Swinging Back to Center: Reclaiming the Honor of Motherhood
We told women they could be anything—and then treated “mother” like a consolation prize. It’s time we swing back to center and reclaim motherhood as a worthy, intentional, and powerful path.
I thought I wanted two kids. Now I want as many kids as my body will allow.
I thought I wanted two kids because I also wanted to protect my freedom, to be able to build a career alongside being a mom, to travel, to have time for other projects and hobbies. I wanted my independence. That was my identity.
Until Anya, our daughter, came into our lives. More than the career and freedom and independence, I now want to embrace motherhood. I’ve been embracing motherhood. I’m leaning in—completely, intentionally, and wonderfully.
This shift in my thinking reflects a broader cultural need: to swing back to center. For generations, women had limited choices. Motherhood was the only accessible path. Then feminism rightfully opened doors, giving us options we've never had before. But somewhere along the way, we swung too far in the other direction. Career became not just an option, but the only respectable choice. We went from having no agency to having agency with strings attached. True balance means returning to the center, where all choices are equally valid, including the choice to prioritize motherhood.
The Wildly Distorted Narrative
Career is everything—that’s the story we’ve been told for many years. You see it in how titles, offices, and awards are celebrated, even paraded. You hear it in the hushed admission of being a housewife or stay-at-home mom, followed by a resigned “I needed to stop work,” instead of a proud “I got to resign from my 9-5 to focus on my kids.” You feel it in the labor and sacrifices inside family homes that remain invisible, unappreciated.
When women are asked what they want to do, where they want to be in 10 years, you don’t hear, “I’d like to be a mother” or “I’d like to manage the household and make bread from scratch for my family.” You hear dreams of becoming a doctor, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, or another impressive title. It’s all about work and ambition and fat paychecks. It’s the reason we try to do well at school, right? To get a good paying job and work our way up.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with those dreams, to want career success and financial freedom, but to think that mothering is less, that it’s a step down, that it’s a waste of all that we’ve worked for—that’s wildly distorted. And deeply harmful.
A family unit is the foundation of society. Not companies. Not institutions. Not accolades. Individual family units—healthy, whole, secure—are what anchor communities. Values are taught at home. Healthy habits are formed at home. When we fail to build those strong family units, when we relegate them to the backseat in favor of external success, what happens to society? What happens to our children?
Our Reality and the Broken System
The ideal scenario is that every family is given that choice. That every mother can choose to stay home and focus on the kids. But I understand that that’s not the reality.
We live in a broken system. Many families need double income (sometimes even more) to live comfortably and enjoy little luxuries here and there. Mom needs to work a full-time job to earn enough money, so she needs to leave the kids at a daycare center and pay them to take care of the kids.
Then the schools. Schools that keep kids in classrooms for whole days, longer than necessary. It feels like schools are designed around mom and dad having full-time jobs, so that kids are “safely” inside campuses ‘til they finish work.
It just doesn’t sit right.
Babies and kids get divided attention in daycares and schools. They could be exposed to questionable behaviors and harmful ideologies. What if they absorb those ways of thinking, before we even finish instilling values?
Childhood and Development Have Become Secondary
This broken system highlights an uncomfortable truth: our kids’ childhood and development have become secondary. We’ve become too focused in providing that we’ve forgotten the most important part of raising children: presence, protection, and pro-active guidance.
We’ve entrusted them to strangers—for them to raise. But our kids aren’t their priority. And they’re not always the most qualified for the job.
I watched Adolescence a month ago, a show about modern teenagers and the messy world they're experiencing. One truth emerges clearly: parents need to do more than just provide. We need to be protectors, guides, steady voices in the chaos. We need to ask the hard questions, help them process the confusion, shield them when necessary, and show them how to stand with conviction.
We need to help them hone their inner compass, not just tell them where north is, but teach them how to find it themselves. Because what else will protect them? What else will keep them grounded when the world tries to sweep them away with harmful ideologies disguised as empowerment?
This ability to discern has become even more important today. We're raising children in a culture that has become hesitant to make moral distinctions. In our effort to be inclusive, we've abandoned the notion that some behaviors and choices are objectively better than others. That some behaviors are wrong—period.
We need to teach them while they’re young so that when it’s time to go out into the world, they have the cognitive ability, confidence, and conviction to navigate complexity without losing themselves; otherwise, we’re leaving them to the wolves to brainwash, abuse, and devour.
And just like in Adolescence, that story will end with regret and heartbreak, realizing that we should have done more, that we should have done better, that we should have been more present and proactive.
Empowered Choice
Feminism gave women something precious: the power to choose. It opened doors that had been locked, created pathways where none existed. I benefit from that fight every day—the education I received, the voice I have, the agency to shape my own life.
But somewhere in the decades that followed, we began to equate empowerment with a specific kind of choice. Career became the gold standard of liberation. Working outside the home became the only legitimate expression of our potential. We started measuring freedom by how closely we could mirror traditional masculine success.
True feminism encompasses all choices—including the choice to prioritize family. It means recognizing that a woman who chooses to stay home with her children is exercising the same agency as one who chooses corporate leadership. Both are expressions of empowerment when they align with our authentic desires and values.
The real victory of feminism isn't that we can now compete with men in every arena. It's that we can choose our arena.
We can deliberate, reflect, and decide what success means for us, personally. Some women will choose corner offices. Others will choose morning routines with their children. Both choices require courage. Both deserve respect.
This is the choice I'm making. In twenty years, I want my greatest accomplishment to be raising my children well, not accumulating professional accolades. I want to carry memories of quiet mornings and bedtime stories, not late-night presentations and office politics.
I might write that book someday—it remains one of my dreams. But right now, it's secondary to raising Anya well. That's not a compromise or a step back. It's an intentional alignment of my time with my deepest values.
When we understand that feminism is about choice itself, not prescribed choices, we free ourselves to live authentically. We stop apologizing for our decisions and start owning them fully.
Embracing Duty
In order to embrace my role, I needed to fully accept my husband’s role as well.
I’m the primary nurturer in our family, and my husband is the primary provider. Some might call it traditional and outdated. It is traditional, but it’s not outdated. It works for us. Just like in any well-run company, we have distinct roles. There's a CEO and a COO. There’s the finance department and the client fulfillment department. We focus on our own responsibilities, trusting that our partner is taking care of theirs.
If both parents are simply providers, no one owns the responsibility to nurture the kids, to make sure they get all the nutrition they need and that the fridge is always stocked up, to play with them and introduce different interests, to be the comfort they run to when they’re confused or overwhelmed.
Parents need to provide for their children; but they need to do more than that.
Owning our responsibilities as parents is our duty. My leaning into motherhood (and accepting my husband’s support with gratitude) is not just because of my desire to be proactive. It comes from understanding that this is my duty. I need to do this and I get to do this.
I need to forgo any dreams of corporate success if I want to be more present in Anya’s development. And I get to do that because my husband provides for us.
My husband needs to work hard if he wants to provide Anya with a good life. And he gets to do that, he gets to focus on work, because I’m taking care of Anya while he’s working.
When we understand what our duty is, it’s clearer what needs to become priority and what needs to fall second.
Motherhood First, but Not Motherhood Only
Prioritizing motherhood doesn't mean abandoning every other aspect of who you are. It means getting the order right.
I still work, but my work fits around my family—not the other way around. I start work after our breakfast because those first moments together matter. My lunch break stretches longer than most because I won't leave Anya at the table finishing her meal alone. I end work mid-afternoon to be there when she wakes from her nap, ready for play or stories or whatever the moment calls for. Sometimes I work in the evenings, after she's found her sleep.
Right now, I'm working part-time, not full-time. But even this isn't the balance I want—my goal is to continue lessening my hours of work per day so that I can dedicate even more time to nurturing and mothering. Each reduction in work hours is an investment in presence, in being available for the moments that matter most in Anya's development.
The work gets done. The difference is that it happens in the rhythm of our family life.
The Trade-Offs
This requires saying no to opportunities that would demand too much. It means turning down projects that pull me away during her most wakeful hours. It means accepting that some career paths simply aren't compatible with the kind of mother I want to be right now.
The world might tell us this is limitation. I call it clarity.
These formative years shape everything that follows—the security she develops, the values she absorbs, the sense of self she'll carry into the world. All of this gets established now, in the ordinary moments we share.
The Privilege and the Possibility
I recognize that this is a significant privilege. Not everyone can restructure their work around their children. Many mothers are supporting families on their own, or their partner's income simply isn't enough to sustain their household. For families living paycheck to paycheck, the choice to prioritize presence over income may feel like a luxury they can't afford.
This economic reality is part of the broken system I mentioned earlier. Housing costs have skyrocketed while wages have stagnated. Healthcare is expensive. Basic necessities consume larger portions of family budgets than they did generations ago. The very structure of our economy has made it harder for families to thrive on a single income.
But I also believe this choice is becoming more accessible than we realize, even within these constraints. Remote work and flexible arrangements are shifting what's possible. Digital products have become a profitable business for many mothers. Microbakeries now provide flexibility and income.
The rigid structures that once made this impossible are becoming more fluid. Sometimes it requires downsizing, moving to lower-cost areas, or finding creative combinations of part-time work and family time. It might mean choosing a smaller home, fewer vacations, or secondhand clothes in exchange for more time with our children.
These aren't easy choices, and they're not available to everyone. But for those who feel pulled toward more present parenting, it's worth exploring what trade-offs might be possible. What could you give up to gain more time? What creative solutions might work for your specific situation?
The question isn't whether you can have it all. It's whether you can choose what matters most and build everything else around that choice.
To Women Who Feel the Same Pull
Motherhood is my duty, my desire, my number one priority. It isn't a detour. It's not the thing I do instead of fulfilling my potential. It is the fulfillment of it, at least in this season.
This is not a manifesto for every woman. I'm not prescribing anything. I'm just offering this: an invitation to those who feel the same pull, but feel ashamed to embrace it. I hope by writing this, those women who are torn, who know in their heart that they want to focus on their kids but are told to pursue other things—I hope you find comfort here. I hope you find strength here to embrace it.
You can lean in. You can build your life around motherhood. You can choose the slow mornings, the quiet presence, the values taught both in lectures and in the rhythm of daily life.
The world might tell you that choosing your children over your career is stepping back from your potential. They're wrong. You're not stepping back—you're stepping into what could be the most consequential work of your life. You're not limiting yourself. You're focusing your energy where it will echo through generations.
Every story you read, every moment you don’t rush, every difficult conversation you handle with compassion—these moments compound. They shape not just your child, but the adult they'll become, the relationships they'll build, the children they might raise someday.
This is one powerful way our society can begin to rebalance: one family at a time, one generation at a time, one mother at a time choosing presence over productivity, depth over breadth, roots over reach.
The world might need what you have to offer in the boardroom. But your children need what you have to offer at the breakfast table even more. Right now, in these irreplaceable years, find peace and power in being exactly where you’re needed most.