Should She Get a Job?

Join us here in Ogden this June for our annual new Christmas conference. This year's theme, the War for Normal, features a great lineup of speakers as well as a whole bunch of fun events to make new friends with like-minded saints. Tickets are more affordable than ever this year with a brand new family pass covering your entire household for one low price. Head to newcrissonempress.com/20206 for tickets and more information. This episode is brought to you by Indigo Sondry's soap company. Clean soap, cleaner body. Well, Bright Arthur's, in the last episode we had to call an audible. What we thought was going to be one episode, we discovered it wasn't just one, it was twins. It's like when you go in for that first ultrasound and you think, "Man, we're going to find out, like, meet this little baby, see him for the first time on the screen and then you look and there's two of them in there." There were two Bright Arthur episodes in that womb of Bright Arthur thing. Yes, I am making this cold open up as I go along. So last week's episode we talked about, we aim to talk about what does the woman have to do with making money? Is she allowed to make money? Do patriarchal Christians think women can make money? Can they be involved in that? Are they allowed to have wallets? We didn't end up getting to that question because we actually talked a lot about how we got where we got today, how is it that we got to this state of affairs where we send our daughters off to college to become liberals and vote Democrat and delay marriage and get a bunch of career debt and then forget to have kids altogether. How do we get here? Is that a good idea? Long story short, no, it's not a good idea. And all of that turns out to be the fruit of some things that happened a long time ago related to mass manufacturing, industrial revolution, but also some nefarious, satanic attacks on the fabric of social life itself, attacks on the man and the woman. And so we diagnosed the problem in the last episode. In this episode we're going to talk about what to do about it, what's the medicine? How do we actually answer that question? Can the woman be related to the making of money? How does she relate to the household economy? What about college, all of these different questions that still remain open? And so that's what we're going to talk about in this episode of Breithart. We're glad that you're here. We hope that you've enjoyed this frankly unhinged cold open. Let's get to work. I said it'll probably be better and then you did that and I thought, "Ooh!" It was way better. I mean, it only worked because it's Breithart and there's a lot of babies. I'm going to do that every time from now on. No more scripted cold opens. You're going to pull a lexie? I'm going to start winging it. Pull a lexie. No, I don't fully winging it. You don't wing it. I just physically write stuff down. She doesn't wing it. She just doesn't like to know or plan where we're going. I do plan. She likes it. It's like this. She doesn't want to see pictures of the destination before she gets there. She wants to experience it along the way. I want to talk about the details as we go. That's right. They got to develop organically. Right. You're an organically. I promise you, I'm not trying to not plan it. I just will be too focused because I'm not super detailed oriented. I told you this this weekend. It's difficult. I gave a speech because I'm not detailed oriented and I know that. If I chart the whole thing out as I go, I will be more worried about remembering the details and do a terrible job in the words of reliant K. We should get jerseys. Who's we make a good team? There you go. There you go. Everybody say hi to Penelope as well. Penelope say hi to the listeners. Hopefully she just said a quick. She's smuggled in and in. Yeah. She's a sweetie pie. Okay, guys. Welcome back. We are very happy that you're here. As always, if you like what we do, jump on and become a chip, you know, basically chip in the cost of a cup of cold brew at your local artisanal coffee shop. If that's your thing or if you're more along my lines, chip in the cost of two ghost energy drinks per month to help make bright, hard possible. As a thank you, we do a weekly in the kitchen episode there. It's like a just short, brief practical one. Lexi's going to be review it like the last one and this one reviewing some books actually related to the subjects we've been talking about. The industrialization issue, all these things, but also just the household, the woman, the economy, all this. I thought that those books. I have at least a few. The one that came to mind afterwards suddenly slipped my mind. Okay. It's a mystery. It's going to be a mystery, even a Lexi, but they're going to be there. She's going to remember in those will be up there as our thank you that the patrons get early and add free access to the episodes as well so that we bring in the sheaves and my George. George Grant and some other ones that I did write down. So. Patrons get early in access, add free access as our thank you to help make this show available for free to anybody who wants to listen to it. So we appreciate those guys. They help keep it going. And I will say as well, we should have pre-orders open very soon for that book I mentioned last time, the productive on the productive Christian household by Adam Madden. Oh, I'm so excited. We're going to talk more about some of the aspects of the behind the scenes in that book. I probably in this episode. And then also just beyond the lookout for a book that Eric and I are co-writing on the long house and the feminization of the world basically. So the gyno synthesizing for both of those. I'm I'm very excited for both these books. I think it'll be very helpful and interesting to make you mad. They'll give you stuff. I'm just going to call it in advance. They're going to be my favorites of 2026. That means a lot, babe. I just know it. That means a lot. So let's get to business. Let's get to business. I think this episode is going to come out in the first week or so of May. So I hope your early summer is getting to work, but it's not time for summer break here. At Breigarth, it's time to get to business and answer some of the questions that the listeners want to know. Can the woman own a wallet? What do you think, babe? I have a tiny wallet. You have a giant wallet. Oh, no. You haven't seen my new wallet. Wait a second. The wallet I'm aware of is the size of like, no, it's tiny, a two pound tube of ground beef would be the closest handle on. It's probably too small. What did you do with all the things from the other wallet? I shoved them in the tiny wallet. Ben and Ali needed something from my wallet last week and I was like, sorry, guys, it's going to take me a little while to get it out. So should women own wallets know the answers? No, they don't know how to use them properly. My husband has money. Why do I need it? Why do I need it? People need my ID. So women can't have wallets. That is kind of wallet. Our women allowed. My wallet is made out of a quilt. It's cute. It's so cute. It's so cute. Can you? Do you have a wallet? Our women allowed to do math. Like when if you go to the store and you're like, how money bananas can I buy with this money? Is that actually allowed for her to? My husband does math. For me. Women are here. Here's the thing. People think that we are. They think that we're stupid. So they think that when we say like women shouldn't go to college and stuff that what we're saying is women should be idiots. And that's stupid. Women are not idiots. Women are the glory of man. She was made to be very capable and think back to that conversation that we had in the last episode about all of the skill in the pre-industrial world that went into just life in the home. She was like medicine, food, preservation, clothing, manufacturing of many items, household like there was so much that went into it. And this is like the normal mode of human existence. We need to get out of our minds the idea that the woman's role at home and in the economy of the home is a low skill role. And it's basically the equivalent of like an unpaid drone who just does day laborer type of work. That's ridiculous. It takes so much skill to raise human beings and provide what is needed in the home for the life of people. It's an ever-varying task. Note every single year it changes is the people change and the number of the people change and the seasons change. It is a, it's like a career field where you have to get a new degree every three to four years. It is a high skill. That's really true. So speak to that for a second. Like let's say someone, their impression of us is Brian and Lexi think that women basically are just unpaid drones and that they should just be doing drudgery work at home while the men have all of the fun and do all the accomplishment and the achievement and they, you know, the only thing they've ever actually read from us is that one tweet where you said women are dumb as a joke and they all took it completely. They're also not very funny. They're not very funny these people. This is their main problem. They have no sense of humor. They're shrews. No, women aren't funny as well as talking. Women definitely are not funny. And here's the thing. Can we be honest? Women are dumb. Sometimes men are dumb too. But you know when people are especially dumb is when you put them into roles, they absolutely were not suited for it. Exactly. Like women are dumb when you try to make them a significant part of it. of the political voting backbone of the nation. In that context, women are dumb. Women are terrible at voting and they should stop doing it. In that sense, repeal the 19th. They actually are kind of dumb. They're bad at that. And I'm saying that as like an assessment of the fruit, they have voted in really dumb ways consistently from the beginning. So when it comes to that, I have no problem saying that. It's like I have no problem saying that if you put men in an environment where you have given them bad goals and bad ideas of success and set them up, contrary to their creation nature, men are dumb. Men do really stupid things in the world, in a world where you set them up to live contrary to their created nature. That's how it works. People are not good at the things God didn't make them to be good at. Why is it that most soaps in cleaning products ironically don't contain clean ingredients? 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So what would you say to someone who Brian Lexie just think women are basically drudgery doby the house self slaves? Well, first of all, yeah, I think it shows their fundamental belief about what household work even is like and about and that it's just not glorious at all. Like they need to redefine even that view of labor in the home, I guess. So I think people who think that don't realize how meaningful work in the home actually is. So when we're saying women should be home, it has nothing to do with their intelligence level. It's because it's actually incredibly meaningful work. And also, I think people like that are revealing how boring they are as humans to actually think that it isn't an exciting, interesting, stimulating, creative place to be working. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. So when we're thinking about her role as helper, one of the things that she has to think about necessarily is that the husband's mission that she's called the help with includes money. So one of the one of the core principles that I'm thinking through in how do we answer the question of like the woman's relationship to money in the home is, well, we need to make sure that her relationship to money still looks like being her husband's helper. And it still looks like those core duties that are involved in Titus chapter two of loving a husband, loving children, being busy at home, diligent at home, that kind of orbit. So how do like, why does that matter so much as we're approaching this question of money? Why is that such a good limiting principle to have it operative for you? Well, because like we talked about last time, if part of the economy of love is aimed towards people, she is fulfilling her part in the economy by loving the people. If in certain seasons, long seasons, maybe most of her life, all she has, quote unquote, time for is loving the people and know other sort of work. Yeah. That's why that's why that's what she's why. And so if she's, if she's leaving that great economic work of loving the people for checking people out at Walmart to get groceries or selling essential oils on Instagram. Yeah. And I use that as an example simply because a lot of Christian women do try to fit stuff like that in. And honestly, maybe they shouldn't. Some of them certainly shouldn't. It's going to be and the point isn't that I'm getting at the point isn't, well, let me put it this way, where the limiting principle is and where it stands is very important to making right decisions because the limiting principle isn't, she cannot be related to the income of the home. She can't ever make a dollar. Right. That's not what it means. It's not even like she can never do something that's not within the four walls of your literal house. Right. That's also not the limiting principle. People think that's what we're saying. Yeah. The limiting principle is we have a very clear univocal answer from both God's revelation in nature and scripture that her primary role in duty in helping her husband is the nurturing and raising of children and loving of the husband. There's the limiting principle. And the reason I do use something like Instagram selling side hustle on Instagram is because that often in hard ways that we're unaware of eats into your time at home, which is for the people. So it's negating that again. So even there, it's not like there are situations where some kind of home business, she can be involved in it, even deeply involved in it. But the where's the limiting principle? Is it taking away from those core things in a way that's deleterious to them? And if it is, then she shouldn't be doing it. Now we need to think about this on a couple levels. One of the most important is in the structural level at the outset where you're setting up your life to be pointed in a certain direction. This is why we talk so much about college and the career track in the last episode and why we hit on it so much is because what we've done is we've set up a pipeline where structurally speaking, we have set women up to not even be able to do that core thing. We're sending them out of their father's house. First of all, we're sending them to college. We're creating perverse incentive structures that incentivize them not to have children, not to get married, not to be diligent working at home. So we need to be thinking about this from that level, not just, well, once she's married and has children at that point, then she needs to think about this. But before that, it's kind of a free for all do whatever you want. No, we need to set up the pipeline into womanhood to be harmonious with this duty and this task. So that's one of the, what should she be doing in her? Let me ask you that. What should she be doing? What should we be doing with her daughters and what should a young woman be doing? Let's say she comes up in from her teens into her early adulthood. What should that actually look like in terms of preparing for her vocation and the economy of the home, the making of money? I think she should, I mean, obviously I don't have daughters there yet, but I think what probably would make most sense is that she takes over at least some portion of the household work from the mother that is keeping her in the feminine sphere. And then in addition to that asking dad, like, Dad, how can I help you with your work? Are there ways? Are there not ways? Because some daughters really can't or some daughters might have fathers that they really can step in and take over a portion of the household business. But I think, I think even still with daughters, the point that I would still want to be instilling is that you're still homeward oriented. Don't get so up to you that you think you going to help dad makes you better or whatever more independent so you don't have to help pitch in with dinner. Yeah, or so that you don't, you can delay marriage and you can just, well, I've got a corp, I've got a career track here with my dad's line of work, even. So now I'm going to delay marriage. That shouldn't be the goal. What fundamentally we need to be thinking about is that our household is an economy. What is the economy? Again, it's reifying love for your neighbor in goods and services. That's what the economy fundamentally should be built upon. And it's love that is ordered. So it starts with the proper love of self and then going on out to the proper love of neighbor, your most immediate neighbors all the way on out to your least immediate neighbors. And that is part of the way that we obey and love God is by doing that well. And I do think it doesn't have to just be dad's job. I think there are ways that ladies can also grow skill sets, even certifications, even their own businesses that are within the realm of being a woman and that still serve the household. Yeah. And what I was going to say is that you have, so that's what the economy is. And if the limiting principle is that she should be homeward oriented and that she's aiming to be able to get married, have children be oriented towards that, she should be seeking to develop a certain set of skills. There's a core set of skills that every young woman should be developing, which are like, think about all of the different aspects of life we've talked about, clothing and feeding people, basic medical care of people. How do you deal with babies? How do you deal with toddlers? How do you like, what about education, teaching little kids how to read? How about cooking dinner and how about managing a grocery budget? How about maintaining the inventory of food in a home so that it doesn't go to waste? What kind of food should she be buying? She has the grocery budget. What kind of meat should she be buying? How do you cook with that meat? How do you plan a menu? How do you fix clothing? - She should be majoring on majors. - Yeah, how do you clean the house? - What happens is when you get women that become career oriented or outside the home oriented, they start majoring on minors. - Yeah, but then think about the other things that go into that economy. So those are all like the baseline skills. Basically every woman who's going to do this tightest to work well is going to need to pretty much be able to do all the things I just listed. She's going to have to be able to deal with children, but what's the other skill? And this is where it really can tie into the father is that the other skill is helping a man. The other skill is submitting to a man, working with a man, serving and helping him. So then there are lots of ways that a young woman provided her father's business has opportunity for this. - Yeah. - To learn how to participate in a trade. Now it doesn't mean that she has to marry a man with that exact skill set, because really the most fundamental skill that she's developing is that working with honoring, respecting, submitting to a male head in a productive economy. - That's a transferable skill. - It's a transferable skill. So let me give an example of like an ideal type of situation here and it's one that comes from the author of the book that is soon to publish from a new Christian press on the productive Christian household, Adam Madden. So Adam has been a pastor. He's actually stepping back from being a pastor, actually right now, even. So, but he's stepping back from that role and he has kind of done that on the side. It wasn't like a vocational ministry. It was more like elder to church kind of thing. But the main thing he's done really well is he's built a household with his wife and their children. And he's, as he looked at the world, he was like, "Man, I have all these duties to leave in inheritance "and like train my children and I want them to be involved "and with me and I don't just want to be like "off-gun in an office all day and not able to work with them "and how am I going to provide them with economic foothold "and keep them in my local." Like all these different things he was thinking through. And so what he does, he started several businesses. And they're not like the type of businesses that are sexy as the wrong word, but that's what I'm gonna do. Yeah, that's, yeah, you're right though. I'll give you an example. Lots of people might overlook these type of businesses. He looked at, okay, thinking like what is the economy? It's Christian love, reified, and goods and services. What's a service that in our area, there's a lot of opportunity for a Christian who loves people well and takes care of things high trust, high customer service because he's a Christian. I'm gonna start a dog kennel. So he started a dog kennel and they take care of people's dogs when they're on vacation or something like that. Like what a kind of boring business, that's not a business that like the idea itself gets most people out of bed. I know. But if you care about people, then that's something people care about and they're willing to pay a reasonable amount for you and they have to be able to trust you that you're not gonna like kill their dog or I don't know, sell it to the Chinese restaurant down the street or something like that to make their Sheshwan puppy. So that was probably racist. I did eat dog in Cambodia. So comes from experience. So it's high trust. So he starts a dog kennel and the cool thing about that business is there's so much opportunity at a business like that for a young man and even like a young daughter to be involved in like answering the phone or hey, go walk the dog or like clean a kennel. - Yeah, it's a great family business. - Yeah, this is just their multiple businesses he's done. He's done fish high quality fish for restaurants and he has another business that does that. There's multiple businesses and here's how this ended up working. His business is doing well. Well, his daughter, one of his daughters is coming into marriageable age. We're working in a local community trying to form relationships. The Eric, Mr. Pastor Khan at our church ends up making a connection with the family through a local conference or something like that and they start talking and they're like, your daughter is like we're both performed Protestant Christians and your daughter is so bold and my son is this age and like, look at that. And so they started talking and like, let's see if they get along. Let's see if there's any interest. And there was and so they go, maybe there's the opportunity for a courtship here. And there was and then maybe there's gonna be a marriage and there was, I got to perform the ceremony not too long ago. And maybe there'll be some children and there is very soon to arrive as we record. And the Eric son who at the time also had graduated from our school and worked for us at New Christian Impress. He still does. He is the guy by the way, if you ever buy a book from us, he is the one who got it into your hands. He is amazing at setting up. He's very responsible. Like he's not even 20 guys. - Can you call him the shipping boy? - No, I call him the, like the czar of fulfillment or something. Some really cool title. You're welcome Benjamin. So he took over, he's done a great job. He like, man, just all of our, it's complicated packaging, shipping like thousands and thousands of books every year and other stuff too. So he does that for us. Mr. Madden said, well, I've got this business and there's some opportunity there. Do you want to get involved in it? He starts getting involved in that. And now he's deeply involved in that business as well. - Yes, yes, yes. - And the point was that, oh, and then along the way as well, the daughter whom the young con, young master con, married, she had also been involved in another family business, which was a flower farm, which is the most girl business ever. But this was a way that Mr. Madden was able to help establish his daughters and his sons and then sons-in-law and the extended family that he's marrying into with, as life goes, he said, I need to establish some businesses and things where I can do this well. And his daughters were involved in it and his sons were involved in it. And then sons-in-law, all this, the extended family's involved in it, including the daughters. The daughter still does certain things for the flower farm business and selling flower arrangements and things like that. And it's a great time of life where that's totally possible. And it contributes to the household economy for that broader family now, multi-generational broader, we're talking now three generations at this point with Mr. Madden, his daughter, and now their child, the grandchild, that's a family economy she's involved in. Now I know this for a fact, that as more children, Lord willing arrive and the brute work like you were talking about that goes into that stage of life, you'd better believe that as soon as it doesn't make sense for that flower business to be a big time involvement, and I don't know how much time she spends on it now, you better believe it won't be. Because what's the limiting principle? - Yeah. - It's not whether or not she makes money, 'cause right now she does make money. A flower business makes money. Channel business that she's involved in, they're all involved in everything. And that's what I want you to see is that it's perfectly orderly, she was under the authority of her father, now under the authority of her husband. Her husband works super hard, he probably works 60, 70 hours a week between all of his different jobs, very competently gaining respect, gaining reps in the real world, she's helping him at every step of the way in doing that. And mainly the home, but also there's this overflow with the family business that she's involved in. Does it generate money? Yes, absolutely. Does that violate the principles? No, it doesn't. Will that money making thing go away if it needs to for her and be handed off to somebody else? Absolutely. And you know what the beauty of it is? They're children, almost guaranteed it, we'll be working in businesses, whether it's these ones or different ones, that this family and the families involved in this growing economy, produce, run, start, build, grow. And their children will then be growing up. So think about the experience of children growing up in that household. - Yeah. - And have a zillion opportunities to be involved in business. - And it just naturally allows them to think outside of the box about things. 'Cause I think that's one of the biggest issues with women that say, should I get a job, should I not? It's kind of like, well, if I get a job, you mean go work for somebody else, it really doesn't give a look about you or your kids, then probably not. - Right. - But do you legitimately have the ability to start something? And not everyone is entrepreneurial, I get that, and they should not be. But I think that is the big difference in today's society, is most people are not willing to think outside the box about this at all. - Right. So the point is that what we're trying to paint is this picture of where we think more of the household. We stop thinking of the household as a way station between office work and school and all these different things. And we start thinking about it as a hub, where the household is primarily the people and their productivity. - Yeah. - And then ordering and directing their productivity, not around the limiting principle of whether or not it makes money. But around the limiting principle of what are they for? - Yep. - The wife, the mother, a young woman is to be for the tightest two type of stuff. Before she's married even in her father's household, and under the tutelage of her mother, we ought to be building households where she's learning all of these skills. And then in ways that are harmonious with their family economy as possible. getting involved. This is an ideal situation and then she gets married and she's continuing to be involved in now her husband's household in business. And she might be involved in different seasons of life more or less with the making of the money. But the central thing is still the central thing. And the buck still stops with him in terms of providing for his household because a man who doesn't provide for his household just denied the faith he's worse than an unbeliever for 75. So those are the limiting principles. His vocation buck stocks stops with him. Her vocation buck stops with her in terms of loving children keeping the household. Nobody else can be her husband's helper but her. Yeah. So a question, is anything you want to say there before I move to a different question related to that? Oh, I just, I do think today in our culture of social media, women can become successful fairly quickly sometimes on social media. And so suddenly husband comes home from work to help her with her mission. Yeah. And I think that can get distorted really quickly because it puts a lot of the pressure and a lot of the stress on her to keep up with things. Yeah. And we, I mean, we even have friends who have through abnormal circumstances ended up having to figure this out where like, say a young woman in her late teens, early 20s, doesn't grow up with like everything we just said wasn't the background normal. And so she's just doing her thing. A Christian big, you know, evangelical world. But nobody's telling her like Titus too, all these ordering principles. So it's not like maliciously. No. She goes out and gets a career. And it's very successful. And then along the way gets married, good Christian man, start having children. And somewhere in the middle of that goes something's wrong here. Like all the money depends on me. Like it all depends on me to make, make the money. So what did they do? And we have friends who've had to deal with this. And they've, what they did is they took steps over time to remedy that situation, recognizing that we live in the real world. And some people think we're such ideal logs that what we're saying is if you realize that there's anything at all out of order in your home in terms of how the money is made in this kind of thing, it needs to be solved by 5 p.m. that day. Guys, that's not how the world works. Okay, sometimes sins and even sins that were unintentional, like where they were sins of ignorance. That's a real biblical category. You have to deal with the consequences of them wisely. You should do them with urgency and put your back into fixing them and be willing to even maybe take a lower standard of living or make less money in the short to medium term if you need to fix that because it's a really big deal. But it is possible to find yourself in a situation where you're like, look, this isn't the ideal. But we're going to make a 12 month plan. We're going to make a two year plan and we're going to fix it. And the husband's going to take the lead and he's going to step up and she's also going to step up in terms of committing to submitting to him and following this and making it happen. And they're going to figure out how to fix it. And it might be a year plan, a two year plan, but they're going to fix it. They're not going to let it be a 10 year plan. It's going to be a. I think my main comment is if you aren't even there yet and you're thinking of this, I naturally wouldn't say use social media as a means to create sight and come for yourself as a woman. I think that's not a good idea. It often starts. Yeah, I agree. I think that's. You need to learn to be quiet in this season of life and social media doesn't lend itself towards that. Even just the way that our economy works. One of the perverse incentive structures is that it is far easier for women to succeed in certain things. Yeah. Without actually having a lot of the skill. So for example, a woman who is moderately decent at maintaining a few talking points and is attractive, a young attractive woman can become a conservative political commentator pretty easily. The pathway to that is not that hard. She could probably grow an Instagram account, Twitter, to like 10 to 50 to 100,000 people without that much effort. If she ticks those boxes, at least moderately intelligent, young and attractive and can talk reasonably well about some of these things. She could probably become a lady political commentator. The point is, is that ever a good idea? No, it's not ever a good idea. Just because it's easy in our economy doesn't mean that she should do that. So there are certain things you should absolutely rule out and just not do it all. But there are going to be realities where you have to sometimes fix a problem that incinsive ignorance or even rebellion. And then you go, yeah, we screwed up. Let's fix it. But commit to it. Make the changes fix it and then do better in your next generations. Yes. So one of the questions I was going to ask though that I want to talk about. Because this was actually kind of more our situation. Was that let's say you didn't grow up with like multi-generational, adam, madden type of family where your dad was thinking through Christian entrepreneurship and like the productive Christian household and homeschooling and all these things. It's like what a blessing if that was you. A lot of us didn't have that. So let's say that you find yourself in a situation where you're a young woman and you've been working like just out of the home and you're get married and you like have a job making income and your household kind of depends on it to some extent. And your plan is basically I'm going to work until we have kids and then I'm going to stop working and come home. What do we think of? Because just biographically, this was more our situation. We got married young. We I worked several jobs the whole time that was never like I was always the primary breadwinner. I made never less than 80% of our income I would say. But there was a time in our early marriage where you out of like a preschool. The first year we got married. I had that last year of college to finish. So I did to school every morning and then a couple nights a week I worked at Starbucks. And then once I graduated I got pregnant. But that year that I was pregnant I taught school. At a preschool. A Christian. Yeah, we were associated with early on and all of my paychecks went to paying for a baby to be born. Yeah. And then we had the baby and then I came home. And you did work. School the school you ended like two weeks before my oldest was born. And then after that Lexi didn't have any like W2 income for I wrote for various Christian magazines and was on staff with deeply rooted overseeing content for I don't know seven years. I think they paid you $19.73 over those eight years. Yeah, it was always funny because people would it writing really has just always been a hobby of mine. People would write me and say how have you made money? I want to get into this industry. How have you made money? Well, I don't know the answer to that for you. No, Lexi just liked to write and was good at it and so did it and it was more like an overflow of. But then even that I quit that magazine the year that we started homeschooling. Yeah. So for us it was this progression of the limiting principle was always we can't depend on Lexi's income. We are never going to allow a situation Lord willing where we depend on it for any basic to live. No, we're not going to do that. So then the other limiting principle was as the home becomes more and more like as kids arrive and things it will eventually and it was very quickly within literally probably I think through a couple years of getting married. You were pretty much done making W2 income and even some of the magazine stuff was like on very on the side very occasional and it wasn't really paid that well. No. It was more of like she likes doing this and it didn't take away from any of that stuff. So that was how it worked for us. When a lot of people are in that situation where they're like we don't have kids yet. How should she how should a woman think about making income at that point? How do I wish I would have thought about it? Yeah. And how should a young woman today like if she's saying well I could go get a job at Chick-fil-A or I could be a secretary or I could. Yeah. Well thankfully my until kids get here in the studies did lend itself towards productive household income as an adult because I do write. I wish though I would have had someone say even in those early years where I did have more time where everyone was napping more consistently. Yeah. I had more free hours in my day. I wish I would have thought more about turning a profit in terms of certifications even something like becoming a doula or some of the skills of the home. Yeah. So that and that's something I tell I mean I was talking even to Whitney about that last night where she was wanting me to show her some different hair things and I was talking to her about that's what my mom did and my mom still like serves her household in our household and she does hair for different people at the church. Just like thinking outside of a career oriented training I guess and more of like a skill set that really can be used to to serve people else out of the household. That was what came to mind for me think about what would I say to someone a young woman in that situation. I would say first make sure you're actually doing what ought to be done at the household not trying to get out as quick as you can develop a love and a habit of mind and heart. And that is part of why I didn't because I love being home. I loved being there full time. Yeah. Where you give your strength and your best there. That's where I give my strength and my best like and I make sure that I'm doing everything that needs to be done there first. Like for example, let's say you don't have kids yet and you're like, yeah, I went and got a job and I do all the stuff and I don't get dinner on the table. Yep. Well, that's out of order. Yep. Like be your husband's helper work to get dinner on the table. Start figuring out these skills. They're not going to get easier when there's a lot more mouths to feed and more think like people underfoot when you're trying to do it in babies and whatnot. Home and hearth started simply with a The mom dad and their two kids making cleaning. natural alternatives for women who wet into something better. Through that process came the creation of the Cycle Support Tincture Set. For herbal blends, one for each phase of your cycle designed to help you reconnect with your body's natural rhythm. Handcrafted with organic herbs that ease cramps, balance mood, support hormones, and bring calm throughout the month. Every bottle is handmade with care with high quality ingredients. Get the Cycle Tincture Set at shophomeinhardth.com/bright and use code "bright" for 15% off your order this Christmas. When you have a busy house, the immediate demands of activities, events, and never-ending to-do lists can overshadow critical long-term decisions. Life insurance, financial planning, education savings, and retirement are continually backburnered. Joe Garasi and his team from Backwards Planning Financial will help you maximize financial tools, management, and strategies so you can focus on your home and have confidence for your financial future. Get backwards planning financial.com, that is backwards planning financial.com, or call 615-767-2555 to speak with Joe to develop a plan for the future. I would say, secondly, if at all possible, try to make whatever economic activity you're involved in. Like Lexi said, be harmonious with the skills necessary to that household economy. So a great example would be, let's say you're 20 and you just got married and you're looking for a way to make a little bit of extra money because you and your husband are like, okay, it's fine. We have everything covered. There's 15 hours a week that she could put into something else. And we're going to put that into the baby fund for like, hey, babies are going to be coming. We're not going to rely on it. We're going to put in the baby fund. You all say home births are expensive. Here's a way to cover them. Boom. Okay. What kind of things would I be looking for? I would say first, is there a house in the church that's further ahead that could use 15 hours of help where the wife could use some help and they'd be willing to pay some hourly what or some fee to come and help. Great. Wonderful. Cleaning, helping with kids. Like, there's lots of opportunities for that with big kid households like our household. We don't have a bunch of that, but it would be helpful. I could think I could foresee some situation where maybe we had the economic bandwidth, like the financial bandwidth and could do that where I would say, hey, there's a 20 year old girl in the church that would get along well with Lexi. Maybe Lexi could use her a day of the week. Something like that would be wonderful. Something harmonious with it. Here's the warning I would give to any activity like this, though, whether it's a nine, like whether it's making money at a job sometime or nannying or something more like that, getting a certification. Make sure you are not delaying children on the because of it. Don't. So don't you shouldn't be like, okay, yeah, and the baby fund. Here's what we're going to do two years of birth control while we build up the baby. Well, the same as the baby. Come on. Are we being serious here, guys? Are we being serious? Just have babies. If the Lord grants that you get eight months of this in your whole life because you just started having babies, praise God. Praise God. And let that weight be what drives the husband and you together to say like we're going to provide through his stuff. And then there's other ways she can be involved to. But like that's the biggest warning. I think if people get this wrong is that they start doing, they start sneaking in. These principles contrary to the whole goal of the thing, which is the household of the people. So it's not that she can't ever make money. But it's like the second we start saying like, ah, we're not really going to have babies for a while because of this. Then I go, no, no, no. I don't care if you don't make a single dollar and you put all of your time even before kids are there into the house. Do it and helping your husband and how can I, how can I make, how can I be as strong of a help to him as possible? Do you know how much that can supercharge your man's career even? Yeah. Having a capable wife at home or even if she says like, I'm not going to get it. My job is going to be a course of self study. I'm going to learn everything I can about caring for the sick. I'm going to learn everything I can about caring for babies. I'm going to learn everything I can about making clothing. Yeah, because there is something to be said too for women who get roped into some sort of like technical training and they have to do it for the sake of the piece of paper. And I mean, that was ultimately why I didn't become a doula is because I looked at the certification programs and said, I really don't want you telling me that I'm allowed to work or not work. I don't really care about that. I can learn everything I want to on my own about this. So you need to realize, yeah, don't let that be a stumbling block too because you do have, you have little moments here and there in your motherhood where you can learn the same exact thing without paying high amounts of money for it and be just as helpful. And I think that's a great use of time and skill where you get with your husband and say, like, what would you like me to learn? Yeah. Here's some ideas I had. What would you like me to learn in the next year when we're getting ready for kids and honestly, ladies, like if you become such an expert in cooking that your husband is like, you're the best cook I've ever. Wow. You're amazing. And hopefully she's been learning this in her mother, but let's say she didn't. Well, then look, you might, you have some time. Learn. I mean, you could, you could do like, I think of all the postpartum meal things that there are now that you can buy young lady learn about even just five different postpartum nutrient dense meals that she can make in freeze and sell and learn batches to families. Like that, even that alone is like, there's all these cottage industry type of things that are so aligned with loving your immediate neighbors, providing a good and service that does make an economic benefit, but also is you're learning along the way. Yeah. And then again, that big limiting principle, the second you start feeling in your heart, I need to be careful about having all these kids because it's really taking away from my cottage industry business, close it, close the cottage industry, but stop doing it. Because those people are the point. Those are your most immediate neighbors you've been given to love. So just shut it down. Stop it. Don't let that temptation drive you. It's so easy for that temptation to drive you. And then once the kids are there as well, be honest. Am I starting to give my best strength and time to the cottage industry thing and really neglecting the people at home? Are my kids getting taught to read well and disciplined well or is mommy too busy marketing the cottage industry business on Instagram? Sorry, mommy couldn't cook dinner today. Mommy had to cook dinner for other people. Come on. You know what I mean? Like the temptations are real. Yeah. Even in getting these things. But our goal should be that you see the board just aligning the vocations between the husband and the wife to work together to produce the end that God has appointed. I think even when you and I have thought through different areas to bring help into the home for different seasons, it's been too better free at my time for those things. Not because which it's kind of funny. It's not because it's a it's below me to do that work. It's just that we still have to keep the main things, the main things. Yeah. And I think we've had like a grand total of one time that we hired someone to clean something. We have. Oh, we had some young ladies too. We did right after. For example, it was born right after Penelope. So we've had we had that cleaning service come once where we were like, hey, let's see how this works. And even that page Madden. I call her on the phone and talk through the details of my life. They had a lot of kids run family business and she's probably closest to someone I can imagine in my similar experience. And so I was asking her, how do you handle this? This is what I'm doing right now. And after talking to her, I was like, you know what? I really don't need the cleaners. I just need to listen to this older woman who's helped me tweak a few details in my life and we're good to go. Yeah. But, but I am also not we're in a season of life where I am having to think of myself as a delegator and a manager. Totally. And not just a quiet homemaker of two children anymore. So that means there does sometimes have to be a little more logistical delegating if that's instant cart. So I'm home more for school. Yeah. Maybe like once a quarter, I catch up on all the household work at once with cleaners. That's what I did when they came over. They cleaned and I cleaned beside them and everything was done for the next three months. That's the kind of thing where you're leveraging services and people and that, but you're still like think about the proverbs 31 woman. This is why like the feminist always bring her up as if she was working a corporate job. I don't know. She was directing a complex multi-generational large household that was part of the economic foundation of her community. So in that, she was a wealthy leading family in the community or husband's known in the gates. She's basically a political leader and their household likely employed people in the community. Yes. Because they were so productive they were able to employ other people in the community. And that was a loving service to other people. And so she was very much managing lots of people. And the feminists go, yeah, see she can work a nine to five of the corporate job completely disconnected from kids on birth control and never have children and we're like, no, no, I'm perfectly fine with this very virtuous grandmother at that point directing a multi-generational productive Christian household that actually threw the overflow of its productivity employees 20 people. That is wonderful. That's what we're trying to build with new Christian impressed. That's what we're trying to build with these other things in our community. It's like, of course we want that. That's not contrary to the work because it's focused on the right people and the right way and the right order. It's not about whether you make a dollar or not. It's whether or not you're focused on the right people in the right order for the right reasons. And that's what. We're driving it. So I keep coming back to like, don't use the money career thing to avoid having the people 'cause the people are the whole point. - Yeah. - That's how society's built. - Yeah. - How Christian civilization is actually built. One other thing I wanted to talk about, we talked a lot about the young years. I'd like to talk and probably end by talking about the grand mother years. - Yeah. - Because what happens, what if we see commonly with empty nesters and how the ladies and empty nester houses can go? - They go get a job immediately 'cause they're bored and need some sort of social output. But then when grandkids and kids need help, sorry, I'm busy, the boss needs me today. - What would we love to encourage people instead? A grand mother in that situation, your, let's say your last kid got married three months ago, you've got maybe a couple grandkids from the older kids there and you're like, what do I do now? Like, well, I don't have to cook for as many people and there's, what should she, what would you say would be a good ideal aim? - I think it would be good for most grandparents to think of some sort of structured help they can offer their kids to provide structure to their life. I've seen this work in a lot of different ways. I know some grandmothers at the church who each day, they take a different grandkids from a different child's family. So they kind of rotate through making sure all of their children do have help throughout the week. So the daughters can get caught up on whatever they need to. She said some of them do actual housework, some of them just catch up on sleep while she has the kids. It really is different daughter to daughter. - In season to season. We heard recently where an older set of grandparents had one date night a week where the grandkids all got dropped off at their house. So all of the kids can go out on a date at once. - Yeah. - And then you just have this cacophonous, glorious rambling herd of grandchildren. - Yeah. - Amazing. I think of, I mean, doing talk about my mom's situation a little bit. - Yeah, we've had both sides of our family, grandma and grandpa's involved in, like my dad, we've talked about, will regularly come pick up some of the boys and like, hey, let's learn how to make this woodcraft thing and teaching them skills. And like my mom has helped with kids all, like, got a lot of different helping with kids and things like that. And they've taken our whole family, like the kids at different times and we go do something or, but yeah, talk about your mom's situation even. - Yeah, my mom, so she worked for a local small family business for a while for years. - Yeah. - As a, as like a naturopathic pharmaceutical company. And then she quit working a couple years ago actually because she was kind of getting some flack for wanting to spend time with her grandkids. - Yeah, she was like, all right. So she was done with that. And then she, she has been taking care of my grandma primarily for almost two years now. And my grandma went back out of state for a couple months and so my mom kind of thought, maybe I'll go get a job for Christmas. And she didn't like it because it was a big company. And she told me, I have been spoiled by working, for working for a small family business for so long. I don't want anything to do with these unpeopleed type of - Yeah. - Companies anymore. And then at that same time, you and I were trying to figure out, okay, this just isn't working anymore. The way we're doing things. The family, the older kids are getting bigger, the schedules were crazier. We could not figure out how to consistently get anything done. Bright Heart-related. Yeah, we were like, we're either gonna stop it or like, what do we, we have to figure something out. - This just isn't working. - 'Cause you guys remember like we would record it like eight, eight, nine at night. - Well, and when we started, we only had five kids. Our fifth was a little baby. So we had all younger children. We didn't have older children at that point. And it was a lot easier for everyone to consistently go to sleep. No one wanted to chat after 8 p.m. Now people want to chat until after nine, 10 sometimes. And then the sleep walkers wake up at 11. - And then the teeth wake up at 12. And then. - And then now I am like my older kids, I have like the chauffeur hat where that I wear more often now. And so I'm actually not home as much as people probably imagine that I am. And so it was just a different season where we were like, well, what do we do with this? Is it time to put it to bed? What do we do? So you had actually, I had read through George Grant's book, Bring in the Sheaves and something he highlighted in there a lot that made sense to me when you look at the book of Ruth, is that when there's economic need in a family, it seems to be the biblical standard that you start by working within the family unit to meet those needs. And so you had come to me and said, there it seems like we could kind of meet a couple of needs. We could meet our need and your mom's need. They wanted to get some stuff paid off at their house. They had read on their basement so that my brother can move in with them. So my parents are doing the intergenerational thing there. And they wanted, they basically just wanted my mom to work a few hours a week to get that completely paid off to help my brother, which is a good thing. And so it was meeting the needs in both of our families for us to say, well, why don't we just pay her? There's no one else that can homeschool our kids like your mom, she homeschooled you guys. There's no one else who can cook dinner for our family like your mom, who can clean house for us like your mom. This just seems to make sense. Yep. And it also freed up more of our evening times as a family. It closed a huge mental door for me to where I wasn't thinking about constantly behind on BrightHearth, not that you ever made me feel that way. It's just how I am. It felt like a word of wisdom from the Lord. I wouldn't say that about a lot of things, but it really did seem like, no, this is the solution he's providing to this. So every of you guys listen to BrightHearth, every other Tuesday for like three hours, we record two episodes of BrightHearth. And Lexi's mom keeps the ball rolling at our house. And there's more work that goes into it, but I do that work. I'll outline the episodes ahead of time, make sure we know we're going. And the thing is like, BrightHearth is mainly Lexi and I talking about stuff we talk about. So we'll be driving the, you know, on some errand and we like, you know, we should do a BrightHearth on this. This is kind of a thing that's come up in the church a couple times. We should do that. Let's make a series on that. And that's pretty much where like a homemaker's rules for life came from in this series. This series came from conversations like that. And then I go and like the day before, I will outline two episodes like we joked about where Lexi doesn't want to see all the road signs along the way. She just wants to sit down. And then so it was like eight birds with one stone. Yeah. And for us, it was just a good example of like a cross between a lot of our different principles lining up to say, oh, this is great. Like, and your mom would absolutely like help for free. Yeah, and she told us that. She told us that. No, I'm happy to. I'm happy because you're working hard and it means a need there too. And it's just like we need to be more creative about what the productive Christian household can look like because the net result of all of that was like more time where everybody's to get together doing productive things that love other people. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's not at the expense of any of the people who are supposed to be loving. It's actually enhancing the loving of all of those people. Yes. And that's wonderful. Like, there are a million ways that I think every, it's your household's going to look way different than ours and that's totally fine. But there's a million ways that we can think creatively about setting up our households. And even planning ahead like going, maybe I need to start a business for some future oriented goals or I need to get involved in a business that's already started a Christian business, family business. Well, plan work, make some steps, start, you can just do things. Like you can do things. You can just do things. And see if the Lord blesses and prospers it and then take the next step. And one, one ditch we have, we haven't talked about yet, but maybe the last thing we could talk about is sometimes husbands when their wives are helping them in their business world, they need to recognize that they might come a time when they actually need a higher-up employee to free the wife up and say, "Why if you're doing too much in the business?" So actually funny enough, that's what we just talked about because new Christian impresses like we do media and this is, I think, BrightHearth's an important project in that tightest two sphere, where, but the last thing we want is to make Lexia Christian Bosch-Babe influencer who neglects her home for the sake of doing some podcast. That would be stupid. So we just talked through how that worked for us where like either we just stopped doing it or figure out a creative way to make it actually harmonious with as we've grown as a family in all of these principles, how can we meet these goals? That's how we did it. Can you speak to that at all? I mean, I think we've seen this before with good intentions, husbands have productive stuff going on and their wives are big part of it, but then like he starts to not realize that her growing role at home is, it's really demanding more and more attention and she's kind of feeling torn like, how do I, which thing do I help my husband in? And he just needs to hire something. - I don't think people realize that to do your mothering well and in a maximalist capacity, you will be required home more when your children get older, not less. That's something I vastly overlooked, and that was something that Paige Madden brought up to me as people don't understand, people are going to assume you have more time because your kids are older and can help you more. It is the opposite. - The opposite. - Opposite. So I think that plays into it a little bit and I think sometimes it can be that maybe a husband, and genuinely is good at providing the service that his business provides, but he might not be as good on the backside of like growing that business. - You're like maybe he's a tradesman. - Yes. - Who's really good at the plumbing, but he's not as good at the business management? - Yes, so he might himself need to figure out how can I talk to somebody else about this? I know you guys had to think through that of like what do we need more employees? We literally need employees. We can't keep doing this on our own. This is gonna kill us all. - Yep. - And that's a good, like I have learned to see over the last year that that's a good and glorious thing to be able to provide more jobs for other people. I think maybe some people can, some business owners might freak out of like, well where's that money going? That's money we're not making. But again, when the people are the point in keeping the wife's central point being the people, it is worth bringing more people on, hiring more people, using your money in good ways for your wife to be free to do what she's doing. And that might be just a read some business books, get coaching from other business leaders about how to hire where you're thinking like, if you hire an employee, they should be making your business, X multiplier of what you're gonna pay them and how are you gonna make that work. And it's hard and it takes the best many of the love your people. But it can be done. And you can figure out how to do it. This is another one of those. Give yourself permission to grow beyond your sole proprietor business. - Yeah, exactly. And just having, I think having things, I feel like at New Chris and I'm, we are really good with things being done at a human scale. Even when we were looking at publishing dates recently for books. - Oh yeah, yeah. - I didn't know that Penelope was gonna give up on sleep. - Which she sometimes does. - And guess what, guys, you don't wanna read a book that I wrote on two hours of sleep. So there are certain aspects of this, you have to be flexible enough with these family businesses to flex with the seasons of a family's life. - Yeah, and that's like, then you just develop rules where you say, okay, here's one of the rules. When we talk about this tightest two older woman teaching younger women stuff that's through media and books and okay, it's a good work. I think it's both lawful and timely and good and helpful and grapefruit, like, okay, good. But here's one of the rules. There can never be a deadline. 'Cause it's not the most, it's like the 10th most important thing. - Yeah. - And it has to be. Otherwise, it invalidates all of the things that we're saying and believe anyway. So there can't be a deadline. Lexi's first, the book that we just published was "Munna Tongue." Great helpful book. Lots of good feedback. Helped a lot of young ladies. Guess what? That was a long time of margin, nap times. When you have a thought and go, "Oh, that would be helpful." Or something in the church where we go, "Hey, that would be good to write down. "Let's write it down." Cool. And then that book, again, with all the publishing process and everything that Lexi wasn't involved in, goes out and it's helpful. But there's no deadline. So we're right now working on a pair of books where I'm writing a book on how to love your wife. Lexi's writing a book on how to respect your husband. There is no deadline. It's gonna get, - Be there some time. - It will get done when it gets done, or it won't. - Yeah. - And I'm okay with it. - The reason why it works is because I'm okay with it. You're okay with it and everyone else is okay with it. So whatever happens with it, we all give the thumbs up. - Yeah, exactly. So I do think I would, on all those fronts, just say, "Granmas, think this through. "Young ladies, think this through. "Keep the limiting principles and the principles central "and then in wisdom apply them to your situation "and figure out a way to make them work." And you'll find that Christians have to be creative and adapt to all sorts of changing technological, social environments, economic environments. And the Christians have been doing that for a long time. And the Lord will provide, but the basic shape needs to stay the same. She's homeward-oriented. She's loving the children. She's respecting her husband. She's, they're not delaying children for the sake of that. They're not like all of these different principles are leading the way. And then go creatively figure out how to make it work in your economy. And where you see something out of line, make a plan and work the plan to fix it. Don't freak out or feel like you have to fix it within the next five seconds. But also don't just let it go. Like go fix it. And the Lord blesses. He'll be with you. It'll be hard because God is faithful to put sand in the gears and let us have difficulty that grows and shapes us and trial produces endurance and character in faith and all these things. So I think that's all we've got for this episode. Yeah. Thanks for listening, guys. As always, we appreciate it. We appreciate all the awesome Christian businesses speaking of that sponsor BrightHearth and help make it possible. So check out all of the great goods and services that they provide. And you're supporting other Christian households that are productive in doing so. But that's pretty much it. So we'll catch you next time on BrightHearth. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) If you like our podcasts, we think you'll love our books. Head to newcrissonimpress.com to browse our growing library of legacy resources, published in high quality print formats that look great on your shelf.