Twitter anon “Peachy Keenan” published a new book, Domestic Extremist. It’s good!
The main reason I’m mentioning it here is because I think it can serve a certain role.
I like old, classic things. Young people need something to fill their minds besides whatever they see on Netflix or TikTok, the print media and popular music. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” it is said, and that is particularly true of young minds. Children and young people know that they have to learn something, and will suck up whatever is in their environment. You have to fill that vacuum with things of merit and value. Read Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, or Ivanhoe.
I think that young minds, or older minds too, should be subject to “overpressure.” “Overpressure” is used where the external environment is basically toxic. For example, if you want to make a battle tank resistant to poison gas, then you pressurize the tank with purified air. The air is constantly leaking out of the tank, which prevents the toxic outside air from leaking in. Basically, read a lot of old books, of quality. For older people, whose minds are more “full,” this pressure of quality new material helps sweep away the old influences. If you read all of Jane Austen’s novels, it will help wash away the effects of watching way too many episodes of Sex in the City and Seinfeld. Or, maybe just read the New Testament.
But the problem with this approach is that it does not give a good idea of how to deal with today’s environment. Young people, and older people too, should have an idea of what we face today, and strategies to deal with it.
“Peachy Keenan’s” strategy was to become: Extremely Domestic. She was on the usual Feminist Life Track of going to a top university, and starting a “good career.” She might not have gotten married at all if she didn’t run across a more traditional, marriage-minded sort of man, who basically talked her out of her Leftist brainwashing. Even so, she tried to do the “working mother” thing for several years. Finally, with a new child on the way, she gave it all up and became a full-time housewife. Now she is the mother of five.
Thus, she serves as an example of someone who was not “born into” traditional family roles, as in some Christian circles or among immigrants, but learned it. And, she has developed a series of strategies for dealing with present-day problems. Along the way, she became a Catholic. She also homeschools, and uses select private schools.
Plus, she looks like this — which, if you ask me, is what a mother of five should look like.
There is not much we can really do directly about what is going on in the world, or the world we face outside the door of the house. But, we still have the basic ability to choose what we do in our own homes. Netflix might be full of garbage; but we don’t have to watch it. The supermarkets might be full of processed foods that are bad for health; but we don’t have to eat them. The schools might be Leftist brainwashing centers; but we don’t have to send our children there. Other men’s children might be addicted to Instagram and TikTok; but we do not have to give our children smartphones.
But, to do all this, you have to be at home. Or, someone does; and since it is usually the man out working, this means the wife. If a woman is not in the home, but is spending all her time and energy working, her children will be raised by low-paid hirelings; they will eat bad food because nobody has time to cook; they will be sent to public schools, because someone has to take care of them during the day.
Now, instead of a personal choice, we are forced into solving gigantic problems. We can’t just choose a homeschool method or curriculum; we have to reform the entire public school system. We can’t just turn off Netflix; we have to reform all of Hollywood. We can’t just care for our own young children; we need state-funded daycare. Of course none of these problems will be solved, at least before our children are grown; so, basically, we can do nothing at all.
Peachy goes into this in some detail. Her snarky style gets a little tiring after 200+ pages, but mostly it is pretty good. Girls and young women will find an example of how to deal with the problems of this day and age, which they won’t find by reading A Secret Garden. Girls of 16 or 18, who are getting flushed into the intake chute of the Feminist Life Track conveyor belt, can hear from someone who says: “Been there, done that; and this is what happened to most of those women.” Women who are already going in the domestic direction will be encouraged that they are not alone.
The Feminist Life Track was semi-functional for a while, but what was common in the 1990s or 2000s is crumbling today. Men don’t want to marry women who whored around between Ages 15-30, and who promise upfront that their careers will be more important than the man’s children. Women are finding that, not only are they unable to effectively combine career and family, as the previous generation failed to do, they are not even getting the chance. They are stuck in their jobs with a bunch of frozen eggs. I suspect that we are heading toward a time where even up to 50% of women never marry. This is just a guess, but I can say with certainty that 100% of the women who will never marry, were unmarried at Age 32. This is something that is happening right now. We just don’t know what is happening until the unmarried women Age 32 today reach Age 45, and we can draw a line under it.
If I had teenage daughters, I would read this together with them. Just read it out loud, and talk about it. You don’t have to do this in a solemn sort of way, like you were reading Corinthians. Just read it for fun, like you were watching a movie together, but it’s a book. Comment on what you agree with, and where you think Peachy gets it wrong. Do this before your teenage daughters go too far down the path of herd-following all the other girls. I think it would be interesting for teenage boys too, although not quite so directly.
Cornerstone 