The Modern Woman Narrative
By Renee Rasmussen
Sometimes I wish I was a man.
It doesn't happen often and usually only on a walk home in the dark, but when the thought does appear outside of this safety context, it is centered on decisions and the future.
As modern women, we are told we can do anything. We are told we can be STEM majors, or become the next big lawyer, or practice medicine. So, we apply to universities, get internships, and work hard to make the women who came before us proud.
Ultimately, women are told we can do anything a man can do, so there should be no reason for my first sentence. There should, in essence, be no reason for me to at times wish I was a man.
Yet, somewhere along the way, some women realize a desire for something that wasn’t on the list when we were young: motherhood and marriage. Consequently, we then look around and have a crisis quickly realizing there’s no degree, no internship, no piece of paper that can give us the qualifications, training, or prestige to complete this task.
There is a tension that appears with this realization. When a woman begins to see the holes in the “power woman” narrative she begins to realize that she has only been fed half the story. Women are slowly realizing that being told it is possible to do anything is not real empowerment, but rather another way to control and categorize women.
In articles such as “Hustle Culture Will Destroy Your Life If You’re Not Careful” and “Why I Didn't Fit Into the Corporate Feminism Mold" Evie, a women’s magazine focused on bringing beauty and truth to women’s media, laments about the modern narrative given to women surrounded by trends such as #girlboss and #bossbabe because research is showing that these girl bosses may actually be more depressed than the rest of the population.
A 2020 Pew Research study states that over 50% of liberal, white women under 30 have a mental health issue. Carrie Gress, Catholic author of Theology of the Home, writes about this exact issue facing women in our society in her article titled “Why The Cultural Assault On Natural Womanhood Robs Women Of Fulfillment”:
“Over the decades, despite the bright feminist promises, the sad decline of health and happiness among women continues. Women continue to chase to the ends of the earth any trend that promises happiness, yet we continue to reject the very things we are made for.”
The real tension comes with the fact that we have been told we can be anything, without being told of the reality of what that means, and unfortunately, motherhood has become an unacceptable--or at least, inadequate--answer to the question.
The “you can be anything” narrative seems only to apply to things our society deems useful or productive. We measure success by worldly standards of wealth, prestige, awards, etc., and tell women this is what they should desire.
Gress, again, writes on this in an article titled “Why Don’t We Tell Women What’s Making Them Miserable”:
But most American women with money, degrees, or connections will never hear that our culturally prescribed feminist lifestyle is the source of their unhappiness, struggles, and feeling of emptiness. It seems that we just allow women to free-fall into truly awful states, without even so much as the quickly spoken warnings of side effects, required for pharmaceutical commercials.
Ironically instead of explaining to women the real “side effects” their decisions can have on their future, society tells women that not having a desire for these things (career, money, degrees) means that they are useless and a disappointment to society as a whole. They do not fit the categories, they do not stay inside the box, and therefore are not helpful to the “empowered” woman agenda.
Articles such as “‘Tradwives’: the new trend for submissive women has a dark heart and history” “The Housewives of White Supremacy” and “The Working Mom vs. Stay at Home Mom Debate” to name a few, use obviously negative rhetoric to frame stay-at-home moms, and housewives, as women with a political right-wing agenda, or simply women who are unable to fulfill their true potential.
For example in the article “The Working Mom vs. Stay at Home Mom Debate” the author says:
“We became working women with careers and goals and desires for life besides just groveling to a husband’s needs and carrying for kids all day!”
But when discussing why women may choose to become stay at home mothers, the author writes:
“When we have the world of options available to us (when women of the past didn’t) why would people choose to stay at home, do housework all day, and be the sole caregivers?”
Therefore, women can be anything without judgment, unless they choose to be “only” a mother and wife. In our modern society we have forced women to make a choice without even giving them all the information.
Many women are prescribed birth control by doctors without ever being told the long term side effects it can have. So much of modern media attempts to push aside the reality that having children gets exponentially harder for women at 30, and then even more difficult for them at 35. Instead, women are told to keep climbing the ladder of worldly success to find happiness and fulfillment, when (as Pew Research has proven) this can actually lead to more depression.
The one fact both sides (working and stay-at-home) women can agree on is that women are in crisis. We may not agree on the reasons but the fact remains the same. Women are struggling to find ways they can be “useful” to society, running to material things that the modern feminist narrative has told them to, and instead of feeling useful they are feeling depressed.
If the question is can women have both family and career? The answer is yes. Carrie Gress for example is a full time author as well as a wife and mother. But that question is old and tired. Women know they can do both, the fact is more and more women are realizing they simply do not want to.
While women are being told they can do anything, it is cast aside that women can do the one thing a man will never be able to do: carry and birth children. This naturally will force women to make choices differently than men, but this does not mean that women should rebel against this. Research is proving that women are actually happier when they embrace this fact.
It is a problem of our modern culture to only see success as a form of productivity, therefore encouraging a new generation to view their self-worth only through their worldly success. When success becomes a race to collect the most material things, unmeasurable things such as motherhood become difficult for society to understand.
The truth is motherhood is work that the world does not reward in the same way a corporate job might reward a good project. We have lost the respect for the home and consequently lost respect for the mother who nurtures it, but this does not mean that women should succumb to the #bossbabe mindset.
The solution to so much of modern strife and anxiety is to regain respect for the home, and to respect the women who are working tirelessly to nurture the next generation.
