4 Lies the Culture Tells

Women have been lied to for years; that's why they're so unhappy and stressed out. Wouldn't YOU be?

Twenty years ago, I wrote my first book about why women can't "have it all," or at least not all at once, despite what the culture tells them.

At the time, the so-called Mommy Wars were raging. Women everywhere had been sold a bill of goods by their feminist sisters and mentors. Many were either lamenting the futility of being able to successfully work full-time outside the home while maintaining a healthy marriage and family life, or they were defending their choice to work full-time by insisting that children "do fine" in round-the-clock daycare.

Since then, the message to women about how to have a happy life have merely served to make women miserable.

Not only are women unhappier than their mothers and grandmothers ever were, they're significantly more stressed out—much more so than men.

What’s more, the push to get more women out of the home and into the marketplace has done nothing to help men and women find their way to one another. Dating in America is all but dead, and marriage is at an all-time low.

While there's more than one reason for this sad state of affairs, at the heart of it are the lies our postfeminist culture has been telling women for years.

Here are four, in no particular order:

1. Women Don't Need Men

It began with a seemingly comical phrase Gloria Steinem used during the height of the 1960s feminist movement: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

The concept is still alive and well today. Jennifer Aniston once said women "don't have to fiddle with a man to have a child."

Over time, as women began to make their own money and take advantage of the birth control pill, they came to believe that women don't, in fact, need men.

They were wrong.

Women know instinctively that they will ultimately need a man if they want to have a family, and if they want the option of being home at all, if only for a period of time.

Indeed, research shows that what matters most to women—even to those who are economically independent—is knowing they have a man on whom they can rely.

It's the feeling of being safe and in good hands—yes, even financially—that matters most.

Biologically, women are wired to depend on men. Most women still want to become mothers. And when they do, they will be in need of a provider—if only temporarily.

The women who realize this too late are the ones woh come to me for coaching. They desperately want to stay home with their babies, but no one told them ahead of time to marry a man who can support them in the future.

To do so was considered retro.

Because of this oversight, they’re now stuck.

2. Men and Women Are the Same, or Gender Is a Social Construct

The precise moment in history when the relationship between the sexes took a nosedive is when women began to have sex like a man—casually, with no strings attached—under the guise that women are no different from men and are thus just as capable of having uncommitted sex.

But if it were true that women are "just like men" in their ability to disentangle sex and emotion, why would campus flings and office dalliances become a cause for the courts rather than a welcome phenomenon?

It's not just our sexuality that confirms the disparate natures of women and men; parenting proves it in spades.

Once a baby arrives, a woman's nurturing gene almost always kicks in. Providing for her child emotionally is her first instinct, which is why going back to work is heart-wrenching for most mothers.

A father's reaction is different. His first instinct is to support the family financially. This is not his sole contribution, but it's first on his list.

That men and women are both capable of performing the same tasks doesn't mean they want to do them with equal fervor.

Desire matters.

3. The Biological Clock Isn't Real

The biological clock may be politically inconvenient, but that doesn't make it any less real. Because of this, it stands to reason that men can postpone marriage longer than women can.

But we don't admit this aloud. Instead, we pretend women can map out their lives with career at the center, as men do, as though they won't hit a point in which their ability to conceive will invariably clash with their career.

Articles abound with the goal to obscure the biological reality that it's easier for women to have babies in their twenties and early thirties.

In doing so, feminists get what they want—for women to reject maternal desire and to instead produce in the marketplace—but everyday women do not.

4. A Career Is More Meaningful Than Marriage and Children

Of all the lies feminists tell, the idea that career success is more fulfilling than marriage and family is by far the greatest.

It’s almost impossible to convey the depth of this lie, for it too began in the 1960s with Betty Friedan writing that being a wife and mother is akin to being in a "comfortable concentration camp."

Since that time, American women have been walloped with a steady diet of words and images that drive Friedan's argument home.

Indeed, the hoopla over Kansas City Chiefs’ Harrison Butker’s commencement speech—for simply exalting motherhood—proves just how much women have been brainwashed to prioritize career over marriage and family.

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Humans are pack animals: Most need to feel part of the group to feel good about themselves. Some of us are content to stand apart from the crowd, but most are not.

Cultural messages matter.

The thirty-something women who reach out to me are utterly despondent. They’ve been through a massive re-prioritization where motherhood has taken center stage. And they’re angry that no one prepared them to make smart professional, relational, and financial decisions in their twenties that would have set them up for success in their thirties.

These women are shocked to discover how heart-wrenching it is to leave their babies and return to work. And they're surprised to discover work isn't nearly as satisfying as they were led to believe.

This same sense of unease is felt by single women who can't find a marriageable man with whom to settle down because they simply waited too long.

Women have been lied to for years. Years.

They need a new roadmap for life. Fortunately, they now have one: