A few weeks ago, as the East Coast braced for snow, Mayor Zohran Mamdani encouraged New Yorkers to stay home and read Heated Rivalry, a steamy enemies-to-lovers hockey romance. I stayed home. But instead of escapist fiction, I read the Heritage Foundation’s new 168-page report on “how to save the American family.”
According to the authors (the same authors who wrote Project 2025), our country is in a moral and demographic crisis. Birth rates are declining. People aren’t marrying, divorce is too easy. Women are too independent, too liberated, too ambitious to give up their careers and care for children. LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, and birth control have allowed people to separate sex from its “true” purpose: reproduction. The solution, they suggest, is a return to tradition. We must remove obstacles to marriage and childbearing, and restore family as central to society.
As a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence, this report terrifies me. In my early twenties I had a relationship with a man who I thought, at the time, I wanted to marry. I was young and naive, inexperienced with men, eager to believe in love. I didn’t recognize the signs or have the vocabulary to name what was happening until it was too late. Within just a few weeks, he began to control where I went, who I spoke to, and how I lived. Within a few months, he became violent.
The second week of my junior year I tried to break up with him, for the third time. He had been drinking, the argument escalated, and he hurt me. My college roommate just happened to walk in, saw what was happening, and called the police. It wasn’t until he was arrested and I was handed a pamphlet on domestic violence that I realized I was a victim.
In the days that followed, he apologized profusely, said it was the alcohol, promised it would never happen again, and said he would change. I wanted to believe him and I went back. It took several more attempts, and the unwavering support of my friends and family, before I was finally able to leave, later that semester. The relationship ended, but the stalking continued for years. Even today, even after extensive (and expensive) therapy, the trauma remains. But I survived.
My story is not unique. In the United States, about one in four women will experience intimate partner violence, most often between the ages of 16 and 24. Murder by an intimate partner is the leading cause of death for pregnant and postpartum women. Prior to the 1970s, marital rape was legal, women could not open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, or own property without a male co-signer. And yet, these not so distant realities are absent from the far-right’s messaging that encourages college-aged women to marry young, stay married (regardless of the state of their relationship), and have many children.
That same erasure is happening online. Growing up, I watched TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, which followed a family that was later exposed for covering up child sexual abuse and having ties to the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a conservative, fundamentalist Christian organization promoting strict, patriarchal family rules. Today, “tradwife” content floods TikTok, a subculture where women embrace homemaking and traditional family structures, with the husband as the primary provider. All over social media, beautiful women make sourdough, homeschool their many children, and softly package Christian nationalist ideals as an aesthetic choice. Wellness gurus promote “natural” family planning methods, while spreading misinformation on the safety and efficacy of birth control. Influencers advise young women on how to date to find “provider men” and embrace one’s “divine feminine.” And just last month, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Taylor Frankie Paul was announced as the next Bachelorette.
None of this exists in a vacuum. Whether the momfluencers intend to or not, they are part of a larger propaganda machine that’s working to socialize Christian nationalism and far-right ideology, baking it into the minds of young people, one loaf at a time. These videos offer a curated, sun-drenched version of motherhood that conveniently downplays the physical realities of childbirth and the labor required to run a household. Many insist they are apolitical. But in a country rolling back reproductive rights, gutting welfare, surveilling and criminalizing pregnant people, and kidnapping immigrant families, there is no neutrality in romanticizing women’s dependence. The personal is political.
And to be clear: there is nothing wrong with wanting a traditional life. What I reject is the coercion of young women into marriage and motherhood before they’ve had the chance to figure out who they are, what they want in life, and the qualities they desire in a lifelong partner. Before they have full autonomy or the means to support themselves. I fear for the women who, like me, may one day have to escape violence, but who must do so with children to protect, and far fewer resources than I had at their age.
I also want to dispel the myth that the so-called “traditional family,” with a heterosexual, cisgender married couple, male provider and female caretaker, has ever been the norm. Staying home, not working, and raising children on one income requires a great deal of privilege and wealth. Throughout history, women, particularly in working-class, agricultural, and enslaved communities, have always had to work to support themselves and their families, though it often went unpaid and unrecognized. Black women have historically had higher levels of workforce participation, regardless of marriage or motherhood, because economic necessity and structural barriers left them few alternatives.
Being a stay at home mom by choice is a luxury, and when it did briefly exist for some white families, it was only made possible by massive government subsidies. For example, after World War II, public programs like the GI bill provided housing, education, and economic opportunities to veterans, enabling the single-income household model. Meanwhile, Black families were largely excluded from these benefits, as discriminatory lending and segregation meant Black veterans and their families couldn’t access the same wealth-building opportunities.
Ironically, these are the very programs that today’s conservatives oppose. While Vice President JD Vance condemns divorce and feminism, he is actively fighting universal childcare, paid leave, and social support. The very things that would actually give families strength and stability, keep women safe, and allow mothers the choice to stay at home. Meanwhile, his wife, Usha Vance, earned a law degree from Yale and a master’s from Cambridge, and up until his nomination, built a career at a firm that calls itself “radically progressive.”
Next month, I turn 30. By conservative standards, I am their worst nightmare: leftist, educated, career-driven, financially independent, happily single, and childless. To make matters worse, I soon plan to adopt a cat, maybe two. The claim that women like me are delaying marriage and children out of selfishness, choosing temporary pleasure over responsibility, ignores the social structures that remain stubbornly out of sync with our reality. Women are freer than ever, outpacing men academically, economically, and emotionally, and yet marriage still too often demands that they absorb inequality. To become a wife and mother means risking our bodies and lives (see “the girl with the list”),stalling our careers and losing income (while men often see a “fatherhood bonus”), and performing countless hours of unpaid labor.
Despite it all, I do hope to one day find a husband and have children. To help with this effort (because it is indeed an effort), for my birthday, my mom has offered to subsidize my return to the dating apps. She is especially excited about Raya (the so called “exclusive” celebrity dating app), hoping I might meet actor Tom Blyth, who, according to her research, also lives in Brooklyn.
My problem isn’t with marriage or motherhood. I just want a world where women are safe and cared for, where the risks and invisible labor we shoulder are acknowledged and honored. I want women to choose partners who don’t just provide, but partners who truly see us, support us, support our dreams, and treat us as equals. Women (and men) deserve a happy, beautiful life that is unencumbered by the weight of tradition that too often tries to dictate who we are and how we should love.
Conservatives are correct in that family is central to society, but “family” is not a monolith. It exists in chosen families, blended families, in same-sex and single-parent households. For me, family is found in my female friendships, in the women who have taught me how to love and be loved. When deciding when and how to build a family, whether it be a traditional home or a radical new dynamic, the foundation must be choice, not coercion.
I’m excited to see what this next decade brings, and if Tom Blyth isn’t available, I’m perfectly content building a life that is defined by my own terms, fulfilled by my career, my cats, and my community of women who know that my value will never be tied to a wedding date.
About the Author: Gabriella G. Watson is a fellow of the OpEd Project with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice and the Every Page Foundation.
