In fact, I even had in my handbag an old notebook dating to 2016, about a year before I took a full-time job. I had word-sketched there a moment of absolute peace I was experiencing in a friend's greenhouse. My friend (who has since died) lived in half of a house built for a duchess, and I was living in the attic of a house bought by a law lord a few decades after it was built. It was a warm and rainy April day. My delightful and perfectly healthy (we thought) husband was at work. I did not have to earn more (we thought) than I was already earning. Naturally it was sad not to have children, but I wasn't thinking about that as I sat sheltered from the rain.
A year later our whole world had turned upside down, and I thanked the Lord of History that a woman, even a woman my age, could, in fact, find a good professional job and be paid the same wage as a man.
So my answer to "Compulsory Feminism" is "Yes, by all means let us work to bring back and support the traditional family, the traditional breadwinner, the traditional homemaker, and the traditional roles. Let us strive to make men and woman marriageable again. Let us teach young men how to woo women, and let us help young women to preserve their mental health. But at the same time, we must insist on an emergency plan. Husbands fall ill; fathers of young families die. The wives and children of sick men are vulnerable to predators; widows and orphans even more so. Every woman longing to marry a good man and have a family must have an emergency plan. This could be income insurance. That could be an in-demand trade or profession. Whatever it is, let us be rooted in reality. Let us have, by all means, emergency plans."
UPDATE: Children get sick, too. If you're looking for somewhere to put your Lenten alms, you might want to consider this poor family.
Just FYI - Scott Yenor, who wrote that article in FT, is a vile misogynist who is being investigated by his university for an incredibly sexist rant about women that is on YouTube. It's incredibly disappointing that FT have published him. In case anyone needs reminding, misogyny is actually a sin.
ReplyDeleteGoodness! I hadn’t the faintest idea. Never heard of him before!
DeleteI recently read the book Pillars of the House by Charlotte Mary Yonge (so good, would highly recommend!), and there was a line about how women would do well to have the ability to be like a rose or a plant that is capable of standing on its own but can also rely on/follow a wall or trellis for support. Much as I believe in and would like to restore traditional values in the world at large, I sometimes think of how Jane Austen had to rely on her brothers to provide a living for her and how she could only travel to see friends and family when one of them was available to escort her, and - while I love and respect my own brothers - I feel intensely grateful that I can earn my own living and travel freely without having to wait on their convenience. There’s certainly a balance - that rooting in reality - needed.
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