Not only are we not likely to return to the days when mothers were at home with their children, we are not likely to return to the much better days when fathers and mothers were BOTH at home with their children. The fact that this issue tends to escape our notice, almost completely, is sobering.
I agree with Joe N.'s comments below. He wrote, "We are living in this weird dystopianism where many men and thinkers will acknowledge that women's liberation has been a societal disaster... And women are enjoying unheard of privileges in society nowadays."
Patriarchy is Biblical, and therefore it is the ideal system. Anything less than that is a compromise that will lead to varying levels of problems, and today because of our wholesale capitulation to feminism, we have enormous problems. Aaron says we are not going back to the old days of women staying at home with children, and while societal trends surely validate that statement, we need to carefully evaluate the advisability of encouraging any new privilege which may further undermine patriarchy.
Regarding the issue of women with crying babies attending public events, the question then is whether or not the net effect of that practice helps or undermines patriarchy. On the one hand women feeling that they they have a right to attend all public events with babies (and possibly militantly letting their babies shriek without taking them outside) somewhat enforces feminism. On the other hand, there are so many forces aligned against women having children and properly caring for them that to deny women access to certain public events (with or without children), even if they should not in principle attend, could be perceived so negatively by them that such a policy would militate rather strongly against their having children. Such a reaction more strongly advances feminism than allowing them to attend the events in question. For this reason, I very narrowly support Aaron's position that we should accept the wailing babies, though I do hope that the women bringing them would have the decency to temporarily remove them if the crying is excessive.
At Amazon HQ it was permissible, even encouraged for my coworkers to bring their dogs to work, and be there in the hallways, in the meetings, at the desks, all day, everyday. The reception desk had doggie treats, my building had a whole dog park on the 17th floor.
But bringing my kid to work would've been a distraction.
Funny you'd publish this today. I'm sitting in my employer's office with a 9-month-old next to me (I do this once every month or two when my wife - a SAHM - is going to a meeting or just needs a break).
To "check my privilege" in the honest sense of the phrase: I've got 1) an office job where there isn't any dangerous machinery around, 2) a private office rather than a cubicle, and 3) work that's somewhat flexible by its nature. Not every type of work can safely accommodate children nearby. But a lot of it can, and employers ought to be expected to accommodate when it's practical.
I’m with Aaron on this one. It is useful to remember that the fifties model was actually a short lived one. I’m old, so I remember what a farmer’s wife did in the course of a day, feed 20 hands bringing in a harvest with three full hot meals including pies. Few households could afford to be without additional revenue before the ‘50’s. Women worked at seasonal jobs in agriculture, and often had cleaning jobs, as the Downton Abbey maids went to the factories. One of my grandmothers took in washing, boiling the water over a fire, scrubbing with home made lye soap on a board. Not a fun or easy job. The other cleaned the Capitol (movie) Theater wielding mops which were heavy before soaked with water.
Speaking of conferences , I attended one where a number of researchers were presenting papers on autoimmune diseases. I have a rare and serious one. The work that was being done by women in research and writing the papers that would bring relief to people like me was heartening. In the world that is emerging, a poorer, underpopulated world, we’re going to need all hands on deck. For the women who want to stay at home, we need to offer support and respect. For the women who have a desire and ability to contribute, we need to offer support and acceptance of the presence of children, rather than insisting that the children be hidden away. It isn’t possible for children to be in all workplaces all the time, but there are more places now than in the early industrial age. If you want to read about the cold, hard evidence as to why a-two parent family is the most desirable environment for a growing child, read Katy Faust’s, Them Before Us, a book which collects the data from impeccable sources. She also reveals the hideous damage to children that is done by birth technologies where the child is taken from the mother’s womb and turned over to strangers, with no mother who has shared her heartbeat and voice with the infant. The damage only becomes greater as the child grows and develops the desire to know the identity of person who gave him or her birth. Katy Faust has adopted children into her family, and does not deny of diminish their pain. But she makes it clear that stepping in when the alternative is a series if foster homes, is vastly different from paying money to create a painful situation for a child so that the adult can feel more comfortable. The idea of an artificial womb is such a travesty that the choice of that direction is the ultimate cruelty. Katy Faust has spoken to congressional committees on the topic of creating laws that hold the welfare of the child over convenience and ego needs of adults. We are at a perilous point in history. I said I was old. When I grew up, it was normal for youngsters to “hate” playing with the opposite sex. It was a sign of emerging adulthood when boys and girls began to see some attraction to the opposite sex. The next step, of looking forward to forming a lifelong marriage, was characteristic of a mature, normal human. The seething hostility between the sexes going on now is appalling. It is not universal. I know many delightful young people, devoted to each other, raising sane, happy children. But anyone, male of female, who thinks that a world in which men and women live apart is anything but a disaster is fooling him or herself. It is time to lay down the weapons and work together to build a humane world. I might add that I am fortunate to live in marriage of more than half a century. I feel such sorrow for young people that don’t even know enough to aspire to a relationship that has brought us such joy, and that is such an advantage as we navigate the challenges of age. Aaron, I appreciate the way you keep the focus on finding a way for people to achieve marriage and a family, rather than sending them off in search of a perpetual adolescence ending in an empty old age, as so many “influencers” male and female, are doing. It is voices like yours, and now Louise Perry’s (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution) that are now being heard by young women and men, that offer a path out.
We are living in this weird dystopianism where many men and thinkers will acknowledge that women's liberation has been a societal disaster... but everyone is simply resigned to it and "trying to figure out how to make it work" instead of doing the hard work of fighting it back to the old ways. When "society" (read: men) have to pick up the slack so women can "do it all", then it's not equality, it's rank privilege. And women are enjoying unheard of privileges in society nowadays.
I like children and I do think children should be integrated more into adult society. But not for the sake of "mothers" and the women's activity level, but for the sake of family exposure to meaningful events. Meaning, if the family isn't there as a group, the women with children shouldn't be there either.
Because if we're not committing to going back, then we should at least hasten the end of this current blighted era (with zero childbirths and no marriages) till society is ready to be rebuilt in the old traditions. 8.2 marriages per 1000 people in the US. We're almost there. Just need a few more generations to make it permanent.
It's not impossible that perhaps you and Aaron are both correct (to a certain extent). Aaron writes,
"We aren’t going back to a midcentury type world where women with young children were at home and not engaged in civic life apart from child-centered activities. If we want to raise birth rates, then we have to make it as easy as possible for women with young children to be able to remain engaged in life."
If what Aaron says doesn't happen, then yes, societies with widespread "women's lib" will have to die out and all that remains will be those societies that figured out how to approach family life in a way that families are actually started and grown.
It parallels how I think about the concept of "profit-maximizing firms." Real world firms don't actually have to be profit-maximizing, it will just be the case that the firms that survive will be the ones who figured out how to make profits. Same thing with societies in the long run.
I don't see that Aaron and I are saying the same things. For starters, his comment includes all women, including women who are single mothers and women who are "empowered" and keep a husband only for convenience. They are doing things on their own and essentially have separate lives. Look at our current political world and corporate landscape and you'll find millions of examples of this.
I'm saying that unless we are actively engaging with the goal of taking away "rights" currently held by half the population, then we should not prop up the system at all and should let it die as quickly as possible.
Even if a portion of society figures out how to "integrate family life" into society (but does not otherwise change their children's behavior), it will not be enough to change society as a whole without significant effort and a LOT of acrimony. But it will be enough to carry the current degenerate society on through a few hundred more years of languish (and billions of aborted babies) till it finally dies. We need families who do NOT integrate into society so that when society collapses, they can carry on unaffected.
The merciful option is to cut society down now so it can be rebuilt faster. Literally, the non-child producers must die out. The feminists, the woke, the leftists - must all age out and be removed from society so the kernel of people who are outside society can continue marrying and having many children to repopulate.
Society needs to (and one way or another, is going to) find a way to configure itself so that children are born again.
But it also needs to be recognized that the stable patriarchal systems of yesteryear were a product of technology. When survival is dependent on male labor (for plow-based agriculture or hunting), then patriarchy is stable and maintained effortlessly because women are, in economic terms, a luxury that fathers will go so far as to pay a dowry to get off their hands.
Moreover, when maintaining the household and caring for children involves a large number of tasks -- some of them skilled and complex -- that take up all the hours in the day, then women will be more content to stay at home (I recall Aaron making this point before).
There has been a technology shock to this arrangement, and I just don't think you'll have a stable arrangement that looks quite like the old one, because the old one didn't require rigorous ideological enforcement to maintain. Economic reality provided the enforcement. Any new system, if it's going to be stable, will have to take into account the fact that maintaining a home is technologically much easier, and there are large economic gains to be had from women engaging in even part-time outside work.
Part of the problem is that technology is changing too rapidly to even see what a stable system looks like. 20 years ago, it looked like we had a stable-enough 2.0 TFR system. Now it's clear that we don't, and the whole world's family life has changed a lot in 5 years.
True - and we are only years away from commercially available artificial womb technology that eliminate the need for marriage and mothers.
There is only ideological adherence which can revere tradition. Women's liberation broke tradition's place in society en masse. Refusal to break women's liberation means society will have to accept the downstream effects which will include men untethering from women completely. In a competitive environment, men excel - and the only marketplace advantage that women hold is 1) biological child bearing and 2) policy-forced privilege. The policy forced privilege part will get destroyed as soon as men realize they have little to no need of women. Artificial wombs will free men from the biological hold that women have over child bearing.
The endless handwringing of the last 80 years has not stopped leftist "progress" one bit. Christianity has no will to stop the last few steps that are yet to be reached. Thus, it is impotent. Thus, it is irrelevant.
Not only are we not likely to return to the days when mothers were at home with their children, we are not likely to return to the much better days when fathers and mothers were BOTH at home with their children. The fact that this issue tends to escape our notice, almost completely, is sobering.
My favorite thing from 2020 was the way work from home increased parents' time with their children.
I agree with Joe N.'s comments below. He wrote, "We are living in this weird dystopianism where many men and thinkers will acknowledge that women's liberation has been a societal disaster... And women are enjoying unheard of privileges in society nowadays."
Patriarchy is Biblical, and therefore it is the ideal system. Anything less than that is a compromise that will lead to varying levels of problems, and today because of our wholesale capitulation to feminism, we have enormous problems. Aaron says we are not going back to the old days of women staying at home with children, and while societal trends surely validate that statement, we need to carefully evaluate the advisability of encouraging any new privilege which may further undermine patriarchy.
Regarding the issue of women with crying babies attending public events, the question then is whether or not the net effect of that practice helps or undermines patriarchy. On the one hand women feeling that they they have a right to attend all public events with babies (and possibly militantly letting their babies shriek without taking them outside) somewhat enforces feminism. On the other hand, there are so many forces aligned against women having children and properly caring for them that to deny women access to certain public events (with or without children), even if they should not in principle attend, could be perceived so negatively by them that such a policy would militate rather strongly against their having children. Such a reaction more strongly advances feminism than allowing them to attend the events in question. For this reason, I very narrowly support Aaron's position that we should accept the wailing babies, though I do hope that the women bringing them would have the decency to temporarily remove them if the crying is excessive.
At Amazon HQ it was permissible, even encouraged for my coworkers to bring their dogs to work, and be there in the hallways, in the meetings, at the desks, all day, everyday. The reception desk had doggie treats, my building had a whole dog park on the 17th floor.
But bringing my kid to work would've been a distraction.
Funny you'd publish this today. I'm sitting in my employer's office with a 9-month-old next to me (I do this once every month or two when my wife - a SAHM - is going to a meeting or just needs a break).
To "check my privilege" in the honest sense of the phrase: I've got 1) an office job where there isn't any dangerous machinery around, 2) a private office rather than a cubicle, and 3) work that's somewhat flexible by its nature. Not every type of work can safely accommodate children nearby. But a lot of it can, and employers ought to be expected to accommodate when it's practical.
I’m with Aaron on this one. It is useful to remember that the fifties model was actually a short lived one. I’m old, so I remember what a farmer’s wife did in the course of a day, feed 20 hands bringing in a harvest with three full hot meals including pies. Few households could afford to be without additional revenue before the ‘50’s. Women worked at seasonal jobs in agriculture, and often had cleaning jobs, as the Downton Abbey maids went to the factories. One of my grandmothers took in washing, boiling the water over a fire, scrubbing with home made lye soap on a board. Not a fun or easy job. The other cleaned the Capitol (movie) Theater wielding mops which were heavy before soaked with water.
Speaking of conferences , I attended one where a number of researchers were presenting papers on autoimmune diseases. I have a rare and serious one. The work that was being done by women in research and writing the papers that would bring relief to people like me was heartening. In the world that is emerging, a poorer, underpopulated world, we’re going to need all hands on deck. For the women who want to stay at home, we need to offer support and respect. For the women who have a desire and ability to contribute, we need to offer support and acceptance of the presence of children, rather than insisting that the children be hidden away. It isn’t possible for children to be in all workplaces all the time, but there are more places now than in the early industrial age. If you want to read about the cold, hard evidence as to why a-two parent family is the most desirable environment for a growing child, read Katy Faust’s, Them Before Us, a book which collects the data from impeccable sources. She also reveals the hideous damage to children that is done by birth technologies where the child is taken from the mother’s womb and turned over to strangers, with no mother who has shared her heartbeat and voice with the infant. The damage only becomes greater as the child grows and develops the desire to know the identity of person who gave him or her birth. Katy Faust has adopted children into her family, and does not deny of diminish their pain. But she makes it clear that stepping in when the alternative is a series if foster homes, is vastly different from paying money to create a painful situation for a child so that the adult can feel more comfortable. The idea of an artificial womb is such a travesty that the choice of that direction is the ultimate cruelty. Katy Faust has spoken to congressional committees on the topic of creating laws that hold the welfare of the child over convenience and ego needs of adults. We are at a perilous point in history. I said I was old. When I grew up, it was normal for youngsters to “hate” playing with the opposite sex. It was a sign of emerging adulthood when boys and girls began to see some attraction to the opposite sex. The next step, of looking forward to forming a lifelong marriage, was characteristic of a mature, normal human. The seething hostility between the sexes going on now is appalling. It is not universal. I know many delightful young people, devoted to each other, raising sane, happy children. But anyone, male of female, who thinks that a world in which men and women live apart is anything but a disaster is fooling him or herself. It is time to lay down the weapons and work together to build a humane world. I might add that I am fortunate to live in marriage of more than half a century. I feel such sorrow for young people that don’t even know enough to aspire to a relationship that has brought us such joy, and that is such an advantage as we navigate the challenges of age. Aaron, I appreciate the way you keep the focus on finding a way for people to achieve marriage and a family, rather than sending them off in search of a perpetual adolescence ending in an empty old age, as so many “influencers” male and female, are doing. It is voices like yours, and now Louise Perry’s (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution) that are now being heard by young women and men, that offer a path out.
Our society is dead.. or as good as.
We are living in this weird dystopianism where many men and thinkers will acknowledge that women's liberation has been a societal disaster... but everyone is simply resigned to it and "trying to figure out how to make it work" instead of doing the hard work of fighting it back to the old ways. When "society" (read: men) have to pick up the slack so women can "do it all", then it's not equality, it's rank privilege. And women are enjoying unheard of privileges in society nowadays.
I like children and I do think children should be integrated more into adult society. But not for the sake of "mothers" and the women's activity level, but for the sake of family exposure to meaningful events. Meaning, if the family isn't there as a group, the women with children shouldn't be there either.
Because if we're not committing to going back, then we should at least hasten the end of this current blighted era (with zero childbirths and no marriages) till society is ready to be rebuilt in the old traditions. 8.2 marriages per 1000 people in the US. We're almost there. Just need a few more generations to make it permanent.
It's not impossible that perhaps you and Aaron are both correct (to a certain extent). Aaron writes,
"We aren’t going back to a midcentury type world where women with young children were at home and not engaged in civic life apart from child-centered activities. If we want to raise birth rates, then we have to make it as easy as possible for women with young children to be able to remain engaged in life."
If what Aaron says doesn't happen, then yes, societies with widespread "women's lib" will have to die out and all that remains will be those societies that figured out how to approach family life in a way that families are actually started and grown.
It parallels how I think about the concept of "profit-maximizing firms." Real world firms don't actually have to be profit-maximizing, it will just be the case that the firms that survive will be the ones who figured out how to make profits. Same thing with societies in the long run.
Here's a telling phrase pointing up the difference in viewpoint:
"...we have to make it as easy as possible for women with young children to be able to remain engaged in life."
I don't see that Aaron and I are saying the same things. For starters, his comment includes all women, including women who are single mothers and women who are "empowered" and keep a husband only for convenience. They are doing things on their own and essentially have separate lives. Look at our current political world and corporate landscape and you'll find millions of examples of this.
I'm saying that unless we are actively engaging with the goal of taking away "rights" currently held by half the population, then we should not prop up the system at all and should let it die as quickly as possible.
Even if a portion of society figures out how to "integrate family life" into society (but does not otherwise change their children's behavior), it will not be enough to change society as a whole without significant effort and a LOT of acrimony. But it will be enough to carry the current degenerate society on through a few hundred more years of languish (and billions of aborted babies) till it finally dies. We need families who do NOT integrate into society so that when society collapses, they can carry on unaffected.
The merciful option is to cut society down now so it can be rebuilt faster. Literally, the non-child producers must die out. The feminists, the woke, the leftists - must all age out and be removed from society so the kernel of people who are outside society can continue marrying and having many children to repopulate.
There's a difference between "could both be correct" and "saying the same thing."
Society needs to (and one way or another, is going to) find a way to configure itself so that children are born again.
But it also needs to be recognized that the stable patriarchal systems of yesteryear were a product of technology. When survival is dependent on male labor (for plow-based agriculture or hunting), then patriarchy is stable and maintained effortlessly because women are, in economic terms, a luxury that fathers will go so far as to pay a dowry to get off their hands.
Moreover, when maintaining the household and caring for children involves a large number of tasks -- some of them skilled and complex -- that take up all the hours in the day, then women will be more content to stay at home (I recall Aaron making this point before).
There has been a technology shock to this arrangement, and I just don't think you'll have a stable arrangement that looks quite like the old one, because the old one didn't require rigorous ideological enforcement to maintain. Economic reality provided the enforcement. Any new system, if it's going to be stable, will have to take into account the fact that maintaining a home is technologically much easier, and there are large economic gains to be had from women engaging in even part-time outside work.
Part of the problem is that technology is changing too rapidly to even see what a stable system looks like. 20 years ago, it looked like we had a stable-enough 2.0 TFR system. Now it's clear that we don't, and the whole world's family life has changed a lot in 5 years.
True - and we are only years away from commercially available artificial womb technology that eliminate the need for marriage and mothers.
There is only ideological adherence which can revere tradition. Women's liberation broke tradition's place in society en masse. Refusal to break women's liberation means society will have to accept the downstream effects which will include men untethering from women completely. In a competitive environment, men excel - and the only marketplace advantage that women hold is 1) biological child bearing and 2) policy-forced privilege. The policy forced privilege part will get destroyed as soon as men realize they have little to no need of women. Artificial wombs will free men from the biological hold that women have over child bearing.
The endless handwringing of the last 80 years has not stopped leftist "progress" one bit. Christianity has no will to stop the last few steps that are yet to be reached. Thus, it is impotent. Thus, it is irrelevant.
Society will be remade in 20-40 years.