FEMINISM LIED TO ME ABOUT MOTHERHOOD

Ilya Repin - What freedom! 1903.

My husband and I sat in silence at a busy cafe after a tense time in our marriage.

“I just don’t know how to fix this,” he said.

Without thinking, something inside me rose and cut through the clinking cups and chatter: “Lead.”

“What?” he looked up, confused. “But feminism says—”

“Forget feminism,” I interrupted. “It’s a lie.”

I listened to myself in shock. But I meant it. And in that moment, something between us shifted. As if a heavy shackle was shaken to reveal it was nothing but dust.

Now, let’s, for a moment, flash back to ten years earlier when I was in my late twenties, sullenly single, and I slumped upon a Facebook group called Women Against Feminism.

How I flew into a wild rage. Almost flying around my house in fury.

I’ll show them, I thought. I’ll outsmart these dingbats! I created my own Facebook group: Women Against Women Against Feminism.

Genius.

They didn’t see that coming, I told myself smugly.

I just couldn’t understand the ingratitude. Do they have ANY idea of what their female ancestors went through so that they could have the right to make a Facebook Page called Women Against Feminism? What kind of poor education were this Westerm women receiving?

And yet, there I was, ten years later, in a café with my husband, facing the fallout of everything I thought I believed.

The tension between us had built around one big question: Should we have another baby?

His argument: We should. But I also needed to have a career. I wasn’t doing enough.

My argument: I couldn’t have another baby, even though I wanted one, because I needed a career. And I didn’t have time to find that career because he wasn’t doing enough at home.

It was an impasse. And then I said it. “Lead.”

It wasn’t strategic. It came from a very real and raw place…and it worked.

From that moment, our relationship began to heal. I let go of the feminist ideals I’d absorbed, and so did he. He never really had time for the hypocrisy of modern feminism but it had become so baked into our culture that he had unconsciously internalised its expectations.

I kept having to remind him that these new standards are milliseconds old and for millennia mothers have spent most of their time with their children. This modern experiment is the first of its kind.

He was expecting me to be a woman who had it all, and so was I. And I also expected him to cook and clean while maintaining a very competitive corporate career. Neither of us were getting what we needed.

After having my child, all I wanted was to be with him. I wanted to be home. I wanted to clean. I wanted to make nourishing meals. I wanted all the things I was told would kill me. But it was the idea of chasing a career that felt like a death sentence—for me, my son, and my husband.

This is my career, I thought. There is nothing more important than this.

And there’s the old saying often attributed to Aristotle…

Show me the boy at seven and I’ll show you the man.

I’m making a man.

This is my Everest.

My husband wanted another child, but as I’ve stated, he also wanted me to find a solid career. At his corporate job, there were high-achieving women with kids. Why couldn’t I measure up? Well, because I won’t have my child in after-school care until 7 p.m. You read that correctly. In Spain, many dual-income families rely on this. Wealthier parents hire a nanny to pick up the kids, feed and bathe them, and get them ready for bed by the time both parents stagger home, burnt out.

But I will not have a child that I can’t raise.

Apparently, that’s now an unreasonable thing for a woman to want.

Thanks, third-wave feminism.

I was stuck. Torn between wanting a career and not wanting one. I believed it would be irresponsible to have two children that I couldn’t finance myself if anything happened to my husband. This internal battle caused massive tension in me—and in our marriage. Until I let go.

Let go of feminism.

Let my husband lead.

Let myself live in the now and have faith that we will always find a way.

A successful corporate friend of mine asked me at 38, “Should I have a baby?”

“Yes,” I said without blinking. “You have all of the body parts to do this…it’s a PRETTY big sign that this would be an interesting journey for you to take if not THE journey for you to take.”

“Wow,” she replied. “Thanks. You just saved me thousands in therapy.”

And she’s right. In 2025, people pussyfoot around this topic like they are deciding whether to get a butt lift or spend the money on a tropical cruise. This is what we are here to do, ladies. This is what our bodies are designed for. A real big hint from biology. Could one get a bigger yellow arrow!

The question shouldn’t be should a woman have a baby. It should be when, how many and with whom?

But we don’t speak like this because we keep measuring ourselves on the whims of the minority instead of spreading the message of the majority: The truth is that the vast majority of women find motherhood to be THE most important area of their life.

With AI changing the workforce and influencers like Ballerina Farm effortlessly showing the beauty of traditional homemaking, I feel the tide turning. Family is coming back into focus. Flesh and blood is becoming the new ideal in a digitalised world. Thank God.

But thirdwave feminism? It nearly ended my marriage and robbed me of the small window I had for a second child. That’s no small loss.

Yes, women can vote, drive, own homes, divorce, get single parent support when necessary. That’s how it should be. Thank you, first wave and second wave feminism.

But feminism isn’t that anymore.

Feminism today is STEM funding for schools but only for the girls. It’s free soft skills training to make women more "director-ready," even if they don't want to be directors. It's calling children a lifestyle choice.. not the miracle of life itself.

And let’s not forget the newest and weirdest feminist cry - We don’t really even know what a woman is.

Many women I know are waking up—in their late 30s and 40s—knocked sideways by the realisation that motherhood brings them the deepest meaning. Their lives, built around an ideology, now feel out of sync with what they truly want.

A mother at my son’s school is paying a live-in nanny while she returns to university to become a psychologist—to help women cope with the mental load. All while working fulltime too! She doesn’t see that she could simply slow down and be with her children instead of burning herself out trying to fix other people’s burnout.

Another friend’s marriage was on the rocks. Her husband pressured her to get a full-time job. "But I like cleaning the house, I like picking up my child" she sniffled to me one day. “You and I, Abi, we love work that isn’t paid.”

She’s right. We love art. We love building community. We’re organising a major free wellness event this weekend in our town. We’re raising our children and shaping culture around them. Just like our great-grandmothers did.

I used to think women in the past had been locked in their houses, their potential wasting away. But women have always shaped the world in their mysterious way. I’ll paraphrase something I heard David Bowie say in an interview: “It’s the artists on the peripheries who move the culture forward.”

It’s true. And women have always been those artists.

Instead of seeing this power and attempting to get others to appreciate it and understand it, we tried to become men. And it’s not working.

We are constantly talking about women with careers climbing the corporate ladder. But most women will never have a career. They will have jobs.

Feminists say, "We need to change this."

I say: You're changing it, but I don't think it's making most women happier.

And the truth is most men have jobs too, and they do them to support a family. Men haven’t been hiding some glitzy pathway to true power…they’ve been slogging it out in service.

Third-wave feminism caters to ultra-wealthy women. Women with elite education and elite networks. Women who can afford help. Women who party in their 20s, build empires in their 30s, and unfreeze an egg for an IVF baby in their 40s.

The suffragettes would weep if they saw what has become of their suffering — their hard-won vote turned into a tool for elite self-promotion

But I have hope. I do hear more conversations like these ones I had with my neighbour, a very good friend, the school lunch lady. She explained that she pursued her low salary, low status position, so she could be a homemaker. "People judge me," she says. "I know. I can see it in their eyes when I say what I do. But I know what I want."

And maybe, with the rise of the tradwife movement, the homemaker will make a comeback. Maybe it will be seen as a bold and thrilling pursuit. A life that means something in a world of machines that can make more money than you.

Let’s make no mistake, I’m all for mothers working, but I would recommend they work around their family. I’ve been a freelancer all of my adult life and I was cursing this when I had my baby - I had no impressive career to return to. But now I see this as a blessing. Many mothers I know with high-end positions are hitting forty and wondering what the hell they are doing. Their male partners in similar positions aren’t having this crisis. And we can all appreciate how hard it must be to let go of stability, an impressive title, and a six figure salary just coz you don’t feel like it and want to do something with your hands.

My father was a stay-at-home dad for our younger years and he disagrees with my argument, “But I loved raising you guys and I would love other men to have that opportunity.” Me too. BUT…I would like women to understand just exactly what they are handing over. You’re giving away the greatest gift that has ever been given. Know that. Hand it over knowing that going out to work to win the bread is a great sacrifice.

When a woman has a child something new inside of her is reborn and we should make space for that creative magic to manifest itself instead of sending it back to the daily grind. My new feminine belief is that woman and men have been changing and making the world all this time, an imperfect but forgiving union that sacrifices ego for the sake of the family and from this death of the self an unbreakable bond is built.

I can already hear people scoffing at my “privilege” but even with a cost of living crisis and a culture of consumerism people can do this. It’s true some people can’t…but many families can but are choosing a different path. My husband and I are looking to buy a house a few suburbs away from our beloved village here. We simply can’t afford these prices on one income and whatever I’m scraping together while I focus on the home. I don’t have a car, that takes out a pretty hefty yearly cost right there. What I mean to say is that when there is a will there is a way and it’s what thinkers like Mary Harrington are calling for. A kind of modern, pre-modern set up in which women work in and with the home and make money but this is done around the act of child and home care. And please, let’s be honest. Even though people are finding it difficult to make ends meet…let’s think about the ends they are trying to meet. Did your grandparents have gadgets for every single family member? Did they have takeaway once a week, did they go out to dinner? What kind of clothes did they wear? Did your grandma prioritise a luxurious retirement or her here and now with her children? We live far richer lives even though we feel poor.

Interestingly enough, many progressives loathe capitalism but find the idea of protesting through opting out of the rat race unheard of. They find the idea of making a sacred space unspoiled by market interest insane. They refuse the quickest and most effective revolution…simplification. But that’s for another post.

Why am I writing this piece? It’s a warm warning to younger women. I took the third wave feminsim propaganda so seriously that I didn’t even want to have a child. I had absolutely no idea why a woman would. I only had a child because my husband deserved one. It was a gift. So you can imagine my surprise when this became the beginning of an awakening to the wonderful meaning of existence. As Anne Lamont says, “There are places in the heart that you don’t even know exist until you love a child.”

And I know, it’s hard to find a good man, but let’s stop pretending we don’t need them and start communicating what we truly need. Love, honor, protection…leadership. Let’s stop singing songs like, I can buy myself flowers as if it were the flowers we ached for.

“Don’t you realise why we get along now?” I said to my husband recently. “I’m not a feminist anymore. When I was I was subconsciously trying to BE or FIGHT you. Now I’m not doing that” We’re on the same team. Very different creatures that complement each other.

Our relationship is singing. The mornings and evenings are light, and the meals are nourishing. He leads without resentment. And we are working on a passion project at my pace, and it’s starting to take shape.

We no longer worry about money so much, we focus on harmony and trust in each other and God to provide what we need as we need it.

We’re using our natural strengths instead of fighting them. We are finding our authentic family flow. We appreciate each other. We’ve stopped keeping score. He doesn’t ask why I’m not making more money. I don’t ask why he’s late home from work…again.

We give each other grace. And from grace comes peace.

And from peace?

Play.

And from play?

Anything is possible.

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