Starting From Scratch
Women who choose a positive path need support from the men in their lives
A Gen X woman explains the challenge of learning how to become a matriarch without having the benefit of any positive examples:
Most women are natural followers and need an in-group of other women to build and grow their identity. And the older Boomer women who should be our matriarchs are STD-ridden, Diamond Princess-cruising nightmares.
When I left my stunningly-successful-early-in-my career professional position to (a) stay home with babies and (b) turn my professional skills toward supporting my husband’s business endeavors, every single one of the Boomer women in both of our families let me know how shocked and disappointed they were in me. How I was setting myself up to be too dependent on my husband, and was throwing away all the opportunities they fought so hard for. This included both my mother who was living vicariously through me, my you-go-girl mother-in-law, all three of their sisters, and three boomer aged step-sisters.
Notably, all but one of them are divorced. The one who isn’t is miserable. So it didn’t take long to look at their lives and think, well, if they’re all disappointed in me it must be the right call for not ending up as a miserable old biddie like them.
I ended up out-grouping myself from them, by standing up for how my husband and I have chosen to structure our lives and raise our children. But I had to create an in-group of GenX women who chose family over career from scratch basically. And not being natural “matriarch material” myself it’s taken conscious effort to study how the naturals do it.
Women that don’t have female leadership potential in them, need visible female leaders telling them that family > career is a positive value. They can’t form and commit to a values set without the group.
It’s on the GenX women to become those examples and voices for the millennials and younger because the Boomer women aren’t going to ever do it.
This woman did exactly what I fault young women, particularly of the Millennial and Gen Z generations for not doing, which is paying attention to the outcomes of the older women who are attempting to advise you! Misery loves company, and failures love giving advice; in both cases, the wise young woman will reject both.
However, this will inevitably create a challenge for the woman who has neither mentors nor matriarchs from whom she can learn. I know one Gen X woman who rejected her Boomer mother’s insane ways, but it took her literal years to learn how to cook, clean, and make a home from scratch as a post-college adult, because she had no female role model younger than her grandmother upon whom she could rely.
This is why it’s also incumbent on men to strongly support their wives and daughters who find themselves stepping up into what is almost certainly a new and alien role for most of them. They need the men in their lives cheering them on to help counteract the relentless negativity and criticism they will inevitably encounter as a result of rejecting the older women who seek to be their mentors in self-destruction.
Thank you, Vox Day! I cannot agree more. When I was 16 and told my mom I liked Brittany Pettibone (in her values) and wanted to be like her and learn about traditional Christianity and one day become a wife and mother, mom said things like "You want to be barefoot and pregnant and stay home all day?" "You are undoing everything I ever wanted for you," "ANYONE can be a mom. I thought you wanted a CAREER. You have talents. You need to use your talents to the glory of God. You got 99th percentile SAT scores," "You can have kids when you are thirty," etc. She said I had to go to college first and basically made me go by saying that she and dad would cosign on student loans but not a car loan (a car would have been my only hope of getting a job in the Midwest unless I wanted to risk death riding the bus), would not tell me how to make a resume or ask their friends if they might have jobs for me anywhere, confiscated my laptop when I was 17 and making the college vs. job decision, telling me that the minute I turned 18 I would be evicted from my parents' house, and my dad carried me outside to tell me he would not let me back inside the house until I agreed to go to college. The crazy thing is that my mom was a stay-at-home mom. I had no good influences on me in high school. When I quit the US Naval Sea Cadet Corps and decided that I wanted to be a mom and not join the military, it seemed like everyone around me said I was ruining my life, and my parents made jokes in front of me along the lines of teen pregnancy even though what inspired the change was Brittany Pettibone, Vox Day's blog, and an interest in traditional Christianity. My grandma said she was happy and thought I'd made the right decision, though, and that she was excited for me, and it meant the world to me. My dad's mockery made me feel unconfident and like I was still very unworthy of a good man and almost made me think I should just become a nun and forget it because I felt so hopeless. Having a happily married man believe in me would have meant something to me. I don't think I ever had that until I found an Eastern Orthodox Church and got some confidence. Full disclosure: I am still unmarried but at least now I am dating and know how to cook thanks to friends teaching me and know how to clean thanks to volunteering at a monastery. I got almost zero help from my parents in this regard. My mom once told me that she is morally opposed to modest clothing because she thinks that Christians should not be seen as prudes, according to the scolding I have been getting for years for almost exclusively wearing long dresses, although now she has shifted to passive aggressive "jokes" and "teasing" about my appearance and "old lady clothes," which, by the way, I have gotten lots of compliments on from men and women.
My Boomer mother(RIP), years ago, looked around and saw that there were no older women who were willing to step up to the plate and follow the injunction of Titus 2:3-5 to train the younger women. She felt inadequate to put herself forward as a model and teacher but she also felt that the need was too great to keep her knowledge to herself. She taught younger women proper domestic skills and how to love and support their husbands and children. At the time I didn't realize how significant this was, but the younger women FLOCKED to her and loved her. And... she found my wife. My wife and my mother were great friends before I ever entered the picture. I honestly cannot imagine a better model.
The YouTube channels and online communities may get the job done, but nothing is better than community that meets face to face.