Still Life with Bowl, Giovanna Garzoni

MARGUERITE LOUISE D ′ORLÉANS, the 17th century Grand Duchess of Tuscany, was a difficult spouse. Her husband, the Grand Duke Cosimo III de ‘Medici, was so frustrated by her behavior that he eventually had her banished to a convent in France. While at the convent, she had affairs and gambled at the court at Versailles. She also tried to burn the convent down, an act said to have greatly irritated her husband.

I bring up the Grand Duchess for no reason other than to relay the following story of marital conflict. Most stories of marital conflict are interesting, but this one is particularly so. Whether it has any lessons for us who live in a highly scientific and egalitarian age – a time generally devoid of palace cooks and princesses and convents that accept banished wives – I prefer not to say. The anecdote comes verbatim from the wonderful 1905 book Florentine Palaces and Their Stories by Janet Ross. Read More »

HUMA ABEDIN is the 34-year-old wife of Congressman Anthony Weiner. They were married last year and have no children. She is an aide to Hillary Clinton and is described as a workaholic. He is a Jew and she is a Muslim. 

Weiner’s actions were reprehensible. He should resign. At the same time, a wife who travels around the world in pursuit of her own fortunes has no right to expect that her husband will be there when she returns. Was this a marriage or a merger?

According to ABC,

Officials tell ABC’s Claire Shipman Abedin will be on a plane bound for Africa with Hillary Clinton Wednesday evening. They say she’s been working non-stop since the scandal broke, and “hasn’t missed a beat.” They also say “she is committed to her marriage,” and that “they love each other.”

The feminist works non-stop even when her marriage is in crisis. Her strength is awesome. Here we see what feminism is really about: the avoidance of pain and intimacy.

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SEE Jesse Powell’s comments in the previous entry in response to a reader’s contention that feminism supports traditional mothers and wives. He writes:

Why would a man treat as a duty the financial support of the household if from the woman’s point of view being a homemaker is merely a “choice?” If women view homemaking as a mere “choice” then men likewise will be inclined to see their wife’s homemaking as optional and be unmotivated to financially support it, denying the woman the “choice” to be a homemaker at all since being a full-time homemaker by definition requires the husband’s support in order to make it practical.

Claiming women have the right to “choose” whether they be homemakers or not implies that men have a “duty” to support the woman in whatever she “chooses” to do; there is a problem with this formulation. Read More »

ROBIN writes, in response to this post:

Eleanor writes: “[F]eminists are not against women staying at home and raising children. Part of the feminist movement is the tenet that we need to place more value on what used to be called “women’s work” like cooking, cleaning, raising children. The feminist movement is about giving women options, so that women who are interested in being housewives can be housewives.”

Feminists whom I know would have everyone believe that this is truth; they are very concerned about “empowering” women and creating “value” for women, all the while ensuring that women have the ever-popular choice to become whatever they want to be. Read More »

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Representative Anthony Weiner’s press conference Monday was a case study in the rhetoric of moral evasion. I have extracted some key moments and added commentary. 

WEINER said: “I’ve exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years.” It seems like a genuine confession, but it is not. Notice the equivocal about. Is it five? Is it seven? Numbers under ten are easy to count and easy to remember. Numbers larger than ten are more difficult to count and remember. Almost certainly “about six” means more than six, likely many more than six.

WEINER said: “I’ve done things that I deeply regret.” Notice what Weiner does not say. He does not directly say, I did perverse and wicked things. He says merely that he did things (things – a vague and neutral word-choice) that he now regrets. However, regret is also equivocal; coupled with things, it lacks a moral context and appears pragmatic only. Regret in this locution implies discomfort over having been caught, not remorse over having committed sexual transgressions.  Read More »

ELEANOR writes:

You write that feminism is anti-housewife, and I, as a feminist who was raised by a stay-at-home mother, would like to clarify something: feminists are not against women staying at home and raising children. Part of the feminist movement is the tenet that we need to place more value on what used to be called “women’s work” like cooking, cleaning, raising children. The feminist movement is about giving women options, so that women who are interested in being housewives can be housewives. Read More »

JONATHAN M. SMITH, professor of geography at Texas A&M University, writes:

A long-time reader of your interesting blog, I would like to pass along a quote from the discussion of divorce in Timothy Dwight’s Theology Explained and Defended (1818-1819), vol. 4, pp. 270-271.

During the contentions of parents, which will usually be generated by the mere attainableness of divorce, and which become ultimately the occasion of granting it, the children will either be forgotten, or forced to take sides with the parents. . . . Jarring parents; and there will be millions of such parents wherever divorce prevails, to one where it does not; can never teach their children religion, either by precept or example. Read More »

THE PERCENTAGE of U.S. households with children has dropped from 36 percent in the 1960s to 24 percent today. USA Today recently looked at the impact on the Philadelphia suburb of Levittown. Where playing children were once a common sight, there are now empty streets and yards. The change is particularly glaring in predominantly white neighborhoods such as Levittown. When Levittown was at its heydey, and flush with children, the norm was the traditional family, with married women in the workforce in relatively low numbers. The more money white married women make, the fewer children they have. The U.S. population under 18 is 54 percent white. From 2000 to 2010, the U.S. population grew by 9.7 percent. Nonwhites made up 92 percent of that growth.

More U.S. households now have dogs than children.

BOB writes:

I grew up in working-class England and, shocking as it may seem, we had an oven. For roasting! Nearly every Sunday, we would have a Sunday “joint” with roast potatoes. My mother also boiled, horrifically so. Read More »

JOHN P. writes:

I’ve been following the occasional discussion at your site on pizza and modern food with some interest and I’d like to offer a dissenting opinion. I think there may be some mythologising going on here. I’ll concede the point that young people probably eat too much pizza but in principle a dish made up of meat, cheese, green peppers and tomatoes, etc. is not so bad. Same thing for the various wraps available at fast food places.

Contrast this with the diet my parents had as children: boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage, boiled carrots and a bit of fish, almost seven days a week. They might have a small portion of beef on Sunday. Everything was boiled, no roasting, and maybe some frying. They had porridge with milk and brown sugar for breakfast every single day. The English-speaking people have never been notable for the excellence of their indigenous cuisine. Read More »

KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States, is a leader in liturgical fashion. At the website Bad Vestments, one commenter recently wondered whether this particular get-up with its flaming sleeves was intentionally designed to earn a posting at the site. Another said Jefferts Schori looks like a cross between the Queen of Hearts and the Wicked Witch of the West.

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DUE TO important family events, including a college graduation and a wedding anniversary, activity at this site has been slower than usual this past week.

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NO ONE elopes in an era of sexual freedom. Couples spend 15 months or more planning weddings that impoverish them for years. They don’t feel the need to run off. They don’t get married secretly because of unexpected pregnancy or urgent desire. Hardly anyone asks for permission from parents to marry anyway. The very idea of eloping now seems antiquated and foreign. It belongs to a distant era, along with arranged marriages and dowries.

The secret, rushed wedding of the past wasn’t a proper way to marry, but many couples who eloped stayed married. Here is one woman’s story of just such a wedding.

THE DAY MY PARENTS ELOPED

By Lois Wauson

My parents, Bertie Lee Goode and Lawrence Zook, eloped on May 28, 1931. It was a common practice in the Depression for couples to just “run off and get married.” They would go find a preacher and get married. No big fanfare or celebration. There was not much money for big weddings, so a couple would go in to town to the nearest preacher or justice of the peace, get married then go home. Read More »

ROGER G. writes:

Ralph Henry Barbour (1870-1944) was a prolific American writer of adolescent fiction: adventure and sports for boys, romance for girls. A great deal of his oeuvre is free online.

Barbour’s sports stories are generally set at fictitious colleges and private schools (or occasionally public high schools), and involve resolution of moral dilemmas over the course of an athletic season or school year. The plots, character, and dialogue, as well as the sports action, are great (in my opinion, anyway). An excerpt from Weatherby’s Inning (1906) illustrates why I like these books so much. The protagonist, Jack Weatherby, is a freshman at Erskine College in Maine. Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes: 

According to U.S. Census statistics released last week, six of the 25 largest cities in America have such high levels of family breakdown that the majority of homes with children are not headed by a married couple. Those cities are Boston, Washington D. C., Philadelphia, Memphis, Baltimore and Detroit.

The Married Families ratio (the proportion of homes with children under 18 headed by a married couple) continued to decline in all of the 25 most populous cities except New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

It held virtually steady in New York and increased by almost four percentage points in Washington, D.C. Looking at the figures for major cities, one finds vast differences. Chicago had a significantly higher Married Families ratio (57.3 percent), than both Philadelphia (44.4 percent) and Boston (49.1). The ratio was 62 percent in Phoenix and 37.5 percent in Baltimore. Heavily Hispanic cities have more married couples than comparably black cities.

The Married Families ratio in the worst city in 1950 was better than the best city in 2010, by a wide margin (83.6% versus 76.5%). Blacks had a higher Married Families ratio in 1950 than whites did in the year 2000 (80.1% versus 77.6%). (A racial breakdown for 2010 is not yet available, but the comparison obviously still holds.)

In 1950, the Married Families ratio for the nation overall was 92.3 percent. In 2010, the Married Families ratio for the nation overall dropped to 67.9 percent. Read More »

NOT TO KEEP
By Robert Frost

They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying… And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,
Living. They gave him back to her alive—
How else? They are not known to send the dead—
And not disfigured visibly. His face?
His hands? She had to look, and ask,
“What was it, dear?” And she had given all
And still she had all—they had—they the lucky! Read More »