Harrison Butker for the Win
Motherhood Over Careerism
Yes, some schools are still having spring commencements, but that does not mean they are immune from mobs. Mobs of feminists are gunning for Kansas City Chief placekicker Harrison Butker, who praised motherhood and criticized feminism in the Commencement Address at Kansas’s Benedictine College. Butker warns Catholics (and Christians generally) against compromising their faith to fit in with America’s “degenerate cultural values and media.” His big point: Christians have “always been countercultural” and they should remain so.
Christian elites are ashamed at Christianity’s countercultural mission in big ways. Bishops, priests, and church leadership generally caved on COVID lockdowns, neglecting the sacraments and allowing the faithful to die alone. The current occupant of the White House made the sign of a cross at a pro-abortion rally. Christian leaders encourage believers to keep their faith “private, hidden away and harmless.” Many also compromise and prevaricate to accommodate our queer constitution.
Big, loud abandonments of the Christian mission are easy to see. Butker also worries about corruption in the “small ways” that involves living out one’s vocation, including how men and women prioritize family in their lives. Higher education leads many women to favor careerism over motherhood—and this is often true even at (and especially at) “conservative” Catholic schools like Benedictine. Generally, the more education, the later the marriage, the fewer the marriages, the less childbearing, and the later the childbearing.
After congratulating the “ladies present” on their “amazing accomplishment” of graduating from college, Butker addressed the important questions of life priorities. Women have had the “most diabolical lies” told to them. “Many of you are sitting here now about to cross the stage,” Butker said, “and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you’re going to get in your career,” yet, he ventures, that “the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.” He praises the wife “who leans into her vocation” as mother. Benedictine students stood and applauded Butker’s message.
Many additional lies support the “diabolical lie” deprioritizing motherhood. Women are lied to about fertility. Many women, especially educated women, do not know or want to know that fertility rates decline so steeply with age. Finnish women think 37 is just as good as 23. Canadian women are similar, as are women in Sweden and United States, and as are American reproductive healthcare providers. (Answer: It goes downhill slowly at 26 and markedly at 33.)
Nor are career women happier, as girls are often told throughout their education. Certainly there are more career oriented women than there were in 1974, when only a third of American mothers of three-year-olds worked; today, that number exceeds two-thirds. Married mothers and fathers are the happiest Americans, according to general surveys, and married women with children are happier than married men with children.
Nor is deprioritizing motherhood the only lie affecting the sexes. “What plagues our society is this lie that has been told to you [gentlemen] that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities.” The absence of men in the home “plays a large role in the violence we see all around our nation.” And the confident assertion of tradition follows from vigorous male cultural leadership and encouraging men to leave their comfort zones and do hard things. Scads of evidence supports Butker.
No matter the evidence. Our anti-human media scolds practiced ritual denouncing. Merely repeating Butker’s words was thought enough to refute him. USA Today’s Michael Freeman, for instance, wondered: “Her vocation? Really? Did I slip and fall into a time machine and travel back to the 1950s?” Ignorant journos and the harpies who are trying to hound the Chiefs to cut ties with Butker pretend anyone opposing the girlboss option simply would consign women to lives of misery and slavish, unrecompensed devotion. Comments under Butker’s speech are moronically splenetic. The memes are boring.
This tired feminist trope—either you are 100% with deprecating motherhood or you want women consigned to be barefoot and pregnant—is as stupid as it is a requirement of our civil rights laws.
Indeed, Butker’s speech is subtle. Never does he blame women for working or using their education. Never does he argue for taking away anyone’s right to work. The speech reflects a profound truth that there are two parties among women—one-third or so of women are careerists and would rather forgo motherhood or emphasize career, while two-thirds or so would rather prioritize motherhood. The ambitions of fly-over women, as Carrie Gress calls them, are all but forgotten in the American mainstream.
The rubber will soon be meeting the road, though: will Benedictine students live like they clapped? Even those committed to prioritizing family have a tougher time living out that commitment today. The battle of the sexes rages ever more. As fewer marry, the battle intensifies. Marriage is the best or perhaps the only peace treaty in that battle.