What is interesting about this rise in the domestic arts is that it is not necessarily springing from an equal rise in our appreciation of homemaking. This can be interpreted in different ways. Maybe we are inadvertently seeking the comfort represented in caring for home, perhaps because that comfort was denied to us. Maybe it is just an acknowledgement that convenience has come with a cost.

What is missing and from what have we cut ourselves off? As we march forward into a new progressive future of our own making, what are we jettisoning along the way? From churches to families, from our historical and literary patrimony in the humanities, to our common mores — more and more often, we have been saying “no.” For many not raised with any connection to the richness of such things, the “no” is not of protest, but of apathy. It is a shrug, a resounding “meh” to things the depths of which we have not penetrated, a rejection without an understanding what it is we reject.

The idea for my book The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity (TAN, 2019) first started when I looked at the elite women of our culture and compared them to Our Lady. The Virgin Mother is the woman who has rightfully been called “the most powerful woman in the world,” even by National Geographic. And yet the elite women who hold so much sway over our culture have very little in common with Mary. These elite women – whom I’ve come to call the matriarchy – control much of the way women in America think today. Their influence saturates journalism, academia, Hollywood, politics, and the fashion industry.

This coterie of well-heeled women and men are desperate to make their distaste of these new laws felt. Their voices join the chorus of elite women in politics, academia, and fashion, the matriarchy — who are united by one thing — to make sure abortion stays legal and unrestricted. Reading the geriatric lines used decades ago by their grandmothers and great grandmothers, they rail against the patriarchy while fomenting panic into the hearts of women about what will happen if women can’t abort their own children. This song and dance has worked for five decades. Why change the script now?

New pro-life laws in Georgia and Alabama have elicited predictable responses from pro-abortion activists. Framing the pro-life argument as an attack on women, Alyssa Milano suggested a sex strike, while Linda Sarsour was quick to blame white women for supporting the patriarchy.

Contrary to the belief today that children hinder a woman’s success, Elizabeth Ann never saw her children as an obstacle. Her remarkable work was largely motivated by the necessity of caring for them. Her children were what drove her efforts, not what stymied them.

For those who have seen “Unplanned,” Marilisa Carney (played by Emma Elle Roberts) is portrayed as the gentle, persistent and loving soul who befriends Abby Johnson, despite the enormous fence and the even bigger ideology wall separating them. Few people know, however, the deeper story behind the real Marilisa Carney.

In 1970, the academically successful but mentally unstable Kate Millett found herself on the cover of Time magazine with the title “The Politics of Sex: Kate Millett and Women’s Lib,” featuring her book Sexual Politics. Considered groundbreaking, Millett quickly became the intellectual force behind radical feminism. Time called her the “high priestess” of the movement and her book, its bible.

The general message to women for the last several decades, and smartly echoed on IWD, is that the future of women is in work, that we need equal pay, more opportunities, more avenues for our ambition, more domains for our dreams. In fact, as we are told, women’s work is so vital and pivotal to our happiness, that abortion must remain the law of the land so that no woman is saddled with an unwanted pregnancy getting in the way of her dreams. Rose McGowan just reminded us of this in her recent statement: “I realized I could not bring a child into my world and simultaneously change the world.” 

Announcing the release of my sixth book, The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity, to be released March 1. So grateful for all these amazing endorsements!