Tag Archives: Housewife

Commentary

Dennis Prager: Does a full-time homemaker swap her mind for a mop?

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On National Review, Dennis Prager argues that going to work full-time is not as intellectually fulfilling as being a stay-at-home mother – if it’s done right.

Excerpt:

I seek to refute the idea that full-time home making is intellectually vapid and a waste of a college education.

Let me first state that I have no argument with those mothers who need or even just wish to work outside the home. My argument is with those who believe that staying at home is necessarily mind-numbing.

Nor do I wish to romanticize child rearing. As a rule, little children don’t contribute much to the intellectual life of a parent (although older children who are intellectually curious can spur a parent to seek answers to challenging questions they may not have considered before). Any intellectually alive woman who is a full-time mother must therefore find intellectual stimulation elsewhere.

The point is that she can find such stimulation without leaving her house. Furthermore, the intellectual input she can find is likely to be greater than most women (or men) find working outside the home. There is a reason that about half the audience of my national radio show is female — they listen to talk radio for hours a day and broaden their knowledge considerably. To the Left, the notion that talk radio enhances intellectual development is akin to fish needing bicycles. But that is because the Left’s greatest achievement is demonizing the Right, and because they never actually listen to the best of us.

I am syndicated by the Salem Radio Network. My colleagues are Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt. Two of us attended Harvard, one Yale, and one Columbia; one of us taught at Harvard, another at the City University of New York, and a third teaches constitutional law at a law school. In addition to reviewing the news and discussing our own views, we all routinely interview authors and experts — left and right — in almost every field. The woman who listens to us regularly will know more about economics, politics, current events, world affairs, American history, and religion than the great majority of men and women who work full-time outside of the home.

Lest the latter seem a self-serving suggestion, there are many other opportunities for full-time homemakers to broaden their intellectual horizons: recorded books and a few television networks, for example. And if a woman can get help from grandparents, neighbors, older children, or a baby sitter, there are also myriad opportunities for study outside the house — such as community-college classes, book clubs, etc. — and for volunteer work in intellectually more stimulating areas than most paid work.

Let me give an example of the woman I know best, my wife. She is a non-practicing lawyer with a particular interest in, and knowledge of, taxation and the economy. She decided to stay home to be a full-time mother to her two boys (one of whom is autistic) and her two nieces (who lost their mother, my wife’s sister, to cancer when they were very young). Between talk radio, History Channel documentaries, BookTV on C-SPAN2, recorded lectures from The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, and constant reading, she has led a first class intellectual life while shuttling kids, folding laundry, and making family dinners.

I guess by now everyone knows my view on this. I expect a good wife to have a college degree, and preferably a graduate degree, and then a couple of  years experience before the children start to arrive. At that point, her job becomes the most important job in the world: making sure that the children that the husband entrusts her with are able to have more of an impact for Christian than either the wife or the husband. That is one of the major reasons why Christians get married in the first place, in my view.

The husband’s job is to go to work and do mindless, useless drudgery in exchange for money. This is the more self-sacrificial role in marriage. He does this so that he can afford to keep a professional teacher in the house to bond with the young children, make sure that they learn empathy and relational skills, and then go on to get bachelor and graduate degrees and influential jobs. She has to plan all of this out and then navigate their path to success – which means she has to know how to follow the path, and how to neutralize any obstacles that may appear. The woman’s role in the home is a massive undertaking, and more significant (ultimately) than the man’s role outside the home.

It’s very important for a woman to choose a man to marry who has this vision for what a woman does in the home. He has to have set the pattern in courtship that it is his responsibility to help her to know as much as possible about all kinds of different subjects. She has to study more than the man, and then impart the knowledge the children. The man only has to have an overall big picture, but the woman has to know the details. In order for the woman to get the details of math, science, foreign policy, economics, etc., she needs to have a constant feed of intellectually challenging materials, and quiet time for study. And it’s the man’s job to provide these materials and that time, so that she can produce influential children.

Please note that I do not endorse any of the other hosts on the Salem Radio Network. In particular, Medved, Bennett and Hewitt are center-left and support Mitt Romney, with all that that entails.

Commentary

Should Christian men marry Democrats who claim to be Christians?

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I don’t think that Christian men should marry women who are politically liberal who claim to be Christians, because I don’t think that political liberalism is compatible with Christianity. But I’ll write some things that liberal Christian women tell me and you can see if you think it’s compatible with a Christian worldview, and a Christian view of marriage and parenting.

Some of this is based on a recent comment I received from a liberal Christian woman who accused me of being a racist (I’m darker than Barack Obama) and opposed to women succeeding (I have a longstanding record of supporting Michele Bachmann for President in 2012), etc. She also basically called me homophobic, because I oppose the gay agenda of sexualizing preschoolers with gay propaganda and because I think that children do best with a mother AND a father.

Her comment shows that the best liberals can do when debating policy is name-calling. Imperialist! Racist! Corporatist! Homophobe! Sexist! Bigot! Greedy! That’s what this woman did, and I encounter these Christian feminists a lot in churches.They learn their secular leftist worldview in the schools, and then they “read” the Bible by having feelings about what the secular leftists tell them to believe. If you ask them what the Bible says, they’ll say “it says that all religions are equal, that people should feel good, and that people shouldn’t judge other people”. This is what the secular leftists told them that the Bible said, and they believe it. And then they vote. And then they expect that Christian men will marry them for voting for policies that utterly destroy the minimal social requirements for Christian marriage and Christian parenting, (e.g. – she votes for things like no-fault divorce, etc.).

So I thought I would list out some of the things I’ve heard from women in churches over the years and you can tell me if you think that marriage to them would be a good idea (by marriage I mean real practical marriage meant to provide God with an ROI higher than he would get if the two people stayed single). Should a Christian man marry a woman whose entire worldview consists of slogans without any evidential support? Should Christian men accept the bare statement “I’m Christian” as though it proves that a woman has a worldview that is compatible with the Bible? Should the Christian man ask her to connect a Christian marriage plan to specific policies and laws,  such as one might read about in Jay Richards’ “Money Greed and God”, Nancey Pearcey’s “Saving Leonardo”, Jennifer Roback Morse’s “Love and Economics”, or most importantly Wayne Grudem’s “Politics and the Bible”? Do “Christian” women have any idea what moral values, skills, policies and experiences are conducive to a successful marriage and the production of effective, influential Christian children?

According to liberal Christian women:

  • conservatives are close-minded
  • conservatives are oppressive
  • morality is not objective, it’s relative to each person, or to different cultures
  • God does not expect people to avoid sinning
  • it’s wrong to judge others
  • all religions are equally true
  • there is no such thing as the Devil or Hell
  • sinning is OK because God will still let unrepentant sinners into Heaven
  • there is nothing wrong with abortion
  • there is nothing wrong with the gay agenda
  • opposition to Islamic terrorism is racism
  • world war II was an imperialist, unjust war
  • the best way to prevent a war is to disarm your own forces, withdraw to your own borders, and appease evil dictators by granting them concessions and abandoning your democratic allies to their aggression
  • Christianity is about agreeing with people who do everything the Bible forbids, and making non-Christians feel good about their rebellion against God, so that they will like you
  • conservatives are racists (FYI, I have dark brown skin and am the son of first generation immigrants)
  • the best way to avoid being a racist is to obsess over the color of people’s skin and demand that people with different skin color be treated differently
  • the desire of Christian husbands to keep the money they earn is greedy
  • Christian husbands have a duty to have the money they earn confiscated by the government so it can be redistributed as the secular government sees fit to redistribute it
  • Christian men are stupid and evil and cannot be trusted, which is why women should be able to count on big government social welfare programs
  • fathers are not needed to raise children, and can be replaced with sperm donors and welfare checks
  • it is bad for poor people to have to depend on their neighbors if they make poor decisions, because asking their neighbors for money and being accountable to their neighbors will make them feel bad – it is better if the government takes money from Christian husbands (in part) and then just gives the poor people the money directly, no matter what poor decisions they made – so that they don’t feel bad about making the poor decisions and they don’t have to change their poor decision-making
  • the government should use the public schools teach children as young as 5 to have sex, use fallible contraceptives, and have abortions, and this teaching should be done using the taxpayer money collected in part from Christian husbands
  • if an individual or a group has a lot of money, then the secular government should be able to take that money away to redistribute it – regardless of how hard they worked for that money
  • taxing and regulating businesses will have no effect on a Christian husband’s ability to hold onto his job, or find a new one if he is laid off or fired
  • the best way to create more jobs is by taxing and regulating businesses and raising tariffs and the costs of energy
  • the best way to have an intelligent discussion with someone you disagree with is to attack their character and call them names that your teachers taught you to call them – reading good books by the people you disagree with and watching academic debates is a complete waste of time
  • watching Michael Moore movies is adequate preparation for debating policy with conservatives
  • watching the Comedy Network and listening to NPR are excellent ways to stay aware of the state of the world
  • the secular leftist government can be relied on to use money from Christian taxpayers to protect religious liberty and practices like homeschooling
  • economic policy can be determined through feelings and intuitions – as long as politicians say happy words and expressing good intentions, then the people they claim to care about are sure to come out ahead
  • capitalism doesn’t create wealth, socialism does – just look at how much richer North Korea is than the United States
  • churches have too much money and they don’t spend it on the poor, so they should be taxed and regulated by secular government
  • private and parochial schools are only available to “the rich” so they should be abolished and all children should be forced to attend public schools, which are run by the secular government
  • homeschooling should be outlawed because parents can teach their children moral values that are offensive and close-minded and make liberal special interest groups feel offended
  • a baby isn’t a person until a woman decides it’s a person, and abortion should be taxpayer-funded
  • children don’t need a mother and a father, and we should have policies that make people feel good about raising fatherless children – like welfare programs
  • corporations “control people” by making useful products, and providing useful services, that people are free to buy, or not, depending on whether they think that those products and services are worth the money being asked for
  • government doesn’t control people when it forces preople to buy health insurance that covers abortions, sex changes, drug rehab, IVF, or any number of things that Christians will never need and may even object to on moral grounds
  • it is ok for Christians to vote for a secular government that reduces the costs of pre-marital sex by allowing taxpayer-funded abortions and taxpayer-funded welfare payments, because the God of the Bible wants people to have premarital sex more easily and at a lower cost
  • conservatives support the death penalty for people who disagree with them on religion and morality (not on a criminal matter, this woman called herself a Christian and literally thought that conservatives wanted the death penalty for people of other religions and sexual orientations – no criminal charges or anything)
  • the death penalty is mean and has never been shown to have a deterrent effect on violent crime rates in peer-reviewed research
  • Christian women can best impress Christian men by showing no understanding of the needs of young children, and by having no plan to produce effective/influential Christian children in a challenging secular environment
  • the best way for a Christian women to understand the needs of men and children is by focusing on her own education and career and avoiding any peer-reviewed research that addresses the needs of men and children
  • marriage consists of the woman working full-time and treating her husband as a roommate and treating her children as pets who are dropped off at the day care – preferably government-run day care – and eventually moving the children on to government-run schools
  • conservative men, especially the Tea Party supporters, are sexist and don’t want women to be successful – especially the ones who want Michele Bachmann to be President
  • if a man asks a woman to read anything on economics, science, philosophy, etc., then he is oppressing her because she should be free to construct her entire worldview based on her feelings, intuitions and peer expectations
  • whenever a woman is asked how she has prepared to deal with a husband and children, she should turn the question around and ask what men and children will do to serve her and make her happy
  • government subsidies for unmarried women who raise fatherless children doesn’t cause more women to have babies out of wedlock, and out of wedlock babies do not increase poverty or criminal behavior
  • corporations who sell products and services to people who are willing to buy them of their own free will causes poverty and criminal behavior
  • the best way to prevent a mortgage lending crisis is for government to lower interest rates for extended periods of time and then impose restrictions on housing construction, driving home prices higher, and then to force banks to make loans to unqualified applicants who don’t have to report their citizenship, report their income, or even make a downpayment
  • the best way to respond to the policy question about whether high tax rates are bad for Christian families is to ask the questioner how much money they personally give to charity
  • God is more impressed by people who give their money to voluntarily homeless alcoholics than by people who give money to sponsor an on-campus academic debate where university students will hear arguments for and against God’s existence, God’s character, and what God has done in history through the person of Jesus
  • the best way to learn about marriage and parenting is by listening to feminist teachers, not by reading Jennifer Roback Morse and Laura Schlessinger
  • the best way to learn about economics is by listening to socialist teachers, not by reading Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams
  • the best way to learn about what the Bible says about politics is by listening to secular teachers, not by reading Wayne Grudem and Jay Richards
  • the best way to learn about foreign policy is by listening to draft-dodging bleeding-heart hippy teachers, not by reading Frank Gaffney and John Bolton
  • developing a Christian worldview is best achieved by believing whatever ignorant, inexperienced teachers in government-run secular schools tell you to believe so that you can get an A – this is called “critical thinking” and conservatives don’t do that
  • it’s more important to be liked by your liberal teachers and inexperienced, foolish peers than to conform your behavior and worldview to what the Bible actually says
  • if a Christian woman engages in global warming alarmism, recycling, veganism and yoga then Christian men will think that she is moral and suitable for marriage and parenting
  • Church is a place where you sing songs and meet people, have happy feelings, and get comfort for the uncertainties of life and death
  • men are just as likely to marry and have children with a 50% tax rate, a 15% unemployment rate and a 20 trillion dollar debt as they are with a 15% tax rate, a 5% unemployment rate and a 5 trillion dollar debt – what really matters is whether they are in love or not
  • men are just as likely to marry and have children with a no-fault divorce law and 90% sole-custody awards for the woman as they are with at-fault divorce laws and mandatory shared-parenting
  • if you pay poor people $35,000 a year in cash and benefits for not working, then they will try as hard as they can to get out of poverty
  • affirmative action is a great idea and it is no problem at all that 60% of all undergraduates are women, because men are just as willing to be husbands and fathers when they don’t have college degrees or jobs
  • God doesn’t want us to do anything effective to advance his causes and his concerns or to defend his moral values and moral duties – God just wants us to have happy feelings and to be liked by others, no matter what they believe and what choices they make
  • the purpose of having children is to let them do what they want so they are happy, and not to make them effective and influential for God
  • it’s wrong to call your children “garbage” even if they later look back on you with love for spending so much time parenting them effectively and are accepted to Harvard and Yale and are set to have an enormous influence for Christ – that’s bullying and God doesn’t like parents bullying people into Harvard and Yale (he prefers poets and ballet dancers)
  • the best way for mothers to deal with children is by handing them to strangers and then assuaging the guilt from child neglect with excessive permissiveness coupled with excessive spending on material rewards and suppression of the father’s desire to discipline and lead the children toward greater effectiveness and influence for Christ
  • defending the faith is something that only a few people do if they have that “spiritual gift”, but other people have the spiritual gift of reading Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer and J.K. Rowling novels – both choices are equally pleasing to God, though
  • if  a Christian man cares about keeping the money he earns for his current or future family, then he is selfish and only cares about himself
  • patriotism, national honor, advanced weapon systems and a large military are all ways to encourage aggressors to attack other nations
  • peace talks, appeasement, betraying your allies, weakness, moral equivalence, coddling terrorists captured on the battlefield, and a weak military causes aggressors to not attack you or other nations
  • legal firearm ownership causes violent crime rates to increase
  • multiple victim public shootings never occur in areas where weapons are banned (for the law-abiding), like shopping malls and schools
  • slavery was invented by Americans and has never been practiced anywhere else or in any other time
  • slavery is only practiced by whites against blacks
  • slavery was abolished first by non-whites, and then only at the very end by whites
  • the American military is largely a force for evil in the world
  • man-made catastrophic global warming is real and needs to be countered by imposing a communist government to control industry, because the Earth has never been warmer than it is now, certainly not during the Medieval Warming Period
  • America is imperialist because Americans spend their blood and treasure liberating other countries from tyranny like South Korea, France, Kuwait, East Germany, etc. and then instead of occupying those countries they leave, and then airdrop supplies (The Marshall Plan) or foreign aid or massive private donations

And then they wonder why men do not think that women are suitable for marriage or children. I think it’s an act of treason against God for authentic Christian men to marry Democrats, or even to give them the time of day.

The point of this post is that today I am seeing a lot of women complaining about men not wanting to marry them, and going on to have children out of wedblock as an alternative (and then they collect welfare and throw the children in day care and public schools – i.e. – child abuse). The thought never occurs to them that men HAVE thought women and marriage and children through, and they have decide that many women are simply not qualified morally or spiritually for the tasks of marriage and parenting. Men decide this based on their knowledge of the needs of men and children, and women’s lack of preparation to meet those needs, and women’s unwillingness to sacrifice their own interests to meet the needs of others. What many women, Christian and atheist, seem to believe is that men should fall in love with them with a complete disregard for their worldview and preparation for marriage and parenting. And what they mean by marriage and parenting is not self-sacrifice and service to men and children, with the larger goal of serving God. They actually mean a combination of postmodernism, moral relativism and narcissistic hedonism. They think that this is what marriage provides – a perpetual state of bliss where they do whatever makes them feel good moment by moment and men and children just celebrate that. Rah rah day-care! Rah rah sex-withholding! Rah-rah wealth redistribution! That’s apparently what men and children should expect from a woman in a marriage situation. And of course, God, if he exists, exists only to guarantee happy feelings and cannot judge or interfere or impose moral obligations on the woman.They think marriage is fairy-tale narcissism. Even the wedding is a day of expensive attention-getting narcissism.

A woman’s relationship with God, and the amount of thought and effort she puts into it, is a valuable window into how she views her relationships with men and children. If she reads a lot and takes on a lot of obligations to understand God and to serve him in effective ways (apologetics, politics, economics, foreign policy) then men should think that she will treat relationships with men and children the same way. But that takes time to assess. Men need to keep their hands off of women when dating/courting in order to assess her real views. You can’t assess a woman for marriage and parenting based on her physical appearance, weight and sexual skills. You would be surprised how little Biblical worldview capability there is for young attractive women, how little practical thinking about money and education, etc. has been done, how little planning has been done beyond the desire for wedding pictures and baby pictures, and how little is understood about how men and children impose obligations on women. God is better than men and children are. She won’t treat men and children well if she doesn’t treat God well. If she projects her feelings onto the Bible, and resents its plain meaning, and rejects the obligations it places on her, then she isn’t going to treat husbands and children any better. If she responds to God’s character by rejecting his differences, his judgments, and his expectations, then she isn’t going to respond well to the those same concerns in men or children.

A nice physical appearance and the willingness to hook-up on the first date are not qualifications for marriage and parenting. And they are not qualifications for serving God either. And women who soft-pedal immorality like abortion and gay rights in order to be liked by leftists are not Christians. Christianity means something. It doesn’t mean having happy feelings and being liked and projecting your goals and beliefs onto God. Men – don’t complain if you are shallow enough to think that you can test a woman by having fun with her. Going on trips and having fun experiences is not courting. Make her read hard books, make her do hard things, make her write essays on men, marriage, parenting, apologetics, science, politics and economics. Demand that she give you 10 scientific arguments from the peer-reviewed literature for God’s existence. Demand that she explain how laws and policies challenge the goals of a Christian marriage. Judge her on moral grounds at every opportunity. Load her up with moral obligations and tasks. Because that’s what she’ll be expected to do in a marriage.

I think that the liberal “Christian” commenter probably places herself more of the good end of the moral scale than the bad end, but I just want to be clear – I consider don’t consider her a Christian or even a good person. It’s not that she is deliberately evil, she is just incredibly ignorant on every subject, having imbibed her views from secular leftist teachers like a trained seal who is rewarded with fish by her trainer. She hasn’t read anything outside of schoolwork, she just parroted her way to good grades. The harm comes when she tries to pass herself off as a Christian to gullible Christian men who will be swayed by her looks and youth and physical contact instead of her knowledge, wisdom and experiences at practical things – like running a business, or evangelizing atheists in her workplace. Men need to have their goals for love, marriage and parenting clear, and to understand what questions to ask women to detect their real suitability for marriage and parenting. This woman simply has no capability to do the job. She hasn’t looked into these issues at all, she just accepted what the people around her believed. When you scratch the surface, she isn’t a Christian at all – she just uses frilly God talk to put window dressing on her own narcissism, vacuity and conformity.

By the way, the quickest way for her to join the reality-based community would be to buy and read Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society”, which I just finished last night. Thomas Sowell is the official economist of the Tea Party movement, and, of course, he is black. As is the other great Tea Party economist Walter Williams. I would also recommend Wayne Grudem’s “Politics and the Bible”. He writes theology, which is something that these liberal Christian woman have never looked into. And of course they will never have looked into apologetics either, so they won’t have read William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland’s “Philosophical Foundations for Christian Worldview”. After all, they have feelings and intuitions and social expectations to guide them. Who needs truth?

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Commentary

Do men have a responsibility not to marry feminists?

29 Comments

I want to highlight three posts that I found on The Thinking Housewife.

Here’s the first one, that explains what a non-feminist is.

Excerpt:

It appears to be increasingly common for women to superficially disavow feminism. That means, when asked if they are feminist, they say, “No, I’m not a feminist.” But saying so doesn’t necessarily make it so. I can say I don’t notice cold weather, but if I wear a coat, obviously I do.

What does it take for a woman not to be a feminist? She must explicitly and publicly reject feminist principles. A woman who is not a feminist would openly criticize and judge women who unilaterally divorce their husbands. She would not remain silent. She would criticize the glorification of career and the glorification of absentee mothering (even a woman who has a career can in this sense be anti-feminist). She would denounce hiring preferences for women and support preferences for men. She would never criticize her husband publicly, even to her closest friends, because to do so is to show disrespect for him and contempt for his authority. She would, within her own social context, encourage and approve of femininity.

I’m not saying that a woman would do nothing else but harp against feminism, but that all this would be part of her life. Saying she is not a feminist means nothing. If a woman tolerates feminism everywhere, she is wearing the feminist coat.

Here’s the second one by a Thinking Housewife reader, that explains what can happen when a man foolishly chooses a feminist to take on the roles of wife and mother.

Excerpt:

My husband and I are always sad when I go to my brother’s home. My sister-in-law is the typical “modern woman” and her marriage to my brother is a microcosm of the feminist absurdity you write about. She never cooks, and as a result her son is a very poor eater and is overweight, even though he is only three. It makes me sad to know that he never gets to make cookies with his mom and he hasn’t learned how to sit through a meal. They just give him juice all day to keep him quiet. The whole family was recently at a hotel together for an event, and when we were in a gift store, she found a gag-gift apron that said, “When I said ‘I do,’ I didn’t mean the cooking.” She showed it to my brother laughing, and I turned to my mom and said that apron is only funny if it isn’t true.

My sister-in-law works full-time, and the children have been in daycare since they were three months old. My nephew is a sweet boy, but his only interest lies in television and movies and what’s more disturbing is that when he is hurt or sad, he seeks comfort from males because his dad is the only one who really takes care of him. While his sister was being born, he stayed at my mom’s. My brother and I went to help. My nephew got upset and asked me to pick him up, but after I picked him up he reached for my brother saying, “I want a man.” My brother and I were really disturbed by this. His mother is a woman who did not change her name when she got married, did not combine bank accounts, and claims that because she carried her son for nine months, it is now the responsibility of my brother to do the rest. My mom saw her knowingly leave her son in a soiled diaper for over an hour, waiting for my brother to come home. My mom didn’t do it because she got into this stalemate where she thought it might appear rude if she did it herself.

My brother is a nice guy, but he seems sad all the time. It seems like these “modern” marriages that claim to be about partnerships are really just about exploiting men. The woman gets to work if she wants, she gets to have as many or as few children as she wants and then she gets to have someone else raise those kids. She doesn’t have to cook or clean, but gets the benefit of having a working husband. They seriously seem to be more like roommates than spouses.

[…]One time my sister-in-law kept telling me about all these movies she likes, and I kept telling her I don’t really watch much TV these days. Finally, I said, “Look, I’m home with the kids all day and when my husband gets home and the kids are finally in bed, we really just want to have some quiet time to talk.”

Her response was that my brother often wants to talk when he gets home, but she just ignores him and watches “American Idol.”

Here’s the third one, which explains why men do stupid things like marry feminists.

Excerpt:

Emily D.’s story is indeed very sad. In my experience, however, hardcore feminists are pretty outspoken about it, or they express opinions and attitudes that give away their position quite clearly to those around them. Didn’t her husband observe any of these characteristics when they were dating? I find it hard to believe that her attitude was a total surprise to him. Either she had certain extraordinary qualities (great physical beauty, perhaps) or, more likely, offered certain “benefits” that he valued so much at the time that he was willing to overlook her extreme feminism.

When I was at university (mid-to-late 1990’s), I remember that the girls with the most active social lives were the liberal feminist types. My more conservative friends and I rarely ever got asked out on dates even though we were average-to-pretty in terms of looks. There were times when I was tempted to turn liberal feminist too. They had all the fun and the male attention.

This is a truism, but maybe it needs to be said: Men who are serious about marrying women who will make good wives and mothers need to look for and date women with those qualities and practice the self-restraint that such women require of them. My experience at university has given me little sympathy for men who take advantage of the sexual license feminists offer and who then later complain about how they ended up with a feminist wife.

I am chaste. I am telling you men – be chaste until you marry. Do not compromise your judgment with sex. A woman’s physical beauty is no guarantee of her ability to be a good wife and a good mother.Willingness to hook-up with you is  no guarantee of her ability to be a good wife and mother.

Maybe we should review some courting rules to help men to avoid becoming miserable.

Do not believe anything they say to you, because women adapt to men and say what men want to hear. Demand that she read hard books on complicated things like astronomy and economics and education policy. Demand that she write about what she reads. Demand life experiences that show that she has sympathy with things like capitalism and apologetics. Demand a track record of past activism in defense of marriage, the unborn, parental rights, Christianity and small government. Make moral judgments of her constantly and tell her the judgments so you can see how she responds to being judged. Hold her accountable for every mistake she makes – demand that she have a plan to change so that the mistake isn’t made again. Push all kinds of moral obligations onto her. Put her in charge of taking care of your pet, your garden, your car, and anything else that can be used to test her to see if she can handle responsibilities. Talk constantly about your desires and feelings. Complain about feminism and female nature all the time. Burden her up with the stories of your hard work day and how hard it is to be a man. Express your concerns about women who withhold sex, put on weight, and spend too much, after they get married. Demand that she engage all of her non-Christian friends and relatives so that they make progress towards better worldviews. Monitor her performance in debates to see how well she can reason and research evidence for her views. Harp on something you like to take care of, like your car, your pet, or your garden – and watch to see whether she shows an interest in it or considers it a rival to be taken away so that she is the only thing to get your attention.

The only way to test a woman for marriage and parenting is to… test a woman for marriage and parenting. And physical attraction is not a good way to test a woman for the roles of wife and mother.

As always, I think the default position for men in this society, given where things stand legally and financially, is not to marry at all. The only women you should even think of marrying are women who are actively opposing socialism, feminism, Darwinism, atheism, and any other -isms that are hostile to authentic Christian living. You will probably be miserable and wretched, but at least you can be miserable and wretched together – and you won’t have to worry about her stabbing you in the back and undermining your enterprises.

I wrote before about my views on who is to blame when a relationship goes wrong.