One Woman’s Prediction Has Come True for Families — So Where Do We Go from Here?

The roles of women have changed in many ways in the last fifty years.

But we still have all the responsibilities of being mothers and wives, often with the added stress of working full-time.

This has led to women being more overwhelmed than at any other time in history, so if we’ve “got it all,” why is it so hard to balance?

It’s created an interesting debate that was recently discussed in an essay for the New York Times.

If we go back forty years to a time when women were just beginning to enter the work force and were fighting for equal pay and equal rights to men, one woman was able to see the problems we were headed toward down the road.

The original feminist movement was born, and many women wanted to be “more” than just stay-at-home mothers and wives.

But Phyllis Schlafly, a brilliant constitutional lawyer and staunch conservative, was celebrating the expiration of the Equal Rights Amendment while other women were fighting for its ratification.

Schlafly saw what many of us see now, that working full-time and still having a natural desire to be involved and present mothers was going to backfire.

Now, we juggle it all, and many of us don’t want to.

Despite stopping the ERA for the time being (re-introducing it is currently a hot topic in Congress), what liberal women wanted it to achieve has still come to pass.

Abortion and gay marriage are legal, women have successful careers and often make as much money as men, the traditional family is crumbling – and many of us are miserable.

Why?

Because conservative women may enjoy working, but for many of us, our hearts lie in our home and family.  And we’re having a very difficult time keeping up with our role as women in God’s plan and our expected roles as women in an increasingly progressive society.

Women are having children later – or not at all.  They’re getting married later – or not at all.  And all that women thought they wanted in that first wave of feminism has only served to make the lives of conservative-minded women more difficult.

Many legislators understand this dilemma and are working to pass family-friendly legislation, pro-life bills, and to preserve conservative values. But the problem is, most of them are men.

It’s ironic, but no one has really come forth to take Phyllis Schlafly’s place, despite the need for conservative women in the political arena.

The left has their Hillary Clintons and Elizabeth Warrens, and they’re perfectly happy with the changes that have taken place in our society.

But the current Republican Party is finding that it is “imperative” that more conservative women take leadership.  Currently, only 13 of 197 members of the U.S. House are women.

ABC News reports that Rep. Susan Brooks (R-IN) is leading the charge to bring more conservative women into national leadership positions.

She is the chief of recruitment for the House’s GOP and has been contacted by over a hundred women who are interested in running on a conservative platform to help preserve traditional values in America.

Other groups include Winning for Women and E-PAC, both focused on helping women attain national leadership positions to bring a voice to those of us who are completely opposed to the progressive platforms of women like Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris – all of whom have declared their intent to run for president in 2020.

We have high hopes that there is a conservative woman out there who will speak for us in a leadership position and address the issues that conservative women face in this increasingly progressive culture.

It is nearly forced on us to “have it all.”  We want to be wives and mothers, but often have no choice in whether we want to work.  It is nearly impossible to maintain a middle-class lifestyle with children on one income.

The Times essay includes Pew Research Center data predicting that, “’…today’s young adults will experience the lowest marriage rate in modern history.’ It has become difficult for a family with one breadwinner to afford a middle-class standard of living.  The result is a two-tiered system that isn’t working for anybody. In the bottom tier, marriage is disappearing [for] lower-income women… In the top tier, college-educated women feel they can’t afford to take time off from their careers to raise their children even when they want to, as many of them do.”

Additionally, working mothers still spend as much time on household chores and childcare as we did before we entered the work force.

It is startling, and the effects on marriage and the family are obvious.

What’s needed is a modern-day Phyllis Schlafly who understands the dilemma and helps bring balance back to our nation.

Phyllis Schlafly said before her death that, “I always did feel that the leaders of the effort to beat E.R.A. had to be women.”

And to continue the fight against the ERA while maintaining the gains we have made will require a new conservative woman to take the reins and prevent further deterioration of the family with the “familiar disasters that inevitably follow — more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the next generation,” according to the Times.

In the author’s words, we need someone to simply “endorse the basic principle that healthy families are the foundation of every other political good.”

This is not an admission we will ever get from a progressive woman in leadership.

For the sake of the family, hopefully someone will answer the call.

What do you think about the relationship between how much modern women have to balance and the destruction of the traditional family?  Can you think of a conservative woman who might be a good leader to help bring back the balance?

Leave us your comments.