Lost Knowledge, Part 4
We really need a podcast.
Sarah and I had a great conversation about Lost Knowledge a while back, as one does. We explored how different segments of the homemaking culture seem to have different pieces of the chain and different pieces of the puzzle of how we got where we are—unmoored from our homes. Carrie Gress researched the feminist movement along with its ties to the communist movement and their effects on us. Happy as a Homemaker points to the conveniences of the ‘50s as being a catalyst for the abandonment of home. If I remember correctly, Rachel Jankovic points to the Industrial Revolution and feminism. Sarah brought up Home Economics classes and we toyed with that for a bit. We talked about how they started out as a way to educate the poor on better home sanitation and then grew into a standard curriculum in schools and colleges. They started as a supplement to further what was being passed down mother-to-daughter, but slowly became the main source of home education as everyone trusted the public schools and stopped teaching. As more and more women left home for jobs, Home Economics classes took over, but they never taught delight. They never give you the deep results achieved by their methods. Fast-forward through just a few generations of this and we have no home management education and no one home.
A piece of this whole mosaic is those of us who were taught by moms who did stay home. There are some of us with this great privilege of not being the first to come home. But we still feel like we’re trying to relearn things we’ve lost. We still have this sense of the broken chain of knowledge. This is me. I have the great blessing of having a stay-at-home mom, homeschooled, and taught from a young age that this is my role and responsibility. And I was all in! This was all I wanted growing up (plus horses and guns) so why do I feel this sense of unmooring, casting about, unanchored-ness?
When I look at my life, I see that I allowed my chain to grow rusty. It’s not so much that my chain was broken mother-to-daughter, but that I let it rust in my 20s and early 30s. I didn’t start to clean and oil it until I was in my late 30s.
I’m sure there are plenty of you in the same boat...the boat of rusty, unused knowledge that you’re suddenly wishing you’d paid closer attention to and started working with younger.
If I could go back in time, I would not have made the mistake of spending a decade of my life on our consignment boutiques.
Side Note: God is good and does good even to those of us who make stupid and foolish decisions. We don’t despair. I trust God’s providence in my life and the life of my husband even though we both wish we could go back and undo our decision.
Life would have been much more satisfying and fulfilling if I had spent my 20s learning to manage my home, nutrition, and, if I may be so bold, lovemaking. Because we have decided as a society that homemaking is a waste and reduced it to only the housekeeping, we don’t even think about encouraging young women, wives, and mothers to dedicate their youth to learning the basics. Why would we when we’ve decided no one needs homemakers? I’m almost sick with what could and should have been. But we were young, stupid, and surrounded by the lie that we would have time.
What a lie!
I chose, in my foolishness, to take the chain my mom handed me and let it rust through 15 years of neglect. I bought into the lie that homemaking was easy and not something that required study, honing, and honestly, a husband who values it and is willing to give you space to learn.
If I were to give any sort of marriage counseling, this would be it: pour yourself into your home from the start. Use whatever pocket God gives you before kids to grow your skills as a homemaker. It will pay off in the end. I would say the same thing to girls still at home and single women. Pour yourself into your home and grow your skills. It will pay off in ways you can’t even imagine.
It’s hard when you realize you were given a gift and you set it aside for lesser treasure, but we carry on.
Something else that played into rusty anchor chains was being born at a crossroads in the Christian community, where it was assumed that we’d choose to just follow in our moms' footsteps or be homemakers as an act of defiance. The homeschool movement of the ‘80s and ‘90s was heavily influenced by a One Kingdom, theocracy philosophy and it shows in our Lost Knowledge.
Parts of the broader evangelical community assumed that all girls would be homemakers and so little on-purpose, civil-kingdom effort was put into giving us the civil-kingdom “why,” the civil-kingdom results. Or what civil-kingdom results we were given were hidden under the massive veil of saving the USA. We got the Christian why but almost none of the Noahic Covenant why. Some of us got some of the why, but none of the delight and none of the practical. Some got the practical but no delight and why. We were all holding different parts of an anchor chain, not really sure what to do next, while the world screamed at us to get rid of the chain. Unsure which way to turn, we didn’t break it, but we did let it rust.
If you weren’t part of the Christian community that assumed you’d just get it, you often found yourself in the camp that trained you as an act of rebellion against your culture and the feminists. That type of rebellion requires girls to have a huge amount of courage. Flying in the face of the world is hard. Being different is hard. Especially for women who are more tribal. Rebellion requires discernment and humility. You have to know how to pick and choose your battles without doing everything with arrogance. Being trained in overt rebellion tends to grow a lot of pride. It’s asking a lot of young women to carry this burden of a wise rebellion. Many of us couldn’t, didn’t, or aren’t naturally good at it. Many of us tried and did more harm than good to the homemaker community, because we used pride as our guard and weapon. Making a home from a position of rebellion might feel exciting, but it won’t create a safe and happy environment. It will only create an edgy belligerent environment. And we still managed to only have pieces of the why, the delight, and the practical. We never had the whole chain either. Many of us let our chains rust because rebellion is hard day in and day out.
Side Note: What I’ve shared here about the Christian Culture in the 80s and 90s is based entirely on my own experiences. I know some of you had very different experiences, some more balanced, and some wildly unbalanced. Feel free to discuss this. The legacy of home passed down by our mothers is both the same and unique for all of us. This short article can’t possibly cover the whole scope and all the iterations of how our different communities, churches, and families handled homemaking training.
As you can see, much has affected our sense of lost knowledge. The last layer of this complicated recipe is simply how much of our work is layers of practice. We can have all the tools and training, but we still have to apply it properly to our unique homes, circumstances, and people. This takes practice. Our moms can give us all the practical training in the world, all the whys, and a heaping helping of delight. We are responsible to take those gifts and use them, learn them, grow them. That takes time. Lots and lots of time. I never cease to be amazed at how much there is still to learn about homemaking. If we’re learning while also raising the next generation it can be a challenge to train up that next generation. Chains can rust because this is such a big job with so many multifaceted applications.
These are some ways those of us who had great homemaking mothers are still dealing with lost knowledge. We have the chain, but we let it rust. We listened to lies, or were born at a point of change, or all of the above. Now we’re scrubbing that rust off and polishing those links and trying our best to connect our parts of the chain with other women’s knowledge. We all need to work together to reforge the why, how, and the delight so we can pass a whole, complete, bright and shining chain to our daughters. How we go about this, I’m not really sure, but being in our FB group, our chat, and these articles are a start.
Each of us in this knitting circle have different experiences, different areas we’ve chosen to explore, and different gifts. When we talk about meal planning, cleaning, cooking, gardens, books, and decorating, we’re never doing that for its own sake. We’re discussing these things because this is how we tend our people. These are the tools of our trade. A mechanic needs to understand wrenches to fix cars. We need to understand nutrition. I don’t know about you, but I’m a better nutritionist to my people when I hear from all of you and what you do, even when I do something different. This is us working the rust off the chains not only for our homes today but also for the next generation of homes.
