Editor’s Note: This is part one of three in a series from Rob Marco’s interview with Leila Lawler.
Who is Leila Lawler?
Leila Marie Lawler, a wife, mother of seven, and grandmother to a growing number of little ones, practices what she likes to call “kitchen sink philosophy” at her website Like Mother, Like Daughter, sharing practical and theoretical insight into all aspects of daily life.
She is co-author with David Clayton of The Little Oratory: A Beginner’s Guide to Praying in the Home and author of God Has No Grandchildren: A Guided Reading of Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii, On Chaste Marriage (2nd Edition), and The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life, a 3-volume set.
Mrs. Lawler and I had the chance to catch up recently and discuss the financial challenges for Catholic families in the present economy, the opposition to the idea of homemaking in the wake of NFL kicker Harrison Butker’s commencement speech, family budgeting, generosity in giving, the need for community, and Gospel simplicity.
We’ll begin this series with Lawler’s insights into femininity and feminism.
You are known for writing about family culture, education of children, and practical home skills on your website Like Mother, Like Daughter. How did that endeavor come about?
Leila Marie Lawler: “I started writing because I saw a need for women experiencing ‘feminism-induced anxiety syndrome’ to get some relief. Feminism is an ideology that can only succeed by means of a great, unrelenting effort to overcome the natural tendency of a woman to wish to be home, to make a home, to be a helpmate to her husband, and to nurture her children.
“One of the ways feminism keeps a stranglehold on women—not just their actions but their psyches—is by insisting that managing a home is difficult drudgery, unworthy of a person of intellect. Another way is to monetize it—and I’m sure that word will come up again—and offer perfectionism as a goal of the successful woman whose disposable income allows her to have an effortless, picture-perfect environment and make money doing it, if possible.
” With Like Mother, Like Daughter, I wanted to offer encouragement to other women simply seeking to live in a traditional way with a lot of freedom and peace and to be competent at the basic skills needed to run a family—skills that happen to be incredibly satisfying if you give them a chance. I have no ads or steady revenue, and nothing pops up when you visit the website. I think this fact helps people feel that I’m not selling a movement or an identity. I’m simply trying to articulate some first principles about the good life.”
There has also been a lot of debate lately about working mothers versus stay-at-home mothers (and variations of the two) after the Harrison Butker commencement speech earlier this summer. What are you seeing in these exchanges between women who may be pushing back against the idealized traditional delineation of duties in a household, and what might they be missing in the process?
Leila Marie Lawler: “Let me say that right now, the ‘idealized traditional delineation’ is definitely not that the mother stays home. Instead, being a housewife (as I like to call my position—for its shock value) is the true outlier! So the pushback to the speech on this account is actually a staunch, intractable defense of an entrenched position: that the woman be a wage earner.
“Women are and have been expected to work since I was a teenager in the 70s. A big factor in my admission to an elite school like Swarthmore was my intention to pursue an engineering degree. On social media, a relentless trope is staying home while earning by monetizing your free time.
“This drive to monetization is behind the disproportionate reaction to Butker’s speech. It’s just not permissible in our day and age for a woman to be provided for by her husband. It’s not acceptable to propose it. It seems like a cardinal sin to suggest that one’s time would not have to be monetarily productive. The corollary is the outrage directed towards his comment about there being nothing natural about limiting one’s family because the hidden assumption of even ‘soft’ ‘Catholic’ feminism is that children accepted at God’s pace hamper a woman’s ability to achieve her goals.
“Of course, it’s never mentioned that marriage itself is a completely freely undertaken state, a one-flesh union of man and woman. If one prefers not to accept its purpose, which is the procreation and education of children, one can simply avoid it.
“The truly traditional idea, that the wife makes the home while the husband provides for and protects it, is barely alive. What’s missing in all the conversations is what the wife’s freedom within marriage, especially of her time and her mind, from the pursuit of money, means to our whole society. What it does for the relations between the sexes, for our homes, for our neighborhoods, for our country.
“Paradoxically, if the woman is free (by relying on her husband to provide the income), she can manage the household and the resources for the flourishing of her family and beyond, influencing the health of the community and the polity.
“Mothers at home protect privacy, intimacy, growth, and wellbeing. Someone has to earn the bread, but someone has to remain untouched by that burden. Often the response when I say this is a pivot from the first feminist cry, that the woman fulfill herself, to the second, that she must work because her husband doesn’t earn enough to support the family. But of course, what is missing? The idea that it might be worthwhile to live on less, precisely to preserve her immunity from having to be a wage-earner.
“Not to mention that by insisting that all families be dependent on two incomes, we’ve created an economy that requires it—thereby making the choice to stay home vanish. When married women didn’t have careers, spirited women could have them (and for the most part did, contrary to the feminist narrative). Now that all women have to have careers, very few women can afford to be home. If we are honest, we should acknowledge the harm to society that has resulted.”
Conclusion: Author Commentary
Feminism in contemporary culture has become so ubiquitous with that of progress that we don’t even notice it anymore, like a chemical in the aquifer. But how can this monumental trend be reversed? When an entire economy is founded on a kind of “two income trap,” those who seek to live a more traditional existence are naturally going to be swimming up stream. What I appreciate about Mrs. Lawler’s writing is that she unselfishly lends support to those trying to do that, and seeks to keep the “collective memory” alive.
In the upcoming part 2 of this series, Mrs. Lawler and I discuss the nuts and bolts of the domestic economy and the role of simplicity and prudence in financial decisions for the family.
