Nancy Pearcey has been doing some research on the masculinity crisis, and she offered this particular piece of information which rings true that I had not heard put into such simple terms:

In response to my comment about this, she followed up with a much more detailed breakdown of how we got to where we are. Historically, men didn’t leave their homes; they worked alongside their families. This was normal. Not just normal, but practically universal. Men, their wives, and their children, as well as extended families, lived alongside each other. Economic isolation, rather than being a regular specter, was rare.

In my own family, we are contemplating some fairly substantial changes over the next few years. There’s a possibility for my work to decline substantially, for my wife to pick up work that she loves (and is appropriately feminine), and for me to homeschool our children, something I have always wanted to do and something she has never wanted to do alone.

This raised a question, though. I’ve always been the primary earner. In the future, I’ll almost certainly be the primary earner again. Along the way I’ll continue working my side jobs that I’ve always worked. But, for a season, it will be much closer to a balance, or with her bringing in more money. There may be a period where I make no money at all. Is this a betrayal of our natures?

I’ve read plenty of masculine literature, and the majority of it would indicate that in some sense, this contradicts our purposes. Men are to leave their home, go out into the world, and make lots of money. Their wives are to keep and maintain the home and teach their children.

Doug Wilson, in an article from last year, even goes so far as to say:

When we look at certain modern forms of egalitarian approaches to marriage, we should just shake our heads and say, “Male and female were not made for that.” A woman can be the breadwinner for the home, and he can be a stay-at-home-dad, for example, and you can certainly prove to me that it can be done. And I will respond by stirring the sugar into my coffee with a screwdriver. It can be done.

That is the ideal “trad” conception of household organization. It’s also foreign to human experience prior to the industrial revolution. It’s a peculiar brand of “traditionalism”.

Before the Civil War, most households were self-sufficient; if you weren’t a farmer, you made things or did things out of your own home. Husbands and wives worked together. Children learned in the home and maybe attended church schools for other subjects. Life was lived through families and extended families. Work was done to maintain life; there were few cases – as far as I can tell – of the average man having an ambition to work hard to get rich. Money was distrusted; moneylenders were hated; wealth was suspect. I’m no leftist, communist hack. Jealousy is a wicked sin, and money is not intrinsically evil. But Jesus warned plenty about money because money can corrupt us. Our obsession with it can turn our trust from Him (on whom we are told to rely day by day, and not worry for the future) to a trust in wealth. We think it second nature to trust in our retirement accounts; that would have been foreign to most Christians who have ever lived, and even looked at as some sort of betrayal. “You put your faith in moneylenders?”

Men leaving home to find work is a recent phenomenon. Sure, professional militaries in late antiquity and the early modern period required men to devote many years to the state, but these were oddities. Most soldiers were militia of some kind, and went home when the fighting was done.

The truly traditional Western life is one lived in communion with family, church, and local organizations. The father doesn’t leave the home to labor in some factory or office; he works in his study, or in his barn, or in his shop. He works alongside his children, whom he teaches. As they age, he is the primary educator. His wife works with him, helps build the home with him, raises the children – especially the young children – and helps maintain the home in her own, feminine way. She unifies the family and the community while he defends it, demarcates its borders, and rightly divides where appropriate.

As Pearcy’s research indicates, what really drives the sexual madness of our age – particularly in men – is generation upon generation of fathers leaving their homes to go and work in offices rather than being home with their children. Take this along with the fact that the transgender craze is pushed by megacorporations who will create victims in order to create target audiences for their products, and you see the whole unholy mechanism in action together. Split families apart by taking father out of the home, have him work for globohomocorp, and push mental illness on young men and women so globohomocorp can reap the profit.

Is it unnatural for a women to leave her home to work? It’s not less natural than a man leaving his home to work. We’ve just done it for 6-8 generations, and now we think it’s normal and good. What if it never was?