Get in On Life...

...before it passes you by.

(Stillwater Cottage by Thomas Kinkade from http://www.allposters.com/ )

I placed these cozy cottage here because of a couple of incredulous comments I received that I deleted, about cottages. These young women stated that a cozy cottage would not really help a depressed woman, but I submit that this is exactly what is lacking in the lives of many frustrated and depressed young women.

"Serenity Cottage" by Richard Burns from http://www.allposters.com/ For more cottages, go to allposters, click on "fine art" and type in "cottages."

Throughout history, women married young because they were finished with childhood and had the ability and the inclination to start a home of their own. Young men also were eager to build their own houses and have a wife and family. This was changed in the 20th century by modernists who thought education was more important than marriage, home and family. The focus would be on "bettering" oneself through education.

Young women are convinced to sit through their child bearing years and their years of true vitality in classrooms, under pressure to get college degrees and careers. They are expected to earn a living on their own, pay for their housing, and eventually get married and have children. They must establish their careers and that takes time and money and concentration, and the home once again takes second place. This also cheats the young men, who need to get married and have children while they are young.

(Swans Near Gazebo by Chiu from allposters)

When women are not able to have children, they still are benefited by home life, which is very good for their strength and their general health. The workplace does not provide all that a woman needs for her well-being, but the home, when managed as it was intended, does. Between the ages of 15 and 35, women are supposed to increase their load-bearing exercise, and it is not a coincidence that this is also the time when women of the past would have been carrying their children around, lifting them up, and playing with them. The exercise of the fitness salons does not have exactly the same benefits as the exercise gained in caring for the home and property.

"Serenity Cottage" by Richard Burns from http://www.allposters.com/ For more cottages, go to allposters, click on "fine art" and type in "cottages."

The book, "Home Comforts," shows the intricate details of running a home, and if it were put to the test, would be greater than most college textbooks.

I have been deliberately misunderstood when I mention education. Each time I do, I get a pile of people on here shrieking in protest and casting dust wildly into the air, jumping around like little banty hens, protesting that I am "anti-education." I am not. I am just saying that the system of education either needs reform, or we need to seek alternatives.

Sometimes these girls, on summer vacation after 9 months in school, (that is an interesting number, is it not?) heavily laced with Karl Marx beliefs that women aren't contributing anything at home, will read the homemaking blogs and see women their own age whose lives are well under way. With husband and children and a little cottage ,they are making a place where they spend many happy hours. These girls looking in may become envious. Envy is the main sin of Marxists, who think this world should be run in a completely different fashion than the way God designed it in the form of marriage, home and family.

(Arbor Cottage by Sung Kim)

There are alternatives to everything, if we would dig a little deeper. At a young age when women need to be active, and need to have love in their lives with a good husband, and children around them and a home to care for, they are told it is inferior to marry and be at home, and are instead convinced they must be shut away into college dorms that make cattle and sheep pens look roomy, and forced to study in a distracting and stressful atmosphere. The piles of assignments heaped on them make it impossible for them to love life and enjoy beauty. Their future is sabotaged from the beginning of education with loans that will weigh heavily on their finances for many years and may effect their chances of having one of those cozy cottages when they get married.

(Cottage by Susan Rios)

After the years of study are over, they still do not know how to live their lives, manage their money, get married to a steady and good man, and raise a decent group of children. They will, however, be qualified to work their youth away at jobs and hardly have time to think. They will be qualified to serve the public in some capacity but have little time or stamina left for their home life.

Such a load can only be borne a certain period of time before they finally break down, either mentally or physically. I have seen this mental breakdown through the comments that come through when I dare to suggest that young women would be far more involved in real life through the home and family.

Even at home with their parents, a young woman can contribute a lot that will be mutually beneficial to them. The pressure that young girls are put through from an early age, can lead to many of them taking prescription drugs to reduce the tension, drugs that they find very difficult get out of their lives. The stress of studying and working and trying to make ends meet also causes them to want to cut loose and party, rather than seek the refuge of a good home life.

College and career can wait: marriage and homemaking cannot. One reason for this is biological, and another reason for this is interest level. By the time a girl has gone through college and career, she does not have the skills or the interest for marriage and home life. Homemaking is quite different than classroom activity, as our Mrs. Alexandra, who was once a college professor, can tell you. It takes a lot more knowledge and a lot more stamina, to be make a success of home life, as well as wisdom, which will not be learned in highschool or college. I have been attacked for taking the stand that getting married young and making a home for a husband, caring for him and enabling him to take care of you and buying a cottage for two, but I challenge you to find a popular artist to day that wants to paint pictures of the workplace. Thomas Kinkade, Susan Rios, Robert Duncan, Sung Kim, Richard Burns, who paint cottages today, are certainly enamoured with them. I suspect their beauty alone is not all their is to it, but what they represent: marriage, home and family.

I've known many brilliant girls who got degrees and claimed to be very successful in business, but they were not successful in relationships and were not able make wise choices regarding husbands and were not able to train and teach their own children. Today, there are many women who have chosen home, and they are both able to teach their own children and maintain a stable marriage. It is shocking to see these brilliant professors, judges, lawyers and so forth, that element of society that is supposed to be smarter than the rest of us and somehow more dignified and higher, go through one marriage after another. Not all of them do, but a great percentage of them, while being smart in their chosen fields, fail in their home life.

The best thing a young woman can do is opt for marriage, home and family while she is young. If that doesn't happen for them, they can go home to their parents and be a help to them, and get themselves out of a system that seems to be defeating them. That cozy cottage is not held out for them as something to strive for, in the world of apartments and parties, but one day they will wish with all their hearts that they had aimed for that peaceful resolution and put all their energy and money into acquiring it, rather than the elusive success that they are told their student loans will one day bring them. They really need to grasp ahold of life before it passes them by.