11-07-2025
What Conservative Women Really Want
To the Editor:
Re 'Standing Up for Staying at Home' (Sunday Styles, June 29):
The 'tradwife' movement, promoted at Turning Point USA's Young Women's Leadership Summit, sends a dangerous message to young women: Prioritize marriage and children over personal agency.
As the chief executive of Jewish Women International, I see this not as a celebration of motherhood but as a push to make women financially and socially dependent on men. This narrative, amplified by figures like Charlie and Erika Kirk, dismisses women's autonomy, urging them to forgo careers and reproductive choice.
The hypocrisy of female leaders arguing against careers while benefiting from their own, as one high school student attendee points out in the article, is striking. Women deserve the power to choose their paths — whether motherhood, career or both — without being told their worth lies in subservience. This campaign isn't about femininity; it's about control.
Meredith JacobsWashington
To the Editor:
As a psychologist who has treated hundreds of women over the past four decades, I was interested in this article. One premise of the Turning Point USA conference is to 'bring back the celebration of the Mrs. degree.'
Feminism has always been about women having choices, and forgoing a career to stay home and have children is certainly a choice. But I suggest that before making the 'Mrs. only' decision, young women consider the research. We know that 64 percent of working fathers take two weeks or less family leave time after the birth of a child, despite research that paternal leave is beneficial for fathers and babies.
Also, the American child care system continues to rely on individual women rather than supportive structures, such as affordable and safe child care. And if we're going to resort to the use of slogans like 'We're done pretending that a cubicle is more empowering than a countertop,' I suggest that we add this slogan: 'Poverty is just one divorce away.'
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