Panic over women with careers

Republicans are rethinking feminism.

Some are speaking out, worried that American men aren't really the "head of household" anymore, and that White American women aren't having babies.

Women are choosing school and a career instead of home-making. Yikes!

Father Knows Best: Six seasons, 1954-1960. Make America Great Again.

The overpopulation problem apparently solved itself in the rich, developed world. In modern prosperous countries, women got an education and entered the workforce. Contraception became reliable, available, and inexpensive. Educated women thought of themselves as citizens and full partners in their country's economic life, not primarily as child-bearers and homemakers for a male head-of-the family. Women got liberated.

Jennifer Angelo retired after a long career as an attorney for the U.S. Postal Service. She was surprised to encounter a blunt presentation of a sentiment that is growing quietly within the GOP. JD Vance had voiced it. Christian supporters of Trump are voicing it. Charlie Kirk said it bluntly: women should find a husband. Leadership is for men -- and he said it at a leadership conference for young women. Say, what!? Jennifer Angelo sent me her reaction.

Angelo, in student days and now:

Guest Post by Jennifer Angelo.

At the Young Women’s Leadership Summit hosted by conservative group Turning Point USA last week, Turning Point President Charlie Kirk said college was a “scam,” evidently because it costs too much and doesn’t prepare students for employment. During the subsequent Q & A, a fourteen-year-old high school freshman told him she wanted to go to college to become a political journalist and asked him to talk more about the pros and cons of college. Kirk’s response was astonishing. First, he asked how many of the young women there had the “top priority” of getting married and having children. Some number of them raised their hands. Then he said:

Interestingly, I think there is an argument to bring back the MRS. degree. Just be clear that’s why you’re going to college. Don’t lie to yourself like don’t say “I’m studying Sociology or whatever,” we know why you’re there, and that’s OK, that’s a really good reason to go to college, especially an SEC school. You will find a husband if you have the intent to find a husband at Ole Miss, or at University of Alabama or whatever.

And by the way, we should bring back the celebration of the MRS. degree. You think about it, I say college is a scam, but that is a really good reason to go to college. You have a bunch of people that are single, they’re at the prime of, let’s just say, their attractiveness, the dating pool is as robust as you’re going to find, and they all live together over a four year period. You don’t get much better than that, it doesn’t get better after college, and so yeah you could go learn some stuff that’s fine I guess or whatever, just don’t listen to your professors, but that actually was the reason a lot of women went to college in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, and worked, and marriage rates have plummeted since then.

This was Kirk’s answer to a fourteen-year-old at a Women’s Leadership Summit who asked him how college might help her become a political journalist. Think about that. Go to college, pay the massive tuition, and spend the whole time looking around for Mr. Right. Kirk later told the audience that if they weren’t married by 30, their prospects would be grim.

Admittedly, this was a meeting of young women who wanted to talk about living their lives as cultural conservatives, which starts with the premise that a woman is incomplete until she is a wife and mother. But it was also a LEADERSHIP summit. Another participant later challenged Kirk about his views on women and college, arguing that many women meet their husbands through their careers. Kirk finally backed down and admitted that the mission of the summit was “any takeaway you want to have,” a renewed sense of patriotism of “traditional norms and roles,” of “true femininity – not this toxic type.”

Why was Charlie Kirk even a speaker at this conference? He dropped out of community college after a short stay. His only qualification for leading an organization of young conservatives is that he has successfully marketed himself as a spokesman for conservative values. None of his ideas are original, in fact they are retrograde and geared toward recreating 1950s America. And yet, he was condescending and arrogant enough to stand up in front of 3,000 young women at a leadership conference and mansplain that the best reason for them to go to college is to find a husband. Today’s conservative men are so shameless, they aren’t embarrassed to say this stuff. And by the way, his claim that the “MRS” degree was common in the 70s, 80s and 90s is hogwash. It hasn’t been a thing since the 1950s and early 1960s. I went to college in the 70s and finding a husband was the last thing on my mind.

As a feminist – i.e. someone who believes in the equality of men and women – and a retired lawyer who is married and child free by choice, I obviously bristled at Kirk’s advice, which completely dismissed women’s value in the workforce. But from what I have read, the thrust of the summit, even from female presenters, was to sell these young women on marriage and motherhood as the first priority for conservative women. Career comes later, if at all. They expressed pity for single women who were “trying for the corner office.” They threatened a lonely, unfulfilled life for any woman who put her career first during her reproductive years. Yikes!

Sisterhood is powerful, and I do not judge other women’s choices. Nor do I want them to judge mine. No doubt it is hard in 2025 for a woman to choose the right path, when there is so much opportunity. When you add so-called conservative values to the mix, it’s natural that a lot of these young women would choose the “Godly” path and make marriage and motherhood their priority. Many of them don’t want to work outside the home, and I respect that. Really. But I worry about them, just as they worry about the women pursuing successful careers who may miss out on marriage. So I would ask them: Is it possible to live comfortably on one income where you want to live? Are you a natural at homemaking, or all thumbs in the kitchen? Are you confident that at 18 or 20 years old, you will choose the life partner who will truly be for life? Will you be ready to settle down at 23? If you were suddenly single, would you be able to support yourself? If, in the process of getting your MRS. degree, you excelled in your classes, do you have a plan to use your talents outside the home later in life? I hope they’re thinking about these things, and not just about putting dinner on the table for the Charlie Kirks of the world.