The housewife makes the neighborhood...

... and saves the world

On my blog Like Mother, Like Daughter I have a post about that lively topic, the child’s “behavior” in Church. I’m trying to awaken this more pressing thought: You go there once a week. Do we really expect a child to act in a way that, six days out of seven, he has no opportunity to practice?

Because we let our authorities take away our freedom for a couple of years, society has drastically changed. Our neighborhoods were already empty, because women work and children are put in daycare and school (but I repeat myself).

During lockdown, even that sad simulacrum of society was revoked. The infrastructure for solitary confinement was imposed and economically determined, as small businesses and neighborhood institutions were shuttered and everything was moved online.

Thus, children, where there are any, don’t have the opportunity to go with Mom even to the bank or post office. They don’t practice walking nicely and whispering in the library, sensing the difference with running out with playmates freely to toss a healthy ball while she is safely in the home, not there to constrain. Everything takes practice…

Even now, some people are wearing masks in many places. I have noticed where I am that the most masked-up people are the ones in the grocery store fulfilling the orders for online shopping — a sort of tight circle of isolation, devouring its own tail.

Only the housewife can stand up to this anti-civilizational anomie, this emotional tyranny imposed on the child.

Only the housewife can revive our neighborhoods, walking outside with her children: shopping, doing errands, teaching them little by little about the big world and how to be aware of it and explore the people in it. This takes fortitude. It takes standing up to what society has become, including its expectations for women’s submission to feminist ideology, an ideology that demands not putting the healthy development of the child first. But only the housewife can restore the neighborhood — and all it means for raising children (including how to behave in Church).

Start recovering day to day life at home and in our little world around us, teaching your children how to act with awareness and consideration. Everything depends on it!

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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.

For the longer version:

My book on how to live with the Liturgical Year: The Little Oratory

As with everything here at the SFH, the best thing is for you to take my ideas, coming from my experience of 45 years of marriage and raising seven children, and apply them to your situation with discernment, prudence, and confidence — and a sense of humor!