SouthernBelle,  as a lowly peasant barmaid on a short break to pump milk for my daughter, I  don't have time to respond to your comments in the detail. However I would  like to at least tell you that the tone of your post is a bit arrogant and fairly condescending. I admit, I have a poor understanding of the role of class distinction in society. Despite this, I do know that our Lord speaks to the level of difficulty involved with the rich getting to heaven. Because of this,  I feel it is might prove to be a blessing that I am poor, as I face enough obstacles to reaching eternal salvation.

God Bless.

Social class makes a big difference in what is considered "necessary," for men as well as women.

This business of women delaying marriage for the university has very little to do with class (any more than getting a high school diploma does), and everything to do with modern times.  In particular, it most has to do with dropping the expectation that a woman is a virgin at marriage.

A man who is the son of a military officer has different expectations than one who is the son of a farmer.

This is amusing, you're trying to justify the modern phenomenon of women attending university with family traditions of agrarian or military families.  

I will say something more: you may be from a well-to-do family, but I doubt the fact you entered into college has anything to do with being of a "higher class" as you fancy yourself.  That your father was rich and saw college as a path to maintaining social status is probably true: the fact remains it wasn't seen that way in the past.  It's seen that way now because of feminism.

This idea of college being part of the "whole package."  It's pretty evident it became "necessary" around Vatican II - around the same time that the median age of marriage began steadily moving up - around the time the birth control pill became common.

As far as I know, co-ed college campuses didn't exist in the past, but higher education did.

Was it typical for women, traditionally, in the past, to attend a university before marriage, in any class?  The answer is simply no, it was not typical.  It might have been more common among some groups of people than among others - it was hardly considered to be something that was indispensable the way it is considered today.  

Simply because the delivery system has changed

Except the way education is delivered has everything to do with whether it's an acceptable path for young Catholic maidens.  Particularly for chaste and innocent Catholic maidens.  The old convent schools and finishing schools of the past have very strict rules.  

doesn't mean that the value of education has.

I'm not seeing any value to your education in your posts.  What I see is feminist attitude.  Education has to have an end.  I don't see your education as making you more feminine.   Quite the contrary.

And I didn't go to college as a "social experience" in and of itself,

What did you go for?  You just said the value of it to you was to assist in social functions.

but I gained valuable social experience in the process. Don't twist my words to suit your own agenda.

It's pretty much a given that "social experience" is the primary motivation for women going to college - not what they learn there.  And for many it is "social experience" in the worst sense of the word.

So, that's your experience; not necessarily the experience of everyone else. Since you appear to dislike women in general, I'm not surprised by this observation.

I don't dislike women in general, I do have a strong aversion to the way modern women typically behave.  It is a convenient pretext to say I "dislike women in general" to avoid the truth of the observation: college education tends to make vulgar and arrogant women.

I'm not a member of Junior League to maintain my social status, lol.

That's not what I said.  I said, in other words, college education allows you to maintain the social status to be a member of the Junior League.

My social status allows me to be a member. Big difference.

And this is why you mentioned going to college, and that's why I said you claim it's necessary to have a college degree for social status that allows you to be a member.

Women living in the trailer park aren't generally civic-minded or interested in preserving significant historical buildings.

So in your mind, women who are beneath you in class, without time in college, are like women in trailer parks?  You needed to go to college, because if not you'd be like a woman in a trailer park, rather than a woman interested in conserving old buildings?

As for what was required of "young women historically" ...

Yes, with respect to college education before marriage, what was considered normal?

well, women have always played a big part in the social fabric of towns/cities, the higher the social/income status the bigger the part. It doesn't take a lot of study to realize how much a part married women contributed to the social/cultural milieu of the past.

And that has nothing to do with whether or not it's necessary for women to attend college.

No, that's the way you decided to translate it.

No, it stands to reason that women give college priority to marriage, not because college is necessary for motherhood, but because college is necessary for social status, social status that they feel they cannot have by marrying and having children without college.  It is the reality that wherever it is common for women to have college degrees the birth rate is lower.  While it may have been unjust to suggest you think college is more important than motherhood, it is a fact that giving college priority to motherhood has necessary implications as to how society places value on these things.  The proof that college is not about preparing for motherhood is in the statistics: women college graduates have historically had reduced fertility.  If the uneducated now are catching up to them it's only because of a general break-down in marriage among the lower classes.

But, again, you appear, at least online, to be a misogynist, so it's understandable.

A good Catholic with common sense wouldn't send his daughter to a modern university.  If you want to call that misogyny, feel free, but I would guess you speak the way you do in large part because of the negative influence so-called "higher education" has had on you.

Timeline of women's colleges in the United States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_colleges_in_the_United_States#First_and_oldest

Timeline of women's colleges in the United States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_colleges_in_the_United_States#First_and_oldest

While many women did receive higher education in the past (a tiny proportion compared to today), it was in a far different environment (especially for Catholics) than today.

It was often a very strict and regulated environment.

Even so, the damage caused by higher education on women was noticed a long time ago:

Earliest among the manifestations of this move-
ment was the demand for higher education for
women, a demand which was speedily met. To-day
the college education of women is so abundantly sup-
plied that In 1911-12 72,703 women were in col-
leges in the United States. College training has be-
come not merely respectable but fashionable. Little
trace remains of opposition to college training on the
ground that it is unwomanly. In twenty years the
number of women at college has more than trebled.
This feminine corps of more-or-less Intellectuals has
increased from 20,874 In 1889-90 to 72,703 in
1911-12, a rate of growth double as fast as the
men students' rate of growth.

It is in the circles from which college women come
that the woman's movement has been most pro-
nounced, for Feminism as a cult touches the less In-
tellectual levels of society but lightly. All that is In-
volved in the claims of Feminism, the liberation of
women by making their lives and work approximate
to the lives and work of men, has been attained more
by college graduates than by any other set of women. |
Their lives have been directed consciously according
to the gospel of the woman's movement more than
the lives of their wage-earning sisters in factories
and stores. They have enjoyed that free choice be-
tween domestic and business careers, following upon
the best training and preparation that society af
forded, that free choice which Feminism hopes to
offer to every woman.

When the higher education of women was in dis-
pute its advocates derided the idea that the mother-
hood of women could be prejudicially affected in the
slightest degree by college education. They argued
that maternal instincts were too deep seated and the
joys of motherhood were too much desired to be
modified by any changes of training or environment. [

What are the facts ? When they are quoted they
are usually challenged. Therefore I have taken
them exclusively from the statistical publication of
highest repute and unimpeachable integrity, the offi-
cial journal of the American Statistical Association,
verifying and correcting my statements by correspon-
dence with the writers of the articles, none of whom
is arguing against Feminism.

First, it is now provetl that half the college women
graduates do not marry at all. In an article in the
Journal of the American Statistical Association
(June, 19 14) has been brought together in scientific
fashion all the available^ marriage statistics of the
women graduates of colleges in America. The
I writer concludes her examination as follows: " The
] decade of 1890 to 1899 is undoubtedly the most
fairly representative (as respects marriage rates).
On the one hand, it falls within the epoch which ac-
cepted college education for women and looked upon
it as thoroughly respectable. On the other hand,
the graduates in the latest graduating class (1899)
 are now at least thirty-five years of age.
The marriage record of the decade is therefore
fairly complete. The eight colleges graduating
more than one hundred students each during the
decade (Earlham, Swarthmore, Wilson, Indiana,
Vassar, Radcliffe, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr) show
fairly uniform marriage rates. The lowest is Bryn
Mawr, 41.8 per cent. (294 graduates), and the
highest Swarthmore, 58.7 per cent. ( 148 graduates) .
It is probable that the marriage rate for this decade
is fairly representative of the tendency in the mod-
ern women's college world." And, as shown by the
figures for this decade : " The proportion of
women college graduates who marry is approxi-
mately one-half." Possibly a few members of the
latest classes included in the calculation might marry
after the age of thirty-five or thirty-six; but so few
as not to affect the argument.

This conclusion is accepted by women leaders
themselves as indisputable. Miss M. Carey
Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, says
" that 50 per cent, of women college graduates
marry and 40 per cent, bear and rear children," ^
a gracious concession on their part to nature and to
society which should, in her opinion, save them from
hostile criticism. To feminists it appears "to be a
matter of astonishment, a claim on man's gratitude,
that one college woman out of two still consents to
marry and two out of five actually bear a child.

. . . .

Next, how many children do those college women
bear, who do have any at all? We know that the
376 women who graduated from Vassar between
1880 and 1889 had, by 19 12, given birth to 348
children and that the 518 women who graduated dur-
ing the same period from Wellesley had given birth
to 427 children, which means less than i child per
graduate in each case, or for every 100 graduates
who married, 167.3 ^"^ 166.1 children, respectively.
Since the youngest of these women would be over 45
years old when the count was made, it is unlikely
that their families will increase. Plainly they have
not been recklessly prolific. They have scorned the
injunction to increase and multiply.

. . . .


That is the central and stupefying fact. Women
college graduates in America bear only two-fifths as
many children in proportion to their number as other
native white American women.

It is not contended that the whole of this differ-
icnce of fertility is due to the woman's movement.
[Other factors operate — social and financial condi-
tions, the desire for luxury, the high standard of liv-
ing, the inability of their natural mates to marry as
young as formerly, the desire to give each child born
the highest training society offers. Can the influ-
ence of these factors be separated and a residuum,
the effect of the woman's movement, be left? Yes.

http://archive.org/stream/feminismitsfall01martgoog/feminismitsfall01martgoog_djvu.txt


The sɛҳuąƖ revolution has had many stages and has been happening for a long time, as has the feminist movement. (It is ongoing, and we are reaching a new stage now, marriage itself is beginning to show cracks like never before.)
 The feminist revolution and the sɛҳuąƖ revolution are very closely connected to each other - one could almost say they are just different aspects of the same movement.

Nearly every issue pertaining to feminism has to do with the woman's sex life.  That is really what the movement is all about, and that is why abortion is the defining issue of the feminist movement.  The goal of opening opportunities for various kinds of achievement for women has always been secondary.  Like the argument women should be doctors so only they can examine women, they must be gendarmes for women's prisons (which requires college?) etc, always, the same motivations are at play.

With regard to college, it's important to recognize it first became popular among classes that were already practicing birth control, and the more it was embraced, the more the women in those classes tended to have reduced fertility.

The college education of women as a social norm depends on contraception being a social norm.  That is the reality.  

 

I have never, ever, encountered anyone who could start with a concept and then take it to a place that has little or nothing to do with the original point.

IOW, ten is a number so monkeys reside in a zoo.

Congratulations.

Are you ever concerned about the inordinate amount of time you spend obsessing about the sɛҳuąƖity of women?

The not so secret "secret" of feminism is that it's about unchaining women's desires and finding excuses and rationalizations for them.

The biggest rationalization of all is the idea that the current structure of society is about advancing the education of women - when really it's about breaking down the family.

The Alta Vendita conspirators of 19th Century mason said they would destroy Christianity by corrupting women, that they would corrupt women by means of the Church.

With Vatican II that has been accomplished.

If we want to combat "Christian" feminism we need to tear off its prim and proper mask and show what its values are all about.

It's the flip side of the guy who spends all his time figuring out how he can score.  Same coin.

You are resorting ad hominem - maybe you're right in part, but every Catholic man has a right to be seriously concerned about his prospects for family life and the prospects for family life for his relatives and sons.

Women today are being corrupted, and femitrads are cooperating with that process by defending feminist values like the social expectation that young women attend coeducational universities.

It's very important for Catholic parents to explicitly recognize that the universality of college coeducation depends on the universality of contraception.  

That's why the thread I posted "Trad priests and birth control" is so important.  Priests know what is going on.  They either resist it, like Bishop Williamson does, explaining the dangers of college education for women, or they secretly condone that if a woman "is going to offend God anyway" that she should use birth control.

http://williamsonletters.blogspot.com/2009/02/girls-at-university.html

Is there anyone who wishes to debate the points made by Bishop Williamson?