The Conservative Women Who Are ‘Having It All'

Hindustan Times

02-08-2025

According to the gospel of TikTok, conservative women are a mix of trad wives, pro-natalists and wide-eyed aspirants to the 'princess treatment.' But a very different ideal looks more like May Mailman, an over-full-time working mother whom others on the right speak about with awe. PREMIUM The Conservative Women Who Are 'Having It All'
At 37, Mailman is the deputy assistant to Donald Trump and senior policy strategist at the White House. Pregnant with her third child, she flies home to Houston on Friday nights to spend the weekend with her family. Once, she gave a major interview one week postpartum, terrified she'd leak on camera. Her first child, not yet 3, has already been on 14 flights.
'People say to me, 'When you're home, I hope you can really connect with your kids' and I'm like, 'You're crazy. When I'm home, I'm constantly attached to my phone,'' Mailman said in an interview.
May Mailman, deputy assistant to the president and senior policy strategist, at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in DC in July.
During the week, her nanny and her husband David, who owns a tree-moving company, get the kids out of bed, change their diapers, bathe and feed them and put them to bed, while making sure to run the dishwasher. Yes, Mailman is missing out on much of her kids' early years, but she doesn't second guess or feel guilty about her choices. She feels lucky. 'I don't have a victimhood mentality,' she said. 'You have to exert a certain locus of control and focus on the things you can handle without obsessing over what you can't.'
'In theory, I would love to be a trad wife,' Mailman said. 'When I wrote down qualities I wanted in a husband, one was to make more money than me because I wanted the freedom to stay home so that I wouldn't feel trapped. And that's who I married. Maybe conservative women don't feel as conflicted as progressive women because we structured our lives from the get-go so we could potentially do both.'
The much-heralded (and oft-disputed) idea that women can 'have it all' is often seen as a liberal ideal, while being a housewife—or as it's now known, a stay-at-home mother—is upheld as a conservative one. But while opinions about how 'the other side' thinks can veer toward caricature on both ends of the political spectrum, real life is more complicated.
According to a Pew Research Center report on parenting in America today, nearly as many Republican mothers (67%) work outside the home as Democratic mothers (70%). And majorities of both Democratic and Republican parents (86% and 88%, respectively) say that being a parent is either one of the most important or the most important aspect of their identity.
For most women, whatever their politics, housewifery is a nonstarter; outside a wealthy elite, the two-income household is just economic reality. But another reality is that many women, conservatives and liberals alike, genuinely want a career—whether for their sense of self, their desire to contribute financially or as a way to pursue their passion.
Conservative women just tend to see their lives in a different light. In interviews with over a dozen high-powered conservative women, they said that the trad-wife lifestyle was never a choice they seriously considered for themselves. All said that they always knew they wanted children and that they also wanted a meaningful career. As for what makes this juggle work for them, they credited a combination of grit, religious faith, familial and community support and a laserlike focus on planning and priorities.
The past decade has seen the rise of many conservative women in high-profile jobs in government, the media and corporate America. There's Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, 53, former South Carolina Governor and Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, 53, and Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, 43. All have held high-pressure jobs while raising a family, despite having financial resources that gave them the option not to work.
Last year, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt returned to work just four days after giving birth when Trump announced his candidacy. 'I would reject that you can't be a good mom and be good at your job,' Leavitt said on a recent podcast. 'It's not for everybody. And it takes a lot of work and will and faith and prayer, and it's hard. But it can be done.'
In interviews, several conservatives pointed to others leading the way, like Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, 42, who feels honored to be considered a role model. 'I love what I do. I love being a parent. And I want other moms to know that they can do both these things,' Sanders told me.
'At the end of the day, being a mom is really hard—and being a mom and working brings a whole other set of difficulties and challenges,' said Sanders, who has three children. 'But in the conservative world, one of the most common things that you hear is that the value of the family and the value of our faith is incredibly important, and that gives us a level of support and purpose and takes away from the anxiety. I know that I'm not doing this on my own.'
Mission Driven
In 2021, when Katie Britt was considering whether to run for Senate, both her kids were heading into middle school. She relished braiding her daughter's hair in the morning and attending all her kids' games. Before making the decision, she and her husband prayed for guidance about what it would mean for her to spend so much time in Washington. 'Just missing those moments and not being present for everything,' Britt recalled in an interview. 'I really wrestled with it. The world is full of voices saying this can't work.'
But her daughter, then 10, approached her one day and said, 'Mom, you have to do this.'
'I don't think you understand what a hard thing this is,' Britt recalled saying, to which her daughter replied: 'But Mom, doesn't God call on you to do hard things?'
When U.S. Sen. Katie Britt was considering a run for Senate, she worried about how she would manage the juggle. Her daughter was encouraging: 'Mom, doesn't God call on you to do hard things?' Pictured with her son on Capitol Hill in July.
That's when Britt says she knew to push ahead—and to push hard. In high school, she'd been both cheer captain and valedictorian, while holding down an after-school job. At the University of Alabama, she'd been president of her sorority and of the student government. 'My husband and I both have this attitude of rolling up our sleeves and getting to work,' she said, even if that means missing out on some big moments in their kids' lives and watching their games via livestream.
There are plenty of good reasons why the 'it's impossible being a woman' narrative is so resonant. Despite increased workplace flexibility, most employees still feel like they are on duty all the time, quality child care is expensive and hard to find, and women still put in more hours than men on the domestic front.
Not surprisingly, books, TV and movies frequently depict mothers on the brink, teetering between resentment and entrapment on one end—and sanity and self-fulfillment on the other. Stories about 'maternal rage' reflect those frustrations. In the novel and movie 'Nightbitch,' a beleaguered mother turns into a dog. In Miranda July's novel 'All Fours,' a perimenopausal woman flees the constraints of an unsupportive society.
'Motherhood is not fun. This is awful. Kids will ruin your life. That's what you read in their magazines and newspapers and what they hear from their friends,' said political commentator Megyn Kelly, the mother of three kids between the ages of 11 and 15, characterizing what she sees as the liberal take. To her mind, liberals are self-involved to their own detriment, obsessing over whether to have children, obsessing over their kids once they have them and obsessing about everything they're giving up in the process.
'Whereas in the conservative world, especially among people of faith, you hear all about the rewards of motherhood and that gets reinforced,' said Kelly. 'For us, having a family is a no-brainer. It's part of your life plan and you know that from an early age. It's a question of when and how and not whether.'
'The world is full of voices saying this can't work,' said Sen. Britt, pictured, of being a working mom.
'The public message you hear in the culture is 'Your life is over if you have a baby and you'll never accomplish anything,'' said Emily Zanotti 43, a copywriter and full-time working mother of four in Nashville and a self-described 'hardcore Catholic.' 'But what I always heard from fellow conservatives was to pursue a vocation and have a family, because that's one of the greatest things you can do to contribute to the future.'
Sex Matters
Conservative women are firm in their belief that childbearing is a big part of womanhood. To their mind, feminists, progressives and contemporary gender theorists have de-emphasized—even denied—sex differences in ways that don't reflect their lives or worldview.
According to Carrie Lukas, president of the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative think tank, and a mother of five, conservative women don't tend to wring their hands over how their roles differ from those of men. In lieu of the gender-neutral 'parent,' they reflexively use the words 'mother' and 'father.' They believe that the maternal impulse fundamentally shapes women's priorities.
'The traditional leftist feminist is often aggrieved that women have this unique relationship with their children,' Lukas said, which she thinks makes them more troubled by career trade-offs or the 'motherhood wage gap.' As Lukas put it, 'Most conservative women, instead of resenting that they have to make a choice, feel grateful that they have choices to make.'
Both Lukas and Danielle Crittenden, author of the 1999 book, 'What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman,' emphasize that this debate is largely an elite discussion. 'It's still true that most women work as cashiers and men as truck drivers,' Crittenden told me. 'The women most likely to stay home are those who had a high-power career, then married high-power men, regardless of political affiliation. It's a luxury item, like owning thoroughbreds.'
That said, Crittenden laments the inability of many women to talk openly about gender and sex differences. 'The maternal impulse to be self-sacrificing is often criticized as subverting your identity, but really, it's a superpower. We're not being taught to look at motherhood as an enriching and rewarding thing. Instead, it's looked at as a sacrifice.'
It Takes a Village
In the governor's office in Little Rock, Gov. Sanders recently implemented a 'Bring Your Baby to Work' program that allows mothers—and fathers—to bring their kids to the office during their first six months. The goal is to help ease the transition back to work so that employees don't feel like they have to constantly choose between work and parenthood. (State employees get 12 weeks of paid maternity leave.)
'I wanted to promote not just family values but family itself,' Sanders told me. Having babies around not only puts everyone in a good mood, she said. It also helps them focus on what she calls their larger mission: creating a better future for all families with policies that emphasize welfare-to-work, adoption and maternal health.
One common complaint among many left-leaning women is the lack of public support in the U.S. for working mothers. Shouldn't the government be doing more in terms of providing child care and other resources? These conservative women take more of a bootstraps approach. They believe the onus is on them, their families and their communities, not on the state, to make family life work.
'I don't think about what excuses might be out there because I just know what I need to do, and I get the job done,' said Shannon Clark, a senior vice president at the security and intelligence firm Palantir. Clark, 44, who has two children under four, credits her parents, a teacher and construction worker who worked overtime to pay for her education. 'I learned that if there are things you want in life, you have to put in time and effort. It's not a free ride.'
Shannon Clark and her children, Edith left, and George at home in Seattle, Wash. in July.
Yet nearly all of these conservative women emphasized the crucial role played by their husbands. 'The best advice I've gotten so far is having a partner who is more than willing to be side by side,' said AshLee Strong, 40, who has two children under two with her husband, a rancher. 'We're on the same team.' After working as press secretary to then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in Washington, D.C. she moved back to Montana, where she runs a small business.
'I don't do this alone,' Strong explained. 'Not only my husband, but also my mom and my mother-in-law and my sisters-in-law help. Maybe that makes me more traditional, returning to the wider family dynamic.'
Many echoed this Hillaryesque 'it takes a village' approach. For Britt, it's the friends reminding her that she needs to order new sports uniforms for her kids. For Clark, it's her mom, who moved across the street two weeks ago. Multiple women said the single best advice they got was 'Don't be afraid to ask for help.' And every woman interviewed was quick to acknowledge that none of this is easy.
Of course, not every conservative woman is traditional in all senses. Some are on their second marriages. Some got married later in life, though almost all wished they'd found the right partner earlier. (On average, according to surveys, Republicans favor marrying and having children at a younger age than Democrats.)
Shannon Clark's husband Sy Poggemeyer and son George in her home office in Seattle.
Just like many women on the left, they revel in the flexible, remote work arrangements normalized by the pandemic. Many are enthusiastically free-range when it comes to child rearing. And like many Brooklyn parents, they refer to their husbands as partners. Despite the pronatalist rhetoric of JD Vance and others on the right, conservatives aren't having dramatically more children than liberals. On average, Democrats have 1.53 children, compared with 1.86 for Republicans.
'In this day and age, being a mom is harder than it's ever been before,' Sanders said. 'I'm going to sound more generous toward liberal women than you might expect, but I think all of us should be less judgmental. It would probably do all of us a lot of good to recognize that we're all, including me, just trying to make it through some days and keep our heads above water.'
The Conservative Women Who Are 'Having It All'
The Conservative Women Who Are 'Having It All'
The Conservative Women Who Are 'Having It All'
The Conservative Women Who Are 'Having It All'