Harrison Butker and the Great Mom Wars
Time for a ceasefire
Motherhood is not a contest.
After my first child was born, I remember feeling completely overwhelmed by the subtly competitive nature of all the moms groups I had joined for support. Competition was especially fierce around baby milestones. There’s unwritten code for translating these discussions, but I’m pretty sure no one wants to admit it:
“How much does your baby weigh? My baby weighed five pounds more at that age” is code for, “I’m a superior breast feeder, and my kid is healthier than yours.”
“Oh your baby just spoke his first words? How sweet! My baby was diagramming sentences by her first birthday.” Again, I exaggerate for effect, but the obvious translation is, “My kid is way more advanced than yours.”
I remember being bewildered by the unspoken pressure to reach milestones early. They seemed so important at the time, but really… As an adult, I can’t say I’ve necessarily met anyone whose premature ability to roll over on his belly as an infant has been directly linked to his inclusion in the Mensa program, but what do I know? I just remember feeling like my success as a mom was somehow connected to my ability to get my kid to be ahead of the curve on these achievements.
And it didn’t really stop after infancy. It continued right into elementary school. I left my first and only PTA meeting after listening to a handful of moms passive aggressively argue over whose playdough recipe was superior for classroom use. Everyone was so eager to prove their worth, and it would be kind of funny if it weren’t so gosh darn sad.
I don’t know who told us that we have to be better than all the other moms to be a good mom ourselves, but it’s a lie from the pit of hell, and nowhere has this played out more fiercely in recent history than between two groups of moms who are relentlessly pitted against each other: the stay-at-home moms vs the moms who work outside the home. There is just soooo much unnecessary judgment and shame in both camps that it’s really stifling our collective ability to support one another’s efforts, which is really sad because good parenting takes a village. None of us do it perfectly.
It’s interesting that this debate seems to be fiercest down partisan lines, with conservative pundits relentlessly preaching “Women, get married, stay home, and have babies,” and the left countering the message with, “Delay childbearing. The future is female. Be a girl boss.”
And both sides are completely missing the mark and contributing to a pressure cooker that’s leaving women everywhere feeling judged and devalued no matter what they choose to do.
Over the weekend, Kansas Chief kicker Harrison Butker delivered a commencement address at Benedictine College that added gallons of fuel to this specific fire. The speech was controversial for a number of reasons. He said a lot of conservative things, and the left always hates that, so of course, that didn’t go over well. But he also added his voice to the scores of prominent conservative men presuming to tell women where we belong. Here’s what he said to the female graduates,
I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.
The internet is split, once again, down the great partisan divide, about how to respond to it. Tons of stay-at-home moms are praising the speech because, for once, they feel like their life work is valued and elevated and seen. But as a current stay-at-home mom myself, this part of the speech was a facepalm moment for me.
As one commenter put it, for as much as these guys feign respect for the role of the stay-at-home mom, it never seems to be the stay-at home moms who are invited to deliver the commencement address, does it? When I hear a man say that a woman’s true place is in the home, what I really hear him saying is, “Everything else belongs to the menfolk. You’re not welcome here. We’ve got it covered.” And I think it’s profoundly unfair.
I thought Butker’s message was particularly tone-deaf in light of his own mother’s successful career as a physicist in the realm of radiation oncology. He’s spent his whole life watching his mom contribute to the greater good of the world outside the walls of his own home, so what gives? Why tell a group of women who’ve just worked their asses off for degrees that their labors are basically wasted? That they, like his wife, will discover their lives only truly begin after marriage and motherhood? What are the implications for single women in this paradigm?
During my crisis pregnancy, I remember being really perplexed by the messaging on both sides of the political divide. On the left it was, “If you have this baby, you’re sabotaging your ability to have a career,” and on the right it was, “If you have a career outside the home, your child will suffer.” This is really terrible, diminutive messaging no matter how you dice it. No one says this to men. Men aren’t told they can’t have a career AND a family. No one tells men their children will suffer if they choose to be an engineer AND a father.
Many women in general are just bone tired of hearing men tell us where we belong, what will make us happy, and conversely, what will destine us to misery. We haven’t asked for this guidance.
Historically, both men and women had careers which they ran from inside their homes. Dorothy Sayers compiled a lengthy list of the careers women held before the Industrial Revolution, and it was pretty extensive. She had some pretty poignant contributions to make to this discussion:
It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry and- which would not please Lady Astor, perhaps- the whole of the nation's brewing and distilling. All the preserving, pickling and bottling industry, all the bacon-curing. And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together for war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates. Here are the women's jobs- and what has become of them? They are all being handled by men.
It is all very well to say that a woman's place is the home- but modern civilization has taken all these pleasant and profitable activities out of the home, where the women looked after them, and handed them over to big industry, to be directed and organized by men at the head of large factories. Even the dairy maid in her simple bonnet has gone, to be replaced by a male mechanic in charge of a mechanical milking plant.
Now, it is very likely that men in big industries do these jobs better than the women did them at home. The fact remains that the home contains much less of interesting activity than it used to contain. What is more, the home has so shrunk to the size of a small flat that- even if we restrict woman's job to the bearing and rearing of families- there is no room for her to do even that. It is useless to urge the modern woman to have twelve children, like her grandmother. Where is she to put them when she has got them? And what modern man wants to be bothered with them?
It is perfectly idiotic to take away women's traditional occupations and then complain because she looks for new ones. Every woman is a human being-one cannot repeat that too often- and a human being MUST have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.
The family unit took a hit when the Industrial Revolution pulled men out of the homes and into factories. Suddenly the wives were left to raise the children alone. Crap hit the fan when the men left the home, not when the women got the notion in their pretty little ladybrains that they might want to do work in addition to tending the hearth. This is poorly understood. People just assume it was always that way and that the good Lord intended it to be like this. But it wasn’t, and He didn’t.
What’s resulted is a disproportionate amount of pressure on women to do it all. Well that’s not right. In today’s economy, most families require two incomes just to eek by. When you lecture women about their “true calling” in the home, you’re shaming them out of the other pursuits God made them passionate about, and you’re guilting them into situations where they feel like they’re failing regardless of what they do. I think this stinks to high heaven. Child rearing is BOTH parents’ responsibility, and both parents ought to be encouraged to follow where the good Lord leads and to contribute financially as life requires.
Most people aren’t living off Harrison Butker’s income.
The script is so tired: Any time we say its obnoxious for men to try to pigeonhole women into the roles of wife/mother, inevitably tons of the stay-at-home moms get super defensive and cry, “What’s wrong with being a wife and mother?” And of course the answer is that there’s nothing wrong with being a wife and mother. Like I said, I’m a stay-at-home mom myself. Our work is valuable!
But that’s not the discussion we are having.
The discussion we’re having is whether or not it’s okay to shame women into believing it’s wrong to pursue occupation outside our children, and that is, in fact, what I heard Butke subtly doing.
I respect the heck out of stay at home moms. It’s really hard, and often thankless work. And some women are, in fact, called exclusively to these places. We should honor them. We should validate them. We should encourage them whenever we can. I understand that, too often, they’re perceived as “less than,” and I think that’s why Butke’s speech resonated with so many of them.
But women aren’t a monolith. We weren’t all shaped from one cookie cutter. And the world suffers when we place women in unnecessary cages. This morning, a woman told me disgustedly, “You’re okay letting someone else raise your kids? That’s just terrible!”
And the sooner we can shut down this vicious judgmentalism, the better. It does not serve anyone well. Even when I worked full time outside the home, strangers were not “raising my children.” My kids were left in the care of trusted individuals with shared values so I could make money to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. The fact that I was not glued directly to them all day long does not mean someone else was raising them. It means that child rearing takes a village as it always has, especially in an economy where it’s almost impossible for many families to survive off a single income.
And guess what? Once in awhile, it’s okay for kids to see that the world does not, in fact, orbit around them—that the grown-ups in their lives are passionately engaged in other things, too.
If women didn't work outside the home, who would staff the thousands of pregnancy resource centers across the country? Who would work in the safe havens and shelters for the abused or trafficked women that are terrified of men? I’m thankful for women in the police force who are there to interview rape victims who don’t want to be further traumatized by sharing their shame with men they don’t know. I’m thankful for women in the school system who can add nurture and insight to our children when we can’t be there ourselves.
Do you honestly believe that the good Lord gave Marie Curie that brilliant mind with the intention that she employ it only in the service of child rearing and homemaking? Should Alice Stewart have just stayed home instead of discovering the link between prenatal X-rays and childhood leukemia? Should Irena Sendler have poured all her energy into maintaining a home instead of harboring hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazis? Should Shirley Jackson just have ignored her genius and been content to cook and clean? Should Abby Johnson abandon her mission of saving millions of children from abortion in order to focus solely on children of her own? Margaret Thatcher? Hedy Lamarr? Helen Keller? Katherine Goble Johnson? Temple Grandin? Sally Ride? Clara Barton? Ella Fitzgerald?
If God wanted women to be relegated solely to the home in every circumstance, it is unlikely He would have chosen to use Deborah as His spokeswoman or position the Proverbs 31 woman as such a savvy businesswoman.
God has always and will continue to work through women's engagement both inside and outside the home. We all matter! We’re all doing the best we can.
Maybe we could try encouraging even the moms whose roads look different than ours. Maybe the stay-at-home moms could choose to be aware of the criticism career moms wrestle and vice versa.
Maybe we could be each others’ village instead of each others’ competition.
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