Remember this poor kid? Last fall The Free Press hosted a debate on political issues of interest to Gen Z men and women. The woman pictured above, Jacky Eubanks, caused a stir lamenting that she would actually prefer to homestead and have several children, but the American economy impedes her, forcing her to work in an office instead.
I’ve thought about poor Jacky Eubanks a bit since this happened, wondering if the economy really has changed such that what was possible for me to do fifteen years ago—buy land, learn to raise food and animals, have five children—is no longer accessible to women. Does the economy really force young women to forgo their homesteading dreams?
You know, one of the truly sad things about social media is the way it pushes genuine hobbies and interests into “lifestyles” or “cultures.” Young people look at life as if one can either be a modern woman OR one can join a weird subculture and reject everything that modern women do. That’s not really how life works. There isn’t a need to strike such a heavy line between the things women used to do, and what they mostly do now.
It’s possible you just don’t know how to do a lot of the things women used to do. But you could learn. You could learn while also wearing pants, even.
Plenty of modern women own land and keep animals. In fact, I would say more often than not, female homesteaders also work outside the home for part or all of their adult lives, just to be able to afford the lifestyle.
Most of my friends in our little Northern California rural community own land and raise either animals or farm produce. Nearly all of the competent female homesteaders are also working women. There are a few who homestead and raise children and do not earn money outside of the home, but it is a tiny minority.
Here’s the way life actually works: either you’re competent . . . or you’re not. The competent people kind of do everything, while the incompetent or still learning struggle to do much of anything. So often, the successful homesteader wife will also have a career and will also be head of the county fair board and will also be the main parent volunteer at school, etc. The coloring doesn’t stay in the lines because “trad wife” and “modern woman” are fake boundaries that mostly do not exist in reality.
