A Sterile Marriage

 

A READER writes:

Dear Professor Wood, 

Thank you for your teaching. Your site shows the young generation of women and men, my nieces and nephews and the children of my friends, a path which they see rarely on campus or on the job. One young man whom you influenced was recently baptized (Eastern Orthodox) at age thirty. 

You have written much about divorce, especially when children are involved, but I have not seen the following situation addressed. What is a man to do who was married while young to a woman who became increasingly feminist and refused to give him children for years, and continues to refuse to do so? What should we, his friends and relatives, encourage him to do (having already encouraged her to change her heart)? I might add that she is angry, bitter, spiteful and treats him with contempt. At this point, he still wants to have children, but no longer trusts her as a wife or mother. 

Were they Catholic, an annulment might have been in order (or would it not?), but they are not.

 Sincerely Yours,

A grateful reader

(more…)

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A Little Girl is Publicly Cheapened

 

AMR writes:

I was looking through the headlines tonight and saw on MSN a video advertised as “You want to marry this kid when she grows up? Your heart might be broken until she gets one thing first.” I thought it was going to be a video on some goofy thing that a kid said, but after reading your site for awhile, I found it disturbing. Now five-year-old girls don’t care about men and want “a job.” It’s as though jobs are the be-all and end-all for women, not a man who might want to commit his life to her or a family or God. So sad. I’d bet she lives in a single-mother household.

After reading a book called Dressing with Dignity by Colleen Hammond in high school, I didn’t really like feminism. Your site helps put into words and expand on the idea that feminism hurts. Thank you for your eye-opening site. It is too bad it’s not mainstream. (more…)

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Lugging Children Through the Shallows of Banal Love

 

TODAY’S journalists are so quick to provide every mind-numbingly boring detail about their chaotic personal lives and so upfront about how indifferent they are to their children. This writer, in his description of his recent “courtship” in The New York Times, talks about his two children from two different women as if they are luggage stowed in the backseat, which presumably is what they are. He focuses instead on the extremely banal details of  divorce and remarriage. He writes:

We took an apartment together as our relationship deepened. She grew close to my boy, became pregnant with our child, and we considered our options for the future. Discussions regarding marriage occurred, predicated, of course, on the completion of my divorce. (It was a source of much joking at Harper’s — another thing I’ll truly miss — that my second child came before my first divorce.) But neither of us wanted to rush things. It felt unseemly to dive immediately into a new marriage so soon after the formal dissolution of an earlier one. We’d make our wedding when we wanted, we agreed, not merely when permitted by the state or demanded by a sense of social propriety.

(more…)

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Cuomo at Church

 

NEW YORK Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is divorced, has been living with his girlfriend, the Food Network celebrity Sandra Lee. Under Catholic canon law, that makes him guilty of “public concubinage” and he is not entitled to take communion. While many thousands of Catholics appear to be unaware of canon law, Cuomo cannot plead ignorance. As reported in The New York Times, Edward N. Peters, a consultant to Vatican court, has publicly criticized the governor for continuing to receive communion and has called for denying him communion. This is a positive development.

By the way, Cuomo took his young daughters to the gay pride parade in Manhattan last fall. He is an exemplary Catholic all around. (more…)

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A Woman Who Speaks the Truth

 

I’VE OFTEN wondered why more people who have divorced their decent spouses don’t later publicly regret their selfishness and tell the whole world just how stupid and thoughtless they were. Probably because repentance hurts or because many people who initiate divorce are too far gone for self-reflection. Here, however, is just that: a woman who has devoted a blog to describing her divorce and its effects. She confirms my point. Divorce is spiritually destructive to those who initiate it. She writes:   

If you have forced a frivolous divorce on your spouse and children, you will never be able to shake off the stench of your selfish act. You will have to explain it to people you date and to their families and to their children and to the people your children marry and to your grandchildren when they start to ask questions about your life. Probably you will be ashamed to tell them the naked truth because it will reveal your selfish, frivolous character and there is nothing you can say to sugarcoat this huge personal defect without resorting to half truths. They won’t say anything to your face, but they will discuss it when you leave the room and they will question your suitability as a potential family member…as well they should.

Relatives and friends who witness divorce and say nothing, imposing no shame on the one who initiates divorce and pointing no fingers, are selfish too. It is not kind to withhold judgment.

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(more…)

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Did Kindergarten Save the World?

  IN 1893, on her death bed, Elizabeth Mardewel, an education reformer who was pioneer of the kindergarten in California, uttered these words: "I believe in the power of the kindergarten to reform the world." As recounted in Rousas John Rushdoony's The Messianic Character of American Education, Mardewel also said, kindergarten would "regenerate the human race." In truth, the history of early childhood education in America is the history of waning maternal attachment and the declining family. Kindergarten did reform the human race. But not for the better.

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Trading Safety for Jobs

 

BRUCE writes:

It suddenly dawned on me this morning that with the ongoing feminization of the police and military, a watershed has been crossed, a step that demonstrates the profound unreality of modern life. 

How could women ever have gotten themselves to the point where the idea of having large numbers of women working as police and soldiers and sailors and pilots (i.e. the ‘need’ for enhanced career opportunities for women) would take precedence over their own safety and the safety of their children? That is a really remarkable level of unreality – and one which I fear will elicit a terrible price if or when equal opportunity, mixed-sex police forces and combat units (with female/feminized commanders) come up against all-male gangs and armies. (more…)

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Excommunicated Yet Again!

 

THE BLOGGER Dennis Mangan joins the ranks of small-minded men’s rights ideologues attempting to burn me at the stake. Mangan writes about my comment that men have nothing to fear in marriage other than the loss of their honor. He comes to the conclusion that conservative women cannot possibly empathize with the plight of men.

Mr. Mangan conveniently ignores the fact that this particular statement by me occurred in the context of a discussion about comments at another website from men who said no women can be trusted and that “99 percent” of women are nothing more than materialistic whores when it comes to marriage.

In addition to failing to mention that participants in the particular discussion in question called women many nasty, unprintable names and celebrated soulless sexual conquest, Mr. Mangan also forgets to take note of the many, many things I have written against female-initiated divorce. If I am not mistaken, I have written more prolifically on the subject than Mr. Mangan. His omission of this small detail suggests some deeper motivation for wishing to excommunicate me from the ranks of anti-feminists. Could it have anything to do with my being a woman? Could it have anything to do with my frequent writings on the devastating loss of the male provider or my refusal to say that the divorce rate justifies anti-marriage campaigns by men or obliviousness and indifference to the soaring rate of illegitimacy?

The lists of my posts on the scourge of unilateral divorce by women is very long. Some (not all) can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Men’s rights ideologues like Mr. Mangan gleefully search for heretics and smack their lips when they think they have discovered that a conservative woman who denounces women for divorce and yet who also points to the responsibilities of men in marriage and society is really an impostor and secretly out to subjugate men. Why do men’s rights advocates so fervently wish to prove that no woman can be trusted? Why must they burn me on their pile of pathetic rhetorical twigs? So they can bask in their One True Faith and not contemplate the complexities. So they can indulge a sense of victimization and self-love.

I repeat. I have written about female-initiated divorce at least as forcefully as Mr. Mangan has. Not only have I written about it, but I have gone so far as to call for a return to presumptive paternal custody. I agree with Whiskey, the blogger quoted by Mr. Mangan, that women must criticize other women for damaging the lives of decent men. I have made this point many times. For all I know, Mr. Whiskey got this point from me. No one has more adamantly insisted on it than I have. Oh! But all that was just an act. I am really a feminist in disguise! Burn me at the stake! I don’t deserve to speak and stand up for marriage! You’re good to go, men.

Arguing with a men’s rights fanatic is like being interrogated by the KGB. The very hairs on your head may be used as evidence against you. At any moment you might be proven an imperialist dog. Even if you have lived the life of hard-working peasant, you can still be an enemy of the people.

                        (more…)

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A Pope’s Words on Careerism in Women

 

AS more and more women left their traditional roles in the early decades of the twentieth century, Pope Pius XI, in his Encyclical Casti Connubii of December 31, 1930, vehemently spoke out against this immensely significant cultural shift. He called the emancipation of women from the home a “crime.”

Now many decades later, at a time when the majority of married women are employed, it is rare for members of the Catholic clergy to speak in strong terms about the spiritual devastation caused by absentee mothering. 

Pope Pius XI wrote:

The same false teachers who try to dim the luster of conjugal faith and purity do not scruple to do away with the honorable and trusting obedience which the woman owes to the man. Many of them even go further and assert that such a subjection of one party to the other is unworthy of human dignity, that the rights of husband and wife are equal; wherefore, they boldly proclaim the emancipation of women has been or ought to be effected. This emancipation in their ideas must be threefold, in the ruling of the domestic society, in the administration of family affairs and in the rearing of the children. (more…)

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Love Boot Camp

 

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A. GUY MALIGNED, at his blog What Women Never Hearcontinues to offer his love philosophy to women looking for husbands and to those who are already married. Marriage and courtship, he writes, founder where there is ignorance of fundamental sex differences. In one of his “Boot Camp for Girls” entries, Guy writes:

Feminine beats plain femaleness. Mystery beats full disclosure. Modesty beats masculine morality. Monogamy beats sexual freedom. All of it makes males back off from their naturally dominant personas, which helps fulfill female hopes and dreams. 

Guy also offers good advice for men. (more…)

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Abortion and Unwed Motherhood

  TRAVEL THROUGHOUT America, into small towns, or big suburbs or dense cities, and you will find the phenomenon of single motherhood. One of the most obvious developments of recent years is the lower middle-class white girl who comes from an intact or relatively intact family and who ends up as a single mother. She finds herself in this situation because she is anti-abortion and yet not anti-fornication. There is no pressure on her to marry and yet there is the good and healthy moral incentive to refuse abortion. She may be cheered by friends and religious organizations for her decision to have a child. And, refusing abortion is the right thing to do. However, it is easy to confuse this heroic decision as something that makes single motherhood right and good. Unless both abortion and unwed pregnancy are stigmatized, social conservatism becomes an unwitting promoter of single motherhood. Abortion rates have fallen in recent years while single motherhood has increased precipitously. Here is a 2008 piece by Selwyn Duke on the relation between anti-abortion sentiment and the growth of single motherhood. The answer is not for anti-abortion efforts to become less zealous.  Both abortion and single motherhood were shameful fifty years ago and the incidence of both was much lower.

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A French Reactionary

 

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WILL the French journalist Éric Zemmour be silenced? It is hard to imagine a man as outspoken as Zemmour, who was convicted of defamation in French court last week for publicly stating that most drug dealers in France are Arabs and blacks, not speaking his mind. At his trial, Zemmour said: 

“I am not a provocateur. I say what I believe and what I see. Sometimes the reality is unbearable and brutal. This is about freedom of expression. When you describe reality, you are treated as a criminal.”

The blog Galliawatch is a good source for background and ongoing news about the celebrated and despised journalist. The author Tiberge wrote this longer piece on Zemmour last year and a recent post on the trial. Zemmour was fined 5,752 euros. Further fines were deferred and will be automatically collected if he comes up for more charges.

A recent profile in The New York Times described Zemmour as a “hopeless intellectual.” In his critiques of multiculturalism and mass immigration, Zemmour complains that France is being “Americanized.” He is an outspoken critic of feminism too. In his book, Le Premier Sexe, the journalist accused feminism of undermining virility, authority and social order.  

Zemmour is a reactionary in the best sense of the word, a critic of the grinding loss of meaning imposed on the individual by the wearing away of national identity and traditional roles. (more…)

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Ozzie and Harriet

 

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ALAN writes:

Regarding the tolerant feminist who called you  an “ignorant housewife from the Ozzie and Harriet era,” your response was perfect.  But you should also feel honored (I certainly would) to be criticized in company with Ozzie and Harriet.   

Because of decades of radical-leftist propaganda, many of your readers might not know the truth about Ozzie and Harriet.  So permit me to share it. 

Ozzie and Harriet Nelson were talented entertainers who provided music and clean, wholesome entertainment to Americans for more than three decades.   Harriet was a talented singer and actress.  Ozzie was a talented musician, writer, actor, and director. Their radio and television programs were well-written, finely-crafted comedy entertainment suitable for the whole family.  Their programs honored and respected the American family, never belittled or derided it.  

Respect for parents and elders, courtesy, good manners, good grooming, proper dress, good sportsmanship, self-restraint, and gentle humor are some of the values that Ozzie chose to depict consistently in those programs over nearly a quarter-century.   The Nelson family did not shout or speak in jive talk or smart-aleck manner.  They spoke English clearly, in complete sentences, and in civil tones of conversation.   Their characters were disciplined and principled.  Each of them in turn became a target of gentle, self-effacing humor.  Never did Ozzie resort to cheap tricks, sarcasm or insults between characters, or off-color language or humor.   (more…)

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Brett Stevens on the Economic Value of Chastity

  BRETT STEVENS, at the website Amerika, argues that the loss of chastity as a social ideal is part of a larger denigration of hierarchy. As such, it is connected to economic decline of the middle class. He writes: Do we want each sexual act to have meaning, or should we remove context? Do we want a nation of equally impoverished middle classes, or a hierarchy? These questions are eternal because they are mathematical, not human, in origin.

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Crusoe Seeks a Safe Harbor

 

Robinson Crusoe, N.C. Wyeth
Robinson Crusoe, N.C. Wyeth

“As I imagin’d, so it was, there appear’d before me a little opening of the Land, and I found a strong Current of the Tide set into it, so I guided my Raft as well as I could to keep in the Middle of the Stream: But here I had like to have suffer’d a second Shipwreck, which, if I had, I think verily would have broke my Heart, for knowing nothing of the Coast, my Raft run a-ground at one End of it upon a Shoal, and not being a-ground at the other End, it wanted but a little that all my Cargo had slip’d off towards that End that was a-float, and so fall’n into the Water: (more…)

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Even in an Industrialized Nation, Americans Said No to Working Wives and Mothers

 

JESSE POWELL writes:

A survey was conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion in 1938 asking Americans if they supported married women working when their husbands were capable of supporting them. A resounding 78 percent said, “No.”

This shows that even after 50 years of married women increasingly joining the workforce and after heavy industrialization of America, public sentiment was still strongly opposed to married women working if they weren’t forced to by economic necessity. The number one reason respondents gave for their negative answers was: women would take jobs away from men and families would suffer as a result.

An article about the survey appeared in The New York Times on December 25, 1938. Here is an excerpt from the piece: (more…)

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The Bullies Speak

 

THERE IS a lengthy highbrow discussion at the men’s website, The Spearhead, in response to the post here in which I said that a wife can never deprive a man of his honor and character. I have not read the whole Spearhead entry, but I have glanced at it. To give you an idea of the tenor of the discussion, or at least of some of the participants, one reader writes of me:

She is worthless, untouchable filth. She should have been aborted with a chainsaw.

Hawaiian Libertarian, who moderates the discussion and who has not deleted threatening comments such as this, falsely states that I do not accept comments here. I accept the comments of anyone who writes to me, provided they are civil and to the point, as is clearly stated on my home page at the bottom of every entry. He also falsely states that I am a reader of The Spearhead. I am not, though readers do occasionally send me links from there. (more…)

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