On the Role of Women

My husband and I have been discussing where we intend to move, because the American south, from which we both hail, is right out. There are pockets of peace here and there, but in 25 years the Deep South will be South Africa and the Southwest will be Mexico.

We've been asking ourselves where we can go that our daughter will not have to flee by the time she is graduating college. I don't want her to have to do what we're doing: leave behind the place where she grew up, the family she loves, the life she thought she'd have. It disgusts me leaving my mother in particular, but I have to do what's right for my child. This decision -- to leave our homes -- is a tragic one and it breaks our hearts. It is one tiny example of the suffering caused by opening our country's borders to the third world.

When I waver in our decision to leave here, all I have to do is go down the street to the grocery store. In the suburb we live in, we are already a minority. If you look up this city's demographics, non-Hispanic whites (this phrase makes me cock my head to the side in wonderment like a spaniel) are 41% of the population. Blacks are 20% and the rest are Hispanic.

When I drive down the street to the grocery store I see ugliness, decay, squalor. When I walk around the grocery store I see unwelcome strangers.

So many of the people around me -- including members of my own family -- live with their heads in the sand. If you point out how the area has changed, they get nervous. I'm venturing dangerously close to that unsavory racist talk that got me doxxed and forced them to have embarrassing conversations with friends about why their relative was in the news for being a Nazi. A few of them get it, though. My mom told me today, "I'm angry all the time and I can't figure out why." I told her, "Maybe it's because you're surrounded by people who aren't your people, and nobody asked you if that would be okay."

My dad totally gets it. When I was a kid I thought he was a terrible racist. Of course now I know he was just ahead of his time.

As we contemplate this move, and as I dread leaving my mother, I think about the mistakes she made and what I intend to do differently. She made the horrific mistake of leaving and divorcing my father. She was very young at the time, about 22, and he was 24. Their problems could likely have been overcome, and I think she grew to understand this and regret her decision as she got older.

My husband and I are much, much older than they were, and our problems are graver, but divorce is not and never will be an option for us. He's been divorced twice, and I've been victimized by my mother's divorces multiple times. It is not a punishment I would ever inflict on my child.

Because my mother made the dreadful mistake of becoming a single mom, she put herself in a position to be a material mother -- that is, a mother who only has the time, energy, and money to see to her children's material needs, and is utterly unequipped and unable to see to their spiritual and often emotional needs. My mom was and is very loving, very well-meaning, with all four of her kids. But we never received any guidance from her. I didn't learn how to, for example, prepare for college, break up with someone, balance a checkbook, cope with loss, understand sex, think about religion, check my credit score. I had Hot Pockets to eat, a ride to school, clothes when I needed them, a TV to watch.

I want to give my daughter what I missed: a worldview. A framework to think about what she sees every day. I believe that is the role of women: to train up our children in the way they should go. Of course, I see nothing wrong with women entering the public sphere to, for example, get on YouTube and share their ideas about the movement. But I think most of what they may have to say that is useful will have to do with the domestic sphere. That is our humble but gigantic role: to raise strong, wise, capable children who understand something of how the world works. It is up to us to protect them from the abject lies they would be taught in American public schools, to introduce them to a faith community and make it a part of their lives, to join them to a tribe of like-minded people, to expose them to the natural world, to make sure they are healthy and vigorous, to teach them history and philosophy and art and literature and science. Children, the home, wifehood -- these are our domains, and they are great spiritual responsibilities that will and should occupy much of our minds and hearts, let alone our time.

I want my daughter's childhood to be beautiful and peaceful. I want her to grow up with people who are her people, with whom she feels familiar and safe.

We are looking at Appalachia. Due to the nature of my husband's work, our livelihood will not depend on the local economy. We can live anywhere. That area has an abundance of cheap, beautiful, wooded land. ("Buy land. They're not making it anymore." - Mark Twain) Much of it is a majority white area, and we like the idea of having, for a change, four seasons with a mild summer and snowy winter.

I don't know for sure where we will end up, but in the coming months we will be researching, and then visiting, a number of places to try to find something like the country our parents grew up in. Meanwhile I look at my baby girl and just pray.