Is this Upward Mobility?

Decades of a social a narrative that women ought to be free from the home have suffocated it.

I’m not the only one troubled by Blue Origin’s most recent flight. I suffered through some of the extensive Elle interview, mostly out of curiosity about the outfits, partly in shock that these women could be taking themselves seriously. As they continually expressed gratitude to take such an important step for women I was forced to wonder: This? This is the pinnacle of female achievement?

It’s bad enough that those who accomplished the difficult feat (safely sending a crewed capsule up to the edge of space and back) weren’t women. Blue Origin employs 80% men, and there is reason to believe that the remaining 20% is overrepresented in HR. On top of that, they expressed continual excitement to become a team of all-female astronauts. But three days cannot constitute astronaut training¹, a highly selective process for individuals who are not only technically proficient, dynamic, highly educated risk-seekers, but who have also outstripped everyone in their field. One reason 85% of astronauts have been men is because men are just more likely to have the extreme drive it takes to become one. So women neither built the rocket, nor underwent the sophisticated training to manage it. Why did they deserve anyone’s praise or even attention?

But the awful thing about the publicity this stunt received was how it actually belittled women. They snatched our attention for being wealthy, cosmetic advertisements in a capsule at the edge of space, talking about their period and fighting misogyny. The trip idolized women’s ability to be eye candy inside of a machine. Actually, now that I write that, I feel like this was obviously a fetish for masculine eyes. When I watched it, I saw a dystopian promise for the post-modern, liberated woman: this is how useless you can aspire to be.

A contrasting worldview, articulated by writers like

Louise Perry

and

Erika Bachiochi

, asserts that women are capable of much more— have unique, irreplaceable capacities to give and nurture life. Such a view allows women to age with grace, encourages a feminine instinct to bond, and animates her various roles—whether it be as educator, healer, wife, or mother. The bonds cultivate community, building strong marriages and teaching children how to develop healthy relationships themselves. What’s at stake between the two views is whether women can be real life partners or simply trophies. Importantly, the question does not merely revolve around the women themselves.

What does society look like when women who are liberated from the life of the home univocally encourage young girls to do the same?

It’s a collapse of fertility, according to Darel Paul of First Things this month. There is a proportional relationship, he claims, between “female empowerment and gender egalitarianism” and the freedom to say “no” to marriage and children. The more women are freed from the home and family, the more the home and family disappear. He calls the low birthrate in the United States the result of a “gender funk” that came from decades combatting global population growth. We wholeheartedly embraced advances like The Pill, ending births to single mothers, and an insistence on delaying child-bearing. We gradually handed off caring for elderly family members and young children. We called it “women’s liberation.” The low birthrate is, therefore, no byproduct of these cultural shifts, but a natural result. “The gender funk” he chillingly admits, “is not the measure of our failure. It is the measure of our success.” Women, he argues, have been driving a childless future.

This matters because the post modern view of women that severed them from biological, emotional, and physiological reality was on display in New Shepard last week. When women are praised for sexually advertising male accomplishments, they make themselves meaningless. Alienated from proper drives (or “free” to try being something else), women have come to resent their natural, specific virtues. Then, wandering around looking for meaningful occupation, they might even wind up in a rocket alone for ten minutes and act like it matters. The Blue Origin trip symbolized just how untethered the popular image of women is, and how self-defeating its trajectory.

While I’m not the only one deploring these issues, I don’t hear anyone acknowledging that we have to change the narrative for young women. Ever since Mattel generated every professional barbie, all the way to Gayle King explaining how her floating in the capsule ought to show young boys and girls what they are capable of, we have been selling young people a lot of tripe. We need to change course, positively framing the fulfillment there is in caring for others in your family, the affirmation that your hard work does not need to be financially remunerated to be worthy, and the confidence that you can do the hard things it takes to help people grow.

One way to do this would be to start teaching home ec again. I was thinking this a few days ago I started looking up seder meals, shopping for ingredients, preparing homemade bone broth and crushing up matzo crackers so I could make matzo ball soup. I bought several kinds of herbs and took three days to make the brisket. While I was working, I thought, I am so lucky that I feel fluent in food preparation because it will always be an integral part of my— anyone’s!— life. A lifelong and extremely useful skill originated from one three-week summer course when I was eight.

For other women, like my mother-in-law, the fluency is in sewing; for my mom and sisters it is not only cooking but gardening. For other women it is interior design of pleasant living spaces or being good at general home upkeep. The advantage of educational expectation to improve in these “living” areas is that many people will find a love to which they might not have been exposed. After that, excellence and passion operate in a cycle, so that early interest can be kindled and improve rapidly when you’re young—critical for many people to carry the skill throughout life. But as a direct result of the active detachment of women from the family and the home, young women (and young men, for that matter) are not expected to learn any of these things anymore. The effects have been devastating.

One of the most important things that happens when you teach young people practical skills is you give them a real sense of freedom— one that marries independence and responsibility. Many parents would agree that teenagers are looking for freedom but neglect to instill the skills and growth factor that make freedom fulfilling and meaningful. Then adolescents become aimless, discontented, and hesitant, often long into adulthood. What if their teenage years were a time setting them up for projects that could either lead into a career of design or simply making and repairing clothes for their family? We could give them the tools either to build homes or work on projects in their own home. They could have the freedom not to eat non-nourishing factory-made food, and instead create something life-giving both for themselves and those they love.

So this was not something I ever thought I would make but you have to have the whole fish on Chinese New Year

My eleven-year-old niece has earned the title “little mama” for how attentive she is to her one-year-old sister. Maria Montessori said that girls at that age thrive as mothers’ helpers because they are capable of providing care and looking to establish themselves separately from their parents. Letting her do so, like my parents let me cook dinner for everyone when I was ten, are parts of the profoundly empowering upbringing that can bring real meaning to your life. Taking care of your little siblings largely eradicates fear of being a parent, while not doing so is certainly a contributing factor to the steadily decreasing interest in having any children.

Before concluding; just as the last decades have shown us that women can thrive and succeed in traditionally male sectors, so too should young boys be encouraged to develop “feminine” skills. Most are only feminine inasmuch as they come more naturally to women. There is no need to divide home ec or shop by gender, anymore than there is a need to keep women from becoming surgeons or attorneys. But exposure, especially young exposure, equips people to pursue skills to which they are naturally attracted. Learning the art of living in schools opens young people to a world completely foreign to today’s culture.

The unilateral messaging that insists on an exodus for women from the home and the family has not come without a cost. The gravity-free women floating in a capsule represent a flagship promise of the effort to disintegrate relationships, fertility, family, homes. What if teenagers could look up to an alternate model, comprehensively demonstrating the competence it takes not only to run a home, but to be familiar with medicinal properties of different ingredients, carry on interesting, thoughtful conversation, and make your grandparents feel loved? The model won’t artificially applaud Blue Origin’s all-women flight, but might show young women that developing natural skills, fostering thriving relationships, and nurturing those around them will be far more rewarding.

1. I struggled to find more information about their training than how difficult the seatbelt situation was.