I posted this article previously on homesteadnutrition.com. However, since I no longer have that site, and I have new followers on this site, I felt that the information was worth sharing again. So, if you read it on the other site, just let it be a reminder. If this is your first time to read it, enjoy.
After a conversation with a friend, I was provoked to thought about the topic I want to share with you. So, I will dive right into it.
Over the years we have witnessed many changes in our world, especially as it relates to the home. Things once frowned upon if public knowledge are now, not only common knowledge, but the norm in modern society. However, just because something is the norm and accepted by society doesn’t make it right or what is best. How does this topic relate to natural health? I believe there is a huge connection. I will probably mention things in this post that spark controversy, but let me state from the outset, I am a Christian first and foremost and then a natural health advocate. What i have to say will stem from these perspectives.
In the late 1800s a trickle of women began to seek employment outside the home. Before this time some women had served as nurses, stenographers, teachers, etc. It was pretty common for young unmarried women to serve as school teachers, but when they wed they were no longer permitted to teach. Around 1893, women were seeking more prestigious positions as doctors and lawyers. After World War I, the women of the 1920s took things to still another level. Their mode of dress began to morph into that of what would be called the flapper. Women stopped wearing hats/bonnets to prove their equality to men. The once ankle length dresses became much shorter. Even the practice of shaving the legs and under arms came from this era since they wanted to look sexy in their short dresses and sleeveless tops.
The real leap from the role of women in the home came during World War II, when women were needed in the factories while the men were at war. Women found that they could do the jobs of men and even adopted the dress of men. Since that time, women have been active in the workforce and the home has gone steadily downhill.
Prior to the 1950s most births were at home. My dad is the youngest of nine children. Born in 1951, he was the first of his siblings to be born in a hospital. Today, probably 95%, or more, births take place in a hospital. Babies are no longer born in the safe and secure walls of the home, surrounded by family and friends. They are born in a cold sterile environment surrounded mostly by strangers who do not have a loving connection to them. Soon after they are born, they are whisked away from their mother and taken among strangers.
The proper time doesn’t even elapse before the umbilical cord is cut. For male babies, circumcision takes place long before the eighth day after birth, causing much more pain than necessary due to failure to wait for proper Vitamin K build up in his body around eight days of age. Mothers are given drugs to ease the pain of childbirth, which the infant is also exposed to. This easing of the birth process can also diminish natural instincts of a mother who otherwise goes to death’s door to give birth. It desensitizes the mother in more than one way. If a baby isn’t born just when the doctor thinks it should be, he/she induces labor not considering that his/her prediction of the date of birth could be wrong. I can’t even imagine what that medication does to the unborn baby. If a baby is breech, they immediately schedule a c-section. In the old days doctors knew how to turn the baby. Today, they make more money if they do a c-section.
There is absolutely nothing natural about hospital births! However, it is more convenient for the mother who is now more out of touch with the home. Women today think they are stronger than those in days gone by. In reality, they are much weaker. In the day when women did everything in the home, including giving birth, they were strong enough to keep up the laundry for a family of ten plus, plant and care for a garden to feed that family, harvest the crops and preserve them, sew and mend clothes, clean house and cook three meals a day, bake loaves of bread for the week, quilt, and birth 8, 9,10, or 11 children in between and care for all of them. I don’t know of a woman living a modern lifestyle that could do 1/4 of that list. And it’s not because things are so much better today. It’s because home is no longer where the heart is.
Back when mothers’ hearts were in the home they taught their children. They didn’t dump their children off on others to mold and shape. They didn’t want strangers influencing their children. Back then when a child reached school age, which wasn’t at age two or three, they reluctantly sent them to the one-room schoolhouse where they knew they would be taught the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, usually by an unmarried lady fresh out of school herself. They didn’t have to worry about some college educated nincompoop trying to teach their boys to get in touch with their feminine side, or trying to convince their girls that they felt like a boy that day. They didn’t have to worry about a boy feeling like a girl and going in the girls’ outhouse. Boys were boys and girls were girls when moms’ hearts were still in the home.
I don’t have to tell you that I am a strict advocate of home schooling. My first reason for this is to protect children from the garbage taught in government schools. Some may argue for private and Christian schools, but I still vote no. Private schools are becoming as corrupt as public and this homosexual and transgender mess is taking over. So what about Christian schools? I attended a Christian school and received a fantastic education. As far as the education, in most, I can’t knock it. However, to attend school you must vaccinate your children. For this reason and several others, I vote no even on Christian schools. There are those who label home school as a joke. And, for the mother whose heart is not in the home, it is. But for the mother who still fulfills her role in the home and loves it, home schooling is right.
Through the years many things have been removed from the home. Fathers are absent due to work or because they do not have the wherewithal to stand up and be a man. Mothers are absent because they have so suppressed the natural instincts of a female that they are practically nonexistent. God is absent because we think we can do it without Divine guidance. Education is absent because daycare and preschool can do that for us. Joy is absent because no one has time for the other. Peace is absent because everyone is fighting about something. Love is absent because everyone is too busy running everywhere to take the time to care.
All of this, from hospital births to education outside the home, to the absence of everything I just listed, has taken a toll on our health. We take more drugs, legal and illegal. We’re more overweight because we’re not doing physical labor and we’re eating junk. We’re emotionally and mentally drained from trying to keep up. We’re spiritually bankrupt because we’ve kicked God to the curb completely. And on and on it goes. When home ceased to be where our hearts are, we lost more than we could ever know. I fear that we have followed our hearts down the proverbial path of no return. But there are some of us who choose to follow our hearts back home. To some, home is still where the heart is.
Homestead Nutrition 