The Magic of Moms
A note from the editor
It's been quite a year for the Fairer Disputations team. In addition to the creation of this journal, two of our three editors gave birth to beautiful new babies, and I celebrated my youngest daughter's first birthday.
That's right: we are an entirely mother-run operation. All three of us work part-time from home, while caring for our young children.
Yesterday, I spent naptime wrapping Christmas pajamas and putting together teacher gifts. Today, I'm using it to write this note to you. I'm thankful for the opportunity to use my professional talents to advance a cause in which I passionately believe, in a way that allows me to care for and enjoy my family.
Here at Fairer Disputations, we defend the fundamental equality of men and women. Yet we also acknowledge the reality of sexual difference, including the unique bond that exists between mothers and their babies. I'm proud that this mission manifests itself not only in the content we publish, but also in the way we run our journal.
If you'd like to support our mission, please consider donating today. We've got lots of exciting plans for 2024, but we need your help to make the magic happen.
All the best,
Serena Sigillito
Editor
This week, we've curated a series of essays from around the web that particularly focus on the gift of motherhood.
But first, we're happy to share our FD original, an excerpt from Nadya Williams' new book, Cultural Christians in the Early Church. Here, Williams tells the story of two mothers who were martyred for their faith in ancient Rome.
Fairer Disputations
A Revolutionary Equality: Women in the Third-Century Church
NADYA WILLIAMS
On a sunny spring day in 203 CE, in the city of Carthage in the Roman province of Africa, thousands of people crammed into the magnificent Roman amphitheater, jostling each other for the best seats, eagerly awaiting state-sponsored entertainment that was one of the perks of living in the Roman Empire.
Trained gladiators were highly expensive, as were the exotic animals they regularly fought. Roman officials, therefore, regularly supplemented the immensely popular gladiatorial games with condemned criminals. That day, however, the condemned criminals in question were not the usual murderers and highway robbers.
This time, they were Christians—female Christians.
We know their story because one of their number, a young noblewoman and nursing mother, kept a journal of the events and her visions while awaiting execution in prison. Following her death, someone preserved her journal, added his own description of the execution, and published the account along with a shorter journal entry from another martyr executed that day. This “Passion of the Martyrs Perpetua and Felicity” became an early Christian bestseller. It also has the honor of being the earliest Christian account written (mostly) by a woman.
At her Substack, Reactionary Feminist, featured author Mary Harrington reminds politicians that only a sliver of the female population finds their chief fulfillment in careers.
Reactionary Feminist
MARY HARRINGTON
Lots of people, of both sexes, don’t have careers; they have jobs. Few of these jobs are as fun and exciting as being an MP. For a great many people of both sexes, even before kids, “networking” is not a thrilling prospect but a dreary chore.
If that’s you, or even if you just aren’t very sociable, needing to be home with the kids doesn’t look like unjustly asymmetrical obstacle to professional develoment. It looks like a blessed excuse to duck out of an evening of dull chit-chat, and professional opportunities be damned. In other words: while Creasy describes the so-called “motherhood penalty” bitterly as “the gift that keeps on giving”, for many happily less ambitious mothers (and there really is, or should be, nothing wrong with having modest ambitions) this is unironically true. Being needed at home really is a gift. And not just in the sense of being rewarding on its own terms, but also in giving the gift of liberation, or at least some measure of opt-out, from the endless, miserable grind of PMC striving.
At Law & Liberty, Rachel Lu reviews a new book on the first-wave feminism and abortion. Many of these early feminists sought to promote women's moral maturity and responsible motherhood, while supporting unwed mothers.
Law & Liberty
RACHEL LU
In 1874, two Bostonian women named Bessie Greene and Lilian Freeman Clarke founded an institution for expectant mothers. Known as the Society for Helping Destitute Mothers and Infants (SHDMI), it embraced an approach to charity that was truly American, in a Tocquevillian sense. The SHDMI wanted to help desperate women. But it also placed a high value on both moral responsibility and associational life. Instead of setting up headquarters in a brick-and-mortar establishment, representatives worked with women one-on-one. Some financial help was given, but just as much stress was placed on friendship, general life advice, and help in finding jobs. The goal was to supply some of the social “roots” that were typically missing in the lives of unwed mothers.
Finally, Kathleen Stock reflects on mothering her teenage sons and her toddler daughter. She notes how much has changed for mothers in the last 18 years—and how some things about mothering will always stay the same.
UnHerd
What I've Learnt About Motherhood
KATHLEEN STOCK
Yes, we might hearken back to a supposedly glorious past where mums would let their offspring roam around the woods all day, only calling them in for tea at dusk. But perhaps this is not because these women were particularly relaxed and self-assured about parenting, but rather because family sizes were on average bigger, and because there’s a psychological limit to how much laser-like attention you can focus simultaneously on lots of children before your mind just gives up. Now that family sizes are reducing, maybe the maternal psyche is understandably freed up for (yet) more worrying.
A Post-Feminist Feminism?
Did you miss our co-sponsored event with featured authors Abigail Favale, Angela Franks, and Nina Power? Video is now available!
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