A Homemaker’s Manifesto

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Today we are chatting about holistic health from a biblical perspective. I share a bit about my childhood with a crunchy mom, how this paradigm has influenced me throughout my life, my current interest in herbalism, and what’s in my modern apothecary.

Resources:

The Practice of Traditional Western H…

This week we discuss what God’s supremacy means for earthly governance, how we can love our country while being truthful about its imperfections, and how re-learning U.S. and world history from a Christian perspective helped me grow in my faith and understanding of God.

Right now, I’m offering annual subscriptions to my premium community including book club and exclusive podcasts for just $20 a year.

Upgrade today and you’ll automatically be entered to win a pair of Bluetooth headphones, three audiobooks of your choice, and more.

Meanwhile, my good friend Alison and I have launched a mentorship group for Christian women who are looking to grow in their journey of biblical womanhood and submission to God’s design.

It is an intimate community to provide support and understanding as we holistically pursue Christ-centered femininity and would love to have you join us if it sounds like a good fit.

Also, if you are single and looking for a like-minded spouse: I’ve been so pleased to partner with The Courtship Network, a new platform that is seeking to defeat hookup culture and help marriage-minded men and women get married.

Sign up today and help support this page!

Recommended resources:

Pagan Christianity, Frank Viola

Worth reading if you don’t agree with him, it actually really softened my heart to institutional church history into the revival movements of the U.S. and is a great snapshot of church history if it’s new to you.

Live Not By Lies, Rod Dreher

A look at what it was like to be a member of the Christian resistance behind the Iron Curtain; it is mandatory reading for any believer living in today’s current cultural climate in my very humble opinion.

The Right Side of History, Ben Shapiro

Whether you are a fan of Shapiro or not, he nonetheless delivers an excellent overview of Western civilization and thought that is a great antidote to modern revisionist history.

The Patriot’s History of the United States, Larry Schweikart, Michael Allen

I was always looking for the anti-The People’s History of the United States, which was written by Howard Zinn and inspired much of the population’s general distortion of U.S. history

America, Dinesh D’Souza

D’Souza is a Christian who immigrated to the United States from India as a young man. His refutation of left-wing revisionist history is not free of his own perspective, but it is both passionate and excellent.

101 Bible Verses That Shaped America, Robert J. Morgan

This is a wonderful work of both history and devotion and gives a great look at just how much faith indeed did define the paradigm of many of our nation’s great leaders.

Eve’s creation, the virtue of homemaking, why we need to be careful discussing this issue in an earthly or legalistic mindset, and my raw, honest take on the Transformed Wife.

In Episode 2 of A Homemaker’s Manifesto Podcast, we chat with Anneliese of Feminine Not Feminist about feminism, the effects of the Fall and Eve’s curse on our marriage, combating affirmation culture with personal responsibility, embracing the process of constant growth, and more.

Follow Anneliese at @feminine_not_feminist on Instagram and her podcast, Feminine Not Feminist.

You can find Isa at A Homemaker’s Manifesto on Substack and @a.homemakers.manifesto on Instagram.

Books mentioned:

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman

Love Thy Body by Nancy R. Pearcey

The Household and the War for the Cosmos by C.R. Wiley

Hello friends!

I have been publishing podcasts with each of my posts lately which I have been really enjoying, but in the next few weeks it is going to be expanding to include some awesome guests along with regular episodes on all of the topics we cover here.

Today I sat down to share a bit about me and my background and what drove me from a progressive feminist upbringing to embrace biblical patriarchy, what it means to be a “keeper at home” in an era of career women, and some practical tips for shifting your habits and mindset so your husband can relax when he gets home from work.

A Homemaker’s Manifesto is the podcast companion to my independent publication over on Substack.

Please subscribe for regular blog posts and podcast updates, right now you can save 50% for one year to access the full site and twice as much content including a book club, exclusive current events round-up and more!.

It is a common refrain among traditionally-minded women that a man should be able to come home to a clean home and relax, rather than be bogged down with requests to help with dishes, diapers, or other sundry household tasks.

This is a piece of advice that I consider to be quite valuable, personally. Many women, particularly in the busyness and chaos of a household with babies and small children, look forward to their husband’s return from work as an opportunity to get some help with their own “job” at home, an occupation that we all know does not end at the close of business, like the 9-5 that breadwinning husbands typically work.  

Yes, household chores are a normal part of adulting, but it is an aspect of family life that often causes tensions when duties are not shared. This is yet another reason why having a full-time homemaker is such a benefit to any family.

A Homemaker's Manifesto is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

So it stands to reason that a full-time homemaker should be willing to make sure her husband can, at the very least, come home and relax when he’s just finished his primary responsibilities for the day.

This common bit of advice, however, often seems to translate to many as the moral imperative that women should “never ask your husband to help with housework.”

Encouraging struggling wives who are at home full time to take on the duties of a full-time homemaker without expecting their husbands to help is simply not the same thing as believing a man must never touch a broom or help out with bath time. We are all adults, and it’s hard for a man to raise young children without participating in family life, in whatever form that might take.

But if he is working full time to support his family, we extend very solid advice to his wife when we encourage her to design their family life so that he can relax and enjoy his family at the end of the day.

We do not need to view this as a strict rule but rather a way of life in which a wife cheerfully works towards creating a nice home environment for this to happen, as he works full time to provide for her.  

To say that a man “shouldn’t” have to help out with household chores if he works full time and his wife is a homemaker is like saying a woman “shouldn’t” have to work if she’s married and ought to be cared and provided for.

It’s just a belief about how to extend support and care to one’s spouse, based on typical, sensible generalities about men and women and how to run and provide for a household.It is an admonishment to a spouse to cheerfully work to make the other one comfortable in a very sensible, enjoyable, mutually beneficial way and to plan to make sure that they can both relax when he gets home.

I believe that this issue is most often addressed because wives who stay at home full-time feel resentful that their husbands get home from full-time jobs and do not want to help out with childcare and cleaning.At least, virtually every discussion I’ve seen about this topic involves women admonishing men and other women that “men are adults they live there too” so it certainly shouldn’t be a woman’s sole responsibility to do household chores.

Meanwhile, women who admonish other women to let their husbands relax and not have to worry about chores when they get home are doing so for the aforementioned reasons — because it’s a great way to love on and appreciate your husband, you’re an adult and live in your home too and are also financially provided for, and homemaking is simply not anywhere near as grueling as we seem to have accepted it as. Here's the hard truth: after decades of combating the presumptions of feminism about homemaking, a lot of women have opted to compare homemaking to a full-time job, a practice which unfortunately simply makes it sound, just as the feminists falsely claim, like literal slavery.

Because if homemaking is just like a job, it’s a 24/7/365 job.

But this is simply not the case.

Women have managed to assume sole responsibility over household chores with small children running underfoot for literal millennia, and we have more technology and resources to make our tasks easier than ever before. I know it often doesn’t feel like it, but you are capable of managing your house well enough to not have to dump a bunch of chores on your husband when he gets home. 

Every husband has his flaws, and a wife will do well to exercise tact and patience when she is struggling unreasonably and her husband won’t support her, yes. But trust me, most responsible men will do their “man” chores around the house that often go unappreciated by their wives, if we somehow need further reason to appreciate the work they do for their families when they are working full time.

And generally, a lot of men are going to be way more likely to see a need and pitch in to help if it’s not being shrilly demanded of them at the end of a long day. It’s not crazy to suggest that any adult human being be patient and considerate when wishing someone would help them out with the tasks that are otherwise generally delegated to them.

After all, a housewife is going to be far more pleasant and eager to manage the home if she feels appreciated, am I, right ladies?On who, then, is the onus to ensure this symbiosis of consideration and pleasantness can occur? Whoever it is who thinks it ought to — but the hard part is that he or she is then the only person whose behavior can be changed.

Man or wife, none of us can morally control the free will of another person, and certainly not with constant contentions nor abuse and tyranny.

So if we want to admonish men to pitch in and help with the duties of family life even if he works full-time, fine. But this is hypocritical and ineffective if we do not also admonish women to do their best to manage the household smartly and — far more importantly — lovingly and patiently. No one can expect to nag their way into healthier and happier marriages. But we can all encourage each other to love selflessly, do unto others, and learn to expect the best from our spouses.

There’s no reason this can’t extend to housework, too.

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How cherishing the idyllic — even on social media and TV — can bring us genuine joy.

Read full post at IsaRyan.Substack.com

On Monday, the Senate took one step further towards passing the so-called Respect for Marriage Act that would codify the Supreme Court ruling Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage legal across the country, into federal law.

The bill has been rightly criticized for the threat it poses to the sacred right to oppose and not be compelled to legitimize same-sex marriage — an urgently valid concern, considering the legal persecution of Christians like baker Jack Phillips and florist Barronelle Stutzman in the wake of the Obergefell decision.

Read full post at IsaRyan.Substack.com.

Actress Anne Hathaway joined the ladies of “The View” this week and shared a passionate appeal for legalized abortion that echoes some of the most popular pro-abort arguments yet woefully lacks any sound basis in reality.

Praised by the mainstream media for her “powerful” appeal, Hathaway defended abortion with many eloquent, emotive words that ultimately said nothing at all.

Observe:

“When you are a young woman starting out your career,” Hathaway explained, confidently reiterating the longstanding pro-abortion argument that unplanned babies can “ruin” a woman’s career potential. “Your reproductive destiny matters a great deal.”

This is itself predicated on the assumption that a woman’s “career” is not necessarily worth avoiding sexual contact with members of the opposite sex, but is worth poisoning or dismembering an unborn baby in the womb.

Hathaway does not, however, consider herself to be callous towards unborn babies. She also echoed the arguments made by the racist, eugenicist members of the early 20th Century Progressive movement by continuing on to say that it can also be an act of “mercy” to destroy unborn life in the womb.

“My own personal experience with abortion, and I don’t think we talk about this enough, abortion can be another word for mercy,” the actress told the all-woman panel.  

A Homemaker's Manifesto is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support independent media, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

She continued on to argue that this is because “no two pregnancies are alike.”

So, “it follows that no two lives are alike, it follows that no two conceptions are alike. So how can we have a law, how can we have a point of view on this that says we must treat everything the same?”

"When you allow for choice, you allow for flexibility, which is what we need in order to be human,” she declared.

“By the way, this is not a moral conversation about abortion,” Hathaway also said. “This is a practical conversation about women’s rights … and the freedom we all need to be able to choose and build our lives.”

These are the sorts of comments that I frequently get on social media when I post anti-abortion messages, and many American women would nod emphatically along with Hathaway as “The View” hosts undoubtedly did as she declares “flexibility” is “what we need in order to be human.”

Yet do they stop to consider if it is remotely true?

It takes no great intellectual prowess to refute this flimsy argument, as “flexibility” is not what we need to be human; this is simply not a thing.

What is a thing, however, is the postmodern moral truism that “choice” and “freedom” are necessary human rights, at least when it comes to abortion, a woman’s role in her home, and alternative sexual lifestyles.

We have collectively accepted as a modern people the fiercely protected taboo that it is fundamentally wrong to inhibit another person’s life, that morality is relative, and that no one has a right to “tell anyone else what to do” (sexually, at least, they seem fine inhibiting all sorts of other aspects of our lives, as seen over the last two years).

Yet all law and order and social structures meant to protect the vulnerable and hold the strong accountable for their actions and responsibilities are entirely based on inhibiting human choices that might be destructive to other human beings, to some degree at least.

So it’s ultimately a total non-argument to say something should be legal because, “choice.”

“Flexibility” is no great virtue in and of itself. It’s certainly not cherished by progressives when confronted with the possibility that white people might not want to take personal responsibility for systemic racism, for example, and it wasn’t that long ago that the vast majority of morally convicted Americans would all agree that there should be no flexibility when it comes to sexually assaulting women and children.

I must note that, far too often, Christians end up defending this same kind of “flexibility” when it comes to issues clearly outlined by Scripture; while Christian liberty is very real and can be nuanced as far as what it looks like in the lives of individual believers, it has become all too common to extend this argument of personal conviction to suit the world’s idea of dangerously subjective moral standards, particularly when it comes to sexual and reproductive ethics.

At the end of the day, Anne Hathaway may be a well-known actress, but she is just another American woman who has swallowed and now promulgates the nice-sounding, but logically baseless arguments that lawmakers whose campaigns are supported by Planned Parenthood repeat to preserve the institution of government-sanctioned abortion.

“Flexibility” is not what makes us human. In fact, I doubt Hathaway or anyone else who supports abortion can satisfactorily define what it is that makes us human — because when you refuse to acknowledge that it is the fact that we were created in the image of a perfect almighty God that makes us human, anything goes.

And that’s the kind of moral flexibility that could quickly lead to “mercy” killings of the physically unfit, terminally ill, mentally deficient, or even (hello, Nazi Germany?) those perceived as dangerous or antisocial to the status quo.

You simply cannot bank your entire argument defending the deliberate taking of a human life on “flexibility.”

Show notes, including links to news stories mentioned, on my blog, Crunchy Con Christian Mom

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