I am quite aware that I am not a correct thinker by the standards of this time. Most of my research has been looking at what is the conventional way of doing things and asking if it is really so. The fact that I have a faith helps here. Because I know truth: I believe in God, and try to reflect is desire for truth, beauty and honour (quite imperfectly) I offend.
So I was obscurely happy to be linked to by a priestess of one civil religion, feminism, as someone who blasphemed against the civil religion, and, as a heterosexual white male, being accounted as unclean, unworthy, and simply to be used as a straw man
In this regard, Christian masculinists are no exception. Members of their community, which seems to have formed in the comments sections of several popular blogs, believe that feminism has destroyed the church and that modern Christian men too willingly submit to female leadership. Many of these users post as anonymously as they can manage in this day and age, but references made to various preferences and ideologues indicate that there is a strong probability that most of them are white, straight, and cisgender. Several prominent masculinist bloggers are single men in their late 20s, angry with the fact that they have not yet found a partner; still more, however, are fathers who are either divorced or struggling with existing marriages.Evidently in response to these personal woes, masculinists have fused manosphere rhetoric with what they see as “biblical” gender roles to envision a hierarchical, patriarchal ideal world. As far as many are concerned, society’s problems—which include war, famine, pestilence, high divorce rates, and anything else they find objectionable—are the result of people walking away from God’s plan for their lives, in which men are leaders and women are followers.
Well, I got a couple of handfuls of people coming over, and if I subvert any of Ms Anderson’s beliefs in the process it would be a worthy thing. But that is not the real civil religion of our society. That is the worship of the child, regardless. Mothers are secondary, as priestesses within the home and their word is taken as law. Elspeth, who is a mother, and an example of the Christian critique of our society (Note Ms Anderson: not male, not white, and what your race and sex is does not matter here. What matters is the truth of your thoughts) notes about this worship of the infant.
I feel so strongly about it that I want as many wives as possible to read it, and the accompanying linked piece.This is because the most important thing we can instill in our children -besides the word of God- is evidence of what a solid, loving marriage looks like. I am gratified that someone, somewhere in the world agrees with me.
In the name of the child: How American parenting is killing the American marriage is the best secular article I’ve read this year about how we kill our marriages by worshipping ourselves at the altar of motherhood. Because let’s just be honest, our supposedly steadfast dedication to our children which crowds out our husbands is far more about our desire to be the perfect mother than it is about our love for our children.
Look, our children are people and they are given to us for a season. During that season, we love them, we pray for them (the only reason I am anywhere good at prayer is because I am now motivated to pray. With teenagers, you cannot control everything. lrt alone grown offspring with children of their own). They screw up.
And we still love them. But let us not say that they are fantastic.
When people choose to have children, they play a lottery. Children have the same range of positive and negative characteristics as adults, and the personalities of some children are poorly matched with those of their parents. Nature has protected children against such a circumstance by endowing them with irresistible cuteness early on, and by ensuring that parents bond with children sufficiently strongly that our cave-dwelling ancestors didn’t push their offspring out in a snowbank when they misbehaved. Much as parents love their children and have their best interests at heart, however, they don’t always like them. That guy at the office who everyone thinks is a jerk was a kid once upon a time, and there’s a pretty good chance that his parents also noticed that he could be a jerk. They just weren’t allowed to say so.
Of course, Ayelet Waldman’s blasphemy was not admitting that her kids were less than completely wonderful, only that she loved her husband more than them. This falls into the category of thou-shalt-have-no-other-gods-before-me. As with many religious crimes, judgment is not applied evenly across the sexes. Mothers must devote themselves to their children above anyone or anything else, but many wives would be offended if their husbands said, “You’re pretty great, but my love for you will never hold a candle to the love I have for John Junior.”
Mothers are also holy in a way that fathers are not expected to be. Mothers live in a clean, cheerful world filled with primary colors and children’s songs, and they don’t think about sex. A father could admit to desiring his wife without seeming like a distracted parent, but society is not as willing to cut Ms. Waldman that same slack. It is unseemly for a mother to enjoy pleasures that don’t involve her children.
You see, I am not a fan of self esteem. I do not tell my progeny they are wonderful because they are tall, or talented or good looking. (I’m biased: I think they are tall, talented and good looking, and geeky, and I think all these things are good). I say you have these talents for a reason and what matters is how you use them. If you are talented or gifted, more will be required of you, more will be asked of you, and you better learn how to nuture this.
I say that this will make you tired, that work is hard, and that nothing good comes without effort, and any great acheivement carries with it a risk of failure. We talk about managing that risk: having plan B, plan C, plan Z.
Worship at the altar of the child and the sainted Mother. No. I am a solo father. I would have preferred that the marriage I had lasted, it did not (and the reasons I will not discuss on a public blog). For the last five years or so I have been trying to mitigate the damage of the marital breakdown.
Women, love your husbands, for that will protect your children. It will also keep you in love with your husband, and make trusting his decisions easier. Your husband is accountable before God for you and the children. Do not blow this up: do not leave your children vulnerable to the playas and predators. Marry young, marry with passion, learn housewifery and wifery, and remain in that state.
Because the divorce will damage the children far more than you “locking the bedroom door”.
