Just a heads up: we do talk about the concept of social hierarchy in this episode, but don’t explore it thoroughly. Hierarchy is an incredibly upsetting way of framing reality that is responsible for some of the worst human behavior in existence. I understand that it is jarring to hear someone say “hierarchy is reality” and then not explain what they mean beyond what they don’t mean.
But this is an unscripted supper table conversation where the entire point is to discuss what we are told to avoid discussing over dinner (i.e. avoid all topics that can offend and hurt, avoid all engagement with the enemy, avoid all pain points in our families), and this is also a podcast that gets about 20 listens and makes me about $5 if I’m lucky, not a government funded nazi convention. Please mitigate and right-size your reactions accordingly. My own family is a microcosm, not a punching bag for every listener’s projected pain.
In this third installment of a supper table conversation about my sister and brother-in-law’s conversation to Orthodoxy, I share a little more about my own reactive process post-polyamory chaos, and we discuss how marriage can be a vehicle for developing spiritual fortitude and selflessness. We also touch on the vulnerability women experience as childbearers (not to be confused with weakness), the way this vulnerability and risk could be mitigated by men developing stronger integrity, and the need for robust social scaffolding to support young families through the trials and hardships of early childrearing. This is NOT because I personally believe that the only solution for the suffering of mothers and children is for women to be able to depend on men.
Yes, all of this is heteronormative, and all of this is predicated on a belief that there is a more or less correct or desirable way of doing things, but please bear in mind that as a single mother of two children with two different men, I’m not exactly sold on the idea of trad family just because I had my own theories about trad family 10 years ago. Nor am I incapable of acknowledging that things could have been different for me if my children’s father’s had been dedicated partners, or if I had chosen partners more wisely. I get that it’s all made up and that the protection of normative nuclear families pretty much only always ends up hurting anyone who doesn’t fit the mold, because I also don’t embody that ideal despite my initial entitlement and privileges. At the same time, if all we’re ever talking about is how it’s all made up, then we’re not really engaging on the level of reality where constructs have both purpose and consequence.