Follow along at thefirstgensahm.substack.com and watch the full video on YouTube.com/classicallyabby 🧡

Do it. Have the big family. Devote your life to raising them well. This the dream and we are so lucky to be living it. ❤️

It's the phones. It's the phones for a hundred reasons. Here are a few: 1) Male consumption of porn reduces marriage (for like 10 reasons) 2) Because of time-wasting college kids and 20-somethings just socialize less, reducing marriage. 3) The dating apps ruin dating (for 10 reasons) 4) Social media gives us a false anthropology, which makes us too individualistic and too averse to connection and commitment. 5) The phones make us sad and make us hate ourselves. If we hate ourselves we don't want more of us.

I've talked about this for a long time. "Women working" has never been a new thing. The 1950s homemaker was an aberration. What is new is women working OUTSIDE the home for a different man. This was stuff generally only tolerated by the lower classes in the form of maids etc. Wives always did their part on the family farm or business historically. They had different jobs than the men, but they did more than raise kids. This is one of the reasons I've never been a big fan of the phrase "retiring your wife." Smart women get bored and want to do more than menial tasks to feel useful. It's much wiser for men to try to simply bring them back under their roof, leverage their mind and energy in more entrepreneurial ways for the family.

Happy 8th anniversary to the best husband, father, friend, and man I know! 3 kids and please God more in the future 🙏 Love this life we are building together, @RothThePatriot ❤️

“Enact the role of strong Jew, and you will become a strong Jew.” Jacob William Roth (@RothThePatriot), grew up in New York with a Jewish father and a mother who had a Reform conversion. He was a libertarian atheist with a very negative world view. He thought he knew it all. Then, he began to study the works of Thomas Sowell, Jordan Peterson, and other scholars who were not Jewish... and it ultimately led him back to Judaism. In college, Jacob was inspired by what he was learning and Judaism and decided to do a formal conversion. During the process, he met @classicallyabby, who grew up observant. They fell in love after spending time together on a road trip, and Jacob completed his conversion before they got married. Today, Jacob is a proud Orthodox Jew, husband, father, powerhouse attorney, and advocate for the Jewish community. He deals with antisemitism on a regular basis (his brother is Ben Shapiro, after all, and they target him and Ben's sister, Abby, constantly), but he isn't afraid to stand up for what he believes in. My conversation with Jacob was fascinating, enlightening, and inspiring. All the things! Take a listen to the full episode. Link below.

Don't tell me there hasn't been a war on femininity, just look at living rooms in the 1980s and 90s vs now. Women used to design lovely, cozy rooms that in no way looked like the workplace, museums or medical offices. Men were grateful, though they'd never pick these designs themselves. Now? Homes are supposed to look like sterile hellscapes that offer no escape, no nurturing comfort. Everything is flattened, it all looks the same and there's no unique style or special touch to any of it. That 3rd house? Could be a podcast set, a waiting room, but not the warm comfort women used to be proud to put together.

Had the best Mother's Day ever! Breakfast with the family, then pedicure and shopping with the baby while Daddy took the older two to buy presents, then swimming as a family and dinner with my parents. What a perfect way to celebrate! Happy Mother's Day! ❤️

Can we please for the love of God and all that is holy (literally) stop talking about what grown women want and start talking about what children need? Anytime we have a discussion about motherhood, it’s about the wants of an adult woman and never about the needs of children.

This is so true and nobody talks about it honestly. Breastfeeding hurts in the first two weeks for most women, even with a perfect latch. Your nipples are not used to that level of friction and suction and they need time to toughen up. I have heard moms with 4 kids say it still hurts at the beginning with every single baby and then goes away. The standard advice that "breastfeeding should never hurt if the latch is correct" makes women think something is wrong when the pain is actually a normal part of the adjustment. Yes, a bad latch can cause pain. But so can a brand new nipple being used 10 times a day for the first time. Those are two very different things and they get lumped together in a way that confuses new moms and sometimes causes them to give up early. It gets better. Usually by week 2 or 3 the pain fades. Push through those first couple weeks if you can.

I was out with my three kids (4, 2.5, and 8 months) this morning eating breakfast and reading books aloud to them. Three separate people came up to us to compliment our family and the fact that we were reading aloud together. Intentional parenting is the best way to put a positive image of large families in the world. P.S. I don't think 3 kids is a large family. But it's a good start. P.P.S. Not every morning looks perfect, even as intentional parents. But it's definitely more frequent when you put in the effort.

Lol that this has become a discussion of the problem with libraries becoming woke. Totally fair. My point was that there are parents who won't bring their children to the library because their kids are too wild, and if you can't bring your kids to civilized places (even for a short while) maybe you need to work on discipline.

I believe that being able to bring your children to the library (where there are toys and activities available) is a litmus test for your parenting.

For the women concerned about their bodies changing after babies and for the women saying it won't change at all: I have had three babies. I have stretch marks and loose skin across my belly, but I am not over my pre-pregnancy weight. Is my body unmarred? No. Does it matter? Literally not one iota. I carried three humans and nourished them using only my body. The only person who will see what my body looks like now is the man who is helping raise these precious children. And you know what? We want more. Because my body being strong and healthy and fit has always mattered more than stretch marks and loose skin. But sometimes it takes having babies to realize that.

Motherhood is a full-time job. Especially with children under five. Even more so with babies under two. It requires your attention 24/7 no matter how badly people want this not to be the case. If you want to choose your job and outsource motherhood, just be honest about it.

Look, I am old-fashioned when it comes to Passover. We cook with matzah meal. This almond flour nonsense is not my speed. 😂

If you've never had a kid it's almost impossible to understand this, but there is nothing you can offer me that's better than pushing my three year old daughter in a swing at the park just before lunchtime and then swinging through the McDonalds drive thru to grab a Happy Meal and then stopping at the gas station to get a slurpee and some M&Ms, because why not, and pretending to race the other cars on the way home just to make her laugh and all the while she's asking questions about everything she sees and I'm smiling to myself because it's forcing me to come to terms with the fact I don't know how to explain even the most basic fundamentals of life. And I like that. I like feeling like the world still contains infinitudes as of yet unknown to me. I used to think it was cope when parents talked about this, because I was stupid and I wanted to enjoy my parties and my drugs and my affairs and my long nights out and my wine and my time to myself and my melodramatic crying fits and my hallucinations and my self-destructive spirals and the fact I had nobody to answer to. The happiness you get from raising a child is not the cheap dopamine hit of an easy pleasure, bought and paid for. It's the kind of happiness that you only get from choosing to undertake an adventure, and the colossal responsibility that comes with it, so that in moments stripped away, inch by inch, the new world you decided to brave and explore is revealed to you.

I was driving my car today with just my baby girl (my boys were on a date with their daddy and grandpa) and even though I enjoy the quiet, it was disconcerting to look in the rear view mirror and see two empty carseats reflected back at me.

I spoke with a lovely mom at the park today with one 3.5-year-old child. She was sharing with me that she wanted a second but felt nervous about having another baby, messing with her routines and schedules, and how it would change things. I think every mother feels nervous to have a second baby. But it got me to thinking. I have always wanted a large family, so the idea of having more children was never negotiable to me. No matter how difficult the transition might be, I knew that having more was part and parcel of the family life I wanted. Even if I was nervous, it would never have stopped me from having more. But it must be so difficult for women today who are debating having any children at all, let alone two. There's not a recognition that parenthood is supposed to be consuming and that happy chaos is better than structured routines. So the question of adding another child is really overwhelming and might prevent them from having another baby. Make having lots of babies the norm, and then people won't be deterred by their fears!

The correct answer is that you should bring your loud and do your best to make him be less loud.

It’s not just nostalgia. This was our childhood and it’s gone now. As a parent you can, through great effort, create the conditions for some version of this for your own children today. But the problem is that most of the other kids are screen addicted zombies who don’t really want to run around outside until the streetlights turn on. So an energetic, free spirited kid who’d rather climb a tree than stare at a screen ends up being kind of isolated. 30 years ago he’d have been the most popular kid in the neighborhood. Now the other kids in the neighborhood are home with the screen and he’s climbing the tree by himself.