Tea at Trianon: The Poor Mother

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

The Poor Mother

From Ally's Substack:

When women have a child everything changes—Medieval or Modern. But it seems to change more for modern women. When modern women have children, the same biological and God-given desire to protect ignites in us as it did in women of the past— but we don’t have near the same dangers. And on top of that, we have an added expectation of fulfilling all our child’s desires. In a novocaine-free world, such a quest would seem like something out of Fairyland. All this underscores just how to ruin parenthood (and childhood): attempt to protect and keep our child happy for 18 years. That is life-destabilizing.
Jordan Peterson speaks often and boldly against the over-protective nature of modern parents, making kids weak and parents miserable. He advises that we teach our children to “face the challenge of life forthrightly,” adding, “You can’t protect your children, you can only make them strong, and then they can protect themselves.”
The Pendulum Swings
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to go back to the Dark Ages. No one appreciates Novocaine more than I do. I don’t think it was good to send 15-year-olds off to war and I doubt most Dark Age mothers were model parents. But the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Rather than raising hardened toothache-ready children, we are raising children unequipped for the intrinsic difficulties of life. Evidence suggests that incoming college students today experience greater levels of stress and psychopathology than at any time in the nation’s history (check out the work of Jonathan Haidt for more on the increasing fragility of young people).
Young people today might not have to fight in the Crusades but they do need to succeed in life, develop relationships, and confront threatening ideas and people. Our children encounter trials that our ancestors never faced—such as attempting to maintain their virtue in the face of Twitter and Internet pornography.
Since the introduction of birth control, we are having fewer children and those later in life—and that increases their value and our ability to hover. Too often they are allowed to become our sovereigns. In the past, there was no rearranging life for kids; they had to contribute and join the larger family project. Today it is the parents who must conform.
If motherhood feels like a burden, it is often a burden of our own making. The other day I was at my son’s soccer game. One of the boys was put in as goalie and his mother spent the next 30 minutes on the edge of her seat screaming instructions at her son, “Get the ball out of there! Stand in the middle of the goal!” It was truly exhausting to watch. She was completely frantic. It’s great to support our children but there is a fine line between support and control, and control is exhausting. (Read more.)