About a year ago, a dear friend moved in down the street. Her then-3-year-old and my then-2<-year-old had struck up a sweet, indivisible little friendship through church and its concentric social circles. The interest rates weren’t favorable, they downsized and had to renovate, but this friend is the type of person who means what she says when she says she wants to build a community. So she walked the walk
A couple months later, she was cooking scrambled eggs in my kitchen after I’d just given birth a few feet over in the den. She took a photo I’ll cherish forever: my husband meeting his son for the first time. So it was with great joy that yesterday, I scooped her kids for a couple hours so she could also give birth in peace.
It’s one thing to LARP on TikTok in an apron. But what does it mean to be a good homemaker? What does it mean to civilize children?
Things couldn’t have gone better. Thank God.
These moments of sisterhood induce a feeling of gender euphoria. People often ask, how do you manage three under 3? Why aren’t you losing your mind?
The answer is multifaceted, but one plain truth comes through: by some mysterious grace, I’m surrounded by excellent women who seek sisterhood through motherhood. I simultaneously respect and rely upon my girlfriends. Suffering finds a solution in camaraderie. We are on the same team. We are in the trenches together — and the togetherness is what makes the difference.
Among other things, this is what writer, mother of many, businesswoman, and doctor of political philosophy Lane Scott says about building a culture more friendly to families than the current one. How do we get beyond the ideological capture of traditionally helpful institutions, the unavoidable anti-natal propagandizing, and atomization in general?
In the most recent episode of “Girlboss, Interrupted,” we explore some of the answers Lane has to offer: self-government, sisterhood, and more.
Scott speculates:
The problem with the rise of “trad life” is that it’s being presented as ideal as we are experiencing the loss of all of the institutions that we used to use to raise our children. Those are all, if not gone, then all severely compromised.
So I’m asking what it means for a political movement or a political philosophy to tell women “men are working, and women are responsible for everything else,” when everything else turns out to be quite a lot. I think what people don’t really consider is the extent to which schools, daycares, libraries, public institutions of all sorts, help people to raise their children. Much of the challenge of recognizing the rot and taking yourself out is, first of all, how do you fill the day? How do you make your kids do anything? How do you make yourself do anything? How do you create a world of incentives and rewards?
It requires an incredible amount of creativity. It requires a kind of feminine genius, and it does require both parents.
In other words, if conservatives are going to ask women to revisit homemaking as a vocation, let alone homesteading or some of the more ambitious forms of #tradlife, it may be a good idea to get a more accurate sense of what that really looks like, not just for the sake of sanity, but to lift our sights higher.
It’s one thing to LARP on TikTok in an apron. But what does it mean to be a good homemaker? What does it mean to civilize children? These are the unspoken questions that, if answered truly, can inspire greatness where we need it most.