Dreher

I thought it was an admirably complete and honest insight into what’s going on in educated young women’s minds. The Randian ideal of the rational autonomous chooser is incompatible with motherhood. It’s a crock of sh*t, besides, but that’s another story.

In any case, we are raising women to engage in 10 years or more of pointless fornication, during the prime of their fertility, during the formation of their identities and personalities and the most advanced years of their education. This means that fertility itself is now considered déclassé, contemptible, by the entire ruling class. And all of this follows naturally from that.

I spent some time over the weekend reacquainting myself with Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman’s 1947 book Family And Civilization.  It’s a sociological history of the family, and what family formation has to do with the rise and fall of civilizations. He says there are three kinds of families:

1) the trustee family, which is tribal and clannish; it maintains very strong ties among its members, and it’s hard for the individual to emerge from it;

2) the domestic family, which is pretty much our traditional conception of family: father, mother, and children; it maintains significant ties among its members, but also allows for a lot of individuality;

3) the atomistic family, which is where many, perhaps most, American families are today: a collection of people who happen to be blood relatives, but who are for the most part free agents.