Tradtional failure Exhibit A.

iFollowing up on my previous post, I thought I would present this following table reproduced from this paper.




Conservatives should reflect upon these figures as they provide an explanation with regard to the rise of Feminism in the 20th Century.

As I've mentioned before, women are intensely social creatures and their preferences for things can be modified by social pressure so the figures should be interpreted with that in mind. Still, the data was obtained from Britain where domesticity still has some credence amongst women, especially amongst the trend setting.


As Ms Hakim has pointed out, women today quite literally have the freedom to mix work and domestic duties without stigma to the degree which they feel comfortable. What the figures above thus represents is the natural temperamental distribution with regard to woman's desire to stay at home as a full time homemaker. What we see is that amongst the British population at least 80% of women would like at least some type of work outside the house.  The majority of women do not want to be at home all the time.


For the Aspergy out there, this does not mean that these women wanted careers, what it means that most women wanted some form of employment outside the home as a result of their natural temperaments.

Prior to full scale implemenation of the industrial revolution with subsequent urbanisation,  life was agricultural, communal and short. A woman was meant to pull her weight on the farm by assisting in the farming duties and raising the children (frequently with the assistance of an extended family). The lot of these women was frequently no different to men.

With the advent of the industrial revolution the resultant increase in wealth and urbanisation resulted in women being relieved of their agricultural duties, and given the traditional conceptions of womanhood,  these women were left with nothing to do but look after the husband and children. The forced domestication of these women by traditional society's failure to adapt to social changes ensured that there was an extremely large pool of legitimately dissatisfied women in the late in the early 20th Century.

Of course, the group most motivate to speak about this unsatisfactory state of affairs was the group most afflicted by it, those women whom were temperamentally career orientated. And given the herd wiring of the female mind, these women claimed to speak on behalf of all women, shaming those who disagreed. The rest, as they say, is history.

Just as good marriage will factor in hypergamy so will a good marriage factor in this desire for woman to do other things than just solely look after the husband and the children. The problem is though, that traditionalists did not want, or more probably were incapable of, factoring in this facet of female nature into their conception of marriage. 

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so in the absence of good thought, bad thought will seep in. The midwife of feminism was traditionalism, which by failing offer any alternative to the social pressures that had been formed enabled a quack remedy to take its place. Feminism was the product of traditionalist failure.

Traditionalism failed because:

1) Whilst human nature remained the same, the intersection of human nature and new social circumstances generated profound dissatisfaction which it refused to recognise.

2)Its understanding of female nature was wrong.

3) It did not provide a satisfactory solution to the problem.

Replies to the Happiness of Motherhood.

Firstly, I want to thank the commentators for quality of the comments.

I thought I would reply to you in a post as some of my replies may overlap others.

Commentator Brandon made the following comment;

The question is, how do we accomidate women who aren't cut out to be mothers and still have a society centered around strong families? As your post mentions, the need for social and peer conformity is great in women so they most likely will end up following what their sisters do or what society says they should do. 

and JMSmith writes:

Your remarks make me wonder, though, if we are not giving too much weight to enjoyment of performance of our responsibilities. I've known people who get psychological satisfaction from cleaning the bathroom or mowing the grass; the fact that I don't doesn't exempt me from these duties. Some men take great pleasure in their work; others don't, but nevertheless stick to it out of duty and necessity.

I think one of the big problems of our society are the forces which promote individualism. I suppose it stems from an intellectual tradition which strongly emphasises individual rights but ignores its reciprocal, individual obligations.  Our society operates on the principle of social atomisation, basically it's every man or woman for themselves. There is no emphasis on people having an obligation to others.

The romantic version of marriage is at its core a hedonic and solipsistic conception, based on the mutual pleasure both parties derive from  it. It's legitimacy being in conformity to this vision.  Hence if one of the members is unhappy, the marriage is said to have failed and is justified in its dissolution.  The romantic vision never emphasises the obligation to the other in such a relationship.
 

I think one way out of this problem is to emphasise that marriage is state of mutual obligation as much as it is a state of mutual pleasure, and when a man or woman gets married, they have a duty to it and any subsequent children that are its product. I think we need to bring back the concept of "injuring the marriage" in other words, repealing the no fault divorce laws. Pursuing actions which deliberately put the marriage at risk should be sanctioned.

This implies that there is duty towards keeping the marriage intact regardless of our own satisfactions, however we as a society should try to endeavor that we try to make our duty as pleasant as possible, given the circumstances, as it will facilitate keeping the marriage strong. Duty only hurts when its unpleasurable.

I think one of the big problems is rigidly defining how the marriage should be run. I'm all for a fair amount of latitude in how people manage their own affairs. I'm all for men and women working if they choose to provided the marriage comes first. Careerism is a form of solipsism and men are just as guilty of it as women. I think careerism is acceptable as long as it is subordinate to the well being of the marriage. A woman supporting her husband advancing in his career with a view towards him gaining more money for the family is not such a bad thing, but if it comes at expense of him never being there for the children, I'm not sure I support it.

Anonymous wrote:

 The primary thing women miss as stay at home mother's/career worker is the women's grouping up and hanging out.

Women are buy and large social animal and one of the main reasons they choose to work (apart from the necessity of more money) is because it provides them with a way to get some psychological breathing space away from the kids, and allows them to interact with other adults. Indeed, many women are happy to work for trivial wages "just to get out of the house". This social isolation problem is far more widespread than people think and is a consequence of many factors including hypermobility, multiculturalism, social reserve and town planning. A lot of women simply hate staying at home all day waiting for hubby to come home.


Dalrock said:

The only part I disagree with is the premise that parents who aren't good parents can "buy" what is missing. If they know upfront they aren't cut out for being parents, then why have kids? If they have one and figure this out, why have more? You can't pay someone to love your kids. 

There are several replies to this.

Firstly, the problem is that a lot of parents don't know that they won't be good parents.

Secondly, what constitutes good child care?

Children are more resilient than most child care specialists claim. I don't think that there is any such thing as ideal child care  instead there is good enough care and substandard care. My own mother worked in a tannery when I was a child as my parents wanted to get ahead. I spent long hours in the care of another lady and I never felt that mother didn't love or care for me, and yet I know other mothers who lavish their kids with attention in order to appear a good mother to other mothers. How many kids get sent to shitty piano lessons just so that their mother does not think that other women will think that she is a bad mother?

A lot of women find full time care of their children emotionally and psychologically exhausting. Child care actually offers them some relief which gives them time to "recharge their batteries" and a happy mother for 50% of the time is better than a grumpy one for a 100%.

Simon Grey wrote:

First, women (and all people, really) can't predict future happiness.

One of the great myths of our currently culture is that, left to their own devices, people can reliably find happiness.  This subject deserves a post of its own.

and:

They should also understand that trying to juggle a career and homemaking is a fool's errand for most women. Simply pick ether a career or homemaking and dedicate yourself to that would be my advice.

I'm not sure what the situation is like in the U.S. but here in Australia most women aim for a part time job, not a career. Most women actually want to look after their children but find the process exhausting or psychologically unfulfilling and hence look for an escape in part time work.   Catherine Hakim, a British sociologist hated by the Left, has done several studies on the subject and has found that the careerist women, like the full time homemakers, make up a small percentage of women's preferred parenting choices. Most women want a mix and I feel that conservatism should have something to offer these women.

The Happiness of Motherhood.

Dalrock has put up an interesting post on a woman who regrets having her children. This woman has attracted a lot of negative commentary and I certainly admit that I don't support her position, but it's a position I've seen rather too frequently in my line of work.

I think that many conservatives, particularly traditionalists, see a woman's role through a polarised light. Women, according to them, should either have a family and stay at home or work and not have a family. Their logic would seem to imply that if a woman decides to have children then the proper thing is for her to look after them.

As I see it, there are several underlying assumptions with this line of reasoning:

1) Women are able to accurately forecast that they will enjoy motherhood.
2) Women are capable of looking after children.
3) Motherhood is an intrinsically rewarding experience for all women, and a woman who doesn't like motherhood has something wrong with her.
4) Good child rearing is incompatible with a working mother.

As someone who deals with a fair amount of post-natal depression (which I've managed to treat rather successfully) I think that many of these assumptions are false and are contributory to a lot of female misery.

Before I get into the grist of my argument I would like to state that motherhood today is given a bum deal. Lots of women who have taken on the role of a stay at home mother feel that they have taken the lesser choice in life. Women, being much more socially attuned and susceptible to social pressure than men, feel acutely their degree of conformity to group norms. Our media constantly blare the message that the way for a woman  to achieve true happiness is to live life riding the cock carousel whilst slaving away in an office cubicle, eventually becoming head of useless widget production. Women are constantly being sold this lie.

On the other hand, conservatives have, in mantra like fashion, repeated that the path to happiness lays in staying at home, cooking and cleaning up after the hubby  and the kids.  Unfortunately, there is actually a great body of evidence that many women find this existence miserable. The conservative response to this is similar to liberal response to HBD evidence, namely to bury their heads in the sand and to deny any problem with their conception of womanhood, rather they blame to women for not fitting to their conception of womanhood.

Fifty percent of my medical course was composed of women, usually women who had been  groomed in high school for a "power girl" existence. These were women that were going to take on and change the world. The funny thing is though, is that the vast bulk of them, once they had gotten married and had children, actually wanted to stay at home and look after the children.(Much to the disappointment of their husbands) To their surprise, they found the experience of motherhood enjoyable, even though they did not expect it to be. On the other hand, many of my patients (especially IVF couples) idealise motherhood so much and prepare for it diligently only to find the actual experience of motherhood a disaster. These are the ones prone to post natal depression.

Maxim No 1: Most women do not know if they will enjoy motherhood until they actually experience it.

The idea that all normal women will naturally enjoy motherhood is a falsehood.  It would appear from my experience that women form a spectrum, with one  end of the spectrum forming the natural stay at home mums whilst the other end of it forms the women who find staying at home with the children psychologically difficult to bear. This latter group of women aren't necessarily feminists, I've dealt with a fair few traditionally minded women who found the actual experience of mother hood incredibly psychologically difficult.

The task of the conservative is to orientate his thinking toward reality, and the reality is that a lot of women are not suited to being stay-at-home mothers. One of the great "fault lines" in conservatism was in the assumption that women are happiest when they are at home.(This was a fault line exploited by the liberals)  I really can't emphasise enough how much this state of affairs is not a result of an ideological position but rather a "natural" feature of the women themselves. 

The second conservative misconception is that women are naturally capable of looking after children. The sad fact is that a lot of women are hopeless for a variety of reasons. And whilst some of this can be remedied through peer education and inter-generational experience some women just can't seem to do it, despite their best efforts.

Maxim No 2: The natural skill of motherhood is not evenly distributed amongst the female population.

The third misconception is that all women enjoy the experience of motherhood and that there is something wrong with them if they don't. The pleasure we experience as a result of anything is a consequence of how our brains are hard wired.  You can't make yourself enjoy something, you either do or don't. As a result of a terrible university sculling competition  accident,  I cannot enjoy beer. No matter how hard I've tried I instinctively wretch at the taste of it. My brain "wiring" has been changed. Similarly, obesity in females is unattractive to many men, and they can't get over it.  The repulsion to fatties is not a choice but a fact.

Maxim No 3. The pleasures we get from things are not a choice. 

Women who don't get pleasure from motherhood are no more bad than men who do not get pleasure from looking at fatties. Most of the motherhood experience under the age of five is a grind. The problem is that many women feel that they have to enjoy it, the consequence of this is that women who are unhappy about being stuck at home with the kids also are unhappy as a consequence of the near constant guilt that they experience.

Maxim No 4: A working mother is capable of being a good mother. Many of the best mums I know  work. What separates them from the neglectful careerist is that the  good woman takes an active interest in the child's care even whilst she is working.  These women work because they are better at working than being stay at home mums. What they do in effect is "purchase" the skill, patience, temperament, etc. that they don't have. Skills they probably did not realise they lacked until after the baby was born.

The inability of conservatives to see that women are not a homogenous block, yet form a spectrum from those naturally gifted as mothers and others naturally gifted as workers  has been one of the great disasters of conservatism. A disaster that was exploited by the liberals to great effect.

With regard to the woman mentioned in the article, I think she was wrong to regret her children but I'm not going to criticise her for not enjoying motherhood. I think people should be less critical of her since even though she did not enjoy motherhood she stuck at it to the end.

The problem with this woman is that she is good but shallow. Good in the sense that she is a woman of her word, shallow in the sense that she blames her children for the choices that she made. Choices that  she thought would make her happy and yet didn't.