Man of the House by C.R. Wiley 

The book is Man of the House by C.R. Wiley. It was originally published in 2017 by Resource Publication. I read the 2017 paperback edition. I read it in August of 2023.  

The title is a play on the common phrase “man of the house” in a “Lord of the manor, king of my castle” kind of way. What it actually means in the context of this book is that men should be men of the house, that is from the house. We are supposed to be chiefly concerned with the health and productivity of our household.  

I read this because I want to read all of Wiley’s books. He only has three so far. I read his second book The Household and the War for the Cosmos, and it absolutely blew my mind. Man of the House is Wiley’s first book.  

Wiley says a lot in this book. He promotes the concept of a productive household. He goes through the history of households and how for thousands of years, the household was the source of most productivity.  

We used to have farms, or trade shops at our homes. The home was the primary source of food production, moneymaking, clothes making, education, worship, and medical care. But then after the industrial revolution we started exporting all the most important productive aspects of a household.  

Work, education, and medicine left the home and so did the family.  

The mothers were the last to leave the home. With husband at the factory or office, and the kids at the local public school, the housewife became desperate and depressed. There are so many times you can clean the house in a week. This led to feminism and the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s and all other social and cultural rot.  

Virtually all problems we have in the world today can be traced back to the devaluing of the home.  

My main takeaway from this book is that virtually all problems we have in the world today can be traced back to the devaluing of the household after the industrial revolution.  

There were many great things that have come with advancements in industry and technology, but there are things we did not need to surrender and we should recover. We need to recover the productive household.  

This book made me think about my job. I’m currently working for USAA in a cubicle, and I feel unproductive most of the time. I’m just sending emails and making reports on people’s work. I hire and fire contractors. I train them in procurement contracts.  

I see an overall productivity for USAA and I think USAA is a valuable company. Banking and insurance are valuable services for people. I get it. But on a day-to-day level. I feel like I’m just clicking keys.  

Wiley talks a lot about freedom. He says you’re either an employee or an owner. And only owners have real freedom. I feel that a lot.  

“Employees tend to believe in safe, secure jobs, with benefits. Employers know that jobs like this do not exist. Employees usually discover this when they’ve been downsized, or their jobs are outsourced, or they have been replaced by machines.” (p34) 

With the advancements in AI, I really feel like my job won’t exist in like 10 years. And I’m at the mercy of market changes and layoffs. I have very little control over my financial situation. I would like to be an owner someday. I just don’t know how to do that.  

Wiley is a good writer. He’s clear and straight to the point. Nothing was confusing or convoluted.  

I learned a lot from this book. It was very similar to The Household and the War for the Cosmos but it had more practical advice as far as developing productive property.  

I’d recommend this to every Christian man. We need to bring back economy and productivity to the household. Wives need to stay home and homeschool the kids. Men need to find some type of job they can do from home. The home needs to be the primary source of valuable and meaningful work again.  

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Notable Quotables 

husband-which means house-bound-hus for house, and bund for bound. And here—in the man’s new title—we see how one thing leads to another. Marriage makes shelter; it establishes a household. (p7) 

A household functions within a larger political body in the same way a leaf relates to a tree. We can’t have trees without leaves. If a tree were to reject its leaves, you would have a sick tree, and before long a dead one. Likewise, a household is the most basic community of all; and larger communities depend on them in many ways. (p15) 

Since political communities must have heads, households must have them too. 

We don’t think of households this way today because we tend to think that people belong primarily to themselves. We imagine individuals as self-contained worlds. And in a universe like that, a head of house can only seem like some alien planet, and every attempt to justify his authority just looks like one world attempting to pull other worlds into a tyrannical orbit. (p15) 

There was a time when husbands and 

wives didn’t work for faceless corporations-they worked for each other and 

with each other. 

That’s because the work of keeping house in those days was the same thing as an economic livelihood. 

The word economy tells the tale. Like every word, it has a history-it is derived from two Greek words: oikos, meaning house-and nomos, meaning law. (p19) 

We don’t think of our households as centers of productive work. That’s because the economy has largely moved out of the house. During the Industrial Revolution steady work in factories replaced the home economy and many people were forced to leave home to make a living. In the process the household was reduced to what we think of today—a haven in a heartless world—a place to sleep and eat and maybe watch television. (p31) 

Employees tend to believe in safe, secure jobs, with benefits. Employers know that jobs like this do not exist. Employees usually discover this when they’ve been downsized, or their jobs are outsourced, or they have been replaced by machines. (p34) 

Many employees seem to follow this advice: Make yourself indispensable, then 

your employer won’t be able to let you go. Becoming indispensable is a pretty amazing accomplishment. It calls for long hours and genuine talent. My thought is, if you really have that much energy and ability, why not go into business for yourself? (p43) 

(A typical homeschool outperforms the typical public school academically. And usually a homeschool is run by a mom without a degree, in her spare time, using mail order curricula. What does that say for social engineering?) (p46) 

When it comes to governing a household, while love and reason are certainly important, what you really need more than anything else is justice. (p68) 

Karl Marx is infamous for sacrificing equity for the sake of equality. Here’s his formula: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. I hope you see the problem here if equity is hard to administer, what can be done about need? Who defines that? (p73) 

When buddy-dad befriends his kids he’s actually abdicating fatherhood, at least temporarily. It is usually an unconscious decision, and sometimes he comes to regret it, usually when discipline is called for. Often, that’s when buddy-dad realizes that no one takes him seriously. (p76) 

academic achievement for women failing to translate into achievement elsewhere in society. But there is only a modest relationship between a good grade-point average and economic success. Students who make their teachers happy do so by excelling in a highly controlled environment. They’re neat and prompt and they properly cite their sources, among other things. So long as they stay in school, this works great. But entrepreneurs really don’t care about any of those things. Now an entrepreneur may want those things in his employees -but that’s why they work for him and not the other way around. Generally PhDs make great administrative assistants.  

What does this have to do with gravitas? Boiled down gravitas starts with, “Who needs you?” And unless you can say it and really mean it, you have no gravitas. (p81) 

Historically, women have shouldered the burdens for these things [elder care and childcare]. Don’t be fooled though, even though we now farm these things out to the state, women still do most of the work-they just don’t do it from home or for people they love. And women are likely to continue doing most of this work (unless women are replaced by robots). 

One of the ways our society shames women into taking these services out of the house and into the “workplace” is by equating a paycheck with real work. The implication is that work done for love is less significant than work done for money. Fortunately an increasing number of women have learned through bitter experience the meaning of wage slavery. (p110) 

promoting goodness itself?  

Yes, that institution is the Church. This may rub you the wrong way; you may wish to enlarge the tent to include humanitarian institutions that do things like feed the hungry or respond to natural disasters. While I am all for those things, they’re one step away from what I’m getting at. Those are for good works, but they are not goodness itself. (p122) 

Sunday schools and youth groups have their places, but they can go too far, replacing rather than supplementing what should be taught at home. (p123) 

whom your children marry is your business. It isn’t solely your business, but you deserve a say, for the good of your children, and for your own good. (p132) 

A friend once said to me, “You shouldn’t hire someone until you have first had to fire someone.” It wasn’t bravado. It was a little dose of reality. What he was getting at is this: If you know what would cause you to fire someone, you know what to screen for before you hire someone. (p132)