4. The family is the first group. The family survives through cooperation, not competition. The good mother is savings and sacrifice. There is no family without her.
12. The bond between mother and child begins at conception with her body feeding the fetus’ development inside her, and later, after his birth, she nourishes him from her breast. The intimacy of these experiences and their shared genetic lineage founds the powerful connection between them. She gives of her body so that the child may live. Her attention is always in regard to the child. She speaks to it and plays with it. She gives of her body and time without any expectation. There is no calculus in the relation of mother to child.
17. From the good mother he learns cooperation, altruism, and the gift. The good mother’s care is the expression of man’s first and most basic institutions, and it is upon these institutions that others are founded. The good mother prepares the child for his future and to do so she forgoes consumption today. That is her sacrifice, self-sacrifice, and the child is her savings.
29. Motherhood is not simply preparing a child for the economic institutions he will encounter later in life. It is not about getting him a head-start on other children by making him an early reader, or educating him in Chinese, or forcing him to learn an instrument. If educating a child to gain a competitive advantage relative to other children was the objective of motherhood then it could be performed by anyone and, verily, this conception guides the Western mother. A nanny can nurse the child on formula while she is away at work. A good pre-school can advance his education. The Western mother argues that specialists are better equipped to care for her child and instruct him. And paying specialists for her child’s care also allows her to have a work career.
38. Child care is a nuisance for the Western mother. It diverts her from her career, which represents her independence from her husband and her family. She rationalizes that the economic benefits of being able to work while a surrogate mother cares for her child is best for both the child and family. Economic considerations are primary to her and thus to the Western family. No longer does the Western mother wish to be identified with her family and with her children. Rather her career, her bank account, and the clothing and possessions she has purchased is how she identifies herself.
50. The undermining of motherhood and the family has extended to the home itself. The home as the dwelling place of the family has more recently become an investment, an asset to leverage and borrow against for further consumption.
52. Whether it is as a result of indebtedness or the desire to earn more for further consumption, the mother is no longer at home. The family is split through by economic considerations. The child develops with a mostly absent mother and only a limited experience of cooperation, altruism and the gift that only she can provide him.
55. For many Western women, motherhood consists simply in providing food and shelter until the age of eighteen, and access to an education that prepares the child for economic life. Her time, she argues, is her own. With divorce laws erected to favor these careerist mothers, many cease to maintain their attractiveness to their husbands. They become emotionally cold, deny them sex, allow themselves to fatten, and call upon their husbands only to fix things around the house. In her refusal to be good wife and good mother, the family is compromised.
69. Abortion, the selection of sperm donors or other manipulations of pregnancy, choosing not to breastfeed (also nutritionally damaging to a baby), homosexual partners or single fathers raising children, etc. are all distortions of motherhood that damage the originary institutions of cooperation and altruism.
76. The good mother cooperates to make the family possible. The good father competes with other men to provide for the family.
77. The good mother is irreplaceable to the child. The good father though, is more easily replaced. Beyond the income he provides the family, he need only be present as a model of hard work and competitive effort for the child.
12. The bond between mother and child begins at conception with her body feeding the fetus’ development inside her, and later, after his birth, she nourishes him from her breast. The intimacy of these experiences and their shared genetic lineage founds the powerful connection between them. She gives of her body so that the child may live. Her attention is always in regard to the child. She speaks to it and plays with it. She gives of her body and time without any expectation. There is no calculus in the relation of mother to child.
17. From the good mother he learns cooperation, altruism, and the gift. The good mother’s care is the expression of man’s first and most basic institutions, and it is upon these institutions that others are founded. The good mother prepares the child for his future and to do so she forgoes consumption today. That is her sacrifice, self-sacrifice, and the child is her savings.
29. Motherhood is not simply preparing a child for the economic institutions he will encounter later in life. It is not about getting him a head-start on other children by making him an early reader, or educating him in Chinese, or forcing him to learn an instrument. If educating a child to gain a competitive advantage relative to other children was the objective of motherhood then it could be performed by anyone and, verily, this conception guides the Western mother. A nanny can nurse the child on formula while she is away at work. A good pre-school can advance his education. The Western mother argues that specialists are better equipped to care for her child and instruct him. And paying specialists for her child’s care also allows her to have a work career.
38. Child care is a nuisance for the Western mother. It diverts her from her career, which represents her independence from her husband and her family. She rationalizes that the economic benefits of being able to work while a surrogate mother cares for her child is best for both the child and family. Economic considerations are primary to her and thus to the Western family. No longer does the Western mother wish to be identified with her family and with her children. Rather her career, her bank account, and the clothing and possessions she has purchased is how she identifies herself.
50. The undermining of motherhood and the family has extended to the home itself. The home as the dwelling place of the family has more recently become an investment, an asset to leverage and borrow against for further consumption.
52. Whether it is as a result of indebtedness or the desire to earn more for further consumption, the mother is no longer at home. The family is split through by economic considerations. The child develops with a mostly absent mother and only a limited experience of cooperation, altruism and the gift that only she can provide him.
55. For many Western women, motherhood consists simply in providing food and shelter until the age of eighteen, and access to an education that prepares the child for economic life. Her time, she argues, is her own. With divorce laws erected to favor these careerist mothers, many cease to maintain their attractiveness to their husbands. They become emotionally cold, deny them sex, allow themselves to fatten, and call upon their husbands only to fix things around the house. In her refusal to be good wife and good mother, the family is compromised.
69. Abortion, the selection of sperm donors or other manipulations of pregnancy, choosing not to breastfeed (also nutritionally damaging to a baby), homosexual partners or single fathers raising children, etc. are all distortions of motherhood that damage the originary institutions of cooperation and altruism.
76. The good mother cooperates to make the family possible. The good father competes with other men to provide for the family.
77. The good mother is irreplaceable to the child. The good father though, is more easily replaced. Beyond the income he provides the family, he need only be present as a model of hard work and competitive effort for the child.
