This woman doesn’t say that she was a virgin at marriage but … what do you think?

Men: This is what you want.

Unfortunately, young men are often not taught how to keep house properly. They tend to be very messy. Often, men pass Age 30 without learning to keep house at a decent standard. This is stupid. Housekeeping is not that hard. Learn how to do it, and do it right. Then, go off and do something fun, like snowboarding.

If you live somewhere, and your Mom isn’t taking care of it, then you have to do basic housekeeping. Mostly, young men do this very badly. Eventually, they learn how to do it. Over time, typically many years, men eventually learn that it is worth spending a little extra time per week doing basic household chores, so that you live in a nice clean place. You do not have to spend a lot of time at it. Maybe three hours per week is about right. Just pick one or two evenings per week, and get it done, and done properly.

Sometimes men learn this, at an early age, in the military. The military demands that men keep their living spaces clean. But, most men do not learn this from the military.

If you live apart from your Mother, let’s say at Age 18 as a college student, then you should begin, immediately, to learn basic housekeeping tasks. These include:

Do the Laundry. Do the laundry about once a week. Fold your clothes and put them away properly. Iron if you have to. Do not let dirty laundry pile up. Do not wear dirty laundry because you have no clean clothes. Do not dump your clean laundry in a corner, and just pick things out of the pile as you need them, instead of folding them and putting them away. Along with your clothes, wash other household linens such as towels, sheets and napkins once a week. Wash your sheets at least once a week, or maybe more often. Bath towels should be washed at least once a week. Hand towels, in the kitchen or bathroom, should be changed every day.

Make your bed. Make your bed each morning after you get up. Change the sheets at least once a week, or more (especially if you have guests). Have a nice bed — nice sheets, comforters, pillows etc. This stuff is cheap so there’s no reason to have crappy, ugly stuff. Go to a store like HomeGoods.

Take a shower. Take a shower at least once a day. Maybe more than once, especially if you have been doing dirty or sweaty work.

Clean the bathroom. Bathrooms should be cleaned at least once a week. Wipe down the sinks, counters, toilet, floors, mirrors etc. with a sponge. Use rubber gloves. Toilets should be cleaned every day, but at least once a week. Hand towels should be changed every day.

Clean the Kitchen. Kitchens should be cleaned every day. Every day, before going to bed, the kitchen should be ready for the next day. Dishes should be washed. Sinks, counters and tables should be wiped down. Use rubber gloves. Sweep and mop the floor at least once a week, or every day if you are cooking often. Wipe down the stove and stovetop at least once a week, or every day. Don’t let old/rotten food build up in the refrigerator.

Clean the other rooms. Living rooms, halls, bedrooms etc. should be vacuumed once a week. Don’t let clutter build up. Put things away. Dusting is actually a thing. Dust builds up on horizontal surfaces, such as the tops of dressers or bookshelves, lamp shades etc. Wipe off the dust with a damp cloth once a month, or more if necessary. Clean out “cobwebs” that can collect in corners. These are actually strings of dust, they are not made by spiders.

Take care of the yard. If you have a yard, you have to take care of it. If you really don’t want to spend your time dinking around in the yard, and would rather go fishing, then don’t have a yard. Look for an apartment or townhouse where you don’t have a yard to take care of. But, if you have a yard, then you have to do minimal care of it. This might be raking and mowing.

Do basic maintenance. Little things need to be taken care of all the time. Apparently, a lot of ill-disciplined people can’t even manage to change the batteries in their fire alarms, and they live for years with the “needs batteries” chirping. Replace light bulbs that go out. Do it right away. Don’t just leave burned-out light bulbs for weeks, months or years.

That’s it. Just learn how to do this right away, at the age of 18 or 20. It takes time and effort, but it is only about three hours a week. Purchase the necessary materials if you have to. Brooms, vacuum cleaners, buckets, sponges etc. are cheap so get something good that works well and is a joy to use. Use rubber gloves, while washing dishes or cleaning. We buy “kitchen rags” from Walmart. These are sold as cheap cotton washcloths, less than $1 each, but we use them as all-purpose cleaning rags. Just get into the habit of doing it, and doing it properly with no sloppiness or slacking off, and then go do what you really want to do.

Louisiana’s “Covenant Marriage” law allows couples to marry based on a separate legal code aside from no-fault divorce.

Here it is straight from the law books:

The laws are starting to change. In Tennessee, DNA testing of paternity is now mandatory for child-support cases.

Things are changing. After scoring a victory with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, conservatives are setting their sights at overturning no-fault divorce laws.

At-fault divorce laws, prior to 1970 and stretching centuries previous, looked something like this:

A married couple could divorce under mutually-agreed conditions.

If there was no mutual agreement, then the case went to court. There had to be proof of “fault,” typically abandonment, cruelty, incurable mental illness, or adultery. Wikipedia summarizes:

Prior to the latter decades of the 20th century, divorce was considered to be against the public interest, and civil courts refused to grant a divorce except if one party to the marriage had betrayed the “innocent spouse.” Thus, a spouse suing for divorce in most states had to show a “fault” such as abandonment, cruelty, incurable mental illness, or adultery. If an “innocent” husband and wife wished to separate, or if both were guilty, “neither would be allowed to escape the bonds of marriage.”[9] Divorce was barred if evidence revealed any hint of complicity between spouses to manufacture grounds for divorce, such as if the suing party engaged in procurement or connivance (contributing to the fault, such as by arranging for adultery), condonation (forgiving the fault either explicitly or by continuing to cohabit after knowing of it), or recrimination (the suing spouse also being guilty).

Unfortunately, this did lead to a lot of problems. Things would be tied up in court forever, and in the end, divorces were usually granted. (It is hard to imagine staying married to someone who ties you up in long legal cases.) Women who wanted to break up the family would inevitably claim that their husbands got drunk and beat them. I am sure this almost never happened, just as it almost never happens today. Nevertheless, about 25% of marriages ended in divorce in the 1960s, and probably there was a barrage of lies that went along with that. Some lawyers offered a “prostitute and photographer” package for women who wanted to frame their husbands for adultery.

Actually, three States today — Mississippi, South Dakota and Tennessee — require mutual consent for no-fault divorce.

What if the State just got out of it? Whether a man and a woman “were” or “were not” married, or divorced, simply was not a matter of the State’s concern. SigmaFrame had an interesting series about this history and concept.

This is not far from what we see in Scandinavian countries today, where men and women live together for a long time, and have children together, without ever getting “married.” Aren’t they married?

What would happen in the dissolution of one of these informal “common law marriages”? Probably, assets that were in an individuals’ name would be retained by the individual. Assets with formal joint ownership would probably have to be split somehow, likely with one side buying the other out, or just selling it and splitting the proceeds. Children would be distributed among parents, or even other relatives, as appropriate.

A step up from this is a private marriage contract, that is entirely a civil contract without State involvement. Basically it is a business contract, still enforceable by law.

The present child support system dates from 1975. It has given rise to the “child support model of marriage,” where a husband and father is no longer necessary — just his money.

Maybe we should just get rid of it. Whoever has custody of the child has to take care of it.

This would certainly remove incentives for women to blow up families and steal men’s children from them. We might see more father custody, a good thing overall. Maybe fathers should be given first choice of custody in divorce. Nevertheless, it brings up the question of who should get custody of the children. While today we tend to think about women who want to fool around with another man not their husband, nevertheless we should remember those men who want to fool around with another woman not their wife. One solution, adopted by the ancient Romans, was that husbands would primarily receive custody of their children. A new wife is probably not going to be very interested in a man that comes with children. She isn’t going to want to take care of another woman’s children (thus all the fairy tales that feature evil step-mothers). A man with children naturally wants someone to take care of them; and who better than their natural mother? Even if a man has a mistress on the side, the family is maintained.

I think that eliminating child support altogether would work pretty well for divorce. Whoever has the children takes care of them. But, the child support system arose from the problem of unmarried single mothers. It was intended, at least in part, to replace existing state welfare programs for single mothers, going back to at least the 1920s. From that point of view, it does make sense: If we are going to be supporting single mothers anyway, shouldn’t the biological father have some responsibility? This puts some of the risk and hardship of single motherhood on men, rather than women alone.

Today, we have reliable DNA testing, so that actual fathers can be identified. This is a relatively new thing. At the very least, we should make no man responsible for a child, who is not the biological father. Oddly enough, this would probably be good for single moms. One thing preventing men from taking up single mothers, and their children, is the risk of being liable for child support if you show even a small kindness to the woman’s children.

In recent decades, Republican and Conservative leaders have been ratcheting up the child support monster ever higher. Today, missing child support payments — even if a man loses his job — is about the only financial obligation that will land you in jail. And how are you supposed to make child support payments in jail?

I sure am writing a lot this morning.

Here we draw inspiration again from the Transformed Wife, Lori Alexander, who always has something interesting to talk about. Here, she talks about the former wife of Joshua Harris, the “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” guy. Shannon Harris talks about her experience in the Christian Church, the Adam and Eve story, and her interpretation of it.

First, let’s just take the Adam and Eve story as total fiction. But, even as fiction, it has certain themes and narratives.

Adam is in Eden and everything is fine. But, he is a little lonely.

Eve shows up. The story suggests that she is somewhat inferior to Adam, being created from his rib.

Eve is tempted and deceived by Satan.

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

This apple sounds a lot like … feminism!

“You shall be as gods” = “You can have it all!”

“the tree was good for food” = you can earn money at a career (????)

“pleasant to the eyes” = seems, on the surface, like a good idea.

“desired to make one wise” = appears the be wisdom.

Maybe, Eve has sex with Satan, and becomes pregnant with Cain (the first murderer).

All is not well in Eden.

Adam is not deceived by Satan, but he also agrees to eat the fruit,

Maybe he also adopts Feminist dogma to be agreeable with this wife?

In any case, Adam errs by following his wife’s leadership, even though he knows it is a bad idea.

You have to admit, there are a lot of interesting things in this story, even taken as a simple fairy tale.

Now, here is Shannon Harris:

My church and their brand of churches interpreted the creation story very literally. God created Adam, and then Eve. Women are second. God created Eve from Adam’s rib, so she’s not her own person. She’s been made from a piece of Adam. God gives Eve the job of Adam’s helper. She didn’t have her own purpose. And then, Eve is curious. She listens to the serpent and she trusts herself, and she becomes wise, and that’s seen as bad. She gets punished for her wisdom.

She becomes wise! She gets punished for her wisdom!

Ummm … maybe she was deceived by Satan? Isn’t that the story?

Is there any evidence of Eve showing any form of wisdom? There is not. Rather, Eve admits that the Serpent deceived her.

And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

There is a little hint at the end that, after a loooooong series of hardships, man will eventually come to know Good and Evil, and develop wisdom.

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

And so we see that women can’t even make sense of a funny little fable like this, only a few hundred words long.

And in doing so, we can see that indeed women are easy to deceive, just like the story says. They just make up any sort of nonsense.

You go girl!

Here’s a very average girl from rural China, with a really crappy $9 dress, and a little makeup but not that much.

But, she isn’t fat, has no noserings or tattoos, has long hair, and is making an effort.

It really is that easy.

Probably, she could be a Good Wife and Mother too. Good enough.

If you’re going to be a wife and mother, be a good one!

Because, what’s the point of being a bad one? Are you benefiting from this somehow? Obviously, your husband and children are not benefiting.

If you don’t want to be a wife and mother, then don’t. Good luck with that.

Being a Good Wife and a Good Mother is not that hard. Today, thousands of American men are going to places like the Philippines, and basically picking an average girl out of a crowd, who doesn’t even speak English, or not very well. And, these women usually make Good Wives and Mothers. Good enough.

Other men see that this has been mostly successful, so they do the same thing.

It’s not that difficult to be a Good Wife and a Good Mother. Most any woman can do it, including those of below-average intelligence and below-average natural beauty. (By “natural beauty” I mean mostly genes, setting aside uglification including obesity, noserings, and bad clothes.)

Yet, unfortunately, things are so bad in the US these days that even the Top 1% of Virtuous Girls can find it difficult to be a Good Wife and a Good Mother.

Of course the most common response is: Blame Men!

Men are not the reason that you are not a Good Wife and a Good Mother.

You can have a terrible husband, but still be a Good Wife and a Good Mother. Your husband should be able to say: “I have been a terrible husband, but she has always been a Good Wife and a Good Mother.”

Florida eliminated permanent alimony. This is perhaps not much, but finally things are moving. There is broad agreement now that divorce law needs major changes. There is not so much agreement on what those changes should be, which is a topic that I would like to get back to, perhaps with the help of a real divorce lawyer.

Divorce law, and related laws including domestic violence (Duluth Model), “sexual assault/harassment” etc., are State laws. Everyone should write a letter to their State congressional representatives at least once a year. They actually read them, and often give a personalized reply. Some policies, such as police treatment of “domestic violence” cases, are Local law. We actually have democracy, for now, so use it. Get up off your ass.

Here are the details in Florida.

https://communitylawfirm.com/florida-alimony-reforms-2023