They say things like, “I think women get to have it all: A career,” on the internet. An instruction. A contented union. As well as kids. And: “Women—you are strong enough to succeed in your career and as a mother.” You are not required to select one. Additionally, “having children does not require you to put your career on hold.”
However, they are not liberal influencers, the girlboss leader of a progressive nonprofit, or former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg. Abby Johnson, the founder of the anti-abortion group And Then There Were None; Kristan Hawkins, the president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America; and Simone and Malcolm Collins, a married couple who operate a nonprofit in the conservative-leaning pronatalist movement that encourages Americans to have more children, are the sources of those quotes on social media. (Simone also made a recent Republican run for office.) They all argue that women have very few choices between establishing a successful career and having children.
There are several reasons why this argument, coming from these voices, is unexpected. Sandberg, a well-known Democrat, popularized the notion that mothers should “lean in” to demanding jobs in 2013, and hordes of liberal career women adopted it. Sandberg and leaning in were viewed negatively within a few years. Many mothers chose to lean out, quit quietly, or rage instead of giving in to the pressure to be everything to everyone. Particularly from conservative-leaning women, who generally did not accept this message when Sandberg was delivering it, a cheerful lean-in renaissance is surprising.
Although it has long been a liberal boogeyman, the idea that conservatives want to trap women at home has some truth to it. In the past, conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and J. D. Vance have maintained that women should prioritize motherhood over paid employment. This assertion is still made by some conservatives: Charles Haywood, a far-right businessman, told audiences at a 2023 pronatalism conference that “generally, women should not have careers.” Conservative podcast host Beth Stuckey once told my coworker Elaine Godfrey that women should prioritize their families over any professional endeavors, such as a “crocheting business” or the like. According to Ben Shapiro, a conservative author and podcaster, girls are distressed because society has told them that they don’t have to “aspire to bear and rear children or make preparations to build a home.” Rather, we have informed them that they can “run from their own biology” by seeking “more work hours.”
Hawkins, on the other hand, once shared a picture of her family—which includes four kids—as evidence that women can “do both: Have a career & be a mother.” Hawkins claimed that the notion that “you need to end a child’s life”—a reference to having an abortion—”to have the career you want” is untrue, citing a photo of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt holding her infant son at work. “It’s terrible to be telling young women that having kids is the worst thing you can do for your career,” a female attendee at a recent pronatalist convention told a reporter for the New York Times. “I’m really offended by the modern-day misogyny that says you can’t have a career and family, so pick career,” said Kristi Hamrick, a four-time mother and vice president of Students for Life of America. The misogyny of the turn of the century, which holds that you cannot have a career and a home, is the same as this one.
The women I interviewed who make this claim were frustrated by conservatives who push women to focus entirely on taking care of the home and raising their children. According to Hawkins, she disapproves of what she refers to as “tradwife stuff”—stay-at-home wives who upload videos of themselves doing things like grinding their own flour—because “that’s not financially possible for the majority of people.” Hawkins stated that her husband homeschools their children and that she has always worked a full-time job. “This messaging is coming across like, ‘You’re either an evil feminist career woman, or you’re a mother,'” she said, particularly in the right wing these days. “What about women who want to do both of those things?” I ask myself. According to Johnson, who has eight kids, “this tradwife movement has been very loud in recent years.” I also dislike it. It’s not helpful, in my opinion. It seems somewhat reductionist to me. Like, “You are only here to breed, women.” At events, she has heard conservative male speakers disparagingly refer to people as “boss babes.” She questioned, “What’s wrong with being a boss?”
Simone Collins, who manages her family’s nonprofit and works in private equity, also challenged conventional ideas about women and labor. She told me that in order to raise me, her mother “basically put her entire life on hold.” Collins “didn’t have anything else to live for and got really depressed after she was grown, and that’s terrifying to me.”
Collins, a mother of four, now wants to set an example for her daughters by demonstrating that having children and putting in a lot of effort at work are commonplace. She informed me that she works every day from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Her family, in contrast to some of the other women I spoke with, depends on outside child care because their tenants pay for it. She stated, “I’m just not the type of person who can sit at home and only focus on kids.”
Many of these women hold progressive family policy beliefs. Johnson told me, “I believe that the lack of federal parental leave is a huge harm to society.” (This is consistent with Republican voters’ increasing belief that the government ought to provide more assistance to working parents.) The significance of remote work for working mothers was mentioned by every woman I spoke with, and it is at the very least liberally coded. Despite this, none of them are typically regarded as progressive. During our discussion, Hawkins attacked feminists of the 1970s and 1980s; Hamrick called the idea of women working “very biblical,” citing the story of a “wife of noble character” who “makes linen garments and sells them” in Proverbs 31. Johnson has advocated for “head-of-household voting,” which would allow a husband to vote on behalf of his wife.
However, the lean-in argument is gaining traction among some of these women, perhaps as a practical calculation that encouraging women to put their careers or children first won’t increase fertility or encourage women to forgo abortion. Women are more likely than men to attend college, and while women’s labor force participation is still increasing, men’s has plateaued. Compared to the 1970s, only around 25% of mothers in two-parent households remain at home while their husband works. Almost 50% of mothers provide for their families. Republican and Democratic mothers work outside the home at comparable rates, despite potential differences in their ideals. Young women today are likely to work—and want to work. Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who focuses on family policy and has four children, told me that a more patriarchal, Leave It to Beaver-style approach to pronatalism is simply not going to work. (His wife is a tenure-track professor, and he works part-time.)
It appears that recognizing that few families can make ends meet on one income is necessary to encourage Americans to have children. Collins informed me that everyone must work. “They won’t have any more community members if they make it seem like you are not a conservative Christian or that you are not a part of our community if you have a working mother, since everyone needs a job these days.”
However, some of these women might be exaggerating their case in their well-meaning attempt to support mothers’ professional goals. (Collins told me that she hasn’t given up her job “even a little bit” for her children.) Many of them have set up their lives in ways that many other working mothers do not have access to. All of the people I talked to work from home, something that many women wish they could do but are unable to do. When her children were young, Hamrick worked part-time, something that most working mothers would like to do but that very few can do because part-time jobs typically don’t pay well. All of the women I interviewed hold senior positions at companies that provide a degree of flexibility that, for example, teachers or nurses do not. (And Then There Were None’s Johnson permits her staff to take midday naps.) Additionally, all of them have incredibly helpful partners, some of whom are not employed outside the home.
The problem is that having children can seriously harm a woman’s career. Despite declining over time and varying according to a woman’s age and occupation, the “motherhood penalty” on wages appears to persist in the short term. In other words, women typically earn less money right after having children, even though their income may eventually increase. This can be due to a variety of factors, such as reducing their work hours, accepting more flexible, lower-paying jobs, or having discriminatory bosses. According to a recent large study, working women’s income typically drops by half after having children, and they experience depression for at least six years. After giving birth, even women who are the family’s primary provider see a decline in their income. Compared to women without children, hiring managers are less likely to hire mothers, and many pay them less. Additionally, women who have children may steer clear of or avoid “greedy” jobs, also known as high-paying white-collar jobs, which often require workers to stay up late, long after daycare centers have closed.
There is undoubtedly a trade-off. Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, an economist from the Catholic University of America and mother of eight children, told me, “It’s enormous.” “To deny it, you must be blind.” “I would have done a lot more professionally if I didn’t have children,” she continued. “I’m happy with this trade-off,” she added.
The others I interviewed, who had previously expressed unqualified positivity, admitted some compromises between career and motherhood when pressed. Collins thinks that the sacrifices ought to be made at home: She told me that if people are less picky about the parenting aspect, it is possible to work hard and raise children. “The house is cleaner after I spend an afternoon with the children. The children behave themselves well. They are fed. Everybody is dressed.” “They appear well-kept,” she informed me. “The children are naked and have candy smudges all over their faces when I return home after Malcolm has spent the afternoon with them.” She claimed that many women reduce their work hours to take care of their children because they don’t like this more anarchic form of “dad parenting.” “I believe women would feel more at ease not leaning out if we changed that and made it more acceptable to have children who are parented more haphazardly or in a more laid-back manner,” she stated.
Johnson expressed some remorse for missing important times with her children, such as seeing some of them take their first steps, in order to maintain her hectic travel schedule. “I am a better mom because I am not at home with my children 24 hours a day,” she said in spite of this. Women “have this feminine genius within all of us that I believe is essential in the workplace,” she continued.
Others claimed that they had made concessions at work. For example, Hamrick claimed that her career had “ebbed and flowed” and that she had worked part-time for years. According to Hawkins, she frequently advises young ladies that having a full-time job and being a mother “does require sacrifice.”
The disadvantages of not having children, however, seemed to worry the women I talked to the most. They want more people to not regret passing up the opportunity to have children in order to prioritize their career, and they want to make it easier for women to have children without sacrificing their careers. They argued that young women were misguided to avoid having children since there is no substitute for being a mother. Hawkins pointed out that “the best thing about being a mom is becoming a grandma.” Hamrick said, “When you have a child, it opens you up to a community that you didn’t have before.”
At the very least, the women I interviewed do not view the culture wars surrounding women, motherhood, and careers as binary choices: either career or children. They aim to move beyond the conflicts that pit mothers against career women or progressive against conservative ideals. They want women to understand that they are deserving of better support, better policies, and more respect, no matter what path they choose.
