Ideals and principles are great.

They make a man a MAN and men who don't compromise are looked up to as heroes.

That having been said...

When a young man decides to start a life in the world -- get a job, get married, raise a family, things go differently than you imagined.

Should one stick to his ideals 100%, or would that be a recipe for disaster?

Can a man expect his wife to live a 100% IDEAL role, given the situation in 2013?

For example, ideally the man should bring home the bacon and the wife should cook it. The wife should stay at home, take care of the children, cleaning, cooking, etc.

Normally the children would go off to Catholic school, or some kind of village public school (before public schools became anti-Catholic, atheistic training grounds for "cogs in the machine") like a co-op. Remember the one-room school house? Neither do I.

Normally your wife would have experience with domestic duties, plenty of siblings and relatives to help out when she has 5 children under 5, etc.

But when is that true today?  Almost never.

People are new to tradition, they come from small families, and both men and women are poorly prepared for their ideal roles in adulthood.

Furthermore, many men don't do hard physical labor anymore. Their work can often be done just as well by women (it sounds awful, but it's true! desk jobs don't require masculine strength, leadership, or talents) Just look at how women are flourishing in the work world today. Women don't flourish as cops or firefighters. But they do flourish at the computer.

So women don't respect their men as much, or feel obligated to take care of him when he gets home. Heck, she probably wishes she could switch places with him once in a while. Plenty of women *know from experience* what a lot of "work" is like, if they had jobs before they were married. Taking care of needy kids all day, vs. working on some spreadsheets all day? I'm sure many moms of big families wish they had that choice!

But if the man was doing manly, hard work -- she'd be grateful he's taking care of her, providing food for the family, and she'd be happy to help out in any way she could.

See how the modern world makes it difficult?

Those with ideals -- and who decide to stubbornly stick to them -- end up severely depressed and/or disappointed, and those who make the wrong compromises don't fare much better. You have to be very careful and prudent. One must keep in mind that some compromises are more dangerous than others.

A man doing a few dishes once in a while isn't going to upset the balance of the universe. But a woman going to work outside the home is much more dangerous.

Can we expect all brides-to-be to possess heroic virtue? I don't think we can expect that, unless we have equally high expectations for the men.

Fair is fair. And no, I'm not talking "misogynist fair", I'm talking TRULY fair.

Of course a man can expect a woman who conforms to traditional roles.

They are definitely out there.  Lots of women don't have a problem with them, usually the problem is other people who think traditional relationships are abusive.  A good example is Gladius Veritatis who has spoken of nearly all past marriages as being evil.

Provided of course the fathers (and the mothers they have to live with) of the girls really believe in those traditional roles, there is no reason for there to be a problem.

What we see with a lot of trads is that they talk a good game but in practice they side with those who try to cripple the authority of trad men in the home.

Why all this talk about caving in?

So long as we tolerate subversives here who are here to persistently attack and undermine the traditional roles of men and women, saying they go back to "Sumeria" or some quasi-masonic BS from the resident liberal here, there doesn't seem to be a serious desire to see that traditional roles are conformed to.

I would think quasi-masonic BS about Constantine "leveraging" (ie, altering) the Faith would be enough to put someone under suspicion here.

There are also those of us raised in modern families who had horrible role models and we desperately want to live a traditional life.  We are learning OJT.

Don't interpret mis-steps as intentional modernism or тαℓмυdism.

Matthew chapter 7:

[1] Judge not, that you may not be judged, [2] For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.


That's why I cut people some slack. I don't know if they're ignorant, trying their best, or malicious. Who am I to always assume "C"?

I wouldn't want God to judge me that way...

It was always difficult.  Bernadette Soubirous's father was a miller, her mother had 9 children but 5 of them died aged, 10, 6, 3, 1 and zero.  A combination of economic bad times, running his business badly and being illiterate put the family into dire poverty.

http://www.lumenverum.org/apologetics/SeatattheSupper/page26.html

St. Bernadette collected firewood and sold it to buy bread.  Any idea how much firewood one needed to collect back then to buy a loaf of bread?  It was a lot.  More than a cubic yard.

Nowadays, at least we have eBay and well off people all around us throwing perfectly good second hand things away.  And that much firewood is worth about 10 loaves of bread because human labour is relatively expensive compared to food.

I would bet if you bought St. Bernadette's siblings back from the dead and showed them how difficult life was in a modern first world country, they would not have a great deal of sympathy.

Sure it is not easy for our generation, brought up in wealthy countries on the back of cheap oil and massive government borrowing.  But my method has always been to look at what the rich and successful are doing and copy them as much as possible.  Have a plan A, and Plan B and don't assume that your business selling religious art will do well just because it would suit your lifestyle if it did.

I knew a woman who decided to go into the business of selling religious books, right around the time that Amazon was starting up, along with a dozen or so competitors.  I warned her she was being stupid and explained in clear economic terms why she could not afford to hold a large stock of books or undercut on-line book sellers.

But she was convinced I was wrong and that her business would succeed despite all of that.

As for the wife working?  It depends on circuмstances.  Generally speaking it is a bad idea as child care, taxes etc leave you only marginally better off.  A better idea is for the husband to work harder than he would/could if he did not have a full time stay at home wife/mother.

A smart Traditional Catholic teenager is already thinking, researching and planning what to do and making these decisions.  A smart 20 year old is knuckling down and saving a small fund to start him off on married life.  A smart couple are planning a cut price wedding, which is still fun and memorable.  One of my friends got married in St. James Church in London recently and then afterwards, at my suggestion, since they are not well off, ordered 600 dollars of nice food from a top quality supermarket and had a wedding Picnic in Hyde Park, Central London.  It was a glorious summer's day.  Everyone brought a picnic blanket, a dozen fold up chairs for the bride and groom and the old people who could not sit on the floor and lots of beer and wine.  Cost around $15 per head and the food was delicious.   Smoked Salmon pâté, crusty pork pies, salads, gourmet sandwiches, grapes, cherries.

Technically it is against the local ordinances to have a wedding reception in the park since you should have permission, but in reality who is going to do anything about it, if you keep it subtle and keep the music down.  It just looks like a large picnic and that is allowed.

Nothing spent on a limo, couple just go a London Cab.  Nothing spent on flowers, Hyde Park is full of them.  Beautiful backdrops for wedding photographs and it was easy to keep the children entertained and out of the adult's hair by bringing a frisbee, a soccer ball and a few other toys.  I was the children's entertainer as I hate adult small talk.

Trad's have to get smart and work out how to manipulate and exploit the broken system to their advantage.  If you cannot win over a drug addled, depressed, addicted, Xbox playing generation of worldly w4nkers, then one would have to question whether the faith has given you the clear thinking mind and love of sacrifice that people claim it offers.

My advice, start young.  As you pass your mid 20s and have little of nothing to show other than a useless qualification and a deep knowledge of medieval agrarian history and little practical  experience, an increasing number of job opportunities are going to be given to younger people.

Also consider things like commute times and costs and the positives and negatives of commuting to an office.  For the first 10 years it probably makes sense to commute because you are building up your network and learning about the politics of the office.  Once you're 30-35 though in many careers you will have the option to work from home.  That is a cost saving, a time saving and it means you are on hand to help with homeschooling, supermarket shopping etc.

Again though it depends how social you are and whether other people around you motivate you to work or annoy you and distract you.  For myself I like my own company and I am happy to sit alone in a garden office and Skype people when I need or want to speak to them.  Some people need to dress up everyday and go to "work".

It's always morally difficult when you have liberals telling men they are to blame for their wives immorality.

Matthew chapter 7:

[1] Judge not, that you may not be judged, [2] For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.


That's why I cut people some slack. I don't know if they're ignorant, trying their best, or malicious. Who am I to always assume "C"?

I wouldn't want God to judge me that way...

Matthew we can't judge someone's heart. We can judge actions and statements as right or wrong and are obligated to not only judge it but speak out against it at times.

No mother in law is telling her daughter to leave her husband bringing home six or seven figures.  The world respects money and wealth.  So one way of avoiding the problem is to acquire some.
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Another thread you encouraged a teenage girl to give herself to the highest bidder and now this for trad men?