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Anthropology of What Early Americans Wanted in a Wife
In this episode, Simone and Malcolm delve into the concept of pronatalism through the lens of U.S. cultural anthropology. They discuss various historical perspectives on fertility and family planning, particularly examining how different American cultural groups viewed marriage, sexuality, and the ideal qualities of a wife. The discussion touches on the often proposed but overly simplistic solutions from certain modern perspectives, such as banning condoms and pornography, and contrasts these with the historical realities and cultural practices of early America. The episode covers a wide range of topics, from the Puritans' value of industriousness and intellectual conversation, to the Backwoods people's emphasis on martial prowess in women, and the Southern aristocrats' focus on beauty and social grace. The hosts also explore the implications of these historical practices for contemporary fertility issues, stressing that arousal and sexuality have long been decoupled from reproductive motivations. They argue that understanding these historical and cultural contexts is crucial for forming effective modern policies and personal decisions related to family planning and fertility.
[00:00:00]
Speaker: Hello, Simone! Today is going to be an exciting episode because we are going to, studying pronatalism through the lens of U. S. cultural anthropology.
Speaker 2: Ooh, academic!
Speaker: Yes, with the idea being. Right now, if you look at, like, the default plans for fixing pro natalism that I often hear on parts of the right, it's like, well, let's ban condoms, and let's ban porn, and let's ban, you know, whatever, you know, right?
And it's like, Okay, so this would increase fertility rates if, historically speaking, the primary reason people had kids was that they couldn't figure out how not to control their sexual urges. Yeah. And cross culturally, this is true, it appears, historically, of some cultures. However, for the vast majority of cultures, particularly that were important in the founding of America, this does not appear to have been true.
[00:01:00] And so what we are going to explore in this episode is what these cultures had to say about their own wife when they were trying to say, like, my wife is better than your wife about young men advice on who to date about what they found hot or attractive or they cheered on and songs and everything like that.
Only one of America's founding cultures. ever referenced the way a woman looked for the other cultures, basically never. And there's actually been some historical stuff looked at this, how attractive a woman was was not referenced was one culture. We'll get into the the Quaker culture in the Pennsylvania region.
So attractiveness is a sign of a bad wife. You wanted a wife who was playing. She was high class all these people are just gonna be stereotypes of what you expect, which is what I love so just like uh Preview here of the backwards people who you mentioned who are like super violent and make up the majority now of like trump's [00:02:00] face and i've always they really like tomboys.
So what did they have to say historically on notes of the state of virginia in? 1785 thomas jefferson observed that in the frontier regions, women were valued for being quote unquote robust and the ability to quote unquote bear fatigue. And Daniel Boone's own writings about his wife, Rebecca emphasized that quote, she could shoot as well as any man in quote, Oh, sweet.
I like that. Simon Kenton, a famous frontiersman wrote admiringly of Daniel Boone's wife, Rebecca quote. She could handle a rifle with the best of them and noted, quote, she could keep the farm and defend it too. That is an ideal woman. Yes, I agree. This, this, this thing you see was in the current frontiers of America, where you have the mud wrestling competition for women.
As we've, we've gone over in o
Published on 10 months, 2 weeks ago