Localism and the Oldest Profession: Grace's Talk for Front Porch Republic

Grace gives us a practice run of her talk planned for the 2017 Front Porch Republic Conference, to be held September 30th at Hope College, a private Christian Liberal Arts college in Holland, Michigan affiliated with the Reformed Church in America. Grace speaks about motherhood, and how its practice as a profession was part of the structure of American communities.

How to Listen

You can find the MP3 file here.

The Podcast feed is here.

The Podcast channel on YouTube is here.

More Information

Here is the link to Front Porch Republic’s site: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com

Here is the link to Hope College’s site: https://hope.edu

Update: Grace’s Full Talk

Appended is the text of Grace’s talk as transcribed at the event. I’m not sure who transcribed it, but thank you!

So I can only imagine that I’ve been invited to speak here today because I am a practitioner of the oldest vocation, or profession. Parenthood. I mean, where do people think all the prostitutes come from? Do they just emerge, fully formed from a john’s sub-conscience? Seriously though — I am a wife, and mother to seven children, ages 23 to 8 months, and I do this work because I am called to it, and it is the work that I find most needs doing in the place I call home. I don’t want to totally bore you with some sappy drivel about how lovely motherhood is, so I’ll only do a little of that. But I’m going to start with a story, and then I’m going to try and explain why I think my vocation is critical to maintaining a place, and how the changes we’ve seen in motherhood over the last several decades have set the stage for profound changes in how we all live our lives. Also, while I think parenthood is the oldest profession- I’m only going to talk about motherhood. Not that fatherhood isn’t heroic and sacrificial work, it’s just not my work, and I’ll try and stick to what I know.

Some time ago when I was applying to college, I was hoping to be a nuclear chemist, and I wanted very, very much to attend Annapolis (they have a great program). So I asked my father if he could ask a friend of his to write me a recommendation. My father said to me “You know. I don’t think the Navy is a safe place for a woman.” And with that right there- I was outraged. I can barely recall what he even said I was so outraged. But I do remember him saying, “I think you should go to culinary school; you would make an excellent wife and mother.” I was honestly kind of appalled that he would say such a thing, and threw some kind of teen aged tantrum over it. And then I went on to State school without his recommendation, and have yet to regret that decision. A few years after that, I went on to graduate school to study epidemiology — I’d moved on from chemistry — but shortly after I started, I dropped out to — wait for it — raise children. Oddly, I was still not able to see my father’s wisdom, it was another 10–12 years before I put this all together. I was sitting at my kitchen table, poring over culinary school course catalogs when it hit me. And it was not so much an epiphany as like an out of body experience. I was right there, with my 16 year old self, and I was shouting at her “You fool! Listen to him! You know nothing! You’re never going to work for the military, or corporate America, or academia. You’re going to raise children, and you’re going to have a great time!” My father knew me, and saw my vocation better than I did at the time. My gifts were in family life.

Now what I did not understand at the time, and I think is frequently misunderstood, is that raising children is honest, demanding, work with dignity. There’s housework, but this is less about that and more about the work of making a home. When the housework gets backed up by life, I like to remind my husband that I am a home maker, not a house keeper. (one you marry, the other you pay.) And this is demanding, intellectual work. Now, I’m not here to convince anyone of that, but rather to highlight why I (and apparently many people) consider a vocation to homemaking… a bit of an insult. People think it’s about cleaning toilets and wiping bottoms. Now that happens — and there is certainly dignity in those details — but that’s not what the job is; the job is to make a place worth coming home to. CS Lewis describes homemakers as having the “ultimate career” and that “all other careers exist for one purpose only — and that is to support the ultimate career.”

Forty years ago, this job was very different. I recall my mother sometimes walking me, other times (when I was late) driving me, to school in her hair rollers and sometimes a bathrobe. She was not the only woman dressed this way. I’d often see moms in rollers gathered at the back of a station wagon complaining about the price of beef. But usually, I walked myself. I also attended half day(!) first grade in the afternoons because many six and seven year olds were not ready to be at school for a whole six hours. While I was at school she would do the shopping, run errands, and on Wednesdays we’d go to G. Fox and Co. downtown, and get our hair done. Most days though, I was released on my own recognizance to ride my bike, dig in the back yard, eat cookies at Mrs. Hall’s house, blow my allowance on novelties and harass my little brother, and later sister. My mother’s work was mostly invisible to me… and I don’t think she would have described what she did as “parenting”.

I contrast that with the fleet of minivans I see idling at my parish’s elementary school on a weekday afternoon. It’s a very different vibe. What, really has changed? The critical change I see, is the mass exodus of mothers into the paid work force, and the emptying out of our neighborhoods for the day. That exodus seems to have reshaped how we raise children and view childhood, how we care for our elderly, how we eat… even I think, how we do business. I submit, it has made our communities fundamentally less resilient.

Consider the “Free Range Parenting” so-called “trend”. I think what Lenore Skenazy describes, used to be called “raising children”. But our ghost-town by day neighborhoods are places we perceive to be unsafe, and so we’ve adapted a behavioral expectation to address the perceived danger: we now expect children to be supervised at all times by a responsible adult — and that is a herculean task. Poor mothers bear the brunt of social scorn for violating these new norms. Or consider my gruff, odd tempered elderly neighbor that I’ll leave unnamed: most folks would today describe him as a candidate for a memory care facility. In my neighborhood, he was just walked home by a mother, or grandmother, or even an older child. Or consider the way we eat now: who prepares the food we eat and how; how often families are able to eat meals together? Much of that labor has been outsourced to save precious time at home for two working parents, and sit-down group meals are weekend treats for many families, and for still other families — gathering for a meal happens only on holidays. Lastly, I want you to think about our contemporary start-up culture. It would seem that start-ups are springing up in every corner of the economy- but in fact, we are at a 40 year low for start-up ventures. Now. You might say, “C’mon Grace. That’s a bit of a stretch. How could a mass exodus of women from the neighborhood cause all of that? There are so many other factors to consider.” I suppose it’s true that correlation does not equal causation; I don’t entirely mean to imply that it does. However, if we look at the communities, and segments of society where children still roam the neighborhood all afternoon — it’s the places that still have women- mothers, grandmothers, aunties — in the houses, and in the garden. Those are the places where the highest number of elders age in place. Those are the families that have the least processed food, eaten together. And by an overwhelming margin — the families that can afford a parent to stay home, are the families that can start a business; the communities still populated during the day by women, are the ones where those start-ups thrive. And let’s not end our perspective with our own society: if we look at modern industrial cultures where the most women stay in the neighborhood — Japan for example — children are expected to run errands for the family alone, at five years of age. Swedish mothers routinely leave their infants on the sidewalk while the stop for a leisurely coffee. Alone or with friends.

Now, I don’t want this taken as some kind of an anti-feminist screed. One hardly thinks of Japan or Sweden as sexist hell-scapes. I suppose you could see it that way. But I’m not saying that all these awful women abandoned their children to daycare and the public school system, and ran off to get jobs for the hedonistic fun that comes with a 9–5. Hardly. These were economic decisions. We all know the numbers. Many families struggle to make the budget work without two paychecks. And it’s a bit of a trap — after childcare — you still have barely enough to get by. This wasn’t about hedonism — it was about paying the bills. And those realities are tempered by our policy. We decided some time ago not to make pro-family policy. And I’m not talking about culture war stuff. I’m talking about the tax incentives, and wage policy that make personal decision the stay in the neighborhood — also the decision that makes the most sense in Japan. I’m talking about the welfare policy that pays mothers to stay home with their children in Sweden. The question is not whether we’re going to make tax and wage policy, or whether we’re going to make welfare policy. We’re going to make some kind of policy; will it be pro-family policy? Or will it push women into the workforce that would rather not be there? Will it empty our neighborhoods every day?

For further reading — because I find there is always a test- I’d like to encourage you to look up Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes, and Third Ways by Allan C. Carlson. And I encourage anyone considering Motherhood to take the plunge. It’s great work if you can get it.