I totally agree it’s a bad target for any human to aspire to. For all the reasons you state. But until we can stop religion from being a central organizing feature of our benighted society we’re not going to get anywhere with any heretical ideas about human equality.
The "Tradwife" lifestyle: Does anyone else find this appealing, or have personal experience with it?
Also I should add that I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with teaching someone to sew clothes or can yams or whatever it is homemakers do. I can respect that people could get really into that. I went through a (mercifully short) phase last year where I became obsessed with cleaning my house. I learned a lot from YouTube.
It’s the submitting to the patriarchy part I find problematic. It’s possible to do all those homemaking things and be a stay at home Mom and have an egalitarian relationship. My husband and I didn’t really set out to fall into more traditional gender roles, but it happened due to social forces and the nature of our jobs. I tend to do more childcare, cooking and cleaning and he tends to do more paid work. I’m very happy with that, because I have a career that keeps me active and plenty of independent pursuits, from writing to Zen temple. I would go absolutely insane as a stay at home parent.
But for some people that’s their jam.
Add “a large number of children” to the mix, and you’ve got a disaster waiting to happen. It’s been my own observation that those big old-fashioned Catholic families were rarely happy homes, for all the reasons listed above.
I’ve had the misfortune of encountering far too many women who believed that any woman who said she was happily married and her husband was a good father, was either lying or in denial.
As for the Biblical injunction that a man be the head of household and the wife should “submit”, it’s about leadership, at least from what I understand. True leadership is NOT about domination.
I had a Facebook friend back when I was on Facebook who was a Christian and a biblical scholar, he interpreted the original Greek “submit to your husbands” line as actually a command to fight alongside. The word was actually a military word. I wish I had that post to reference now.
I liked that interpretation because I think of myself as kind of a warrior for love. I’m taking bullets for him, I’m defending him with a sword. I can get behind that.
I’ve run into this mindset during pre-blizzard panic buying at the supermarket.
It isn’t pretty.
Combat
Opportunity
Stocking
The
Complete
'Omestead
Thank all of you for the smiles🤭