For obvious reasons, cultural as much as or more than ideological, some of the people in the First Things circles are some form of Crunchy Con . Rod Dreher invented the term a few years ago to describe those who are socially and culturally conservative but as part of that conservatism value practices that are mis-labelled lefty. (Click here for chapter one of his book Crunchy Cons .)
We (my family and I) are. Our eldest works for a “fair foods” group in Philadelphia (and babysits for the Drehers too, as it happens). We buy everything we can at thrift stores and haunt the farmer’s markets. We grow our own vegetables. We homeschool. We don’t watch television. Our younger two are even members of the nearest 4-H Club.
But we’re not Radical Homemakers , despite some sympathy for the idea, and I suspect the First Things circles don’t include many of these. (The feminism, by the way, is important to the founders but seems pretty much irrelevant to the enterprise.) I had not heard of it till reading Madeline Holler’s I Am a Radical Homemaker Failure .
The author of the book Radical Homemakers , Shannon Hayes, writes that effecting change means “letting go of our attachments to employment, releasing ourselves from the pressure of the status race . . . spending more time thinking about what we can do rather than what we can acquire.” Holler didn’t like living this way, however:
I hated being left behind. By then, our friends had settled into careers, started families, entered escrow. While they drove new hybrids all over town hunting down backsplashes for new Viking stoves, I was loading up on two-for-one gallons of milk or racing to the zoo before 9 a.m., where I had heard the parking lot attendant would wave me in for free.In the drop-off line at preschool, tiny mothers climbed like mountain goats into SUVs the size of K2. Our lifestyle came off as quaint or quirky, and these moms sweetly waved down to me in our ‘97 Nissan Altima, the difference in altitude fitting.
Which is a terrible attitude for a borderline radical.
And, as she points out, “Not spending money is an incredible amount of work.”
Living something like the life Hayes describes has its attractions, in theory, at least for someone brought up as I was, but in practice we have other, more pressing and enjoyable, things to do. We just last night bought a trampoline at a big box store, because where else are you going to find one at a price you can afford? and it’s a great thing for our youngest, and no we’re not going to tell him to start jogging because we refuse to buy a trampoline at the big box store.
And there is a reason for the size and diversity of modern economies, which provide real gains in human happiness, and these should not be denied. Even the Radical Homemaker will someday find himself needing advanced medical care a Radical Homemaker never would have developed.
At best, we’re Mensheviks rather than Bolsheviks. I suspect that’s true of most First Things Crunchy Con types.
But it is cheering to see people trying to live a life in accord with their principles, at some sacrifice and with a willingness to be eccentric, to be aliens and sojourners of a sort. And daring to call themselves homemakers too, that’s great.
