Babbling Botkin: What if My Husband Dies? - Part Twelve

Hello!

I realized when I was driving home from work yesterday that I have a cold.   I'd been feeling off for a few days previously and finally recognized that I had a sore throat from post-nasal drip.   

This is the second cold I've had in the year since COVID came to the U.S. compared to about one a month prior to that.   That made me wonder just how many other illnesses have been minimized by the social distancing, handwashing and masking protocols from COVID.  I'd bet that the total number of circulating cold viruses has dropped.  

Speaking of looking back, I mentioned early in this set of posts how revealing the number of filler words and pauses that Geoffrey Botkin uses is for his level of discomfort.   When he's talking about theoretical situations where he has a lot of control, he uses minimal filler words.   When he's discussing the actual life experience of the woman who wrote him to ask "What if My Husband Dies?" of COVID worsened by COPD, he uses so many filler words that sorting out the content is hard.  Look at this quote when Botkin brings up the idea of discussing the husband's wishes for his sons' education if he dies:

[00:12:03] Talk about this now with your husband um this possibility.   I mean..... if it.....  really.....if you  you know    if you are really.....(pause) thinking about the future responsibly you do have to talk about this, you know.  If....um.... you know....if..if.... "Honey, if you died, how would I train the boys?  What would be your...your number one preferences for how I would do that?"   These are important conversations to have. 

People are often uncomfortable talking about death in American society.   We've lost a framework for discussing the fact that everyone will die let alone what will happen when I die.   

I'm not surprised with Botkin's discomfort in that context - but this isn't a spontaneous conversation between a husband and wife.  We're watching a video post to a website.  Botkin could have - and should have - practiced his monologue enough that he could say "Honey, if you died how would I train the boys?  What are your preferences?" without floundering for 30 seconds.

Geoffrey Botkin likes control.  He's been in one cultic religious group - The Great Commission, Vision Forum- after another since he was college age.  Currently, he's branched away from being a member of a larger religious group to running his own personal family religion while diving deeply into QAnon.  The main theme between these groups is that they offer a form of gnostic  knowledge (secrets known only to the initiated or "educated") combined with a framework for Botkin being the undisputed leader of his own family.

He struggles during this portion because he glances tangentially at the reality that some day he will die, too - and his wife and unmarried adult children will be left to carry on without him.

Botkin concedes that talking about how the family will carry on after the patriarch dies is important - but shares no stories from his life.   |

That's unfortunate because families who have been marching along to the Vision Forum/ATI/IBLP/CP/QF ideas of stay-at-home daughterhood and multigenerational faithfulness now have unmarried sons and daughters living at home in their late 20's, 30's and 40's.
 How is this supposed to work out as the older generation ages and dies?   

Who is responsible for maintaining the single daughters who have no work experience outside of their families?  Are the married sons responsible for room and board for the daughters?   Do the unmarried sons going to support their sisters? 

What happens if an unmarried son wants to make a later in life marriage?

I don't know that the letter writer should be asking Botkin for advice because he's got a lot of loose ends flapping around involving his own four single adult children.

Next, Botkin runs away from the entire subject onto a much more comfortable just-so-story:

[00:12:24]  Mentoring character is really, really important.   And so.... you know here's a story that I....I....I read about when I was raising my own sons.  Fifty years ago when NASA began recruiting competent leaders for their manned space program they discovered that boys who had worked on farms with their farms had the biggest advantages in coming of age, the best trades for adventurous leadership.  The strongest character traits.  They were most dependable, they were more dependable than other boys.   And why?  Mainly it was just because of that; they were working with their dads.  They were learning these things about daily work ethic and they applied it in their lives and it built character in their lives.  And so boys can really learn a lot about manhood and the proper way it should be defined from doing hard work, facing challenging problems, with their fathers or with other mentors on a day to day basis.

When Botkin says "fifty years ago", what decade is he placing himself in?   

If he's talking about today, he's discussing the recruitment of the 1978 Astronaut Class - that one he probably wants to forget about since it included - *gasp* - women and people of color.   Lazily scanning through the biographies of that class of astronauts I found that a lot of the astronauts lived in highly populated areas like cities where family farms are non-existent.   On the other hand, all of the astronauts had multiple advanced degrees in math or science.    Since the advanced degree requirement was included on the employment advertisements along with physical fitness, I suspect NASA found it more important than "grew up on farm".

If Botkin was talking fifty years before the 1990's or 1980's, he'd be talking about.....no one, actually. 

The Mercury Seven were put together in 1958.   

Well, let's pretend he was talking about the Mercury Seven because they are the type of white, clean-cut, all-American men that Botkin admires.   Of those seven men, only Deke Slayton grew up on a farm.    The other six men grew up in families where their fathers worked outside the home in white-collar or blue-collar occupations.   

You know, just like most kids do.  

And the job posting for the first set of astronauts included a maximum height, age limitations, a college degree requirement and that the candidate had finished test pilot school - but no requirement of where the kid grew up.

Yeah....don't ask Botkin for advice.   If you are worried about family income - don't buy a farm in hopes that your sons will have strong work ethic.   Instead, follow the mothers of the Mercury Seven most of whom worked outside the home.