Let’s raise the banner for motherhood

The American Mind recently published what I think may be the most concise and incisive explanation of the challenge of modern motherhood that I’ve ever read.

In “The Mother’s Gauntlet,” author Lane Scott wrote:

Total freedom is in some ways the source of the dissatisfaction. The lack of supervisors and peers, the absence of enforced schedules, and the loss of systems and productivity boosters which all working Americans enjoy makes job performance a little problematic, to say the least. Most of the time, no one is watching. No one is cheering. No one is there to keep you honest; and worst of all, no one is there to tell you what ought to be done now vs. later that day vs. next week vs. never. What this means is that there is no system to prevent you from slipping into your worst habits day in, day out.
And your habits are the crux of the issue.

Life at home with small children requires self-governance …

If we are going to ask women to stay home and raise children, if we are going to tell them to pull their kids from schools and homeschool them, we should know what it is that we are asking. The stay-at-home mom cannot escape into a system and hide from her own ungovernability. Not only will she tell on herself, but her children, her life’s greatest work, will eventually tell on her, too. It is a monumental task, calling forth resolution and self-possession on a scale that most of us have never practiced. For that very reason, it is ennobling. But it is also a severe and demanding road bereft of honors and outside encouragement. Our advertisements for homemaking should include that fact—this is a spiritual battle, not a cakewalk. Expectations need to be set at that level.

In the ongoing mommy wars, some social conservatives seem to have taken up a new position on the woman question: Women should leave their careers and return to their homes, which are havens in a heartless world, the management of which is easier than formal paying work.

A common refrain: Why slave away in your cubicle when you could cuddle your baby all day long?

“Girlbosses,” according to this particular memeplex, only choose to work outside the home because of brainwashing and outsized vanity. The implicit leisure of domestic life is more logically appealing, but logic isn’t in women’s wheelhouse anyway.

Scott’s position radically diverges, not in the conclusion that it is good for women to be home, but in its justification. Homes are built, she insists. The “haven,” if it is to exist, must be carefully, systematically crafted and routinely re-examined.

Good homes are vectors and mirrors of civilization. This implies a certain process of refinement, of cultural carpentry in homemaking. It implies that the stuff of the home begins as chaos and is brought into order through certain processes. But someone must enact those processes. Put simply: Peace and order begin with the homemaker.

Homemaking, Scott admits, isn’t easier than formal remunerative work. In many ways, it’s more difficult. Rather than a matter of mindless luxury, it is an opportunity to master self-government and to participate in something of great consequence.

This is a sometimes harsh reality that many women, often women who were very successful in their professional lives, face if they do take the leap and choose to raise children full-time. The skills aren’t precisely transferrable; negotiating with a toddler is nothing like negotiating a contract. On top of that, you’re the janitor and cook now, too.

But if homemaking is the kind of civilizing force that Scott describes (for all members of the family, especially the mother), then it has deep political implications, too. How many of the criminals terrorizing American streets were raised with any intention at all, let alone by mothers who loved them and regarded their role in their lives such as to make them both self-governing and governable?

As conservatives (aside from Scott) struggle to articulate the reality of women’s lives, liberal feminists will acknowledge the difficulty of stay-at-home moms, but only in service of the prefabricated conclusion that responsibility that involves (particularly feminine) difficulty should be avoided. The present dynamic is a tragedy. Liberals continue winning the culture wars. The conservative attitude has room to shift more in the direction of Scott’s — acknowledging the difficulty and dignity of the vocation of motherhood while still offering no quarter for self-indulgent complaining.

Imagine a cultural movement that, instead of diminishing the role of a homemaker, either by right-wing neglect or left-wing manipulation, publicly recognized motherhood as a sacrificial service to one’s country. It wouldn’t be the first time in history, nor would it be unique among contemporaries.

If we are seriously concerned about the future of a country with dismal birth rates, we can afford to reconsider the current methods anyway.