I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
The other day I read a post on LinkedIn where the individual was praising marriage and the range of tangible benefits it offered to people. I was shocked! Then I also saw a comment on the post where someone praised their husband for the invaluable support he provided. I was doubly shocked!! Their husband?! The source of all patriarchal evil and oppression?!! You could have knocked me over with a feather duster.
When I calmed down later, I got to thinking more rationally about the whole thing. How, I thought, did we get to this state of affairs? When things so natural and normal have become so loaded with dangerous counter-cultural baggage. When I reflected on it, I actually couldn’t recall reading any other post of this kind. In my life! And if I’d ever read any (mainstream) articles like that, they were few and far between.
It was weird, man. Really weird.
Except only - it wasn’t. I’d been reading a book, you see, which touched exactly on this whole issue. I’m not here to be a book promoter, or reviewer, you should know. However, I AM a big fan of Nancy Pearcey, following as she is in the tradition of the great Francis Schaeffer – whose influence, via the L’Abri initiative, literally changed her whole life, and that of many others. Her latest book, The Toxic War on Masculinity, is well worth reading for a whole host of culturally relevant reasons. But what really struck me is the singular historical perspective it gives on the institution of marriage, and in particular the role of husbands within that context. I feel that it really bears repeating, or at least paraphrasing, here.
We have this idea in our minds today, or at least many people seem to, or at least many vocal people seem to, that marriage was historically a tool of male oppression and that this has only gradually been challenged through many decades of activism in the public sphere. The truth, as is so often the case with history, is actually A LOT more nuanced and interesting than we may have been led to believe.
What would you say if I told you that pre-industrial books on parenting were nearly always addressed towards men? That it was generally taken for granted that men held the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that their progeny grew up to be decent law-abiding, God-fearing and respectable citizens? Or that the biggest barrier to women gaining the vote (as recorded by the suffragettes themselves) was not the attitudes of men but of women? I don’t think I flatter myself that I am reasonably well versed in Western cultural history. Nevertheless, these revelations struck me with a certain collective force, seeming – as they did – to fly in the face of all conventional ‘wisdom’…for the past several decades at least.
(Don’cha just love history?! It never ceases to amaze, inspire and confound expectations. Especially when you have the audacity to actually read it).
As Pearcey explains, the secret to this mystery lies in the truly revolutionary impact of the Industrial Revolution; how, in a very short space of time, it completely upended the normal functioning of our economy and society at all levels. This is something we too often forget about nowadays; to wit, the lingering impacts of industrialisation on society, and how this continues to set the West apart from most other places on earth. But here I was on more familiar ground, for I had done much studying and reflection on this very issue at various points in my life.
Indeed I brought to memory then a particular encounter, via work, with one Frances Holliss, who had written about the change – from a town planning and architectural perspective – in her fascinating book Beyond Live-Work. Frances observed, like Pearcey, how in the pre-industrial age (as also in non-industrialised societies today), life and work were not the separate spheres that we have grown accustomed to think of them – notwithstanding the recent changes to work patterns wrought by the Covid hysteria. Rather, the home was typically conceived of as the ‘family enterprise’; a place where all capable individuals played their part in promoting the Common Good, or Wealth, of the whole family. Something which in turn promoted the ‘commonweal’ of the wider community and nation and (dare I say?!!) Empire.
When industrialisation landed, however, everything changed - radically. Increasingly, the man of the house was forced into mining, factory or office work, often at a significant distance from his place of abode. Of course, (single) women too were often forced into servicing the industrial complex, e.g. in industrial mills and fabric making facilities. However, the absence of the husband/father in the home was by far the biggest change overall.
You can imagine how this changed things. For Holliss, of course, the key interest lay in how this affected the physical character of homes and, ultimately, towns as well. Instead of being active, gritty places where individuals of both sexes formed character and skills from an early age, homes became increasingly passive facilities, designed for little more than relaxation and (if you were lucky) personal cleansing. And as new towns and neighbourhoods began to be built, they also reflected this new division of reality, with whole schemes of ‘affordable’ reductive housing built at an appropriate distance from the grimy craters of industry. Even now, though modern industry is so much more clean, quiet and discreet, we continue to think – and build – along these outmoded, and frankly regressive, lines.
For Pearcey, though, the interest is more directly social in nature. How men going ‘out to work’ radically changed not only the conception of home but also our understanding of the role of men and women in society. It was indeed a source of great concern at the time, prompting lots of discussion in periodicals and parlours while also causing whole new fractures to appear in the social fabric. Don’t get me wrong; I am not in this berating the fact that the Industrial Revolution ever happened. (I’ll leave that to childish ingrates like Greta Thunberg.) It’s just to make clear that what we tend to think of as a perennial issue is in fact of very recent provenance. Neither the profligate husband/father nor the wife/mother tied to the kitchen sink should be regarded as a matter of grave immemorial heritage.
For men, to begin with, the shift promoted a general change in attitude, from one that was more sacrificial and rounded, let’s say, to one that was more (ostensibly) selfish and hard. That was not a universal thing, of course, and one could gather plenty of evidence to show that many husbands and fathers remained truly dedicated to their families. However, spending much of their day now with other men in mines, forges, factories and offices inevitably brought out more of the mean, survivalist streak that we know is part of the human, and especially the masculine, DNA. To begin with, and even now I’m sure, the hardness could be justified as simply a different way of expressing familial love. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!” But either way the concept of masculinity gradually altered in the West, with more and more men becoming dissociated from their traditional roles, relations and rituals.
When I think of the shift I can’t help thinking of the heroes of the old American detective novels. Or maybe of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. I had the pleasure of reading The Maltese Falcon recently; an experience I can strongly recommend. But it is quite noticeable that, for all the hero Sam Spade is a very capable character, and extremely loyal to his friends and loved ones, he is not an especially open or congenial member of the human race. In fact, the author gives very little insight into his thoughts and feelings other than what he DOES. It’s as if his utility is the thing that matters, rather than any deep revelations lurking in his heart.
Compare that now with someone like Hamlet. You can make a good case that Hamlet is considerably less useful than Sam Spade. Certainly, there is little to celebrate in his achievements. But we know, and we are expected to care deeply about, what the Dane thinks and feels. Indeed, there is barely a thought of the hero that is not writ large in the script. Hamlet is Man as the full and unashamed representative of the human race; the archetypally wounded guardian of the Common Weal. (Like King Arthur, in the time of his illness, awaiting the cup of Christ.) That he ultimately contrives to dissolve his whole corrupted tribe is less to be seen as a failure of masculinity than a moral lesson for the fallen man and woman alike. Better to contend with the truth, and seem to fail, than to put aside one’s conscience and ‘succeed.’ For the goal of man is not to escape his doom, but to transcend it.
And here, I think, is the key difference between Hamlet and his American descendant. Not just that the hero speaks more in Hamlet, which is after all a play. But rather that, in the later piece of fiction, the thoughts and feelings of the male hero are judged largely irrelevant. He is less a source of guidance, wisdom and comfort than an increasingly blunt tool against the worst excesses of society. Rather than being an explicitly moral actor, like Hamlet, his real source of value lies in his cool resilience and ability to solve fiendish problems. Like a kind of precursor to the caddish James Bond, his success lies not so much in any sense of honour or righteous endeavour (although that is still lingering in the background, I’d say) but rather in his cold hard efficacy – with bonus points for style.
Pearcey aptly calls this phenomenon ‘de-moralization’ and I think it’s fair to say that the process has only gathered pace since the 1930s – doubtless fuelled by inane evolutionary speculations and the desire of all too many men to be freed from their ‘softer’ social responsibilities. The upshot is that, in our present day, we have a general, and often justified, perception of masculine disutility verging on the downright destructive. If the effects were confined to adult men alone, the problem would be bad enough. But of course it is not. When men are viewed, and view themselves, as terminally irresponsible, there are all kinds of serious long-term impacts to consider. What these might be is not difficult to discern when we look at things like plummeting rates of marriage and sky-rocketing rates of divorce. Which then, of course, has profound impacts on things like birth rates, family and community cohesion and, most distressingly, the wellbeing of children.
Notwithstanding that kids of both sexes benefit exponentially from having consistent attention from BOTH OF their parents, we know that male children especially have a powerful need for the moral input and encouragement of their fathers. When they don’t get this, or something like it, to an adequate degree, it naturally affects their levels of achievement and psychological resilience. Which is then, sadly, liable to impact negatively on their whole approach to life.
Certainly there’s a significant problem to consider, if our civic and community leaders can get beyond their woke virtue-signalling long enough to consider it. For a long time now, boys have been falling steadily behind girls in terms of academic achievement. Meanwhile, suicide rates for males are also VERY much higher than for females. And the prisons are literally full of young men with missing, elusive or morally questionable dads. No doubt, there are other important factors to consider; factors like changing legal frameworks and an apparent hostility in certain quarters towards the whole idea of the traditional family, or indeed norms of any sort. But without men who are willing and able to play their historic role in families and communities, all bets for the future of a cohesive society are off.
To shift focus for a moment, what then of the earlier claim that it was not men’s but women’s attitudes that really delayed the introduction of the female vote? Now this is REALLY interesting! (Again, an example of how actually reading history can displace our dearest held assumptions.) Pearcey focusses on America but the timings and dynamics for the UK are very similar. What happened is that originally (and not a lot of people know this!) it was not individual men who had the right to vote but individual households, and it was simply the man who was usually, as the person most associated with the commonwealth of the household, entrusted with the task of voting on its behalf. (This was before the rise of feminism, you’ll understand. The idea that men and women had complementary roles was still ascendant.)
Within this arrangement lay an assumption that now seems rather alien to many of us, accustomed as we are to the atomic view of political responsibility – that of the family as not just the basic unit of civil society but an actual microcosm of the State. If one had experienced the challenge of running a household, so the theory went, then one could also be trusted with having an influence over how the regional, national or federal government was run. Underpinning this theory lay the idea that the State itself existed not to lord it over the people but to serve and protect them like a father/husband in relation to his family. Indeed it was this normative experience of the family, underpinned by the Biblical ethic of servant leadership, that suggested the whole arrangement in the first place. If it worked at that everyday domestic level, and by all accounts it frequently did, then it could also be expected to work at the grander level of community administration.
Women generally liked this whole arrangement, as they perceived that it helped keep the family together – something which, apart from anything else, was critical to their status and wellbeing at that time. The idea of universal adult (male/female) suffrage was at first resisted by women simply because they perceived, perhaps not unreasonably, that it could and would compound the effects of industrialisation on the male psyche, leading them further away from the care of the domestic scene. However, when universal MALE suffrage was eventually introduced, the battle seemed increasingly futile. In a society where men and women were regarded as fundamentally equal (again, in keeping with the Bible’s teaching), there could be no further excuse for excluding women (as individuals) from the vote. In a very short period of time, universal adult suffrage was embraced across Western society.
What happened to women, and the idea of womanhood, during all these economic and political changes is also worth reflecting on. Indeed, the history is perhaps even more interesting and surprising than the contemporaneous history of the men folks. Because, quite simply, the ladies didn’t take all these radical changes lying down! Great emphasis now is laid on the suffragettes, but before that movement even emerged there was already a rising tide of female-led social activism. This was not usually motivated, as one might assume, by a desire to get one over on the male of the species, but rather by a sincere desire to protect the family and community from disintegration in the face of increasing male profligacy. If men were not going to fulfil their historic role as guardians of the Common Weal then the women sure as hell would show them how it was done!
The widespread temperance movement is one notable example of this phenomenon, but major campaigns were also led against things like gambling, poverty and slavery. (Notwithstanding, of course, that men continued to play an important part in many such campaigns.) So widespread was the female activism that it was even christened The Benevolent Empire, and books and sermons frequently praised the female as the guardian of moral virtue and refined Christian culture (with the implication, of course, that men were no longer to be trusted in such matters). Indeed, it was during this age – from, say the mid-19th century onwards – that the idea of the domestic goddess first arose, and such was the fervour in its application that even angels began to be portrayed as feminine for practically the first time in the whole of history. (This might not be so noteworthy except for the fact that the angels who are actually mentioned in the Bible are male.)
From this whole shift, we can see that it was but a short jump to the rise of modern feminism. Indeed, even in the 19th century some of the more radical female campaigners had begun to speak of men in the sort of demeaning terms that we would recognise today. Even so, as the author Mary Harrington points out, it would take further developments in the twentieth century before the atomisation of men and women – or ‘the battle of the sexes’, if you like – would take full hold of the Western imagination. In particular, she points out how the experience of total war actually necessitated that women join the industrial and agricultural workforce en masse, in order to compensate for so many men going to war and, as we know, being killed and seriously injured in defence of flag and freedom. This in many ways broke the spell of the previous unnatural divide between the public/male/secular sphere and the private/female/spiritual one. But in doing so, we may argue, it also killed off the memory of the earlier social polity based on the traditional family household.
So where are we now? And what should we do, those of us who care for such things as family and tradition and believe that men and women are actually (literally) made for each other? Well, if I may be so bold as to offer an opinion (ahem), the split between the sexes may take some healing, especially as it has now become complicated by a host of other “gender-based” matters. (Or maybe those “matters” are actually helping to create a common cause?) But, returning to the insights of Frances Holliss, there are perhaps small steps we can take towards softening the friction and (literally) creating an environment where people of both sexes can flourish despite all of the social and political challenges of our time.
Covid was a tragedy on many levels, which I’ll resist getting into. But one good thing that DID come out of the pandemic was the realisation of many employers that people could indeed be trusted to work away from the office, when and where that was appropriate to the task. This, in my view, has created an unprecedented opportunity to realign our economy and society to better resemble that which prevailed before the Industrial Revolution. And in the process allow both men and women to build families and enterprises, and indeed enterprising families, that can act as an effective bulwark against economic and political distress. Though policy may have moved away from the idea over time, I think it still remains essentially true that families ARE the bedrock of society and progress. (Just as small private enterprises are, and always will be, the bedrock of successful economies.) So, we can all do ourselves a favour by embracing the ‘new normal’ of WFH and hybrid working, while also ceasing to plan our towns and cities on the basis of a socially disruptive commuter lifestyle. NB: I am NOT talking here about low traffic neighbourhoods, or blocking (poorer) people’s right to personal transport, but rather a reintegration of life and work that allows for better personal and social outcomes.
Secondly, and closely related to the above, we can just begin to talk again about the value and importance of families. I remember from growing up in the eighties that there was still then a decent amount of talk about families, from the top levels of society down. You can argue about how much of it was sincere, but at least it was on the agenda; at least it was seen as something worth mentioning now and again. Now it seems the topic has become almost taboo, such has been the profound atomisation of our modern society. You may have noticed: if people in the public eye say anything about families, it is likely to be something to the effect that all families are equal – as if a family is just the same as an individual, rather than a profound reflection of the deep and ancient ties that bind us all.
Rob Henderson, the guy who brought us the term ‘luxury beliefs’, has written about this in his latest book ‘Troubled’, which is really an autobiography detailing the VERY chaotic life he experienced growing up. Listening to him, he is very clear in the conviction that not all families are equal – any more than all cultures are equal. Some are A LOT better at producing good and rewarding lives than others. And in fact he goes so far as to state that the quality of family life is a lot more important to a person’s wellbeing and progress than mere educational attainment. Even though educational attainment is consistently pointed towards as the primary vehicle for social mobility and integration. (Perhaps because that’s seen as something the State can more directly control?) At the very least, he says, a good family life lays the basis for attainment in education and other spheres of life. It provides the stability, social capital and aspiration on which all real fulfilment depends.
Now what is a good family is perhaps something beyond the reach of this ‘short’ essay. But speaking from my own experience, I do believe it stems first of all from the unity and commitment of the parents. The commitment is foundational, I believe. When you make those vows before God, they have to be more than mere ritualistic words. You have to take them to heart, and REALLY mean them. (That’s why they really ought to be made before God, in my view.) Because the degree to which you live by them will affect not just your own satisfaction and success, but that of potentially generations of family on both sides of the partnership. Which is more than just a ‘private issue’, when you think about it.
And in case you’re wondering, mere cohabitation really doesn’t cut it. People don’t generally talk about this, or even probably know about it, but there’s actually stacks of evidence to show that marriage works A LOT better for everyone concerned than other familial arrangements. For example, according to a UK report from 2010, “Children born to cohabiting parents were almost three times as likely as those born to married parents to no longer be living with both these parents when they were 5 years old.”[1] We also know that married couples obtain more wealth than cohabitees, that marriage increases physical and mental health for both men and women, and that the children of married couples do better at school and have a much better chance of moving out of poverty. Of course, this isn’t to say that cohabitees cannot, or do not, buck the trend and lead happy, extended family lives. Simply, that the odds are against them.
It also isn’t talked about much, at least not anymore, but I do believe that marriage and family plays an especially important role in relation to the males in our society. Without some kind of transcendent mission to occupy our energies, it’s a fact that we men are especially apt to become a force of negative disruption in the community. Whether by neglecting or over-indulging ourselves, or both, we can quickly become a deadweight, and since males have a stronger inbuilt tendency to be disagreeable the effects are not necessarily easily contained. For this reason, society has traditionally worked hard to find ways of keeping males productively occupied in ways that benefit, rather than fatally injure, the whole of society.
There are of course a range of options that might be considered. Like Rob Henderson, you might use military service as a means to bring your own (self-) destructive impulses under control. Or, like the great Scot David Livingstone - native of my beautiful hometown of Blantyre - you might apply yourself to missionary, medical and exploratory efforts in benefit of mankind. For most people, though, and I include myself, there is no surer path to mature transcendence than simply getting married and raising a family. Not only does it keep men out of trouble; a benefit not to be taken lightly! But for men themselves, and again I speak from experience, there is a profound satisfaction, enlargement and peace to be gained from taking up your cross as guardian of the familial commonwealth. The more you apply yourself to the role, the better it gets – in my experience. You know, it's almost like we were designed for it!
But if I may bear on your patience just a moment longer, and fulfil the promise of my rashly conceived title, there is one further recommendation I can make for us, male and female alike, to secure a more integrated way of life. And that is JUST TO TALK. Well, I say JUST to talk, but as I have been learning, there is a lot more to the art of conversation than most of us have ever conceived.
I’m sure most of you will have heard of Jordan Peterson and that most of you will have views about him. In any case, I have just recently finished reading his 12 Rules for Life book and I can honestly say it’s one of the most wise, helpful and stimulating books I’ve ever read. (And I’ve read a few, as you may gather!) In particular, I was struck by the thorough treatment he gives in the book to the topic of conversation, based on his extensive therapeutic experience. This is not the place for a full treatment (ahem) of the issue. If you want that, read the book! Or at least read Chapter (Rule) 9: ‘Assume That the Person You are Listening To Might Know Something You Don’t.’ It seems to me that there is a strange contradiction going on in our culture today where, on the one hand, we’re being encouraged to be empathic and collaborative but, on the other hand, we’re continually being advised of the potentially dangerous consequences of what we say to each other. To the extent that people and ideas routinely get cancelled before they’ve even had the chance to be aired. And there is even now, in some places (so I’ve heard), the threat of more formal repercussions for saying things that are ‘hurtful’!
Dare I say that this is NOT a coherent framework for effective communication between the diverse membership of our species?! That, on the contrary, it breeds the sort of confusion, fear and uncertainty which is liable to make meaningful conversations, especially in the public sphere, more and more difficult to entertain? Yet very few seem willing or able to counter the inhibiting authoritarianism that such practices clearly imply. Which bothers me, to be frank.
But maybe, just maybe, if we all as individuals took the time to properly assess and revise our conversational practices, not to constrain them but to bring them nearer to perfection, and if we all at the same time made a commitment not to let ANYONE interfere with our basic rights to free speech, then maybe (just maybe) we could regain some lost ground and arrive at better understandings of both ourselves and our esteemed neighbours on this pretty little planet of ours. As Peterson says, ‘genuine conversation is exploration, articulation and strategizing.’ It also mostly involves listening, as opposed to just filling the air, jostling for status or justifying our existence. That’s a high bar, to be certain, but I do think it’s a noble goal for us all to aspire to. It certainly has to be better than simply howling against the opinions that we find subjectively offensive at a certain moment in time. Or, worse still, snitching on our neighbours, like so many lowlife informants in an updated version of the Soviet Bloc. (Not that any of you, dear readers, would ever act like that.)
It didn’t work out then and it won’t work out now! As wiser people have so often said, it is only through (honest and humble) reflection on history’s mistakes that we best avoid the total dismemberment of our future.
Oh, with what excitement we greet the prospect of a different path; the road less travelled! The promise of new adventure and insight beckons round the briary corner of the way that all our ancestors studiously avoided (and soberly warned us against). But what if our ancestors were onto something? And what if, rather than being liberated from the oppression of old rituals, we find ourselves, like Frodo, unconscious beneath a forgotten ancient barrow, and at the mercy of foul spirits whose only impulse is to smother the very memories of life and hope? Will Old Tom Bombadil then come leaping to our rescue, as if out of nowhere? Perhaps, if we could just remember his prayer…
Sometimes you have to go back a few steps if you really want to go forward.
T.D. Craig
17 April 2024
[1] Holmes, J and Kiernan, K, ‘Fragile Families in the UK: evidence from the Millennium Cohort Study – Draft Report’, University of York (2010), pages 2 and 22