Baby showers are a way culture and churches bestow value and honor to mothers and infants, unborn children, and growing families.

Catherine Pakaluk and Emily Reynolds’ new book, ‘Hannah’s Children,’ studies mothers of large families and concludes they may hold the key for solving many societal ills. //

While there is much to be said about the particular reasons people choose to have large families, Pakaluk writes that there is one beautiful commonality among these women:

I suppose it boils down to some sort of deeply held thing, possibly from childhood — a platinum conviction — that the capacity to conceive children, to receive them into my arms, to take them home, to dwell with them in love, to sacrifice for them as they grow, and to delight in them as the Lord delights in us, that that thing, call it motherhood, call it childbearing, that that thing is the most worthwhile thing in the world — the most perfect thing I am capable of doing.

Hannah
Pakaluk opens with the story of Hannah, a woman from a Reformed Jewish background whose search for meaning led her ultimately to procreation and the proliferation of family through child-bearing, what she called “this key to infinity.” At the time of her interview, Hannah had seven children, and described her choice to have a large family as a “deliberate rejection of an autonomous, customized, self-regarding lifestyle in favor of a way of life intentionally limited by the demands of motherhood.” //

The modern challenge to traditional and cohesive family roles has absolutely impacted family growth patterns, the book argues, and will likely continue to do so. And the declining population will impact future workforces, infrastructure, and entitlement programs far beyond basic demography.

“The political and economic consequences of these trends cannot be overstated,” Pakaluk writes. “Birth rates are falling because of tradeoffs women and households are making — tradeoffs between children and other things that they value.”

‘Home Alone’ isn’t just a funny Christmas movie. It displays a mother’s transformation from selfish, absentee parent to devoted loving mother.

As reported by The Federalist's Elle Purnell, there's a movement arising of individuals all over the country who are choosing to forego gathering with loved ones around the Holiday season and choosing, instead, to focus on themselves by giving them a self-care day: //

To be clear, there was no explicit socio-political reason given. It was just the stress of doing things that focus on arranging, scheduling, and being with others. The thing is, modernity and all the ideals and trends that come with it are primarily leftist, as modernity is driven by corporate tastemakers and slacktivists.

And if there's one thing leftism promotes, it's isolation.

Ideological isolation is one of leftism's biggest demands. You cannot think thoughts outside the body politic, you can't ask questions that would challenge approved ideals, and if anyone breaks from the approved boundaries they must be ejected. You must close off your mind to anything outside the boundaries. //

The "do what feels good" approach to life has contributed to an inordinate amount of people obsessed with their mental health, as anything that doesn't feel good becomes a stressor, and stress is a sin in the modern world. Stress-reduction is a billion-dollar industry, and I'm not just talking about the pharmaceuticals that promise to reduce it. Therapies of all varieties have sprung up, all of which promise to reduce your stress.

All of this has created a culture of "me," and people are willing to abandon loved ones and go into isolation in the false hope that it will relieve their stress and improve their "mental health."

If you peel it all back, you'll see the self-care industry is just that — an industry. Corporations love for you to spend time and money buying things to help you focus on yourself. As I said, it's a billion-dollar industry, but ultimately, this is harmful to the mind and soul. Isolation is not healthy. //

People who are lonely are also more susceptible to illness. Researchers found that a lonely person's immune system responds differently to fighting viruses, making them more likely to develop an illness.

Selfishness is literally unhealthy, both mentally and physically.

Family matters, friends are a lifeline, and isolation due to it being a kind of stressful to travel or deal with relatives is not doing yourself any favors.

But they're missing something very important about the original Snow White. In fact, they're missing what I would consider to be such an important part of femininity overall.

The 1937 Snow White didn't lift a finger to fight. She didn’t have to. Her purity and goodness were worth fighting for and protecting, which is why a group of normally peaceful dwarves picked up their weapons and went to chase after the evil queen at the end.

I don’t know if you recall this moment from the original movie, but it’s still a heart-wrenching, intense, and oddly beautiful moment. When this movie was first released in theaters, people were really overcome here. There were people crying in the theaters when the apple fell from Snow White’s hand, because they truly thought she’d died.

At that moment, the audience was the dwarves. They wanted to bring the evil queen to justice. We wanted to pick up weapons and ride out in the name of punishing evil and preserving that beauty and kindness that had touched our lives. Ultimately, that evil was struck down by God Himself. To this day, the entirety of the pursuit sequence holds up as an incredibly dynamic moment.

But the dwarves served a much deeper purpose here. We were the dwarves. All of us. We were messy, grumpy, dopey, and unrefined, but when true goodness and beauty come into our lives, it changes us for the better.

We relate to the dwarves on a personal level, and defending the beauty in our lives, even if violently, is worth doing.

Even after this sequence, a very interesting phrase pops up on the screen before it cuts to her in her golden coffin, with all creation, including the dwarves, paying homage to this beautiful, kind woman.

"So beautiful, even in death, that the dwarfs could not find it in their hearts to bury her."

She was inspiring them even after she died. That was the effect she had on them. You're going to tell me that this isn't a power of its own? To be so life-changing that the people who knew you didn't want to let you go? Taken spiritually, you really begin to see the importance of what Snow White actually represented.

Snow White enchanted everyone she came across. She caused people to change into better people, not because she forced it or demonstrated some sort of artificial toughness, but because she inspired them to be better.

This is what the writers of this modern rip-off and the actors and actresses that play in it don’t get. To them, Snow White is a character that needs to change because she has no power. They see her as weak and, as such, needs to be injected with strength, not understanding that Snow White’s tenderness and boundless kindness carry with them a strength and power that refines civilizations, crafts and grows humanity, and inspires goodness through kindness, generosity, and tender warmth.

This is the very essence of femininity, and it's a strength that modern feminism — with its hyper-focus on selfish inner power relating to outer power — can't wrap its head around.

This is why the 1937 film was such a masterpiece and appealed to so many people, and why the modern "live-action" film is likely going to bomb and eventually be forgotten. The modern version is a shallow shell of what the original told. It misses the point entirely.

It doesn't understand the power of kindness and warmth.

Be A Man

Nick Freitas
Playlist
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9 videos
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• What They Don’t Tell Fathers About Raising Sons
• Three Things I Learned Raising Daughters
• Why Dads Should Be Dangerous
• Should You Get Married Young?
• What Every Son Needs To Hear From His Father

‘In many ways, my life is what I always dreamed it would be, except for one glaring difference: I am not a mother. I wish I was.’ //

If most women knew they were sacrificing the freedom, provision, and safety of full-time mothering to be a gypped gas station attendant or “Office Space”-style paper-pusher, far more would choose full-time motherhood. To make it easier for themselves to reach the C-suite and the Oval Office, elite women sell their lower-class sisters glamorous false promises of “Boss Babe.” This is another reason we should reject feminism: it damages women. //

Another part of Cheng’s situation besides the lack of broad social networking opportunities is also now common to all women. It’s the no-win outcome of the Sexual Revolution: women must either have sex with men before marriage or the men can easily find other women who will.

The post-Pill expectation that women will make sex an infertile act obviously eliminates a major motivation for men to pop the question. If the men Cheng dated in her 20s and 30s couldn’t get sex aside from accepting the responsibilities of husbandry — which include fatherhood — I’d bet $10,000 she would have secured a man before her fertility window closed. //

Of course, men also get economic and familial security from marriage, as married men earn more, reach higher career zeniths, are happier, and live longer. But those benefits are less obvious and require a longer timeframe than the benefits women and children get from marriage, which usually begin accruing much earlier.

This is one major negative effect of America’s leaders deciding to kill Christianity as a social norm. It’s also another way in which people who participate in the life of a local church dramatically increase their chances of finding a spouse while they still are physically capable of procreation. Pastors, congregations, denominations, and Holy Scripture itself all stand behind women who say, “I’d love to have sex with you, but I can’t unless we’re married.”

Clinton's village involved outside influences on your child. However, the real village that it takes to raise a child is one of extended family members, and that's a decaying idea.

Historically, family units weren't nuclear. They included grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and more. The nuclear family as we knew it wasn't truly a thing until around the 1950s, when a self-contained family situation was the standard and a sign of success. Historically, multi-generational family households weren't necessarily uncommon. According to the American Enterprise Institute, only about eight percent of Americans between 18 and 50 live in the same household as their parents, as this is now considered a sort of failure.

Moreover, 55 percent of Americans live within an hour of extended family, while the more successful you are financially, the further away you likely live, according to The Survey Center on American Life. This separation often leaves families in an isolated state geographically, making extra-familial connection something that only happens on occasion instead of regularly. //

I don't think it's any accident that we're seeing fewer children born as the extended family becomes less important. Modernity and consumerism have played a large role in destroying the family unit, but the extended family unit has also taken a hit, and from many sides.

Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb once wrote, “What was once stigmatized as deviant behavior is now tolerated and even sanctioned; what was once regarded as abnormal has been normalized .… As deviancy is normalized, so what was once normal becomes deviant. The kind of family that has been regarded for centuries as natural and moral — the ‘bourgeois’ family as it is invidiously called — is now seen as pathological.”

The Democrats are taking a bet that Americans are far more willing to embrace men who think they are women and men who dress as dogs to have sex than a veteran married to an Indian woman with mixed-race kids who thinks perpetuating humanity and the nation is a good thing.

It is the logical end of deviancy becoming normal. When Democrats think J.D. Vance is weird and Rachel Levine is not, we reach a tipping point in the direction of the nation.

If you look at what the left has done, they have radically taken this out of context and, in fact, aggressively lied about what I’ve said. The left has increasingly become explicitly antichild and antifamily. They’ve encouraged young families not to have children at all because of concerns over climate change.

Gowdy attempted to trap Vance by pointing out that numerous Americans, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, and Founding Father George Washington never had biological children. By highlighting these people, Gowdy aimed to challenge Vance's views on the importance of family structure, suggesting that childlessness does not diminish one's ability to serve the country effectively or possess strong leadership qualities. This rhetorical move was intended to put Vance on the defensive and question the validity of his stance on the matter.

Here is a shocker: Vance agreed with Gowdy's assessment because the Fox News host completely missed the point of what Vance was saying in 2021 or purposely misinterpreted it.

Vance said:

Vance agreed with Gowdy’s assessment that “direct offspring are not necessary to be fully invested in the future of this country,” but went on to say being a parent “really does transform your perspective.”

“So this is not a criticism, and was never a criticism, of everybody without children. That is a lie of the left. It is a criticism of the increasingly antiparent and antichild attitude of the left,” Vance said. //

"I’m going to keep on calling that out, because I think it’s important for parents to have a voice,” he said. “I’m proud to be on the ticket with President Trump, a real defender of parents and families."

“Their moral calculus is as crude as you can imagine: They see Israelis and Jews as powerful and successful and ‘colonizers,’ so they are bad; Hamas is weak and coded as people of color, so they are good…,” she said. “This is the ideology of vandalism in the true sense of the word — the Vandals sacked Rome. It is the ideology of nihilism. It knows nothing of how to build. It knows only how to tear down and to destroy.” //

A father or mother deficit is one of the chief causes of systemic American social problems including crime, addiction, poverty, depression, early sexual activity, low achievement, and susceptibility to predators. Indeed, the decline of marriage and the Marxist denigration of men are chief sources of our culture’s decline. You only have to name any effect of Cultural Marxism to see almost instantly that stronger and better men and women would end or reduce it.

So while she speaks true and admirable words repudiating Marxist politics, in her own life, like other alleged anti-Marxists Rubin and Benson, Weiss enacts those same politics. Despite spending her entire professional life chronicling sexual politics, like most in our society Weiss is still blind to the full implications.

Weiss is clearly open to changing her mind and adopting counter-culture positions. So can others who share her current sexual preferences, and those sympathetic to them. If we truly want to save Western civilization, which protects us all, we must refuse to perpetuate Marxism no matter how much we want a child in our arms.

But there are ads that can move you. There are bad ones—think Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney—and there are good ones. Anyone who is old enough to remember “where’s the beef” knows that it became a catchphrase throughout the ‘80s, deservedly so, IMHO.

https://youtu.be/idnwh6iDnXA //

As one user noted, "It's interesting that countries outside the US are sent advertisements that celebrate life." Good point. //

There are many commercials over the decades that we could discuss—both terrific and terrible—but my wife sent me one Sunday that maybe sort of touched my cold, hard, toxic-masculinity-filled heart just a little bit. The spot, for Coca-Cola, brilliantly sums up both the joys and trials of parenthood in the modern age. Yes, little kids are bundles of joy—but yes, they also will test your stress tolerance and bring you to the edge of exhaustion in ways you never thought possible.

Watch, and if you’re a parent, pretend to look out the window and scratch that non-existent itch in your eye.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaSteinman/status/1792257229405749750

Dad was a quiet, friendly sort, almost shy in public. Sometimes, I’d be next to him when he’d mutter some observation that just broke me up. He was funnier than Jack Benny. //

Dad had occasional advice. “When you have something to do, do it now. Then, you’ll have time for fun stuff later.” I probably should have thought about that the past few days when I could have been writing this.

I realized later his parenting style was very Socratic. One Sunday, no matter how many times I yanked the cord, the stupid lawnmower defied my efforts to start it. Dad happened to walk by, “I’m sure you checked the gas tank.”

I hadn’t, of course. It was bone dry. So, he passed on that lesson in privacy without confronting me with my own stupidity.

Dad had a phrase, “Minus to a plus.” It was okay to make a mistake, as long as you learned something, anything, from it every time so you’d never make the same error again.

“Think of how far ahead of everyone else you’ll be when you grow up and avoid all these early mistakes.”

When it comes to building a happy life, the secret is to play the long game. Being as intentional about your personal life as you are about your professional life when you’re young offers the best chance at being successful in all areas of life, not just your career.

Despite what the culture teaches, our twenties aren’t years to squander. “Eighty percent of life’s most defining moments take place by age thirty,” writes Meg Jay in The Defining Decade. //

All of this suffering was, and is, avoidable. There’s a completely different way for women to do life, and it begins with this premise: Whom you marry, and how that marriage fares, will have more effect on your happiness and well-being than anything else you do. Nothing else even comes close. //

It is never too late to shift your priorities and change your life. It simply begins with a mindset shift that’s rooted in 4 truths:

Whom you marry is the single greatest decision you’ll ever make.
Career success alone will not make you happy.
The biological differences between men and women are real, and they’re hardwired.
You can “have it all,” just not all at once.
The good news is, no matter where you are in life’s journey, you can embrace these truths and do a U-turn. When you do, you will have begun your journey toward building a better life.