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I'm always a little suspicious when some guy from 1947 starts tossing around the word "race" so maybe that's part of why I missed it on the first pass.
I've also looked up most of the species names that he uses for ants. They have all been revised: but some aspects of the story make even more sense now that I know the modern names of the ants he's talking about.
2/2
In “Consider Her Ways” by Frederick Philip Grove, there is a phrase that has trouble me for some time. He says “the human race-conceit of the investigator” What could this mean? I thought this might be about investigating different species (races??) of ants, but I was wrong.
It’s actually another one of his jokes: “the human race-conceit of the investigator” is Grove saying that humans do science instinctively. Birds build their nests, the human creature investigates things.
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I know my mom and dad love each other because that woman would be gone in a heartbeat if she didn't. Gone to the other side of the earth never to be seen again.
Heck she might leave if she got sick of me. It's sad she didn't grow up in the era of memes. "hit da bricks" is in that woman's soul.
The question about if taking on a loan is a good idea to pay for college should be separate from the question of if it's a good idea to go or not at all.
I think it's better to be debt free and have a less prestigious institution than big debt and a fancy name... but much of this depends on if you are "good at school" and other questions.
And really college should be free. If we had any sense.
Americans will look at this and call it "primitive" and they are doing the same things.
No. LOL. That book just has a lot of themes.
Real love is only possible when people are free. Real love is only possible when it's a free choice made by independent people.
My great grandmother, married at 16 did not have much love in that marriage. At best it was hopefully polite, tolerable. I look at her eyes in the photos and I don't know if it was even that. I do not want our daughters to live that way. Not ever again.
Wanting someone to be free and independent *is* loving them.
It would feel hollow if I thought the only reason my husband was around was because in some sense he had no real choice. I don't think he'd enjoy being with me either if I was just... stuck. Not here because there isn't anywhere else in the world I'd rather be.
And if something happens to either of us it feels good to know one of us could still make it.
This "trad wife" stuff marketed to young women and men is based mostly on aesthetics and not practical realities like the ones you describe.
A postcard image of a woman taking care of happy children. The husband working hard, paying for everything. A real partnership. Then they lie say "the left doesn't want you to have this"
Young people see that trusting relationship. Financial stability. Shared independence. We all want that, right? Independence is the foundation.
The whole "marry off the fertile young girls" thing is just that. It's just creeps who want a female servant.
These templates can cut men off from some of the most rewarding aspects of life and shame them for having normal human feelings.
That's an argument for just not having them at all.
My mom? By then women could own property and have credit cards. My mom was the first through the gate to get her hands on all those things and grandma was right behind her cheering her on.
My dad loves how she takes over all of the financial matters. He worked as a chemist, she became a college teacher. They still love spending all their time together. I think of my husband and how I hope we can grow old together like that. That's a good template.
My grand mother had just one husband and married at age 18. She loved him, I think. He worked in the steel mill and she packed his lunches and kept house.
The template was still there. But I think she found a better place in it.
She sent all five of her kids to college. Especially the girls. Especially my mom and aunt. And she sometimes resented how smart and fancy they had become, but she never doubted it was the right thing to do.
She was embarrassed that she struggled to read.
My great grand mother got married at 16 for the first time. She had three husbands. They were all in their 40s and 50s.
If she was not married she would have lost the little scrap of land they owned, against all odds in NC. If her children didn't have a mother who was married to their father they would face social exclusion.
She understood this and worked within it. Kept the land, improved it. Raised a massive family.
The template was hardened. Unhelpful. She was so brave.
It was honestly a shock to me. But my mom is a black woman who was a college professor in the 70s, her mother was a homemaker with a 6th grade education, her mother worked on a tobacco plantation and learned to read from the Bible.
All of them would agree "girl, you better have your own bank account, I don't care how much you love him."
I think, since black women have never been really offered the "homemaker" status the nature of the sham is a bit more obvious from over here.
I totally agree.
Women having the freedom to do what they want changes everything and there are some people who really really really don't like all of the status, free labor, and opportunities to exploit that become harder when this happens.
They want everyone put back in our little boxes.
And there is a lot of propaganda to try to get young women to feel their only "value" is their youth and child bearing hips.
It is nonsense.
There is nothing wrong with using the template if it works for the life you want to create. But, be aware that you are using a template, you can toss it aside if it doesn't fit.
And try not to close doors in your life, such as education, that might make such a change possible.
Of course this is easy to say. Harder to Do.
These things can be easier and better when you aren't alone. That's what a marriage can be. Two people with shared values who are happier and stronger together than alone. There are a lot of social templates that cast women into one role and men into another. These roles are not equal and the role as cast for men has more freedoms, although both are constricted.
Have there been women who were happy homemakers untroubled by the world? Yes. There have also been women exploited by that dream.
Women:
* Own property
* Have bank accounts
* Have the education and skills to take care of yourself.
These are hard things for people of all genders to do "in this economy" it's a big fat lie that "leaving it to the man" is anything like a solution.
If you really love him you might need to take care of him too, and yourself and the kids. Amass the knowledge and power to protect everything and everyone you love. That is how you "make the home."
Being a homemaker is incredibly important work. There is nothing wrong with being woman who thinks "what matters most to me is that I can be a good mother" that's kind of amazing.
The first thing that you need to make that dream a reality is independence and your OWN financial stability. Anyone who tells you that, you can't do that unless you "trust in a man to provide for you" is trying to lead you into a very pretty little cage.
And no, we of the left, will not hate you for your dream.