I think the prevalence of lower fertility just scratches the surface of a greater issue, which is a genuine weakening of the feminine resolve to raise strong and healthy children. I am personally aspiring to the noble effort of reversing this trend within my own progeny(just as the good Samaritan is trying to do). So far I have three daughters to raise into the strong mothers of the post paleo revolution. The obstacles are huge and there is no guarantee that such efforts will be successful, but I will do what I can.
There are stories of a bygone era where strong armed farm working women reared 12 kids or more on the fat of the land. One story in particular sums up my Ideal of what a strong woman can do. This man I knew told me about how his grandparents lived about 80 years ago. His grandfather grew up in a farming community where everyone worked and everyone raised large a family, so the idea of marriage and family life was conditioned into the whole community at a young age. By the time he was eight years old he had already picked out his future wife, a girl that was three years younger and lived on a farm down the road. He waited until he was 18 years old to go up to the girls father to make his intentions known, and they got married shortly after. So she was about 16 by the time they married (barley fully grown) . They soon started a family and after a few years of hard work raising children on a dairy farm she grew to be about as physically strong as any man and developed wide shoulders like a line backer. There was even a story about her physically throwing a doctor out of her house because he was giving her husband bad treatment. Anyway she ended up having 12 children of her own. Her grandson(the man who told me this story) was born premature and was barley 4 pounds, in those days he would of surly died, if not for his grandmothers efforts. She placed him in a goose egg incubator and gave him droppers of expressed breast milk night and day, for weeks, until he was strong enough for his mother to take care of him.
I often wonder if being able to pick such a prolific mate and caring mother is a matter of luck or craft. To be able to pick out a woman that will let you breed her throughout the fertile years is a challenge, especial in this new age of reproductive austerity. I personally decided to pursue my brood mare after finding out that she was the kind of woman who would love to raise a family. So Perhaps old Sabertooth got lucky when finding a hell cat to produce his litter of cubs, or there may be some greater force behind the whole thing. What ever the nature of the situation is( dumb luck or fruits of a righteous conquest?), I would like to make the most of what knowledge I have available and use it to raise the type of daughters that would be able to raise twelve children if they so chose.
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So that brings us to the question, of how to raise the strong mothers of tomorrow in a society where it is no longer fashionable to have children . Of course there is another problem , how would you gear a young daughter to seek out such a life and to pick out such a mate that would allow for the best chance of a good life for the grandchildren. These are really important questions that require further discussion.
Of course at the backbone of the plan to build a strong mother we need the most optimal of nutrition, as well as to find ways to avoid exposure to the hormone disruptive chemicals that are damaging to the maternal soul. Even if exposure to chemical pollution doesn't cause out right infertility, it can reduce the maternal capacity in ways that cannot be measured.(even the eagles who were exposed to DDT and still managed to hatch a healthy egg, often were made apathetic and neglectful of their offspring by the hormone disrupting effects of the pesticide. The same thing happens in humans although its not well documented. The fact that women today may be able to conceive and birth a child is only part of the fertility issue, the other part deals with the maternal drive. The instinct of motherhood is interconnected to the overall endocrine health of a woman and women who are polluted with endocrine disrupting chemicals may still be able to give birth, but afterward are more prone to neglect their offspring and not build the type of relationship that is required to produce the ideal human being. This is an issue that is at the heart of the debate of why women are weaker and have less interest in raising baby's these days. A woman who is in prime hormonal health should have a body and mind that desperately craves insemination.
So raising the future mothers on a more natural diet that is void of pollution is at the top of the list of things to do. Of course this leads us to the next problem, what do you do once you have raised a daughter on paleo nutrition and then like clockwork they develop the biological craving to get pregnant , often before a suitable mate has been vetted. This is where the parental nightmare begins. What can one do to insure that your daughters wont get knocked up by the first gutter tramp that feeds them smooth a pick up line. There has to be something one can do to at least encourage a more discerning heart. Instead of locking them up and telling them how awful so in so is . History proves that such negative reinforcements often fail miserably. Perhaps fathers should be taking the time to point out good examples of what a hard working man is to their daughters , and teach them about what makes a good man a good man.
I am lucky enough to have a woman who practices attachment parenting and my older two girls have always seen her with a baby in her arms and so they mimic her by trying to nurse and change their dolls. They are already baby crazy and for all I know each of my daughters would be capable of raising 12 kids if they were so inclined.
Topic: Women are weaker these days... grandmas were much stronger. (Read 22790 times)