A pause to remember what we're doing here
The incremental road to housewifery
The School for Housewives brings you short, practical, and thoughtful messages to inspire you to make your home. If you’re new here, go to the homepage for the previous Lessons; the categories are arranged in the menu bar at the top.
Greetings, new subscribers! So very glad to have you here!
A note about The School for Housewives!
Here at The School I am offering general thoughts about how to run one’s home more proficiently. Some exceedingly practical, some more metaphysical, all offered in light of the vast importance of home and the woman’s role in making it.
However, I’m aware of how that can sometimes backfire to make the reader feel that she is, after all, experiencing quite a mess.
So remember, the aim here, in a more brief way than on my blog Like Mother, Like Daughter, is to give (nearly) daily quick thoughts aimed at incrementally increasing skill and confidence in becoming that “queen on her regal throne,” in the words of Pope Pius XI — the mother of the house, the housewife, in fact — with due acknowledgement of the realities of busy home life.
Be prudent. Don’t panic.
We are talking here of competence, not perfection.
I will try in future to include a link in each post in this hopefully encouraging format, to point you to main categories. Substack doesn’t easily direct you to the “home page,” where all my categories are so thoughtfully and intentionally laid out up on the menu bar (you’ll have to read from the bottom up). If you find yourself saying, “but where do I start?” you will likely find the answer there.
Remember, feminism has had a run of about half a century, in which relatively short time it has indoctrinated nearly everyone into its false ideology of equality — as if equality, the very barest minimum of standards, can ever be a guide to a fruitful, cheerful existence — and has nearly ruined the entire concept of home.
The path to freedom from its toxicity (for women as well as for men, each according to the nature given by God) lies in recovering our ability to act for the good of others and thereby, discover the good for ourselves. It will take some time, but we can do it!
Mending the Nets by Edwin Harris (1855–1906)
As with everything here at the SFH, the best thing is for you to take my ideas, which come from my experience of escaping feminism to enjoy the gift of 45 years of marriage, seven children, and more than a score of grandchildren, and apply them to your situation with discernment, prudence, and confidence — and a sense of humor!
Be happy at home! Could you become a free or paid subscriber? That way you won’t miss anything!
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For the longer version:
My book on how to live with the Liturgical Year: The Little Oratory
Auntie Leila I have a question about books or recommended reading for my husband. Specifically in relation to what you said above "The path to freedom from its toxicity (for women as well as for men, each according to the nature given by God)". The key phrase there being "each according to the nature given by God". I have spent many years reading about our God given nature as women and my husband is recently becoming interested/starting to see that much of the way we were raised, and much of what the culture taught us, is disordered. He is asking me for reading material and all I can seem to do is blather about papal encyclicals and books written specifically for women and wave my arms around rather incoherently. I think what he wants is something written more for men, or at least speaking to the differences between men and women and what true masculinity might look like. Also, he is trying to understand women (i.e. his wife) better and get a better picture of how our rightly ordered roles/relationship ought to be. I hope that makes sense! I would like to be able to point him to something that he could read to get a sort of overview of the differences and complementarity of men and women.