Liberal, Lonely, And Lost: The Modern Crisis Of The Gen Z Woman

I remember the moment I tried to school my dad about feminism as if it were yesterday. A young high school me was in a hotel room, traveling to the Midwest from California with my parents and middle sister to visit my eldest sister in college, and as I often was, I was scrolling on Tumblr. My dad had innocently made some comment about a current event and, the budding social justice warrior within myself, being indoctrinated day-in-and-day-out online, reacted in alarm. He got an earful about intersectional feminism and I felt self-righteous. But to be honest? At that time in my life, when I was Democrat-by-default, I was at my most miserable. Sure, some of my teen angst was probably just part and parcel of high school life, but I know for a fact that a great deal of that angst, depression, and friendship or romantic relationship mistakes were caused by the ideology I tried too hard to align myself with. I didn’t realize at the time how much of my inner pain could be blamed on a blatant disregard for human nature. Liberal women are enraged by their nature and are at war with themselves: the monthly cycles they “suffer” through, the prospect of becoming pregnant (a proverbial death sentence, for many), and the sheer notion that they might physically and emotionally be better suited to a different style of life than their male counterparts. Well, surprise, surprise, as Gen Z women align more exclusively with liberal ideologies while Gen Z men report closer ties to conservative ideologies, Gen Z women have found themselves stuck in a cycle of anxiety, burnout, and bad relationships. It’s true; liberal women report feeling unhappier and lonelier than ever before, and if they knew what was good for them, they’d ditch the toxic ideology that gives them a steady dose of emotional poison. Work Over Family = Burnout Culture Let me make one thing abundantly clear: I am in no way trying to push a full-fledged SAHM lifestyle on all women. It works for some, it doesn’t for others. I firmly believe that if a woman embraces a “trad” lifestyle, that can exist on a spectrum and isn’t the proverbial straitjacket that modern feminists claim it is – "sending women back to the 1950s, too, serving their menfolk, with no control over their own bodies," or whatever. But progressive ideology isn’t friendly to the notion that a woman would even want to embrace traditional sex roles, and if she does, it’s because she’s “ doomed ” to take on domestic work. Progressive narratives push careerism while devaluing motherhood and homemaking, which has totally backfired. Young women seek out college education, sometimes even advanced degrees, and then find themselves exhausted by hustle culture and unfulfilled by the rat race. Don’t believe me? Look no further than social media posts where women are getting brutally honest about their career woes. On TikTok, several video trends have gone viral where girls are talking about how they basically phone it in at work because they just don’t care, and sometimes even reveal how they wish they could just be moms instead. In 2023, the “ lazy girl job ” went viral on social media as somewhat of an addendum to the trend of “quiet quitting.” Lazy girl jobs are easy, white-collar jobs with solid pay, where a woman is either working fewer hours for the same compensation or perhaps she’s just resigned herself to a less demanding role so she can invest more energy in hobbies and relationships. “I have a job like this and it’s heaven,” commented one TikTok user on a video about lazy girl jobs. Other commenters expressed wishing that they could find their own easygoing job. It’s extremely unsurprising to me that women are less interested in a high-stakes 9-to-5 work environment because even after I tried to convince myself that was something I wanted, I also found myself happily settling into a WFH role. While it’s not a lazy girl job in the slightest, I relish in my workplace flexibility and ability to more or less manage myself. This same concept is why the independent contractor or freelancer work style is so appealing to women. Even if we’re not currently mothers, many women want the option in the very near future and know that raising a child while working is significantly easier when that work environment isn’t away from the home and inflexible. Amidst a growing cohort of women disillusioned by hustle culture spawned the TikTok trend of the “ stay-at-home girlfriend .” Sometimes posted in jest but also posted by people who are entirely serious, this trend shows how some women focus on homemaking or personal pursuits while their partners work. The videos take you behind the scenes of their self-care, how they manage the household, and often lean into their femininity through creative endeavors. While this is not a huge population for sure, this trend and the lazy girl job trend both highlight how there’s a quiet but growing sentiment among women to step away from conventional employment and prioritize personal well-being over professional ambitions. And you might be asking yourself… Andrea, don’t these women just clearly want to be married? I’m sure if they really thought long and hard about why the concept of the “stay-at-home girlfriend” is appealing to them, they’d realize marriage and motherhood is their best path to happiness but look, if the boss babe propaganda is really so deeply ingrained in women’s psyches and we have to take baby steps here, baby steps it is! I suppose it’s better for them to dream about being a stay-at-home girlfriend or to have a lazy girl job than to be eagerly “ bed rotting ” and passively watching their lives go by. Casual Sex and “Situationships” = Toxic Cycle of Loneliness In March 2025, a study revealed that a shocking 56% of Gen Z adults reported having had a romantic relationship while they were teenagers. For reference, this is compared to 76% of Gen Xers and, similarly, 78% of Baby Boomers. So, what’s the deal? Is Gen Z just not interested in relationships? As it turns out, they appear to want to, but have had their relationship standards seriously messed up by hookup culture and “situationships.” The situationship, which often used to be called “friends with benefits,” is an ambiguous “are we or aren’t we?” relationship that removes any burden associated with a formal commitment. In 2024, polling showed that half of individuals aged 18-34 had been in a “ situationship ,” indicating how traditional dating conventions just aren’t the standard anymore for younger generations. Celebrity culture can be blamed, in part. Page 6 regulars have babies with boyfriends, rather than husbands. Even Sydney Sweeny recently called off her wedding with fiancé Jonathan Davino because she reportedly wasn’t ready to settle down. But the increasingly liberal worldview amid young women is also to blame. Following the sexual revolution and advent of hormonal birth control, it’s easy for college-aged women to belly up to the bar after class, have a few drinks paid for by an eager stranger, and end up in bed with him by the end of the night. Despite all this, “situationships” and other casual encounters actually aren’t popular at all among college-aged women. Surveys suggest that as many as 83% of female college students would much rather be in a committed relationship than having casual sex, and over 95% of them prefer dating to hooking up. Situationship culture is just another form of gaslighting, wrote TyaCamellia Stone, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist on her blog . Stone argues that relationships with no strings attached go against human nature as “social, bonding creatures” with a “biological attachment need.” We’re at our best when we know that people we can trust are attentive, reliable, and deeply care about our emotional and physical well-being. If they’re only present for us when it's convenient for them, we don’t feel safe. “For this reason, attachment instability is inherently traumatizing,” Stone wrote. Stone also places blame on social media and dating apps that, intentionally or not, influence people into believing the grass is always greener. If you settle down, you might be seen as dependent, weak, and uncool. Why not just keep swiping to find the next best thing? Stone explained that this lack of safety has real consequences. Physically, attachments to unreliable individuals can impact your quality of sleep, immune system, and blood pressure. And emotionally, you never allow yourself the chance to develop real relationship skills. Liberal musician Chappell Roan sings positive praises to hook up and party culture, but at the same time released a song called “Casual” about heartbreak after a situationship. She sings: “It’s hard being casual/ When my favorite bra lives in your dresser/ It’s hard being casual/ When I’m on the phone talking down your sister. And I try to be the chill girl that/ Holds her tongue and gives you space/ I try to be the chill girl but/ Honestly, I’m not.” Gen Z women would be far less miserable in their relationships if they actually took a risk and tried commitment, but by and large, my generation is woefully risk-averse . Many put on a “self-protective facade of detachment and apathy,” as one Slate writer put it , so they don’t have to potentially be hurt by commitment. The bottom line is that situationships are often a bigger risk than your average, committed relationship because someone inevitably catches feelings, lines are extremely blurry, and so much precious time on planet earth is wasted while being strung along. Victimhood Mentality = An Exhausting, Anxiety-Filled Lifestyle Going way back to my embarrassing teenage moment attempting to school my dad on feminism, it’s clear to me in hindsight that I was angry, flustered, and frankly, arrogant in that moment because I had been brainwashed to believe I, as a young woman, was oppressed. Despite there being many advantages to womanhood, leftist ideology instructs women to see themselves as oppressed, fueling chronic anxiety and stress over simply existing. When you spend all day on high alert trying to tear down traditional values and play victim over “microaggressions,” you’re bound to be lonely and sad. There is power in mindset. Look at Wim Hof, otherwise known as “ The Iceman ” who climbs mountains shirtless and sits in freezing temperatures for hours. Hof controls his immune response through breathing techniques and mindset, and research can confirm that his methods can actually rewire how your brain reacts in ways that were once thought to be completely involuntary. You can explore this same principle in one of my favorite books of all time, Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. “Those who have a why to live, can bear almost any how,” wrote Frankl about his time in a Nazi concentration camp having observed that the people around him who survived the longest may not have been physically strong, but they had a positive sense of purpose. No, mindset can’t make you immortal, but the human mind can push body and soul further beyond normal limits. This is why the victimhood mindset cultivated and even worn as a badge by many liberals is one of the most psychologically damaging states of mind to live in. If you feel like life is happening to you, your “locus of control” is external, not internal. After President Trump won in 2024, commotion built online about how the Trump administration would send women back to the 1950s. One writer in The Hill (a male, actually) argued that we’d soon arrive at "a vision of alpha males protecting—in other words, dominating—women." Liberal American women take statements like these to heart. They then cry and scream that their rights are being taken away while women oversees are barely afforded personhood. Women in America have all the same power that men have, and yet some liberals seem to forget that reality for women in many other countries means being covered up head to toe, married off as child brides, suffering from female genital mutilation, and being denied the right to work or vote. How are we oppressed when we can vote, start our own businesses that are often lauded for being female-owned, dress however we want, and often get the better end of the deal if a marriage splits? If someone starts to define themselves by their proverbial wounds, they’re locked into a loop where their pain becomes their identity. If they were to try to let go of that “suffering,” they risk losing a part of themselves. I don’t believe for a second that bad things aren’t often happening to women based on their sex. There are real injustices committed against women by bad actors. But the threat of a conservative-leaning government is not an injustice toward women. In fact, this administration has been much more pro-woman than the previous one which tore apart the very meaning of “womanhood.” The mindset that women choose either reinforces their proverbial, patriarchal prison or can unlock their power to transform any amount of adversity into meaning and movement. But, the liberal ideology crumbles without intersectionality and the constant victimhood Olympics. Conservative young men, by contrast, are embracing self-improvement, personal responsibility, and a more positive outlook on life. Community, family, and oftentimes faith are what make people feel far more fulfilled. While mental health is decreasing across the board, young women’s mental health is suffering more than young men’s. While young women might take to TikTok romanticizing how they rot in bed (and believe it’s self-care), young men might be on X posting about their gains in the gym. The Guardian once warned that the rise in right-wing fitness culture is a front to recruit and radicalize people into becoming white nationalists or political extremists, and more recently toned down the rhetoric, simply saying that getting fit could “turn you into a rightwing jerk.” It’s true that physically strong men are more likely to be right-wing , but the drive for physical fitness doesn’t come from a place of supremacy – it’s derivative of a growing culture of men who want to be the best husbands, fathers, and workers they can be. A Political Gender Gap = Inevitable Future Relationship Struggles So, young men are moving farther to the right while young women are moving left. What happens to dating and marriage prospects? If more young women don’t wake up to the reality that the so-called progressive agenda actually works against them, this divide will only worsen. Women will struggle long-term with romantic difficulties, and their ability to find and thrive in secure attachments will be stunted even further than it already is. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign investigated just how polarizing American politics can be for romantic couples. 30 percent of American adults don’t share the same political views as their partner (though I’d imagine this divide is only growing for younger generations), but if they watch or discuss news coverage together, the researchers found that news media was a major trigger for conflict and debate. In fact, the researchers found certain couples completely avoided news because they worried it would escalate relational conflicts or trigger anxiety. One couple was a woman who supported Donald Trump, but her boyfriend had been a Hillary Clinton-voting Democrat. They had worked out an agreement where she could watch the news in the morning, and he could watch it at night, but ultimately, they still had serious friction. Another couple had the opposite ideological divide, and the woman reported how she secretly watched CNN and hid her Democrat volunteer activity from her husband. Families will always have disagreements, and sometimes it’s not even over politics, but apparently it’s growing harder and harder for people to have heart-to-hearts over political differences. A recent study out of the University of California-Berkeley found that brief conversations about sensitive political topics don’t narrow division, and even if the conversation partners switch to neutral topics and find some amount of goodwill, the effects don’t last. In other words, Democrats and Republicans nowadays, by and large, cannot resolve their differences. If it doesn’t turn ugly, which we’ve all seen happen on social media especially, and people can have a good conversation, researchers found that these positive feelings and increases in warmth toward the other side had a shelf-life of three months. But is there anything we can do about this? I don’t know about you, but I have many loved ones who sit on the opposite side of the aisle from me politically. I still love them unconditionally and can understand why they have formed their far-left beliefs. What’s worked for me has been limiting any conversation about political topics (easier said than done, considering I work for a policy organization) and making a concerted effort to remember that political ideology is part nurture, but also part nature, and so I have to reserve some amount of judgment. Get this: research suggests that liberals and conservatives have minuscule differences in their amygdalas, the part of your brain that aids in threat perception. Furthermore, twin studies show that 40% of political ideology is heritable, while the other 60% is shaped by environment. There’s still a lot of research needed to understand how genetics can affect political ideology, but it’s a hot topic among political neuroscience researchers since brain scans are surprisingly good at predicting one’s political leanings. With all this in mind and the rise in extreme political polarization on social media, and frankly, in person too, the future landscape for cross-political relationships seems bleak. Some studies have suggested liberals are more likely to stay within their ideological bubbles, especially online. According to social media researchers , conservatives more often end up seeing liberal content while liberals curate homogenous feeds for themselves. And as conservatives are more likely to be exposed to liberal views because of how dominant they are in media and academia, conservatives are also more likely to be tolerant of liberal views. Closing Thoughts Gen Z women are in the middle of a major crisis – not because there’s some oppressive, patriarchal boogeyman out to get them, but because they’ve been sold a lie. The far-left ideology many of them follow actively works against their nature, fulfillment, and happiness. The good news? This cycle can be broken. Rejecting a victimhood mentality, walking away from hookup culture, and choosing purpose over hustle culture won’t immediately fix everything, but it’s certainly a start. It’s high time women actually stick to the whole “women supporting women” mantra, but this only happens when they stop glorifying misery and start embracing values like family and community that have historically grounded women. Real liberation begins when women realize they’re not oppressed for being women. We’re empowered because of it.