My husband sent me this article about the American covetousness for fancy kitchens, expensive appliances in particular. But while there is a rush to keep up with the Joneses in domestic appearances, not much domesticity is taking place in those empty homes with their glistening chrome goodies. It costs a pretty penny to maintain the look but it takes a radical lifestyle change to turn it into true domestic bliss. Bowing before silver cookstove idols does not create homecooked meals. Only flesh and blood hands which are committed to spending the time and care necessary to prepare nourishing meals for a family can make the magical comraderie of the dinner table a reality.

“It must be remembered,” wrote Isabella Beeton in 1869, that the kitchen “is the great laboratory of every household, and that much of the ‘weal or woe,’ as far as regards bodily health, depends upon the nature of the preparations concocted within its walls.” Today, the laboratory is filled with the finest equipment, but there is often no one to use it. Despite purchasing more and better appliances, home-cooking and family dinners are both racing toward extinction. American Demographics reports that between 1985 and 1995, “the number of hours women spent cooking per week dropped 23 percent, and the number of hours men cooked dropped by 21 percent.” By 1997, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that more than one in five households used their (non-microwave) oven “less than once weekly” and only 42 percent “make a hot meal once a day.”

If nobody is home to do the domestic work, then how can the benefits of domesticity be enjoyed? Acquiring the skills and time it takes to create the environment that so many nostalgically long for is too big a sacrifice for those same people to make. To make a home you have to be home. You can’t have your cake and eat it too if nobody knows the recipe. Some might think there is no objective value in preparing a meal from scratch versus opening a frozen dinner and nuking it in the microwave. I do admit that I cannot find a Bible verse to support the idea that homemade is best. But the financial benefits of cooking it yourself rather than buying prepackaged can be quite substantial, and we are to be good stewards of the possessions God gives us, as well as avoid debt. Cooking for one’s family is also a tangible way to show love to them, carefully choosing nutritious ingredients and taking time to make healthy and palatable meals which can be shared together on a regular basis, conversing together as you dine. And I don’t know anyone who would argue that the scent of fresh-baked bread or cookies doesn’t exude a sense of warmth that emanates from the heart and not just from the oven.

If there is a modern heiress to Beecher and Stowe, it is Cheryl Mendelson. “Although a large, enthusiastic minority of home cooks grow more and more sophisticated,” she writes, “the majority become ever more de-skilled.” This is echoed by the kitchen-design website, Homeportfolios.com, which reports that “despite a deluge of cooking programs, celebrity chefs, and state-of-the-art appliances, on average, we’re preparing fewer meals than generations past.” But instead of lamenting this fact, it stays upbeat. “No matter,” reassures the site. “The kitchen still draws us in with its irresistible charm.” This is like saying the bedroom is a comfortable place for insomniacs.

The result is a great disconnect between our domestic fantasies and our domestic reality, between the high-tech façade with its image of home and hearth and the kind of lives we actually live. We have fancier kitchens but fewer family dinners. We have gourmet cooking machines that sit largely unused and oversized freezers filled with microwave dinners. We have high hopes but limited energy for performing domestic labor, and we tend to devalue unpaid labor in the home despite its positive effects on family life. We purchase increasingly specialized, professional-quality domestic appliances at a time when our desire to use them regularly is waning.

Just a few steps behind the world, women in the church are once more buying (and promoting) the lie that the grass is greener away from the home. Even those who purport to have a warm spot for the role of wife and mother, rob that role of all dignity and importance when they chafe at the idea that meaningful dominion-taking activity is occurring at home when women serve the Lord with gladness there. Meanwhile, the neighborhoods continue to echo with the sounds of silence as everyone is busy paying the bills for those expensive kitchen remodels, assuring themselves that they are finding fulfillment in their separate but equal callings. Their empty kitchens are eloquent idols which betray their yearning for a better way.

Of course, neither cultural nostalgia nor technological progress can restore the domestic tranquility we feel we have lost. What is necessary is a sober defense of the worth of domestic life, including those labors—chopping vegetables, sweeping a floor, setting a table—that are hardly glorious in themselves but essential parts of the domestic satisfactions we still seem to want. “As people turn more and more to outside institutions to have their needs met (for food, comfort, clean laundry, relaxation, entertainment, society, rest),” writes Mendelson, “domestic skills and expectations further diminish, in turn decreasing the chance that people’s homes can satisfy their needs. The result is far too many people who long for home even though they seem to have one.”

I’m reading an interesting book while wearing my biblical worldview goggles to filter out the foolishness. It’s called Mothers, Leadership, and Success, written by Guy Odom, former chairman and CEO of U.S. Home, which became the largest homebuilding firm in the country under his leadership. Being such a good leader, he looked for ways to find leaders to fill important spots in his corporation. He was one of the first to use personality and intelligence tests in business to filter out the “losers” and find the ones who had the most potential for helping his business be successful.

A voracious reader, Mr. Odom noticed trends from history which correlated with patterns he discovered in the tests he was using for his company. One of the strongest indicators he found for a strong leader was that he had a strong or “dominant” mother.

From a biblical standpoint there are flaws in some of Mr. Odom’s conclusions. He does not give enough credence to a father’s influence in the lives of his children, I believe. But I also agree that the role of a mother is crucial in her children’s lives. She had tremendous influence on their futures. Some of the mothers described in this book ruled with an “iron thumb,” as blonde Gracie would say, and their sons became tough because they had an innate fear of failing, so they sought success above all else. This fear-based parenting isn’t necessarily a great way to raise children. But those mothers who are too laid-back in their parenting style, never challenging their children, may raise children who have contented and Pooh-like personalities, but they probably won’t be accomplishing great things either.

One of the points that I do agree with in this book is that when the “dominant,” well-educated mothers leave their homes in droves and outsource their childcare to passive, intellectually inferior caretakers, the children will not be emulating the patterns of their strong mothers, but they will have the weaker personalities of those who spent the most time with them in their younger years. The epidemic of wimpiness in our society, with the corresponding rise of homosexuality, might be a result of this abdication of motherhood.

Some wrongly assume that my defense of Prairie Muffinism is a clarion call to women to be simpering doormats who scrub toilets all day and only read cookbooks. Anyone who can read what I’ve written the last few years on this subject and still portray my views of biblical womanhood in that dim light needs to put on some different spectacles or read a little more carefully. I want to see Christian women being strong in their expansive realm of home and family. I want to see them breaking free from the passivity of submission to cultural norms and be women who take charge of their educations as well as their spiritual maturity. I want to see Christian women who radically trust God in every area of life, not always fearing what might be if they don’t have all their safety nets in place. I want to see Christian women exercising great creativity from their homes.

Squint your eyes just a little. Can you see the possibilities for major revival if Christian women would stop thinking in terms of “self-fulfillment” and started thinking in terms of radically ruling from their homes as they rear armies of children raised to the glory of God and for the building of His kingdom? I can feel some shudder as they read my military lingo, others as they stumble over my criticism of self-fulfillment. But God uses such analogies in His Word, and so will I. We are to be warrior women, but our fight is not in the same domain as our husbands. Jael was in her tent when she defeated the mighty general Sisera with a glass of warm milk and a sharpened tent peg. How’s that for an example of the kind of influence we can wield when we are in the right place for “such a time as this?”

Okay, back to my book. It’s flawed (as one expert in the art of plausible deniability likes to say), but it has some truth, too.

Whatever the specific reason, as affluence increases, dominant women deliver fewer or (in many instances) no children. At a time of national affluence, a high percentage of this group of their own volition practice birth control in various ways including abortion.

Affluent women are probably among the first and most likely to be informed about and to use artificial birth-control methods regularly. They are more able than the poor to afford contraceptives and to obtain abortions. Working, affluent couples clearly recognize that these practices increase their joint income and improve their standard of living. Dominant women are less likely to be affected by religious mandates concerning birth control than their less dominant counterparts. Consequently, in affluent countries, the first to have fewer or no children are likely to be the most dominant, affluent, and intelligent women. The less affluent and less educated are most apt to continue their standard childbearing practices or to be denied the full opportunity to use artificial birth control should they desire it…

The culturally caused withholding of children was recognized as a factor contributing to the decline of ancient Greece. The Greek historian and politician Polybius, ca. 200 B.C.-ca. 118 B.C., publicly denounced Greece’s declining birth rate, equating its drop to suicide for the country.

The introduction of chemical means of birth control in the early 1960s and the growing affluence of the United States accelerated the decline in the birth rate particularly among dominant women. The advent of legalized abortion in 1973 hastened the decrease even more. Abortion alone accounts for 1.5 to 1.7 million fewer births annually, approximately 25 percent of all pregnancies [Carmon sez: it's thought to be as much as 30 percent now]. The ratio of abortions between dominant and nondominant women is unknown.

Now someone will say I’m power-hungry and have subversive plans for world domination (mwahaha!), but my point is that eschewing the importance of motherhood for a mess of pottage has been one of the factors in the rapid cultural decline we see, and shame on the Christian women who think that this home-centered pursuit is just another “choice,” fine for thee but not for me.

My cup overfloweth with things I want to write about, but this evening I am going to post an article from our friend Dr. Arthur Robinson’s newsletter (with permission), Access to Energy, with a quote in the next post from a book I am reading. The demographic dilemma is being talked about more and more. God is sovereign and will orchestrate events as He wills, even if western civilization as we know it disappears. I don’t think there is anything wrong, however, with saying that this is probably not a desirable thing, and while the snowball may have grown too large to stop it now, Christians ought to continue to embrace the part of the dominion mandate which commands them to “be fruitful and multiply.” I hear a lot of people who want to take dominion weaseling out of that last bit of the equation, but it’s hard to be a culturally relevant Christian when the culture you are engaging is hostile to your very existence.

Thinking about broad trends in civilization and apparent historical events is interesting, but the basic elements of importance are individual human beings. It is in their individual lives and those things that each of us can do to enhance those lives that true value is measured. For this reason, one specific factor—among the many that can be listed—in the demographic suicide of the West grieves me the most. This is not because I am wise and smart—which is doubtful, but because I was lucky.

Soon after my scientist wife Laurelee and I were married, we began the five years of work that built the Pauling Institute. Our first home was a pleasant house located about two blocks from the Institute in Menlo Park, California.

While we were house hunting, Laurelee showed a special interest in large houses. She especially loved one that we called “the box” because of its squarish shape—and large number of bedrooms. We never lived in the box, but her dreams of houses over the years seemed to emphasize this sort of structure.

As difficult as it may be to believe, the reason for this never occurred to me at the time. I was totally preoccupied with our work. She was thinking quietly about the future.

Over the years, from time to time, she would say that she was thinking about having another child. I would reply that another child would be a lot of work, especially for her, but that her life, especially the second half of her life, would be much richer if she did. One by one (and once by two) she added children until she was up to six—and beginning to plan for number seven when she died.

Laurelee lived 13 unselfish years for those children—and she did a lot of additional work for them. A child, if all goes well, is definitively 18 years of unselfishness for the mother—and somewhat for the father, too, in good families. When she died at their ages of 12, 10, 8, 6, 6, and 1.5 years, she had done most of the hard work. I, unfairly, reaped the benefits. I learned then, in a way that most men are never fortunate enough to experience, the incredible rewards that the unselfishness of mothers make possible.

One of the reasons—certainly not the only reason—that people elect to have so few children today is selfishness. The potential parents are simply unwilling to share their time and lives with children. This is not just in the mothers. There are many men who reprehensibly deny their wives children because of their own selfishness. Surely, if children are allowed to run wild, many of the benefits can be lost, but children do not behave in this way if they are raised unselfishly in a good home.

The great tragedy is, of course, that this selfishness is entirely misplaced and self-defeating. If a woman or man wishes to emhance his own life—with the most selfish of motives, children are the very best way. They are by far the greatest form of personal wealth available to all.

We know a family with 8 children between the ages of 2 and 15 that is unhappy because the parents are squabbling about various things. I do not understand them. With 8 wonderful children, they are among the richest people in Oregon. How can they let foolish bickering overshadow this?

In any case, I have lived an unusual life as a father who reaped all of the benefits of both a mother and a father to six children, after their mother made most of the unselfish sacrifices for them. And—because I have had this experience, I know—beyond doubt—the terrible error that is being made by so many potential mothers and fathers in our civilization.

The misplaced selfishness that causes so many people to decide against a child—whether their first or additional ones, is one of the most foolish and impoverishing decisions that a human being can make. Yet, so many of the descendants of those who built our civilization are making this tragic error that our population is dying out—lost to history along with the unexperienced personal happiness of those who lacked the wisdom to continue it.

Most of us (minus the young fireman who needed to be at a training class) took a quick jaunt to Monterey this weekend. We are trying to get in some special moments with Pieter before he leaves for basic training in April. I know some of you mothers have gone through this transition time, as your children grow up and engage in various pursuits. When Pieter leaves it will only be my second time saying goodbye to a grown son, and I’m praying that my heart can withstand the strain it undergoes each time one of those little boys grows into a man. We have five more boys to set on that path, not to mention the three lovely daughters whose presence daily brightens our home.

As we drove to the central California coast, I was once again amazed at the beautiful state in which we live. I know that many of you have the impression that California is concrete, illegal immigrants, and perverts. I don’t deny that our state contains its fair share of those elements, but having visited a bit around the nation, I don’t think we’ve necessarily cornered the market here. A few bad apples like San Francisco and Los Angeles spoil the whole barrel for some people. We just don’t go there. But we do occasionally enjoy going to some of the more beautiful spots that are within a few hours’ drive of our home.

I don’t want to boast, but those bumps you folks on the other coast call “mountains” are mere molehills compared to the majestic beauty you find in our backyard. We are blessed to reside in the foothills of the rugged Sierras. Last fall Pieter and I celebrated our birthday together in the beauty of Yosemite. And this weekend we saw some awesome sights.

The best sight we saw, though, was when we pulled into the driveway late last night. Two whirlwind days were just enough to remind us of what we really never forget: there’s no place like home.

You can see pictures of our most recent adventures here.

We had a picnic lunch in a grove of eucalyptus trees, then we played on the beach at Natural Bridges State Park. Do you see how it got that name?

Pieter and Baby Braveheart had fun making a sand castle and putting the sand back in the ocean. They weren’t quite finished with that job before it was time to go.

Chasing the waves and commanding them to recede was great fun. Baby Braveheart was a bit timid about the tide, but his older brothers were saying, “Here, Sharkie” as they wiggled their toes in the surf. We also explored tide pools where we found a zillion mussels, some gooey sea anemones, and some star fish clinging to the rocks. Gracie was as silly as any of ‘em.

This woman is smiling in spite of all the sandy clothing she knows she will be hauling home to wash when the fun is over. There are rumors that she was racing her daughters across the sandy beach in that denim skirt she is wearing.

This girl wins the prize, even beating out the younger brothers, for the most sand collected in her clothing. See that mischievous grin? It’s not just for show.

This rowdy bunch cleaned up pretty well and walked across the way to see if any monarch butterflies were still hanging around the butterfly grove. Much to the disappointment of youngest muffin mix (who has a new passion since reading Girl of the Limberlost), most of them had flown the coop, but she did catch a glimpse of a few fluttering in the highest branches of the trees.

That Daddy is such a joker. He made us all look.

The next day we went on a whale watching tour around Monterey Bay, hunting for gray whales. Here is Captain Ahab, who is looking for another color. We’re a bit worried about his obsession, but we make sure to keep his leg polished and his spyglass handy.

These are not CalTrans workers in their orange uniforms, taking a two-hour lunch break. They are members of the Friedrich crew and expert whale hunters. Nary a one had so much as a queasy stomach on the two-hour tour.

It was a tad chilly on deck for Baby Braveheart, so he went in the cabin to change from blue back to his usual rosy hue. Shortly after I shot this picture, we finally saw some marine life: groups of dolphins swimming near the boat, then some whales spouting and sounding, giving some good glimpses of their tail flukes before they submerged again.

After a sunny picnic at Lover’s Point in Pacific Grove, we drove down the coast to Big Sur. I don’t have any magnificent pictures of the scenery, but we were oohing and aahing most of the way between Carmel and Big Sur, both at the steep cliffs and the ocean and sky. There were patches of cloud enveloping the mountaintops as we drove past them, then bright streams of sunshine breaking through and lighting up the water, as you can see in this picture.

This was taken at one vista point where the cliffs beyond drop sharply down to the sea. The large boulders give a bit of psychological assurance; none of us wanted to walk even to the other side of the rock Pieter’s perched upon, as it made our knees wobbly just to consider it.

This is the driveway we were happy to see, even though we enjoyed the mini vacation. This picture was taken just a couple weeks ago. We rarely get snow here in the winter, though we get lots and lots of rain as we are in a perfect spot for the clouds to bump the foothills. As you can tell from the pictures of us playing on the beach, the weather here is unpredictable. Today is windy and rainy. The one thing you can count on, though, is that if it’s raining today, you can just wait a few days and the sun will be shining again and you can go out in your shirtsleeves.

The view from the deck of Steve’s office, the one with the 30-second commute. It looks beautiful with or without the snow. And while I admit that we have been guilty of a bit of concrete pouring, I’m not budging from my contention that we live in one of the most beautiful places in the country.