The Trump administration is reportedly considering allowing certain married couples with a stay-at-home parent to receive childcare subsidies averaging about $9,000 per child.
This initiative would put the federal government right in the center of the girlboss vs. tradwife debate.
The girlboss narrative has been sold to young women for decades and reinforced by public policy — from childcare policies designed around two working parents to federal labor rules that have narrowed the path to independent contracting. And don’t forget about the commercialization of feminism that has accompanied the #girlboss message. “The future is female” and “Boss babe” have been plastered on T-shirts, mugs, tote bags, and more, and worn as a badge of honor.
Then, when the tradwife movement emerged on social media, influencers pushed just as hard (and commercialized it as well) this version of what it means to be an empowered woman. Influencers such as Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm and Nara Smith amassed large audiences around highly curated depictions of motherhood, cooking from scratch, and traditional femininity. The aesthetic became a business: brand partnerships, monetized content, product lines, and other ventures turned an ostensibly anti-girlboss lifestyle into a lucrative influencer industry.
These messages sell, but what sells shouldn’t define a generation of women.
The Trump administration’s proposal raises the question of the proper role of the federal government in the choices mothers and families make.
What if mothers actually want something in the middle, between girlboss and tradwife? Something more complicated and nuanced. This might involve staying in a job instead of accepting a promotion, part-time work, flexible work, or coming in and out of the workplace as life circumstances change.
The data tell us that married mothers of young children don’t prefer full-time work or being stay-at-home mothers. They prefer some type of part-time work. That is, they prefer the messy middle. Among married mothers with children under 5, 40% ideally want to work part-time, versus 39% preferring full-time work, and 20% preferring not to work for pay.
Yet only 30% of mothers who want part-time work are actually doing part-time work.
While so much of the cultural conversation continues to focus on the extremes, the messy middle is where many mothers end up or wish to be.
The problem is that the middle ground truly is messy and requires people to make tough trade-offs on their own. Often, those trade-offs shock others. A mother recently posted to Instagram that she stayed in a job for years while she was raising her children, not seeking any promotion because she feared her children would have suffered. Once her youngest graduated from high school, she took a promotion and was vindicated when she saw the job would not have been a good fit for her when she had small children at home.
So how do we make more room for the messy middle?
First, we must reject the false dichotomy between the girlboss and tradwife models of womanhood. Stop pushing the message that women must choose between just these two options. There are far more paths available to women — from working part-time, to stepping away from the workforce and later returning, to choosing a job based on priorities beyond career advancement. We need less focus on which of two prescribed paths women should choose and more recognition of the many paths they can forge for themselves.
Second, we need to talk openly about the trade-offs and empower women to make decisions that are best for themselves and their families in each season of life. As life changes, so does the cost-benefit analysis of different options. For example, it was much easier for me to travel last minute across the country for a conference when I was single and childless than in my current stage of life when I have young children at home. The math of ambition changes when children enter the equation.
MOST MOTHERS WORK. BUT 50 HOURS IN THE CUBICLE WITH THE CHILD IN DAYCARE IS NOT THE NORM
And finally, we should support policies that don’t tip the scales toward one particular model of work and family life. Women benefit when they have the freedom to structure work around the needs of themselves and their families. The Biden administration, for example, pursued labor rules that made it more difficult for some workers to qualify as independent contractors. For mothers who rely on the flexibility independent contracting can provide, policies that narrow that path can mean one less option. Keep that option on the table.
Beauty often emerges from a mess. The same can be true of a happy family life. Instead of trying to sort women neatly into two opposing camps, we should make room for the choices, trade-offs, and changing priorities that come with different seasons of life. The messy middle may not fit neatly on a T-shirt or into a social media trend, but for many women, it looks a lot more like real life.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
