Anyone interested in reading a little more on this history, or the topic of productive households, I recommend books like Total Truth by Nancy Peaecey (specifically chapter 12), The Household and the War for the Cosmos by C. R. Wiley, and Durable Trades by Rory Groves.

Plenty of other books out there, including historical primary sources, but these are some great books I have been reading lately and are good places to start.

For most of human history, the household was the economic locus of society—the term economy literally duriving from the household. Households were also covanental. The husband as the covanent head of the family, the wife as his helpmeet and "oikodespot" (household manager), the children involved in the domestic and economic life of the home. Fathers were involved in raising, training up, and educating the children. Wives were very often involved in the household business.

This all changed after the Industrial revolution. The economic center shifted from the home to the factory. Fathers left the home for work. In the beginning, women and children did too. But over time, the home became the woman's domain, and the domestic life became her primarily responsibility.

As industrialization and modernization unfolded, the family fragmented more and more. Work, education, entertainment, and social life all shifted from being anchored to the household to taking place elsewhere. And, most fundamentally, society began to see its foundational and basic unit shift from families/households to individuals.

This was the context in which feminism emerged, and it grew more militant, more divisive, and more toxic as the family became more fragmented and as the household more plundered of all its richness and texture.

For the waves of feminism to subside, there needs to be a retrieval of preindustrial life. We cannot go back, but we can pull forward:

Masculine men and feminine women getting married, having children, and establishing productive households. Both parents finding ways to be involved in raising children and in domestic life. Families starting home businesses or engaging in remote work from home. Families reassuming the duties of education rather than outsourcing it to the State. Fathers training up their children, particularly their sons, in their craft, trade, or line of work. Families developing more food and finance sovereignty, growing gardens and denominating their household economies in #bitcoin. Families joining solid churches and reviving the discipline or family worship in the home.

This retrieval is happening. May it accelerate. May egalitarianism and feminism be cast into the dustbin of history. May men, women, and families flourish.

As goes the household, so goes the world.