I lived in a world filled with women. Our husbands spend at least nine hours away from us each day, and we find ourselves surrounded by other women–except for our children, who might happen to be male. It seems to me a hyper-feminized world, and I can’t help feeling resentful at times of the change wrought by the Industrial Revolution.
Let me explain what I mean. It seems to me that God’s design for male-female interactions is complementarity. We need men to balance and fulfill our femininity and men to us to do the same for their masculinity. Any time we cut ourselves off from our complementary sex, we become unbalanced and lose out on the fullness God intended.
I suggest that corporate America is hyper-masculinized. Women generally have to leave a little, or a lot, of their femininity at the door if they want to succeed; granted, this is not the 80′s where women have to wear shoulder pads, but women usually have to choose between some aspect of their feminine vocation–wife and motherhood–and some aspect of their professional life. Many companies are trying to bridge this gap, offering daycare at work for nursing mothers and encouraging women to work from home, so as not to lose valuable trained employees after maternity leave is over. Yet, the fact remains that the working world makes it hard to be both a good employee and a fully engaged mother.
Equally, I think that my world, that of a full-time wife and mother, is hyper-feminized. At daily Mass, I see women. At the grocery store, I see only women. Out for a walk, I pass other women. I wonder if this feminine world does not discourage me from balance; it seems that my feminine tendencies of over-emotionalizing and talking too much and frittering away time have easy access to excess in my feminine world. Our husbands are off to work, and we are not our best selves without their strength and masculine objectivity.
This comes to mind today because my wonderful husband invited me on a hot date this morning, to join him at work for lunch. I was excited to see him during the day and had a great time. I felt exhilarated by the bustle of his corporate cafeteria as people rushed past, and part of me longed for that world again. A world where my ideas, not my capacity to keep babies fed, matter. A world where I receive raises and accolades based upon my good performance, not who I am as a person. A world that challenges my intellect and compliments me and keeps me abreast of the swiftly turning culture mill.
I would not for anything change places with a mother who has to work a salaried job. The thought of missing my childrens’ first steps and first words is a sad one. So, I have given up my commute in heavy traffic and business lunches and heels and pearls–okay, actually I still wear heels and pearls. I have given up that world, but I could and I do wish for a world of complementarity, where I would be around the balancing influence of men.
This is a large part of my desire to raise our family as farmers. Devin’s presence in our family is such a gift, and it is one that I want to enjoy daily for more than a few hours. With that in mind, I promise a Part II blog post tomorrow, discussing pre-Industrial Revolution culture and male-female complementarity on the farm.
I’d comment, but I fear adding to the estrogen level already here.
I am curious to read Part II. As the daughter (and daughter-in-law) of a farmer, I will say that farmers are not around all the time and especially absent during the peak seasons of planting & harvesting. I don’t think my dad was around more because he was a farmer – he was around at different times, perhaps, but not for dependable lengths of time. He had no 8-hr workday, no holidays, no weekends, no sick days or vacation days. In fact in the 4th grade, I wrote a whole report about how truly unfair the life of a farmer is compared to people who have a “regular job” in town!
(Amy, I am adding some testosterone…)
Jenny,
I would like to take a shot at answering your (very reasonable) objection.
I assert that there are three kinds of farming:
1. Hobby or retirement farming
2. Conventional farming
3. Unconventional farming
Hobby farming is not interesting to us here as by definition a person has already made their fortune doing something else and then retires to the farm where they poke around all day and sip coffee on the back porch.
I understand (from talking with your husband) that your father and your husband’s father are conventional farmers, the second category. From what I have read and from what I have learned from conventional farmers and their relatives (including my own mother whose father was a conventional farmer with row crops, grain silos, etc.), your experience is not unique, and indeed the norm is that a conventional farmer 1) works his tail off, and 2) doesn’t make very much money.
Working his tail off means he doesn’t get to spend lots of hours with the family, especially during the peak times, when work starts before sunrise and ends after sundown.
I have nothing but the greatest of respect for such men, but that is not the kind of farmer that I hope to be one day, God willing.
I want to be an “unconventional” farmer, the third category. I am purposely avoiding using the word “sustainable” farmer because I know that conventional farmers object to that language since it implies that their type of farming is unsustainable, and my goal is not to create an argument or insult others.
By unconventional I mean the new agrarians: small-scale farmers that typically grow and raise one or more of the following: organic vegetables, grass-fed and -finished beef, pastured poultry (eggs and broilers), and so on. These products are then sold by the farmers directly to the customer, another difference between them and conventional farmers, who usually sell their grain to the co-op and their beef to the feedlot or sale barn, or the chicken farmers who run large, confinement poultry operations and sell to the big chicken companies (Tyson et. al.).
We have read books and blogs and even seen a movie about people who are making a living as unconventional farmers right now, all over the country. They do work hard, no question, but their farm work is more conducive to the family members pitching in because it is small-scale in terms of acreage, animals, and machinery (e.g. no enormous combines needed to harvest the hundreds of acres of row crops). Also, unconventional farmers work with the seasons of nature as closely as they can, so during the winter time, when nature rests, so do the farmers. Most of the cows have been sold in the fall season, the chickens are in the hoop houses with the deep bedding of hay and droppings composting and giving off heat for them, and so chores take an hour a day perhaps.
Yes, the spring and fall seasons are busy, but the daily management involves moving the cows from one paddock to the next using management intensive grazing (MIG), moving the chicken tractors to a fresh sward of grass every day and making sure they are watered, etc.
What enables this business model to be successful at a fraction of the acreage and machinery inputs of conventional farming is selling direct to customers at retail prices. If customers are not found who the farmer can sell to, then they are in trouble because they have to sell wholesale to the feedlot or sale barn and will receive a small fraction of the retail customer dollar. At the wholesale prices, the farmer needs to have much more acreage and animals to make a large volume so that the small profit per animal provides enough income for them.
The wonderful thing is that many people all over the country are becoming more and more aware of the goodness of grass-fed and -finished beef, pastured poultry (meat and eggs), goats, sheep, and pastured pigs. They also want a connection with the farmers who make their food, and they want to know that the animals have the best animal life possible, which unconventional farming gives them. So the customers have been coming to these farms, and these farms have been thriving, and more and more people are giving unconventional farming a try.
Will it work if we try it? I don’t know, but from learning about all the farmers doing it right now, I know that it is not a gimmick. It will be hard to be successful because it is not a get-rich quick scheme, and there is a good possibility of failure, but it is also possible to make a living off a modest number of acres using this model.
I have spoken with your husband about it, and he seems to be a Missourian when it comes to believing in unconventional farming being viable: “Show me it working somewhere”. I can tell you to read the books that we have and the blogs that we have, but ultimately the best I can do is try it myself and then report back about whether we were successful at it or not. If we were, then yes, it is possible because even someone as ignorant as me with animals and farming can do it; if we fail, then it either means that my ignorance sunk us or that the whole thing doesn’t work.
My hands are tired of typing! I look forward to Katie’s Part II as well, but I would also welcome your response to my thoughts here.
I don’t know enough about farming to argue whether \unconventional farming\ is viable or not. I’m interested in then angle of husbands and wives spending more time with each other. There are various ways to do this. Some make time in their busy days to focus on each other. Other couples start and run businesses together. Farming is akin to this since ultimately, you do need to make a living. The thing is, does working together result in a closer relationship? I don’t have data to say, but as with anything it probably depends. Some marriages fail due to the stress while others thrive. But ultimately, are we supposed to spend a majority of our hours with our spouses? The immediate response may be yes, but we are all human and invariably our idiosyncrasies will come out. Aside from that, being around each other all the time may lead to taking each other’s presence for granted. I know I look forward to coming home and talking to my wife and spending time with her. Would I feel the same if we spent a majority of our day together?
Regarding industrialization, I would say Jenny’s experience with her dad is close to what pre-Industrial life was like. My wife reads our kids the Little House on the Prairie books and that life was tough. Was the family unit stronger then than it is now? I’m sure it could be argued that it was, but there were also external forces – weather, famine, disease – that stressed the family as well. What helped alleviate those stresses? The progress that came from the Industrial Revolution. Yes, it required men to leave the fields and got to the city, but what resulted were innovations in technology that helped the farmer become more productive. Also, some of those farmers (or their children) became doctors that helped discover medicines that reduced deaths on the farms of livestock and people.
Katie,
I don’t know alot about farming, so I don’t know how much time farmers’ wives get with their beloved. I have no idea.
But I can understand your desire to spend more time with your dh. What about a job where your dh works from home? My dh has been working from home for seven years now. He does travel a few days during some weeks, but he’s also home for several days at a time. We eat breakfast & lunch together. He takes “coffee breaks” to play with the kids or explain math homework.
I love this set up!! He’s home for our early dinner times! He rolls out of bed in the morning and walks a few feet to his “office.” And at the end of his work day he heads outside with the kids to ride bikes and walk the dog.
Its a great life! And he earns a good living. Now a days there are lots of jobs that can be done from home. Just FYI.
I do better when I’m around my dh. He’s my rock and I don’t feel so isolated with my kiddos. Happy dreaming of the future.
I agree with your ideas Katie. I just read Dr. Laura’s new book, In Praise of Stay-At-Home Moms and it was a great read and covered much of what you discussed. As much as I don’t want to miss any of Nate’s events, the hustle and bustle of the working life can be missed. I can’t believe it has been a year since I quit working…guess it is time for my review
We get our wonderful beef from a rancher with five children. He is very close with all of his children, and EXTREMELY close with his sons who help out on the ranch. Obviously I cannot come to a conclusive answer based on one case, but it is a wonderful case to see.
I’m going to have a different take on this post. I agree with your ideas, Katie, and I think your feelings of imbalance are also reciprocated by many men.
I, for one, have noticed a great polarization of my ‘two’ lives since becoming a father. It is like there is this vast schism between my personal and professional lives, and crossing that boundary has become much more difficult for me. I find that I need a certain amount of time of adjustment between the two before I’m fully engaged. Somehow I must find a way to integrate my ‘two’ lives, or at least spend more in the life I enjoy the most (with my family).
While I’m not terribly interested in farming as a vocation, I confess to a certain yearning for that sort of lifestyle. Good luck in making your dreams come true!
Thanks to you all for your thoughtful comments.
Jenny, your perspective is an interesting one, and I am a little acquainted with the efforts you mention. As well as having spent my childhood in a small farming community in New Mexico, my grandparents and great-grandparents were farmers–chicken, green beans, artichokes, and strawberries–and I know that my father was eager for a different life, one that paid better and was less smelly. As Devin explained, we believe there is a different kind of farming, one that actually pays the farmer a living wage and invites the customer into a relationship of mutual respect and responsibility.
GMart, your comments and questions make sense in light of what we are taught in school textbooks. The problem is that those textbooks are usually written by post-Enlightment scholars who tend to view any time before the Enlightenment (ie. the Middle Ages–which by the way is a derogatory term given to it by Enlightenment thinkers) as superstitious, dirty, and generally barbarian, especially when it had to do with religion, especially the Catholic Church. So, I do not agree that more children died then than now; certainly we have the resources now to keep children from dying from diphtheria, but we have new maladies that we can’t seem to eradicate–AIDS, autism, STDs, cancers galore. In addition, it seems to me that our infant mortality rate is much higher than theirs, with at least 1/4 of our babies dying from abortion. If our lives are easier than theirs, we certainly aren’t more healthy or more happy, with suicide and drug use seemingly ever on the rise as people seek to escape their dismal realities. No, it does not seem to me that our civilization is any higher than theirs.
On a different note, thank you for asking me to clarify what I meant about more time with men. I did not only mean more time with my husband, though that would be wonderful; as Ryan mentioned, it usually takes Devin a short time on the weekend to adjust to being home, and I wish he did not feel like he had two separate worlds to bridge. Lillian’s mention of husbands working from home is a good one, and I know that my friends whose husbands do so love it. It does seem like this option for husbands is certainly growing, as companies try to cut operating costs and encourage employees to work remotely.
But, beyond men having more time with their families, I am also just speaking of more interaction of men and women in general, of the two worlds that Ryan mentions having more relationship. Because, certainly, women and men will always in some sense have their own worlds–we are such different creatures–but I think that difference should give rise to a wonderfully rich harmony, not a sad division.
Yes, Devin, I’d say the life you dream of living and the farm life I knew are different things. Whether or not you can make a go of it doing “unconventional” farming I couldn’t say. My own father wasn’t able to stay in business with conventional farming so that experience makes me wonder, but if you can find enough customers to support the life you want to live, then by all means do! I would ask this, however, when discussing conventional farmers, keep in mind that there are all types (as in any industry) – good & bad stewards of the environment, good & bad animal caretakers. But in a lot of ways, the true family farm exhibits many of the same attributes you value. For example, my parents sold beef to local contacts in the very same way you talk about selling yours. The problem they faced was finding a large enough market.
I will also add that in regards to Katie’s original post and the discussions of the separate lives we men & women lead, I agree that it would be nice if there was more overlap and one of the benefits would be more understanding between the breadwinner & the homemaker. It is really hard to understand the other person’s reality when yours is so very different, no matter how much empathy you can muster.
Oh, and for the record, hobby farming sounds just lovely to me (especially the part about already having amassed great wealth and sitting on the porch sipping coffee)!
I doubt there are good enough records from the pre-Middle ages to be able to compare infant mortality rates to today. Also, we didn’t have surveys then to know how happy people were with their lives. Everything is relative. I am not as pessimistic to think that we are all unhappy, pill popping, suicidal, swine flu infected people. I would argue that we are as “happy” (if not more) than those 500 hundred years ago. Our standard of living is so much improved and our health is so much better that our bodies have to invent ways to get “sick”. I think allergies are a reaction to the over sanitary lives we lead. We don’t have the Black Plague to deal with anymore. Of the number of live births, I would argue that many more children (and mothers) live healthier, longer lives. Your stat about a 1/4 of births are aborted though is valid and sad.
As it was then, I think you are happy as you make your life to be. Some enjoy the hustle of high tech life. Others prefer a simpler life. Everything in moderation. Putting down your iPhone every once in a while is not a bad thing.
Hi Jenny,
It is certainly true that some parts of the country have more customers for the type of food we hope to raise. My uncle and aunt live on my grandfather’s old farm in the Texas Panhandle north of Amarillo (where my mom and aunt grew up), home of row crops, circle irrigators, feedlots, and massive cattle processing plants that stink to high heaven. They have been trying over the past several years to start an unconventional farm, but have run into difficulties. One of their challenges is that there are not many customers close by them, since everyone up there is a conventional farmer or has been raised with conventional farming principles and are not open to radically different ways of doing things. They are probably going to have to move in order to start their unconventional farm dream.
so many interesting things to think abt katie! i also agree we can hardly believe the bias from our textbooks and teachers- just look at how they portray christopher columbus nowadays!