- Content: 
By Lillie Liska
For years, I filled a Pinterest board with wedding dresses, engagement rings, floral arrangements — you get the picture. I called it “For Someday.” Then six months ago, that “someday” happened when I married my husband. Marriage truly is all I hoped it would be.
I don’t think my experience is unique. Many young woman probably have a wedding Pinterest board just like I did.
But many don’t, and that’s a worrying sign of a broader cultural trend.
Recent research shows that only 32% of women believe “that women who marry and have children live fuller, happier lives,” while 55% of single women believe they’re happier than married women. Less than half of single women, according to a 2024 Pew Research survey, want to have children.
And aspiring to marriage and motherhood as a young woman seems tantamount to societal suicide, if you believe what THE VIEW tells you.
A few weeks ago, conservative influencer Isabel Brown came under fire from THE VIEW hosts for encouraging young women to get married and have children.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the young mom said it was “high time” to encourage young people “to grow up and have the courage to get married and have kids — more kids than they can afford before they think they’re ready.”
Related: Katherine Schwarzenegger Defends Traditional Marriage: ‘I Need My Husband’
Brown believes this will “ultimately trickle down into the political policies that we will see save our country,” and I agree.
But if you were to listen to THE VIEW, you’d think that she and I and the other young women like us are resigning ourselves to a life of misery.
“The world has over 8 billion people! We no longer need to force people to procreate and pump out babies. We have arrived here. Women now and girls now have a choice,” co-host Sara Haines said in response to Brown.
“I think it’s really reckless to be suggesting that people should have more children when you now know in this country there’s this affordability crisis,” co-host Sunny Hostin said. She claimed that a married, two-person household needs to make over $400,000 a year to support having children.
Guest host Whitney Cummings said that one does not need “courage” to get married and suggested that Brown will “rethink” how many children she wants as her 1-year-old daughter gets older.
But is encouraging young women to desire marriage and motherhood really so wrong?
Doom scroll just a little on social media, and you’ll probably come across single, childless woman celebrating the “freedom” they have. They point to their ability to travel, financial resources, doing what they want whenever they want and living for themselves as reasons to skip having children.
Comedian Chelsea Handler often goes viral for her child-free bits, quipping recently that “Kids…they’re not that great.”
But in reality? Research shows that the happiest women are married mothers.
In fact, “Nearly twice as many married mothers say they are ‘very happy’ as unmarried women without children,” Institute for Family Studies found.
That could explain the growing popularity of “trad wife” influencers, like Ballerina Farm or Nara Smith, who approach the joys and challenges of marriage and motherhood in beautiful and aspirational ways. Young women see the happiness they find in their families and want the same.
Is being a wife and a mom for every woman? Not necessarily. But telling us that marriage and motherhood will ruin our lives is simply a lie.
Will it be challenging? Yes. The Bible calls women to a high standard, telling wives that they are to submit to their husbands, to love him and their children so that “word of God may not be reviled” (Titus 2:4-5). The woman described in Proverbs 31 routinely puts the needs of her family before her own, a message counter to today’s “me first” attitude.
But worth it? I think so.
“…let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven,” Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount.
How we love and serve our families will point the world to God, who loved us so much that He sent His son, Jesus, to die for our sins and rise again that we may enjoy life forever with Him.
When we understand that marriage and motherhood can illustrate that reality in a small, small way, it makes sense why the world would push young women to reject those God-given gifts.
So for my fellow Gen Z women who can’t wait to be married or be moms, don’t let what THE VIEW or social media says dissuade you from those dreams.
Read Next: Best Actress Winner Gushes About Marriage, Motherhood at Oscars
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
– Content: +3