Twenty years ago, I wrote my first book about why women cant have it all, or at least all at once, despite what the culture tells them. (Hint: Its because no one, male or female, can perform two full-time jobs simultaneously without the bottom falling out.)
At the time, the so-called Mommy Wars were raging. Women everywhere whod been sold a bill of goods by their feminist mothers and mentors were either lamenting the futility of being able to successfully work full-time outside the home while maintaining a healthy marriage and family life, or they were defending their choice to work full-time by insisting children do fine in round-the-clock substitute care.
Since then, the messages to women about how to have a happy lifeas it relates to love and sex, work and familyhave merely served to make women miserable. Not only are they unhappier than their mothers and grandmothers ever were, theyre significantly more stressed out; much more so than men.
None of this has done anything to help men and women find their way to one another. Dating in America is all but dead, and marriage is at an all-time low. While theres more than one reason for this sad state of affairs, at the heart of it are the lies feminists have been telling for years. Here are four, in no particular order.
It started with a seemingly comical phrase Gloria Steinem didnt coin but repeatedly used during the height of the 1960s feminist movement: A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Its still alive and well today, whether its Jennifer Aniston talking about how women dont have to fiddle with a man to have that child or Emma Watson talking about self-partnering. Over time, as women began to make their own money and take advantage of the newfound birth control pill, they came to believe that women dont need men.
They were wrong. Biologically, women are wired to depend on menregardless of much life has changed. Most women still want to be mothers, and when they do they become vulnerable. Even today, women know instinctively that they will ultimately need a man if they want to have a family and if they want the option of being home at all, if only for a period of time.
Indeed, research shows that what matters most to womeneven to those who are economically independentis knowing they have a man on whom they can rely. Its the feeling of being safe and in good handsyes, even financiallythat matters most. That is whats known as hypergamy, and it is alive and well in 2019.
The precise moment in history when the relationship between the sexes took a nosedive is when women began to have sex like a mancasually, with no strings attachedunder the guise that women are no different from men and are thus just as capable of having casual sex. Consider this ridiculous Bustle article asserting, based on a dubious study, that men and women are now equally likely to pursue a hookup if approached the right way.
From college campuses to our nations boardrooms, many women today have learned to pursue sex the way men often do: no commitment necessary. And theyre getting burned.
If theres anything that proves this in spades, its the so-called campus rape crisis and the excesses of Me Too. For if it were true that women are just like men in their ability to disentangle sex and emotion, why would campus flings and office dalliances become a cause for the courts rather than a welcome ride?
Its not just our sexuality that confirms the disparate natures of women and men. Parenting proves it in spades. Once a baby arrives, a womans nurturing gene almost always kicks in. Providing for her child emotionally is her first instinct, which is why going back to work so soon is heart-wrenching for mothers.
A fathers reaction is different: his first instinct is to support the family financially. It is not his sole contribution, but its first on his list. Simply put, that men and women may both becapableof performing identical tasks doesnt mean they want to do them with equal fervor. Desire matters.
The biological clock may be politically inconvenient, but that doesnt make it any less real. The ideal age for a woman to get pregnant is 25, noted Gillian Lockwood, medical director at the Midland Fertility Clinic in the U.K., recently: The bleak reality is that the chance of IVF working with your own eggs once you are 40 is absolutely abysmalIn what other branch of medicine would we let, yet alone encourage, patients to pay for an elective operation with a less than five percent chance of working?
Because of this, it stands to reason that men can postpone marriage longer than women can. But we dont tell women this. Instead, we pretend they can map out their lives with career at the center, as men do, as though they wont hit a point in which their ability to conceive will invariably clash with a career. Articles abound with the goal to obscure the biological reality that its easier for women to have babies in their twenties and early thirties.
We lie to women, in other words, to further a political agenda. In doing so, feminists get what they wantfor women to reject maternal desire and to instead produce in the marketplacebut women dont.
Indeed, after decades of following the cultural script, women can often no longer find husbands. Or they cant have babies. Or if they do get married and have babies, they cant stay home with them because they mapped out a life that supported an entirely different goal.
Of all the lies feminists tell, the idea that career success is more fulfilling than marriage and family is by far the greatest. It is almost impossible to convey the depth of this lie, for it too began in the 1960s, this time with Betty Friedans insistence that being a wife and mother is akin to being in a comfortable concentration camp. Since that time, American women have been walloped with a steady diet of words and images that drive Friedans argument home.
Humans are pack animals: we need to feel part of the group to feel good about ourselves. Some of us are content to stand apart from the crowd, but most are not. Ergo, cultural messages matter.
Women are surprised to discover that work isnt nearly as satisfying as they were led to believe.
Since mothering is no longer revered or understood to be something a woman would want to do, let alone should do, women are surprised to discover how heart-wrenching it is to leave their babies and return to work. Theyre surprised to discover that work isnt nearly as satisfying as they were led to believe.
This same sense of unease is felt by single women who cant find a man with whom to settle down. Careers arent fulfilling at all, it turns out, if you wind up in bed at night alone.
Too many women map out their lives with work at the center and eventually wish they hadnt. Sadly, my inbox is loaded with emails from women who tell me they wished someone had told them this sooner.
So, here I am saying it as loudly as I can. Women have been lied to for years, and thats why theyre so unhappy. There is only one solution. Flip your prioritiesput love and family, not work, at the centerand you will win in the game of life. Thats what I did, and it made all the difference.
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4 Feminist Lies That Are Making Women Miserable - The Federalist
