Is feminism anti-family? Or is that the MAGA GOP?
It seems there's some confusion.
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Someone recently told me that she felt that my writing might not be for her, because as a mother who works at home, she wasn’t sure that it supported her family life. She wasn’t sure that feminism was pro-women and family so much as anti-patriarchy. Couldn’t it build things up more?
I get it, because this is a common notion, and one that I heard a lot growing up myself. And now a misogynistic right-wing manosphere version of this argument appears to be becoming mainstream, or maybe was always low-key mainstream: that feminists are ruining everything, and in particular that feminism is anti-family.
But really, who among us hasn’t heard a version of this argument?
This administration rose to power largely helped by a narrative of male grievance, and the idea that feminism is harming our country and is bad for families (see: “misogyny slop”).
I thought about this while reading about the State of the Union address, where the current president of the U.S. and accused sex offender took the stage to address Congress. Since he took power and started making sweeping changes, the stock market is down, inflation is up, and the majority of American families believe the economy and their cost of living are getting worse.
With control of all arms of the government, his administration could do virtually anything it wanted—anything at all—to help American families.
Instead, since taking office, this administration has cut millions in public health funding, including $190 million for pediatric cancer research, and House Republicans passed a budget plan that would significantly cut Medicaid funding—the healthcare program for low-income families and Americans, as reported by Ms.
The administration is proposing to actually take food away from millions of kids by cutting funding to SNAP, the food assistance program that helps over 40 million children, parents, older adults, disabled people, including 1 in 5 children.
The president’s tax plan would benefit his ultra-rich friends and donors— the top 5 percent of U.S. earners—while immediately raising taxes for the middle class.
At a press conference by the Democratic Women’s Caucus, Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), condemned the GOP’s cash grab for the ultra-rich: “And where is this money coming from? For tax cuts for the ultra wealthy, they’re taking it from families, from women, from moms, from grandparents, from sick children.”
Meanwhile, the GOP is forcing children to give birth, forcing women to go septic, and a rising number of mothers and infants to die due to abortion bans, as Lyz Lenz wrote about in detail this week.
The GOP is also busy making life hell for families with trans kids who find the US so dangerous to their families that they are now fleeing the country. It is galvanizing to outlaw same-sex marriage, is separating children from their families through brutal immigration policies, and is threatening alimony policies as well as trying to end no-fault divorce.
No-fault divorce provides an escape for the alarming number of women and their children who are abused by their male partners (over 35% of women), and it also allows for couples who don’t wish to be stuck with each other in their current family situation the freedom to be…not stuck. (So much for “freedom” !)
And oh yeah, the White House is also doing its best to shutter the Department of Education. You know—school. What could go wrong for families there?
Clearly, the GOP is in the process of ravaging the American family, and trying to create a veritable hellscape for women-who are the backbone of most families.
So how exactly did feminism get blamed for being the force that is “anti-family”?
It’s a lot to process, given the absolute onslaught from forces that are—not feminism. But the GOP has always tried to own the narrative that they are the “pro-family” party, the “family values” party—from Reagan to J.D. “women should stay home and have babies” and “childcare is an attack on normal people” Vance.
And they have often been able to pull it off.
Because apparently that’s how easy it is to blame women and get away with it? Just blame women for doing a thing, while you stand there doing the actual thing?
Or, maybe because all you have to do is be a man who claims that he “protects women” and even if you have multiple rape accusations, an expression of frat boy glee, or were caught on tape bragging about assaulting women…you are believed?
I wonder, if feminists could simply claim that they are the “protectors of women and family” would they be believed? Could these false accusations about being “anti-family” cease?
What if feminists provided receipts that they are the protectors of women and family—would that help?
Let’s take a look at a few movements and proposals that feminists have been fighting for, advocating for, and generally shouting for from the rooftops:
Paid leave: The U.S. remains the ONLY high-income country that still has no federal paid leave after birth. None--not one day. Get off the delivery table, and drag that womb back to work! If you’ve ever heard about this, or seen a bill introduced on it, you can thank a feminist activist, because they have been leading a long-suffering fight for paid family leave for 100 years. Literally.
Btw, paid leave is wildly popular with U.S. voters on all sides—96% of Democrats and 88% of Republicans are in favor. So passing paid leave is not just some feminist daydream, it’s in line with the will of the vast majority of American families.
Subsidized childcare: Norway spends over $29,000 per year per child on early childhood education. Slovenia spends $11,664. Chile? Lithuania? Over $8,000. Hungary? $7,222.
U.S.: $500
That’s $500 with two zeros. Everyone else has three zeros behind their number.
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I mean, I think a lot of us have fantasized about the wondrous year-long maternity leave and free childcare dreamscape of Denmark life where you can hygge it up nursing your child (or not) whilst eating cardamom buns for 12 months if you want to. But the US is not just out of step with Nordic countries, it is behind all peer countries and many countries that are not rich—Chile, Lithuania, you name it—in childcare spending.
You might remember that this was a major feature of the “Build Back Better” act back in 2021, that provided affordable childcare and free pre-school for 6 million children, thanks to the long-suffering work of…feminist activists.
As reported by Ms.:
Feminist activists have been fighting this fight since fifty years ago, when President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 that would have created a multibillion-dollar national day care system. At the time, Nixon objected to the bill’s “communal approach to child-rearing,” which he tied to communism.
As a result, the U.S. lags behind countries across the globe in terms of supporting working women and families. Most countries guarantee workers paid family leave and offer generous support for childcare. Not the United States.
Feminists have been advocating for family policies that would bring the U.S. up to basic norms for decades, centuries even.
You know who has not been doing that? The GOP.
In fact, you know who has steadfastly blocked these basic family-saving policies—from paid leave, to childcare, to meals for hungry kids in schools? Who has ensured that we don’t have basic family supports that are the norm in other countries and overwhelmingly popular with voters, that would benefit every American family?
From Nixon right up to the current moment—it’s the GOP. The GOP is largely why families can’t have nice things.
How they get away with scapegoating feminists for this I don’t know; it seems like a massive case of projection.
What I can say is that feminist movements have their problems and shortcomings, but they have a very long track record of fighting for things that should be, dare I say, basic human rights, and that would make life better for every American household.
Paid medical leave, for example, would cover leave to care for any sick family members: an aging parent, a spouse with cancer, or a hospitalized child—it would benefit everyone who has another person that they care for. At any point in their life.
The GOP casts these things as “social spending” or “handouts.” The media often echoes this, treating these policies like they’re boring policy fodder, or expensive and controversial spending plans, as if their sweeping benefits to families and just…humans…are really hard to capture in headlines.
If “social spending” never seems to appeal, maybe we could rebrand them as “policies that make life not miserable for women and small children and other humans, that are the norm in other countries.”
Maybe something like: “1 in 4 four mothers in U.S. return to work within two weeks of birth, paid leave laws would remove choice between caring for baby and financial ruin” would help the cause. Or: “1 in 5 retirees with no paid leave forced out of work to care for sick loved ones, linked to desperation and unnecessary hardship.”
It’s not as catchy as “Feminists are ruining the country,” which seems to play really well right now in certain circles.
But Americans might see their baby’s first smile, or hold an ailing parent’s hand, if the feminist agenda was pushed through.
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Links and further reading:
“Feminism isn’t ruining the family” by Lyz Lenz
“The Republican Party’s obsession with family values has taken a fanatical turn” by
“JD Vance says childcare is an ‘attack on normal people.’ That’s ridiculous” in MSNBC.
“How other nations pay for childcare. The US is an outlier” in the Times.
“Paid family leave isn’t a new fight. Here’s a century’s worth of attempts to get something passed” in the Washington Post.
We can't say this enough!! This piece says exactly what we need to remember -- assaults on feminism are assaults are *true* family-values. The biggest success of the right wing was taking this idea and running with it -- that somehow feminist values undermine families. It's gaslighting at a societal scale. But I relate to the concern your friend raised: I have a "I heart Moms" sweatshirt I wear (bought as a fundraiser for a maternal health group) and I sometime fear that people will read it as some kind of conservative, pro-natalist (and therefore anti-abortion!) statement. This is the victory of the right -- to take being a mom away from the provenance of being a feminist. It's heartbreaking.
As a feminist who has been supporting women's rights since the '60s, the only reason women have any rights is because of the feminists! But the men sure have been able to make the word, feminist, into a curse word. I got sole custody of my three daughters in '81. Ex chose not to pay court-ordered child support. Family home was ordered to be sold. The judge told me to get a job, that my education was a luxury I couldn't afford. I put myself through college, while working and raising my kids, regardless, graduating Magna cum Laude. My daughters went on to put themselves through college, since my paycheck was still paltry. They are a veterinarian, a medical doctor and a corporate senior manager. And yet, my oldest daughter, the DVM, in private practice, does not consider herself a feminist and, in fact, denigrates feminists and the word, feminist. She had my only two grandchildren. The doc has no children and my youngest doesn't either and has a wife. All of this made possible by feminists snd the policies I've fought for my whole life. Go figure!