Category: Parental Rights/ Parenting

Very few people, if any, are telling young women that they must have big families. We do hear constant warnings about how unfathomably hard and expensive children are and how children limit your freedom, your fun, and your time with your spouse. On the flip side, we also hear constant chatter about how women can balance career and family if they truly want to. Are we not allowed to hear about the women, like my mother, who defied the world and raised a clan at home?

Parenthood is absolutely hard at times, and we should acknowledge that. Postpartum mental health struggles are real and beginning to get much more serious and merited attention. I struggled with both postpartum anxiety and depression on more than one occasion.

The American conversation about family has become increasingly cultural. We argue about gender roles in online forums, warn of a male loneliness epidemic, and question whether ambition and motherhood can coexist. Social media influencers like Hannah Neeleman and Nara Smith, whose carefully curated domestic lives have sparked conversations about femininity, work, and power, have become symbols in broader arguments about what modern womanhood should look like.