the mailbox. Home is the best place to die. Think of future generations. They sing their favorite tunes even now. Think of the minds of children. They'll discover new continents within four walls. "History has tongues," said Stephen Spender. The same might be said of the smallest child, in communion with past and future even when incapable of speech. Cleaning and cooking, dusting and weeding – this may seem very ordinary and un-dangerous. To me, it's filled with philosophical depths. The kitchen broom and the garden hoe are ancient tools of enlightenment. The scientist in his lab may have the illusion of progress. The sweeper knows this: Nature only changes so much.  Out of the very ephemera of home, the idea of eternity arises. The universe doesn’t knock at the front door; it enters the very cracks in the walls. We are hungry and there is a world…

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May 6, 2009
Crusoe / The Domestic Island

Crusoe, C’est Moi

 

 

N.C. Wyeth's Crusoe

One of the greatest books ever written about homemaking – in the physical and metaphysical sense of the word – is The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. This is the strange and surprising story of making a home in a hostile world.

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May 6, 2009
Uncategorized

More On Careers

 

Mike Berman, one of the perceptive commenters from Lawrence Auster’s View From the Right, writes about The Finest Occupations :

You bring up a subject here which has consumed me since I can remember. Coming from a poor family, one of my early memories was the marshals coming to our door to put us on the street and my promise to myself that I would never let this humiliation happen to me.

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May 6, 2009
American politics

A Beautiful Boy

  Americans apparently still care when national figures show contempt for traditional morality. The widespread interest in the hypocrisy, lies, and adulterous affair of John Edwards is a sign of life. Edwards is the Dorian Gray of American politics.  No painter, however, could truly capture his self-conceived beauty. The canvas itself would rebel. Elizabeth Edwards is right to let the country know the full extent of his lies and she is right to decline to leave him. He made himself a poster boy for famly values. Now let him be a poster boy for deceit.

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May 6, 2009
Thought and Its Nature

On Intellectual Revolutions

william-morris-wallpaper-s-1

 

Much has been said and written about civilization’s great intellectual revolutions, the breakthroughs in thought that have led to ages of enlightenment and darkness, to waves of technological innovation and new ways of living. History is the story of ideas. It is an ongoing intellectual thriller with the slow and boring pages followed by scenes of fast-paced drama.

The micro-revolutions of history, however, interest me more. These are the intellectual revolutions that occur in a single mind. About these, their general nature and characteristics, much has been said, but not nearly enough.

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May 5, 2009
Uncategorized

The Finest Occupations

Is there an inherent good in all work. What is it? Think of all human occupations through the ages – the farmers, the soldiers, the sailors, the welders, the chefs, the priests, the lawyers, the bankers, the bank robbers, the insurance agents, the politicians, the mechanics, the journalists, the professors, the teachers, the police, the computer programmers, the actors, the doctors, the nurses, and so on. Imagine being something else in one’s own time or in another place and another time. How about a shepherd? That would be the one. To be a shepherd in fifth century B.C. or a shepherd in the hills of Britain many centuries ago – that would be the career. A shepherd’s life is elemental. There is plenty of time to walk and think. The sky is overhead and open land stretches before him. He probably doesn’t own any of this land and he is poor, but his constant companions are submissive creatures, some of the most gentle in the animal kingdom. They recognize his voice in the dark. His dog is trustworthy and reads his thoughts. His existence is simple, but full of occupational hazards. There must be moments when he lays his head on his stone pillow at night and, surveying the stars overhead, feels not wonder, but worry. Our shepherd is a human being. Perhaps, in looking at his days, we can find some guiding principle for all human occupations. There must…

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May 5, 2009
Old Age / Uncategorized

The Luminosity of Age

 

The human body appears to liquefy with age. It actually grows more arid, but it seems to slowly melt into the earth. This metamorphosis, which seems to slowly drag every cell with it, is visually compelling.  Its physical effects are so unlike the beauty of youth that they are often mistaken for its opposite.

If one takes the separate features of the old – the skin, the hair, the eyes, the posture – one finds almost no support for the argument that age possesses its own beauty.  But, the whole often conveys something the parts do not.

What is this something?                                                   

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May 5, 2009