The Girlboss Debate Misses The Real Problem

It started gaining real traction a few months ago with Helen Andrews’ viral essay, The Great Feminization, in Compact magazine, where she argued that the feminization of our institutions has contributed to many of the social problems we see today. Then, just weeks ago, Sheryl Sandberg announced a major pivot for her Lean In organization: a new, younger CEO, staff cuts, and a sharpened focus on battling the “manosphere” and “tradwife” trends while doubling down on girlboss messaging for the next generation. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

I’ve been right in the middle of it. Through my articles for Evie and my pieces for the Institute for Family Studies, I’ve put the spotlight on the war on motherhood and shared my own story and the stories of friends who waited too long to start families or feel invisible in our anti-motherhood era. Many of us are now single and childless in our late 30s or early 40s. We grew up with the “girl power” anthems of the ’90s that seamlessly morphed into the girlboss ethos of the mid-aughts into the 2010s. One close friend tried to freeze her eggs at 42 and was essentially laughed out of the clinic. “You should have done this years ago,” they told her. Others are married but spent their prime fertile years chasing promotions, degrees, wardrobes and “experiences.” They confide in me their regrets over coffee or drinks. These women are real. They exist in every social circle I know. And they deserve to be heard.

What we’re calling out is the toxic girlboss messaging: the anti-motherhood, anti-family, anti-men rhetoric that has been pumped into Millennial and Gen Z women our entire lives.

We’re not “attacking girlbosses” themselves. That would not only be cruel but hypocritical. Many of us writing for Evie, including me, are ambitious professionals with careers as writers, editors, and creators, but enjoy a healthy work/life balance. We celebrate women’s choices. Evie actively seeks out young, driven women to contribute to the magazine. Instead, what we’re calling out is the toxic girlboss messaging, not the ambitious women. We're calling out the anti-motherhood, anti-family, anti-men rhetoric that has been pumped into Millennial and Gen Z women our entire lives, which appears to be negatively impacting the working class the most. This isn’t shaming individual women for their successes but recognizing how that messaging has fueled the gender wars, eroded the value we place on family, and shifted our culture from cherishing the next generation to worshipping self, status, stuff, and “economic parity,” which has left countless women angry or sad and alone.

The blowback has been fast and often dishonest. Journalists quickly framed me as part of some chorus “yelling” at young ambitious women. Matt Yglesias wrote a Substack piece painting me as part of a group scolding high-achievers. Patrick T. Brown published his own Substack piece positioning himself as a white knight defending girlboss women, citing higher marriage rates among them and suggesting critics should look at men’s role in the fertility crisis instead. I reached out to Patrick to clarify. He had misunderstood my point entirely. We aren’t attacking women; we’re critiquing a cultural narrative. To his credit, he listened. In his follow-up for The Free Press just days later, he removed me from his critique. It was gracious, and rare, in today’s discourse.

Since then, the defenses have continued rolling in, from an article in The Wall Street Journal to one last Friday in The Dispatch. These aren’t left-leaning voices. Conservative writers and even professionally successful conservative women have pushed back. Some reached out to me privately, saying my words felt like a personal attack. They have high-powered jobs and prioritize family and felt judged for having “leaned in.” I understood their hurt. I had to explain that we aren’t coming for professional women. How could we? We’re professional women ourselves. Our target has always been the decades-long anti-motherhood, anti-womanhood drumbeat that told us careers must come first, babies can wait indefinitely, and motherhood is a penalty rather than a profound calling.

Feminism’s irony is that it promised to champion women but practiced its own form of misogyny. It claimed to value us while insisting our worth was measured by a traditional male yardstick: corporate titles, salary increases, political conquests and being breadwinners. To “succeed” or have value we had to become more like men. If that isn’t misogyny, I don’t know what is. We were told independence meant rejecting the very things that have sustained humanity for millennia: love, marriage and children.

Feminism’s irony is that it promised to champion women but practiced its own form of misogyny.

Look around. We live in an era of unimaginable material luxury, advances our ancestors could only dream of. Yet our society feels unmoored. We’ve traded the things that truly sustain us like deep connection, family, and community for money, power, status, and stuff. The girlboss debate is really a proxy for a much larger question: What should humans value? No one here wants to shove women back to the kitchen sink. We celebrate choice and equal opportunity. What we need is a cultural reordering of priorities. If love, family, and the well-being of the next generation come first, economic “parity” between the sexes becomes secondary. Differences in outcomes? That’s okay. We have freedom. We have options. We simply stop pretending women are victims, men are the enemy, and motherhood is a burden to be minimized rather than a glory to be honored.

The so-called “motherhood penalty” is a perfect example of how twisted this conversation has become. Data consistently shows women out-earn or match their male peers until children arrive. Then, the pay gap appears. Instead of celebrating the fact that women are raising the next generation, the most important work any human can do, we frame it as a sexist setback to female ambition. That framing is what’s truly sexist. Motherhood, nurturing, creation: these are universal treasures. Love itself is universal. We’ve become so lost in our human-made constructs of success that we’ve forgotten why we’re here.

We need women in the workforce. The idea that we could somehow roll back decades of female participation is delusional. Our modern economy is increasingly feminine; female-dominated sectors are the fastest-growing, while many traditional male fields struggle. Women start companies, innovate, write and lead. We need that energy. The challenge is building a culture that supports ambitious women without demanding they treat family as an afterthought and men as the enemy. We can have both, success and the sustaining power of love, if we get our priorities straight.

I often think of Alexander the Great. The story goes, as he lay dying, he ordered his servants to walk behind his funeral procession scattering his jewels and gold all the way to his grave. He wanted the world to see that none of it could follow him into eternity. Earthly items, ego and power—they stay behind. What endures? The love we give, the families we build, and the communities we strengthen. That’s the uncomfortable truth we’re dancing around in this debate. Are we prioritizing the right things?

If women are too afraid of offending anyone to speak uncomfortable truths, we’ll watch our society unravel.

I refuse to pretend the conversation is about attacking individual women. From what I’ve read and through my perspective, most of the female writers out there engaging seriously aren’t either. We’re having a hard, necessary discussion about the messages we’ve absorbed since childhood and any consequences they have had on society, which includes consequences that negatively impact women. If women are too afraid of offending anyone to speak uncomfortable truths, we’ll watch our society unravel. Humanity has work to do to realign our priorities—toward connection over consumption and family over self. I hope we do it willingly, before some more powerful force imposes it for us.

Because the data, the stories, and the regrets of women in their late 30s and 40s aren’t lies. They’re warnings, and we’re giving them a voice. The girlboss era sold us a beautiful lie: that we could have it all by putting ourselves first. Many of us did exactly what we were told and we’re living with the consequences now, personally and societally. It’s time to tell the next generation the fuller truth. Ambition and success are wonderful. But love, connection and family are what make a life truly worth living.