“Mother Culture” and Mothers as Transmitters of Culture

Mothers passing on Christian tradition are the real threat to the Revolution.

If we mothers were all "growing" there would be less going astray among our boys, less separation in mind from our girls. –“A.”, The Parents’ Review: A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture, Volume 3, no. 2, 1892/93, pgs. 92-95.

An anonymous contributor, “A.,” to Charlotte Mason’s The Parents’ Review coined the phrase “mother culture” and said:

“There is no sadder sight in life than a mother, who has so used herself up in her children’s childhood, that she has nothing to give them in their youth. When babyhood is over and school begins, how often children take to proving that their mother is wrong.”

Today’s parenting magazines do not convey quite the same message to mothers. Whether working or stay-at-home, rather than being encouraged to read and nourish their intellect, moms are told to make time for “self-care” and to head to the salon or spa for a day or for a girls’ weekend—because those kids are runnin’ you ragged, girl! Yes, they are running us ragged, but the fix is not a manicure. It is a book, or rather, lots of books—good books.  

To read a book instead of going to the spa threatens the ruling ideology of Globo Homo Consumerism, after all. Self-education does not stimulate the economy like weekly trips to the salon or weekends in Napa. Nor does good fiction or history spur the revolution the way romantic escapism does. The more that women are encouraged to see home life as onerous and something which must be fled, the more they resent it or avoid it altogether. The secular, consumer culture only stands to gain by fanning the flames of the women-needing-liberation-from-husband-and-children movement.

Vs.

Taylor Swift, Candace Bushnell (the author of the Sex and the City book series), Kamala Harris, and other latter-day saints of fifth-wave feminism are the opposite of the type of strong, independently-thinking mothers who Mason and her journal were trying to build up.

As the humble “A.” points out, a mother must have “the love of Jacob, the patience of Job, the wisdom of Moses, the foresight of Joseph, and the firmness of Daniel,” and all at once—and all virtues she acquired because she has children and a husband to care for.

One of the first items on the agenda of the political revolution is to undermine gender norms and specifically to cut off the mother from her children. The French Jacobins, the Russian Bolsheviks, the Chinese communists, and even the American neo-conservatives tried to “liberate” women as a part of their respective regime-change operations. For the readers of this Substack, it probably comes as no surprise that the orchestrators of the French revolution and the masterminds behind the Red Terror should, in their effort to sweep away the old aristocratic society, made use of the destructive powers of the libido dominandi. After all, the Jacobins took their cues from such libertines as Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade (where we get the term “sadism”). The Bolsheviks, for their part, applied “collectivization” even to women, who, at least in one town, were told that they must make themselves available to their Bolshevik comrades.

The Marquis de Sade, chained up in the Bastille for torturing a prostitute and other “sex crimes.” He just missed out on the storming of the Bastille on July 14, having been transferred 10 days prior. Still, the National Assembly, in its infinite benevolence, freed de Sade not long after.

That the neo-conservatives also sought to undermine traditional gender norms in the Middle East is somewhat more surprising. But democratic capitalism can’t function with a bunch of veiled housewives teaching Islam to their children!

But the mission of the neo-conservatives in Iraq and Afghanistan was revolutionary—transforming traditional, Islamic societies into democracies. Since women are the primary transmitters of the status quo, women must be re-educated in the new principles of the regime. The United States spent an enormous amount of money on women’s programs in Iraq in an effort to turn them into transmitters not of Islam but of western-style democracy, most of little value (Former U.S. Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Burn recalls in his memoir We Meant Well: How I Helped to Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People one particularly funny episode in which a big, trumped-up workshop about the future of women in Iraqi society devolved into a belly dancing affair for the women, as the men had all departed after lunch.)

Even Plato, who was no egalitarian, recognized that the family is a harbinger of “private morality” and incompatible with the collective. Plato ensured that the women of the “guardian” class could outsource childcare so that they could devote themselves full-time to ruling. He goes so far as to say that the “community of women and children would be the greatest good” to his Kallipolis.

This idea would, in the modern period, become a part of the totalizing political philosophies that envision an all-encompassing public consciousness. Family life, especially for women, is not very well suited to this sort of political arrangement, which expects adherence to its creed and participation in the civic body, including economic participation.

For the Bolsheviks and Chinese communists dreaming of utopia, the nuclear family—the bond between husband and wife and between parents and children—undermined both the economic and political goals of the revolution. Women who remained at home to raise their children were passing on the old ways and traditions and were, moreover, not economic contributors to the collective.

Communists are, more than anyone else, obsessed with material stuff. It seems paradoxical, but Marxism is a materialist philosophy—it claims that material conditions rather than ideas determine the structure and politics of a given society. Everything comes down to production and consumption. In this respect, it is not so different from capitalism.

One way to tell if an idea or political program is seeking the revolutionary overhaul of existing society is to hold it to the Gender Litmus Test: does it obsess over “liberating” women from their traditional and biological roles as wives, mothers, caregivers? Does it make the major pillar of its platform “reproductive rights”? Then, you know that beneath that hysterical cry for abortion or gender mutilation or what have you is an entire program for remaking society. There will never be a revolutionary agenda that does not target women and call for their “liberation” in one way or another. The communists did it just as the democratic capitalists are doing it—abroad and at home.

And this is why traditional homeschooling mothers have become a target of progressives. As long as this stubborn holdout still remains, there will be serious resistance to the program of the Secular Machine, whether it be of the collectivist variety or the radical individualist kind.

In 2020 Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Bartholet announced that there should be a “presumptive ban on homeschooling, with the burden on parents to demonstrate justification for permission to homeschool.” Even representatives of the Catholic Church are taking action against homeschoolers. Just take a look at Cardinal McElroy’s statement banning homeschoolers from using parish facilities in San Diego. With a bunch of hemming and hawing about “unity” and “no educational oversight,” His Eminence has chosen the side of Bartholet. Mothers and their children are not allowed to use Catholic Church property for their co-op meetups or classes that are doubtless heavily colored by Catholic thinking (the old Catholic thinking that accords with the Magisterium of the Church). It is incredible. It indicates a very serious faction of revolutionaries within the Catholic Church—which we already knew to be the case.

Francis and McElroy, mask under the chin, says it all.

Thus, we mothers must shore up our defenses against UniCulture, inc. We are a strong line of defense against the cultural strip-mining that would wipe out everything traditional and authentically Christian.

Truly, mothers passing on Christian tradition are the real threat to the New World Order.

This is why I love Charlotte Mason’s idea of “mother culture”—a mother continuing her own education alongside that of her children. And the more she grows and is nourished, the more her children (and husband) also benefit.

The mother who reads good fiction, good history, good philosophy, and especially the classic texts that have been foundational for our civilization—for good or ill—will not be easy prey for the ideologues and advertisers.

Rousseau and Marx, for example, have set the tone for secular modernity. The housewife who is familiar with their ideas can respond with surety when her child asks her about something that is really just the latest iteration of their philosophies.

“Ah, Black Lives Matter, my dear, is simply the repackaging of the old ideas of a slovenly, unemployed German revolutionary who lived off of the work of other people—all so that he could devote himself full-time to drafting a philosophy in which no one would ever have to work. Crazy, I know! So BLM is simply a band of grifters trying to foment another class warfare. It’s all been done before, my child.”

Even post-modern garbage like White Fragility and How to be an Antiracist ought to be on the reading list of the Mother Culture mom. If our children are out in the world even a little bit, they will come across some version of these ideas. Extended family members may even be the ones to introduce them, so divided is our society. We better have some ready and thoughtful answers.

Knowing the arguments of our enemies will help us to recognize the wolves in sheep’s clothing when we see them and to have convincing arguments for our children. They will see that not only faith but also reason is with us.

Modern charlatans often come cloaked as compassionate, tolerant, real Christians, but ones who have moved beyond Christ. They proclaim the “basic message” of Christ but without all that mean stuff about repenting and conforming our lives to Him. These sentimental humanitarians make use of Christian language to deliver what is ultimately a secular and materialistic message—one that would ultimately separate us from the true gospel of Christ. So pervasive is this secular humanitarianism that even the Vatican seems to have adopted it.

Knowing Rousseau and Marx will, for one, help us to “deconstruct” these ideas for our children, while living the liturgical life will, at the same time, give them the real proof of the truth of the authentic Christian faith.

Fortunately for our culture (and unfortunately for the Revolution), the ranks of first-generation housewives are swelling, and they are eager and intellectually serious (just take a look at what homeschooling moms are publishing on Substack in their “free” time!). The old ways are returning, in large part due to a growing desire for a conscious return to tradition.

We have seen how empty life is without any connection to the past, to the seasons, to the land, to our ancestors, and to our orthodox Christian faith. And it is clear that the only way to revive and pass on these ways is to inculcate them in the home—for the mother to teach them to her children so that they can one day pass it on to their children.

I’ll conclude with A.’s prescription to give the mind “a good airing in something which keeps it ‘growing.’ A brisk walk will help. But, if we would do our best for our children, grow we must; and on our power of growth surely depends, not only our future happiness, but our future usefulness.

Is there, then, not need for more ‘Mother Culture’?”