Authentic feminism is not at odds with family and children like the contemporary version is.

By Mariya Manzhos

The weakening of family structure scaffolding — including declining birth and marriage rates and a growing loneliness epidemic — has ignited debates around what’s contributing to this alarming trend. One of the more controversial questions being raised is the effect that feminism has had on family formation and child rearing.

This was the subject of a recent debate in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hosted by the Abigail Adams Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, both conservative organizations. Erika Bachiochi, American legal scholar, author of “The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision” and director of the Wollstonecraft Project, sparred with Scott Yenor, a political science professor at Boise State University, over a central question: Does feminism undermine family?

It doesn’t have to, argued Bachiochi, a Catholic mother of seven. But the “pro-family” feminism she’s defending is not the version prevailing in the modern culture today. “What flies under the banner of feminism today is not actually feminism, but a corruption of feminism, born of the abortion-backed contraceptive revolution in the ‘60s-’70s,” said Bachiochi, a former self-described Marxist feminist and a convert to Catholicism. This kind of “autonomy” feminism equates feminism with sexual and reproductive rights.

Yenor, on other side, argued that independence is a pillar of feminism, and by this definition, feminism compromises the mutually dependent community that is a family. “If I boil it down to one simple proposition, I would say that feminism is about cultivating a new kind of woman — an independent woman, a core of her identity is independent of marriage and family, of tradition; it’s independent of the country,” he said.

As she does in her book, Bachiochi laid out a case for a more “authentic” feminism — one that doesn’t negate or constrain women’s reproductive nature, but instead recognizes “distinctive sexual, reproductive and caregiving needs of women as women.” This affirmative version of feminism, she argues, is a return to origins of the vision espoused by first-wave feminists, who coalesced in the mid-19th century to advocate for women’s needs and interests amid increasingly industrialized society.

https://www.deseret.com/family/2024/04/06/feminism-family-debate-marriage-women/