The Feminist War on Motherhood

Victor Joecks on May 13, 2025

If you celebrated Mother's Day, you rejected modern feminism without even knowing it.

Last Sunday was Mother's Day. It's generally a joyous occasion. Everyone has a mother. Unlike with dads, almost everyone knows his or her mom. Most people appreciate the sacrifices their moms made.

More broadly, the survival of society depends on women marrying and having children. The nuclear family is the core building block of American society.

Yet, some feminists aren't interested.

"The heart of woman's oppression is her child bearing and child rearing role," feminist Shulamith Firestone wrote in her 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex. She continued, "It was woman's reproductive biology that accounted for her original and continued oppression."

Women were "the slave class that maintained the species in order to free the other half for the business of the world." She dreamed of "the full development of artificial reproduction (that) would provide an alternative to the oppressions of the biological family." She wanted "the full self-determination, including economic independence" of women.

Her vision also included the destruction of marriage, the nuclear family and sexual norms.

"In our new society, humanity could finally revert to its natural polymorphous sexuality -- all forms of sexuality would be allowed and indulged," she wrote. That included children, she claimed, who should have the ability "to do whatever they wish to do sexually."

Now, it's tempting to dismiss Firestone as a crank pining for a Marxist revolution. But look around. The ideas she and other radical feminists promoted dominate the culture.

Many popular songs glorify promiscuous sex. Around 40% of all births are to unmarried women. Last year, New York Magazine had a cover story on polyamory, subtitled, "A practical guide for the curious couple."

But our sex-obsessed society isn't producing many children. The country's birth rate is well below the replacement rate and generally has been for decades.

A major reason for that is that many women have prioritized economic independence over having children. Young women are earning college degrees in record numbers. On average, more educated women have fewer children. Abortion advocates frequently argue that women need to kill their children to improve their future financial prospects.

You may not know who Firestone is, but you're surrounded by people who are living out her ideals.

But this feminist revolution hasn't produced the promised utopia. Far from it. Around 20% of women ages 40 to 59 are on antidepressants. Among women 60 and over, it's almost 25%. In 2023, more than half of high school girls reported "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year," according to a CDC survey. The CDC also reports that "depression carries a high economic burden."

In a 2023 advisory, then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness to be an "epidemic." It increases your risk of heart disease, dementia, depression and even death. Two factors that increase one's risk of isolation are being a single parent and living alone.

Marriage doesn't just help ward off loneliness. Statistically, children are much better off being raised by married parents. They are less likely to live in poverty and end up in jail.

Rejecting institutions like marriage and motherhood has left millions of women depressed, lonely and unhealthy. And it has made things worse for whatever children they do end up having.

The solution isn't patriarchal control, but society telling the truth. That being a married mom is a noble and meaningful vocation. That while there's a financial cost to having children, the cost of not having them is often greater. And that trying to act like a man is a terrible way to be a woman.

For one day a year, Mother's Day hints at these timeless realities. Now our culture needs to spend the rest of the year celebrating motherhood.

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Victor Joecks is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Email him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or follow @victorjoecks on X. To find out more about Victor Joecks and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the

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