Feminism isn’t ruining the American family
Also, is this the end of Joni Ernst?
Last year, at a book event with
, someone in the audience asked him how he, a family man, felt being up on stage with me, an advocate for divorce.Garrett handled the question with his usual disarming wit, replying that he felt great about it. I was a little less charming. Feminists have families too, I pointed out. Divorced people are still part of families. In fact, a good portion of my book is dedicated to talking about the joys of parenting with freedom and love. A large portion of my work discusses my children, which some critics do not love so much.
It’s a reductive line of thinking, but one that remains popular: Feminism is antithetical to the American family.
For a very long time, the American narrative has allowed the GOP to claim that it is the party that supports families. Last June, the New York Times published an op-ed by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman that claimed liberal narratives of a good life left little room for having children.
Other think pieces have claimed that motherhood has a branding problem among liberals; writing in The New Yorker last year, Jay Caspian Kang claimed that, “Liberal writers and thinkers don’t frequently opine on the joys of bearing and raising children, or the tremendous social good that it brings.” That statement should not have passed the New Yorker’s famously rigorous fact-checking process, and reveals more about how little King must actually read liberal female writers than what those writers say.
But this thinking is everywhere. From the vice president, to a seniors honor thesis from Liberty University, to “liberal” feminists on Substack.
It’s telling how quickly and easily this rhetoric is swallowed up and spit back out: divorce is the enemy of the family, feminism is ruining America, and choice is undermining the birth rate.
The argument is particularly vacuous in 2025, when the GOP is actively and aggressively undermining the American family.
Speaking at a conference in Austin, Deborah Dorbert, a Florida woman who was forced to carry her baby to term and watched it die in her arms, pointed out that the violence of that moment extended not just to her and her baby, but to her whole family: to her other children, to her partner. Anti-abortion legislation is deeply anti-family: It forces mothers to go septic and infants to die.
There are other ways the GOP is anti-family. Currently, Republican lawmakers are expanding their assaults on same-sex marriage, immigrants, trans people, and no-fault divorce. Each one of those attacks harms families. Eliminating same-sex marriage would wipe out entire legal categories of families, many of whom have children. In fact, the majority of children in the United States live in “nontraditional” families.
Deporting immigrants is an attack on families. Children in particular are harmed by the breakup of their families due to the loss of parents through deportation. Kaiser Health reported that the stresses of deportation damage children’s standard of living, developmental trajectory, schooling, mental health, and psychological well-being.
Feminism isn’t destroying the American family. The people who are consistently stripping choices and lives away from queer people, birthing people, and immigrants should be defensive. They are the ones harming families. They are the ones advocating for destruction.
Attacking trans people by limiting their access to healthcare and participation in public life, harms families; it attacks family members who are loved and cherished. As a result, families with trans kids are fleeing the United States.
Ending no-fault divorce would also undermine American families. The existence of no-fault divorce has decreased violence in marriage by 30 percent. Ending it would only increase the prevalence of violence and coercive control in marriages. Republicans and Democrats alike love to moralize about the impact of divorce, but fewer grapple with the realities of what not being able to leave can mean for those trapped in a marriage.
In 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that ended “permanent alimony.” This law cuts off the economic support designed to help women who left the workforce to raise children.
The GOP also blocked expansion of the child care tax credit, and the vice president has mocked the idea of universal childcare, calling it “class war on normal people.”
All of these moves undermine the American family. Feminism is just a handy straw man. As feminist philosopher
points out, “You can decorate a fucking cake and read stories to your child all day long from any feminist perspective worthy of the name. Our point is that you aren’t obligated to do these things and men aren’t entitled to expect them of you. And also they too should contribute to labor that, yes, can be meaningful and fun and is undoubtedly invaluable, but that ANYONE can get overwhelmed with if they’re overburdened with it.”Feminist critiques of the structures that oppress us are not an effort at destruction but at renovation and rebuilding.
I am part of a family, and I am a feminist. I had children and I advocate for the right not to have children. Nothing about my life choices (and I got choices!) makes me better than someone who chooses differently. I’m not going to stoop to a defensive posture in a world that already refuses to see me as a whole person.
I’m not going to constantly be on the defensive when the sum of my work has been to create and advocate for more — not less. I am not the one who should be on the defensive.
Feminism isn’t destroying the American family. The people who are consistently stripping choices and lives away from queer people, birthing people, and immigrants should be defensive. They are the ones harming families. They are the ones advocating for destruction.
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Joni Ernst’s unethical relationships
Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst is a single mother and a woman who is successful in a party that often denigrates and insults both.