I see this also as an important corrective to taking too small a mindset in terms of both sin and vocation. The small sin mindset is most interested in countable offences--how many times did I yell at my kids--but not big, unquantifiable attitudes of heart--I am arrogant about X. Unfortunately I think the modern Catholic approach to confession can exacerbate this, or at minimum seems to have no inbuilt correctives to it. It's the "i watched porn 4 times" approach that never asks "deep down, do I kind of hate women?". It also easily avoids reckoning with sins of omission, not commission (for non-catholics: that means what good did I fail to do, not just what wrongs did I commit). I see this also happening in the question of vocation. The sheer amount of ink spilled on the topic of the small sacrifices of motherhood is...questionable to me. It's not that those sacrifices aren't meaningful or important. But you can spend 90% of your moral efforts and abilities on achieving just 2% more patient mothering, and you'll have lots of Christian mommy bloggers cheering you on. But that may be a very high price for a very low reward, not just to you but to your children. What larger scale good might you be called to with all that moral effort? What might that mean for your family? It's interesting to me how much both conservatives and progressives fall into emphasizing our culpability in only the smallest and largest scale moral issues: big societal problems (climate change, the collapse of the family) and tiny individual choices (not driving, not using daycare) and completely ignore the middle 60% of issues. If you've got the right opinions on the large scale stuff, and the right lifestyle on the small scale stuff, you're good to go. I'm, obviously, dubious that this is how it looks to God. It's interesting too how gendered this can get in terms of keeping people esp women very preoccupied with small scale offences, and allowing people esp men to avoid thinking about midrange to large ones eg the ethics of the company they work for.
Nora--this comment of yours left a huge impression on me:
> "It's interesting to me how much both conservatives and progressives fall into emphasizing our culpability in only the smallest and largest scale moral issues: big societal problems (climate change, the collapse of the family) and tiny individual choices (not driving, not using daycare) and completely ignore the middle 60% of issues. If you've got the right opinions on the large scale stuff, and the right lifestyle on the small scale stuff, you're good to go."
(Yep, still thinking about it most of a year later!)
In part, it was because Martha said, "I would love to read a whole longform essay on everything you've outlined here... actually a series of them.." and I realized, "HUH. So would I."
Soo... fyi, I brought it up in comments of the latest OtherFeminisms post, pertaining to "something I want to read":
I would love to read a whole longform essay on everything you've outlined here. Actually: many essays. Enough to meaningfully change our societal discourse.
Hey, Martha... this RE is your old comment from May 5, '21! Nora was talking about how both the left and the right focus on things at the low end of the scale and the high end of the scale and skip "the middle 60%."
Nora said: "...you can spend 90% of your moral efforts and abilities on achieving just 2% more patient mothering, and you'll have lots of Christian mommy bloggers cheering you on. But that may be a very high price for a very low reward, not just to you but to your children. What larger scale good might you be called to with all that moral effort? What might that mean for your family?"
Me, thinking: "Huhh... I... I think she's right. And... that's really kind of warped."
You said:
> "I would love to read a whole longform essay on everything you've outlined here. Actually: many essays. Enough to meaningfully change our societal discourse."
And I meant to second that!!
Additionally, I think we should have a tradition at OtherFeminisms of nominating each-other to work on pieces like that! (low-pressure, though!!) :-D
Hypothetically, in the case where we had that tradition, I'd nominate you to write (at least part of!) an essay on that!
Anyway, since Leah recently brought up the question "What topic do you wish you could find a book or essay on?" and I legit want to read that, I brought this discussion up today:
I appreciate this discussion so much. Thanks for printing Martha's comment in full. It reminds me of a study long ago about children's fears of nuclear war. They compared the level of anxiety in children of parents who were taking action against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and who shared their concerns and activities with their children, with the anxiety level of children whose parents tried to protect them from all news about it, and did nothing. The children of activists were far less anxious. So Martha's approach is good for entire families.
I see this also as an important corrective to taking too small a mindset in terms of both sin and vocation. The small sin mindset is most interested in countable offences--how many times did I yell at my kids--but not big, unquantifiable attitudes of heart--I am arrogant about X. Unfortunately I think the modern Catholic approach to confession can exacerbate this, or at minimum seems to have no inbuilt correctives to it. It's the "i watched porn 4 times" approach that never asks "deep down, do I kind of hate women?". It also easily avoids reckoning with sins of omission, not commission (for non-catholics: that means what good did I fail to do, not just what wrongs did I commit). I see this also happening in the question of vocation. The sheer amount of ink spilled on the topic of the small sacrifices of motherhood is...questionable to me. It's not that those sacrifices aren't meaningful or important. But you can spend 90% of your moral efforts and abilities on achieving just 2% more patient mothering, and you'll have lots of Christian mommy bloggers cheering you on. But that may be a very high price for a very low reward, not just to you but to your children. What larger scale good might you be called to with all that moral effort? What might that mean for your family? It's interesting to me how much both conservatives and progressives fall into emphasizing our culpability in only the smallest and largest scale moral issues: big societal problems (climate change, the collapse of the family) and tiny individual choices (not driving, not using daycare) and completely ignore the middle 60% of issues. If you've got the right opinions on the large scale stuff, and the right lifestyle on the small scale stuff, you're good to go. I'm, obviously, dubious that this is how it looks to God. It's interesting too how gendered this can get in terms of keeping people esp women very preoccupied with small scale offences, and allowing people esp men to avoid thinking about midrange to large ones eg the ethics of the company they work for.
Nora--this comment of yours left a huge impression on me:
> "It's interesting to me how much both conservatives and progressives fall into emphasizing our culpability in only the smallest and largest scale moral issues: big societal problems (climate change, the collapse of the family) and tiny individual choices (not driving, not using daycare) and completely ignore the middle 60% of issues. If you've got the right opinions on the large scale stuff, and the right lifestyle on the small scale stuff, you're good to go."
(Yep, still thinking about it most of a year later!)
In part, it was because Martha said, "I would love to read a whole longform essay on everything you've outlined here... actually a series of them.." and I realized, "HUH. So would I."
Soo... fyi, I brought it up in comments of the latest OtherFeminisms post, pertaining to "something I want to read":
https://otherfeminisms.substack.com/p/what-other-feminisms-readers-read/comments
I would love to read a whole longform essay on everything you've outlined here. Actually: many essays. Enough to meaningfully change our societal discourse.
Hey, Martha... this RE is your old comment from May 5, '21! Nora was talking about how both the left and the right focus on things at the low end of the scale and the high end of the scale and skip "the middle 60%."
Nora said: "...you can spend 90% of your moral efforts and abilities on achieving just 2% more patient mothering, and you'll have lots of Christian mommy bloggers cheering you on. But that may be a very high price for a very low reward, not just to you but to your children. What larger scale good might you be called to with all that moral effort? What might that mean for your family?"
Me, thinking: "Huhh... I... I think she's right. And... that's really kind of warped."
You said:
> "I would love to read a whole longform essay on everything you've outlined here. Actually: many essays. Enough to meaningfully change our societal discourse."
And I meant to second that!!
Additionally, I think we should have a tradition at OtherFeminisms of nominating each-other to work on pieces like that! (low-pressure, though!!) :-D
Hypothetically, in the case where we had that tradition, I'd nominate you to write (at least part of!) an essay on that!
Anyway, since Leah recently brought up the question "What topic do you wish you could find a book or essay on?" and I legit want to read that, I brought this discussion up today:
https://otherfeminisms.substack.com/p/what-other-feminisms-readers-read/comments
I appreciate this discussion so much. Thanks for printing Martha's comment in full. It reminds me of a study long ago about children's fears of nuclear war. They compared the level of anxiety in children of parents who were taking action against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and who shared their concerns and activities with their children, with the anxiety level of children whose parents tried to protect them from all news about it, and did nothing. The children of activists were far less anxious. So Martha's approach is good for entire families.