Women Are Starting To Give Up On Trying To Have It All
The job, the family, the friends? It's just not a reality anymore.
Jacob Lund | Shutterstock For years now, there has been endless talk of “leaning in” and trying to live as full a life as possible as a woman. This meant doing it all — being in a long-term relationship, having kids, spending time with friends, and still climbing the corporate ladder.
Now, things are shifting. The pressure is somewhere else. The idea of working and having kids is gone. Instead, you should only choose one — and you can guess which one there’s more pressure to choose.
Research shows more women are leaving the workforce in favor of taking care of their kids.
A new piece published by The Washington Post examined the growing number of women leaving the workforce. Written by Abha Bhattarai, the piece referenced a data analysis performed by Misty Heggeness, who used to work as a principal economist at the U.S. Census Bureau and is now a professor at the University of Kansas. The data showed that “the share of working mothers age 25 to 44 with young children has fallen nearly every month this year.”
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Bhattarai noted that working moms made big gains during the COVID-19 pandemic due to more remote and flexible options. Now, that progress is largely being done away with. Women are being forced out of the workplace by return-to-office mandates and work becoming less flexible as the pandemic has ended.
They can no longer take care of their children while working. Many are expected to show up at the office instead of working from home as they have been, and companies are becoming less open to letting employees find that necessary work-life balance, especially as the government leads the way in setting the example.
Some women are dropping out of the workforce because of the current culture.
People like Vice President JD Vance are encouraging families to have a parent at home with children, and the “trad wife” trend has taken over social media as women conform to conventional ideas of belonging at home performing domestic labor.
A TikToker named Paige Turner pointed out just how true this is. Responding directly to the article from The Washington Post, she stated, “I am not surprised by this article, and I don’t think any single working mother in America would be either, because being a working mother in America is completely unsustainable.”
Turner said that while it’s true that things like a lack of paid parental leave and government layoffs often unfairly target women, no one is willing to talk about the fact that women are “disproportionately impacted” by the very act of having children. “We are shouting from the rooftops that there is a birth rate crisis, and that this government wants more babies, and yet we fail to acknowledge that the people sacrificing in the biggest ways in our society in order to have children are women,” she said.
The cost of childcare alone can drive women out of the workforce and back to their homes.
According to a report from Care.com, most parents said they spend 22% of their household income on childcare. Women are, in essence, making enough money to cover childcare costs and hardly have anything left over. Their choice really comes down to whether they’d prefer to stay home and care for their children themselves or if they want to work and watch their entire paycheck go to other people doing it.
That's the problem with this notion of women needing to choose. They are being forced into stay-at-home mom roles. There's no choice in it at all. Women who already have children are hit the hardest, and that sacrifice is not lost on women who haven't made the decision whether they want to become mothers or not. Taking away opportunities will not increase the birth rate. In fact, it will likely have the opposite effect.
Women were once told they could have it all. Unfortunately, that concept is largely disappearing. Women are realizing that, with the way society puts the burden of childcare and other domestic duties on them, they can’t handle that responsibility and have the fulfilling careers they once dreamed of. It’s a sad reality.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
