Feminism Taught Women That Sacrifice Is Oppression

This self-centered foundation can be seen in the way the movement champions certain causes. Take the pro-choice slogan : "my body, my choice." No one, not even one’s own child, comes before the mother’s choice. Feminism shifted the goal from expanding women’s opportunities to participate in society to celebrating personal autonomy and individual choice despite the consequences. Motherhood is the ultimate challenge to one’s autonomy. Pregnancy requires the sacrifice of your body to grow and nourish a baby. Every stage of motherhood requires a sacrifice of some kind: time, energy, money, and resources. The sacrifice of motherhood poses a challenge to the foundation of a self-centered ideology. The implicit requirement of this worldview is that the individual comes first. Their freedom supersedes any sort of duty or obligation to society at large. There are no duties for a modern feminist woman outside of making her own choices, since personal autonomy is the name of the game. The only rationale a feminist needs to provide for her choices is “because it was best for me.” This answer will typically earn the praises of progressive feminists, who very rarely hold women to any sort of universal standard. For them, freedom is equal to the ability to choose. Choice, however, is not a moral standard on its own. People make all sorts of choices: generosity or selfishness, courage or cowardice, good or evil. The mere action of choosing does not entail that a moral choice has been made. Modern feminism treats choice and freedoms as ends in themselves, regardless of what has been chosen. If autonomy is the highest virtue, sacrifice and duty toward others look a lot like oppression. If autonomy is the highest virtue, sacrifice and duty toward others look a lot like oppression. We can see this model of morality exemplified in Anne Hathaway’s attitudes surrounding her pregnancies. She is currently in the public eye happily showing off her latest baby bump, yet in 2022, she appeared on The View and spoke about her previous abortion, even calling abortion analogous to mercy. In a world where choice is all that matters, there is no moral difference between Anne aborting her unborn baby and carrying it to full term. The value of the child simply boils down to whether the mother chooses to want him or her. The child’s worth is no longer rooted in what the child is, but instead in the circumstances around the mother’s choice. This society has lost the value of suffering , so any choice that involves less suffering tends to be the better one in the eyes of a progressive. Women who have been propagandized about the realities of motherhood avoid it altogether, and when they do choose it, these feminists seem to center their own well-being over their children's. There exists an attitude among modern feminist mothers that their happiness is the most important aspect of parenthood. This leads to women seeing sacrifices like breastfeeding as unnecessary or too burdensome. They often cite using formula before even attempting to breastfeed, with the simple reasoning that they “don’t want to,” despite endless research that speaks to the benefits of breastfeeding for both mom and baby. We've pushed women to deny their most basic maternal instincts in exchange for lifestyle maintenance. Many mothers will choose to dismantle their family structure in the name of self-actualization, with 70% of divorces initiated by women in the United States. This number rises to 90% when you look at only college-educated women. The number one reason for seeking divorce: irreconcilable differences. Women cite emotional dissatisfaction over anything else when it comes to reasons for divorce. Time magazine claims that “men and women experience marriage differently,” implying that women are suffering more in marriages than men, which would explain women initiating divorce more. Though perhaps women don’t see marriage and raising children as a duty or a moral good; they instead see it as a burden. The culture feminists have created emphasizes self-fulfillment, making endurance through hardship seem irrational. Progressives have transformed the idea of marriage and family into something that remains valuable only as long as it provides individual satisfaction. We've pushed women to deny their most basic maternal instincts in exchange for lifestyle maintenance. This mindset has extended into the process of creating children. Since many women have put careers and education before starting a family, services like IVF and surrogacy are more popular than ever . These processes naturally deprive children of their mother’s womb in the cases of surrogacy or result in the destruction of embryos such as in IVF . Immoral actions are again justified by the basic pleas of women who want to do it because they want children. But children are not commodities; no one has a right to a child. The more we allow women to act on entitlement without duty, the more women, children, and society suffer. This self-centered mindset around parenthood has created a generation of mothers who see choosing to put themselves first as just as good as choosing to put their children first. And in a world where choice is all that matters, how could that be wrong? The question a mother should ask is not “What do I want?” because true motherhood begins with the understanding that another person’s needs now matter more than her own desires. The tragedy of feminism is that it failed to teach women that the best choices often are the ones made for others, especially for our own children.