I’m looking to find out where I can meet other women/moms who value rationalist-style discourse, but are more interested in kids, family, community, and home than in Motte discussions these days.
I’m a long time Motte lurker with a deep respect for the tenets of this forum. I crave more of this type of discourse. The issue is, I’m a stay-at-home mom now and I’m choosing to spend my time elsewhere (kids, community-building, garden, etc). Most of my exposure to this community is now through my husband (who forwards me the quality contributions he thinks I’d like), and honestly I’m generally more interested in topics that relate closer to my daily life these days anyway. (e.g. I'm very interested in Culture War stuff, but with more of a focus on "how the heck do I raise my kids in the middle of this Culture War?")
I’m wondering whether I can somehow connect with other moms (maybe wives of Motte members?) who are similarly lurking but who’d enjoy Motte-style discourse a lot more than the kinds of discourse I’ve been finding on more-mainstream kinds of online mommy groups (ugh).
TL;DR Seeking moms who love the rationalist ethos, but are busy doing mom stuff.
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No email address required.
Notes -
Data Secrets Lox seems to have more wives and mothers than here, so you might get more useful responses there (but keep in mind, they're spending time on DSL, suggesting that that's the online community of like minded people they've found, not somewhere else...)
I've been watching things like this lately https://youtube.com/@TheCottageFairy
I am also wondering about this question, with the impression that it may be underspecified.
What's missing (at least for me) isn't talking about children, animals, food, church, whatever. What's missing is actually doing those things together. I do not want to talk about preserving fruit -- I want to get together and preserve fruit. I think some of the other moms feel similarly, but none of us is good at organization, so the best we manage is going to the zoo or museum together every couple of months. I don't really want to talk about education, I would much rather form an educational co-op, the moms in my community are mostly better educated than the average school teacher, but again... organization. Other moms have mentioned kind of wishing that we all lived closer together, so that we could form some sort of loose commune sort of thing, but I don't think that's exactly it, either, so much as norms around not going to others houses casually or without a lot of warning and coordination. I lived in some other places on the edge of Europe where that was not the case.
The natural mode of socialization with women and small children should probably be something like handwork, like all the old stories with the mother spinning or baking or weaving or something, and talking at the same time. We should do this together, but I am also not an organizer, and we were all socialized into reading all day every day as kids. I'm starting to see some of the downsides of that culture. I listen to podcasts (with at least two people discussing something; I've been listening to Personality Hacker and selected Jordan Peterson interviews lately) while I do handwork, because it has some of that effect.
In my case, I'm mostly bringing this on myself by not going to church, because I find the specifics of my own church very stressful with small children. This is mostly because the church service does not include built in activity, except some parishes that have the boys help serve in the alter, so it's a really stressful back and forth, in and out of the service, scolding the children for speaking too much or too loudly, the children confused, frustrated, and bored.
Edit: If your kids are at least 10, and you live in the US, I'd recommend 4-H. Lots of down to earth families, and moderately structured, goal based activities; my mom and I both made a decent number of friends this way when I was a child and teen.
Wow, I love this comment!
I totally agree, I would rather preserve fruit with friends/community than talk about preserving fruit. Generally it feels like what’s missing isn’t talking, it’s doing (with friends/community).
I feel like one great takeaway we got from Covid was that socializing online is a vastly insufficient substitute to in-person. Still, I feel like having some kind of online MotteMoms group would be better than nothing. Plus, I’m hoping that if anyone does have reasonably good in-person community, they might be able to tell me how it’s done. Maybe we’re similar enough that your solutions might work for me too. (Also, I’m secretly hoping that if I make good enough online friends, they’ll come and visit!)
I’m impressed with the feedback from this post and thinking I’ll set up a small Discord channel when I have a minute to figure out how those work.
That’s a fantastic point about norms around not dropping casually by people’s houses. I’ve spent a ton of energy trying to encourage my local friends to do exactly that, but the norms of not imposing seem very deeply engrained.
I love the idea of women doing “handwork” and socializing. I’ve attended and organized a bunch of “knit night” groups over the years, and while I always feel like they should be incredible and soul-nourishing (and judging by the fact that many women seem to attend the same group every week for years, it must be particularly rewarding for some of them), for me they always seem to fall flat.
I feel like conversations at the knitting groups I’ve been in always seem to devolve into something flat and shallow. Maybe that’s a reflection on my ability to promote stimulating conversations, but I think it might also be something like: women in the ancestral environment had more in common and more actually productive things to talk about. (Even gossiping about who likes who, or about whatever social scandal of the day could have been really useful.) At my knit nights I felt like there was a huge potential for great wisdom to be shared, but not enough group cohesion for anything useful or insightful to come of it. Maybe just “liking knitting” isn’t enough to form a meaningful social group on.
Listening to podcasts/Jordan Peterson while handcrafting/knitting is a very relatable pastime. It had never occurred to me to compare that with the ancestral equivalent; that’s a very fun picture.
“[T]he children confused, frustrated, and bored.” That’s brutal. I so feel for you guys. I know I would find this very intimidating, but I wonder if there’s anyone you can talk to at your church about setting up some kinds of a family-oriented service or other considerations. I’d be shocked if you were the only one whose life would be made better by this.
My husband and I are toying with the idea of joining a synagogue in our area that has a “regular service”, and then a “family service”, back to back, deliberately catering to the different demographics (and noise levels).
I am now following The Cottage Fairy; thank you! I’m not sure if this is quite your thing, but you might find a similar joyful aesthetic here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z0cdVEGDuDg&ab_channel=%E6%9D%8E%E5%AD%90%E6%9F%92Liziqi There’s less explicit wisdom, but similar wholesome vibes.
In my experience, it helps this sort of thing to have everybody living physically close by and to have some kind of well-maintained sign that says your current status is "I'm away / sleeping / want some quiet time, so don't bother me" versus "I'm here and open for anyone to drop by and chat". I'm thinking of living in college dorms, a bunch of smallish personal rooms on a common hallway, people would leave their doors propped open to say "visitors welcome" or closed to say "leave me alone right now".
Ooh, a sign is a neat idea. I might have to play with that. I’ll just have to remember to take it down when it’s not relevant.
Dorms are definitely conducive to that kind of drop-in culture. Major perk.
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