Federalist Magazine Staff Annoyed that Other Outlets Publish the Down Side of Motherhood and Are Requesting Sunny Motherhood Propaganda Pieces – As If Conservatives Haven’t Pushed for Motherhood Enough? The Mind Boggles
I apologize if you’re actually a regular reader of this blog (do I have any regular readers?, I don’t know!) and if you get really tired of me repeating myself, but I never know who is reading whatever blog post I write (it may be their first visit), and I don’t want anyone to misunderstand where I’m coming from.
At first glance, most conservatives would probably confuse me for a nuclear family-hating, man-hating, feminist liberal, merely because I criticize other conservatives for their inaccurate, at times insensitive, or non-stop, abnormal and un-biblical obsession with promoting marriage, motherhood, and the nuclear family.
I’m a conservative, I am not a feminist, and I don’t hate marriage, parenthood, or the nuclear family.
But you damn skippy I am going to call out other conservatives when I see them over-hyping marriage, parenthood and families, and especially when they do so by insulting singles for being single or the childless for being childless (whether by choice or by circumstance).
I sure don’t support the vast majority of opinions and causes of liberals, feminists, and progressives, but occasionally, I concede they may have a legitimate point or concern on some topic or another.
I actually meant to blog about this (and a million other articles from other sources) a few months ago but didn’t get around to it at the time:
(Link): BuzzFeed Should Stop Publishing Only Negative Takes On Motherhood
The author, it says, is a “Karin Agness Lips,” which totally sounds like a made up name 😂. The piece was published on May 18, 2022.
Here are some excerpts (and of course, below these excerpts, I’ll state where I disagree):
(Link): BuzzFeed Should Stop Publishing Only Negative Takes On Motherhood
Stories about parental regret might get clicks, but BuzzFeed acting as a PR machine against motherhood might also influence people’s decision to become a parent.
by Karin Agness Lips
As BuzzFeed contemplates its future, the website should reconsider its approach to motherhood.
…In April, BuzzFeed ran an article headlined, “Mothers Are Revealing How They Realized They Regret Having Children And How They’re Coping Now, And They’re Such Nuanced And Valid Feelings.” The first mom the article quotes said, “I regret having children because of what’s going on in the world. I feel a SEVERE feeling of doom and anxiety when I think about her future. She will probably never be able to afford a house and struggle with debt, climate change, scarce resources, and inequality. I am truly terrified, and I feel so guilty. If I was childless today, I would 100% not have any children.”
This is such a pessimistic view of motherhood and society. Yet it is a view that is getting more attention.
… [The author goes on to cite famous persons who have expressed that they will only have one or two kids and no more.
She also cites statistics showing that more and more people are opting out of parenthood – while later in the article stating that more and more people supposedly want to have children – I don’t know how one squares that circle. Maybe she means to suggest a lot of people want to have kids but feel like they cannot afford them(??).]
… Yet very little of what we see elevated in popular culture focuses on the joy and satisfaction that nurturing children brings mothers also.
… It seems like popular culture spends more time promoting the “wine mom” narrative that women need alcohol to get through mothering and less time honoring women for the work they put into mothering. Just because caregiving can be tough doesn’t mean it is not worth our time, shouldn’t be done, or is bad.
[The author links to several articles at BuzzFeed by parents who say they regret having had children.]
…We get it, BuzzFeed wants its readers to know that not everyone is happy with her decision to have children. But BuzzFeed is doing more than this. It is promoting a narrative that conflicts with what Americans want.
A huge majority of Americans have or want children. Only 5 percent of American adults do not want children.
[The author surmises that perhaps women who are mothers who enjoy motherhood are simply not writing about the joys of motherhood, so that perceptions on the subject may be skewed, since online, we seem to be hearing more from people who admit to disliking being a parent or dislike aspects of parenthood.
The author ends her piece by expressing upset that there are so many “motherhood regret” essays being published and encouraging women who enjoy motherhood to start cranking out essays about how great motherhood is.]
— end excerpts —
Where the author states:
Stories about parental regret might get clicks, but BuzzFeed acting as a PR machine against motherhood might also influence people’s decision to become a parent.
— end —
This is clearly a double standard by this author, for most conservatives are, and have been for decades, acting as a “PR machine” in FAVOR OF motherhood to influence women to get married young and to have children.
That non-stop portrayal of motherhood or marriage as being a woman’s only or highest godly role or design in life, with an underlying, sometimes unspoken promise by conservatives, that motherhood and marriage will totally fulfill a woman and bring her purpose and identity, is precisely the reason that the ladies on the left have been pushing back against this for years, because those points are false.
Conservatives over-hyping motherhood, generally editing out the negatives of it, and shaming women from even considering opting out, or getting a career (in place of kids or in addition to kids) is, I think, precisely one reason many liberal women are printing essays the last decade pointing out the realities of motherhood, and those realities are not always positive or pretty.
For many years, conservatives have presented motherhood and marriage as being the only options for women.
There are many conservatives (in particular very conservative Christian ones) who don’t want young women to even consider going to college or getting a career.
Women who wanted to forgo children or who could not have any (due to infertility or not being able to find a husband and marry first), or women who wanted to have a career (as in a 9- to- 5 paying job) were insulted by a lot of conservatives, especially Christian ones, for not wanting to be a mother, or for wanting a career (outside the home) in addition to motherhood.
I’m a conservative, but I will call double standards or hypocrisy out where I see it, regardless if it’s coming from the right or the left.
It’s rather dishonest for any conservative author to act astonished that other sites or segments of culture may point out that motherhood isn’t always a fantasy or as rosy as so many conservatives depict it as being, and supposedly, to convince women to reconsider having children,
when every other conservative site I visit (and conservative programs and church sermons in the past I grew up seeing and hearing) existed to extol the wonders of motherhood, to convince women to marry and have a lot of children.
Both sides – liberal and conservative, secular and religious – offer up a steady stream of propaganda to women, but then both sides act like only the other side plays at this game. It’s laughable, and I’ve seen through it for years.
I’m not a progressive. I realize one goal of Marxism is to eliminate the Nuclear Family, and American progressives are happy to go along with that. I understand. I don’t agree with it. I am not anti-Nuclear Family, nor am I anti-motherhood.
But please – as a conservative woman who (Link): was raised gender complementarian (i.e., traditional gender roles, heavy on sexism, with Bible verses mis-applied to offer a thin pretense of biblical support), and who was raised as a Southern Baptist – I can say, and see, that editorials from the opposing side are needed.
I know I myself didn’t hear any, or much, of an opposing view when I was growing up in the 1980s, or at least not much balanced, moderate dissenting views.
I would’ve welcomed hearing from voices at that time by people who didn’t fully agree with conservative or Baptist views on women, marriage, and motherhood,
but, regarding dissenting views on marriage and motherhood, a lot of what I did hear at the time were either extremist, wacko feminist views,
or else inaccurate, caricatured views of what women liberals and feminists supposedly believed via male Baptist pastors or conservative radio hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, who of course weren’t going to honestly weigh and consider or present what non-bat-shit insane feminists had to say.
(Rush Limbaugh, and even now, conservative hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, usually only feature bat- shit- insane feminists, or crazy, far left feminist ideas on their shows,
except when either one interviews an anti-transgender- activist feminist, and only THEN will these conservative hosts find a non-wacko, sensible, liberal feminist on to discuss the problems with trans activism.)
Women face an inordinate amount of pressure, especially during the era I grew up in (1980s and college years in the 1990s), to get married and become mothers….
- This is so, even though the Bible states that singleness is to be preferred to marriage (1 Corinthians 7),
- even though Jesus of Nazareth never married nor had children, and
- even though Jesus states that placing biological family or spouse above him and his church was in error
(See (Link): Matthew 12: 46-50 and (Link): Matthew 10: 37,38 for more about how Jesus discouraged his followers from prioritizing biological family or spouse above devotion to God or above spiritual family, as today’s American conservatives tend to do.)
….in spite of all that, most religious conservatives continue to uphold marriage and parenting to an un-biblical degree, even in the year of 2022.
Women are shamed, guilt tripped, or pressured by conservatives to become mothers.
At times, secular and religious conservatives (Link): insult singleness or the state of (Link): being childless to promote marriage or parenthood, which is revolting and something Jesus of Nazareth never did.
In all my years of attending church services or watching church services on television, and out of the many Christian publications I read in the 1980s and 1990s, I’ve never seen a preacher or Christian author extol the wonders of singleness and celibacy.
Any time I hear relationships or a station of life spoken of fondly from the pulpit, it’s either about parenthood or marriage, never about singleness.
The author says:
… It seems like popular culture spends more time promoting the “wine mom” narrative that women need alcohol to get through mothering and less time honoring women for the work they put into mothering. Just because caregiving can be tough doesn’t mean it is not worth our time, shouldn’t be done, or is bad.
— end excerpt —
Do you know who spends a lot of time promoting “wine mom” narrative and “motherhood is so un-rewarding,” “motherhood is so under-appreciated and exhausting?” – Women who are mothers, that’s who; it’s not just secular culture that has a dislike for motherhood or sees problems with it.
It’s the mothers themselves who will admit (usually under a pen name) to the problems they have with motherhood.
If they write under their real name, they know they’ll face blow-back, because it’s taboo in American culture to admit to being less than thrilled with being a mother.
If women (usually conservative ones) (Link): aren’t busy writing their sunny, unrealistic, essays about how rewarding and beautiful motherhood is, they’re complaining and lamenting on other sites how tiring it is, and (Link): they write long essays begging and imploring their single, childless sisters- in- Christ to provide them with free baby-sitting so they can grab a nap.
If motherhood has a public relations problem, maybe it rests with actual motherhood and the women who are mothers who openly discuss the problems with it on their blogs and Facebook groups, and it’s not always or necessarily due from pro-abortion, anti-family liberal feminists.
Our culture has been consistently pro-motherhood and (Link): spits on women who deliberately choose not to have children (i.e., “childfree”).
There has been article after article and study after study showing that American culture treats childfree women, or women who aren’t thrilled with being mothers, with suspicion or contempt.
That more and more sites have actually been allowing women to openly and publicly discuss their regrets with motherhood, or of not even wanting to get pregnant in the first place, is actually balancing out years and years of excessive pro-natalism hype, put out there by secular culture and by conservatives.
The very end of the editorial ends with this:
Editor’s note: We welcome submissions about experiencing the joys and rising to the challenges of motherhood here at The Federalist. See submissions instructions here.
— end excerpt —
Maybe this is why within the span of just a month or two now The Federalist has been publishing more of their singles-shaming, childless-shaming editorials.
A few weeks ago, there was this Federalist “rah rah natalism, motherhood” essay (link to my rebuttal of it):
And this past week, there was this one (my rebuttal to it):
Because Federalist appears to be on an agenda to seek out more pro-parenthood propaganda from the public, my guess is, we’ll be seeing more and more of these things.
There is nothing wrong with a person choosing to become a parent.
But for years, and years, the dominant expectation in American culture, and especially from conservatives, was that all women wanted to be a mother one day, all women would become mothers, and they would love being a mother at all times.
All that has turned out to be false.
Not all women want to be mothers – and that’s okay.
But if women admit to that, to not wanting to have a child, they will be automatically thought of by most Americans as being weird, selfish, or it will be assumed that they are abortion-supporting, Democrat-voting, man-hating shrews – when they may in fact be a registered Republican, pro-life, conservative woman who just isn’t interested in having a baby.
Women should not be shamed or insulted for not wanting to have a baby.
The people at The Federalist really do not need to publish any more cheery, upbeat editorials about how super awesome motherhood is; women have already been inundated with such indoctrination for years and years, from secular culture, Christian culture, and probably their own families.
More such essays are not necessary, but I fear more are coming from The Federalist.
I don’t see any need for conservatives to be upset or angry with other adults choosing not to get married or not to have children. Let other people live their lives, and if they choose to live them without marriage or children, it’s not your place to lecture them into doing so.
I’ve seen a few conservatives argue that the number of tax payers are decreased and so forth as the birth rate declines, but I don’t think a main motivator for having children should be to increase a tax base, for goodness sake.
The Bible certainly doesn’t engage in a steady drum beat of, “you must marry and have children, you must marry and have children, God can only heal a nation if every one marries and has children!” That concept is just not in there.
More and more Americans are choosing to not to marry or have children, or some want to marry but cannot find a partner, and some of these single or childless or childfree people are conservatives. Not baby-hating liberals, but conservatives.
It’s a losing model for any conservative group, church, or organization to continually hype and promote marriage and parenthood, or to promote marriage and parenthood by insulting singles for being single or the childless for being childless.
Churches for years have been losing membership, and out of the ones that bother to notice that marriage is on the decline, they too wrongly assumed over a decade ago (when I began blogging here) that the way to get new members, or to get current single members married, was to “double down” on marriage and extol marriage in every other church service.
That approach had the opposite effect. It drove single and childless people away (author Julia Duin kind of addressed this in her book “Quitting Church.”)
Once churches began over-emphasizing marriage and parenthood, and continued to ignore singleness and continued to refuse to meet the needs of single adults, more and more singles stopped attending church.
Instead of churches meeting singles where they are, many pastors instead chose to shame them where they are presently (i.e., single, not married) and fault them for not having reached the pastor’s goal for them of getting married and having children. If conservative sites like The Federalist try this same approach, it will more than likely fail as well.
How about conservative sites like The Federalist start providing materials encouraging conservative singles in their singleness, and advising them on how they can get involved in their local politics while they are un-married and so forth, instead of badgering them into getting married and having a baby?
Maybe those conservative adult singles would love to get married, but they cannot meet anyone compatible; perhaps they want to have a baby but they are infertile – what good does it do to scream at them to go out and get married or to have a baby, when they cannot do one, or the other, or both?
Instructing adult singles on how to accomplish goals or participate positively in society or politics while single would be far, far more productive, helpful, and less insulting, insensitive, or patronizing, than these never-ending, “you’re terrible for being single and childless, run out immediately, marry the first man you see, and get pregnant and be a mother, motherhood is so great” editorials.
By the way, while the author at The Federalist laments the number of what she terms “motherhood regret” articles and interviews keep increasing, I bet she doesn’t have a problem with all the (Link): “transgender regret” articles that have been published the last year.
Most conservatives like “transgender regret” studies, interviews, and articles, because they work well to poke holes in the trans-propaganda put out by trans-activists.
(Link): video on You Tube: “I Hate Being A Mom” – Parental Regret Story – via Childfree Kimberly
Related Posts:
(Link): Woman Breaks Taboo as She Admits ‘Loathing’ Being a Mother – After Spending £100,000 to Have a Baby
(Link): Why Are Conservatives Forcing Mothers From Their Kids? by M. Walther
(Link): Unmarried and Childless Women Are the Happiest, Happiness Expert Claims (2019 Study)
(Link): Facebook’s motherhood challenge makes me want to punch my computer screen by F. Everett
(Link): Why We Thought Marriage Made Us Healthier, and Why We Were Wrong by Bella DePaulo
(Link): Stop Pressuring Women to Be Moms: It’s Insulting to Assume We All Want The Same Thing by R K Bussel
(Link): 30 Mothers Who Regret Giving Birth Share Why
(Link): I’m in My 40s, Child-Free and Happy. Why Won’t Anyone Believe Me? By Glynnis MacNicol
(Link): Family as “The” Backbone of Society? – It’s Not In The Bible
(Link): A Woman’s Fertility is Her Own Business, not Everyone Else’s by L. Bates
(Link): Why is the Childfree Singleton a Curiosity? by V. Blackburn
(Link): Why do we still have to justify the choice to be child-free? by H. Freeman
(Link): Family as “The” Backbone of Society? – It’s Not In The Bible
(Link): Study: Couples Without Children Have Happier Marriages / Study: Having Kids Ruins Your Life
(Link): American Romance Standards Are Changing as People Have Less Sex and Marriage Rates Drop
(Link): ‘Stop Nagging!’: Why China’s Young Adults Are Resisting Marriage and Babies
(Link): Do Married Couples Slight Their Family Members as Well as Their Friends? / “Greedy Marriages”
(Link): The Two Reasons Parents Regret Having Kids
(Link): Meet the People Who Won’t Have Sex Until They’re Sterilized
(Link): “I Regret Having Children” – Various Mothers Interviewed (via NY Post)
(Link): Parents Who Regret Having Children Speak Honestly About Why It Was A Huge Mistake
(Link): Motherhood Is Not A Woman’s Most Important Job by J. Wright
(Link): Women Are Having Fewer Babies Because They Have More Choices by Jill Filipovic
(Link): Sorry, but being a mother is not the most important job in the world by Catherine Deveny
(Link): Is The Church Failing Childless Women? by Diane Paddison
(Link): Don’t Judge Me, I’m Childless (from Today’s Christian Woman)
Christian Pundit 