Dear Kay, my 35-year-old daughter is single, and is fully devoted to her career and her liberal ideologies. She says she’s desperate to find a man, settle down, and have children, but she still seems to think she can do it all. Did I ruin her life by indoctrinating her with my 1960s/1980s feminist myth that we can have it all? Sincerely, Devastated Mother.
Dear Devastated,
I know from your longer message that you’ve already tried to talk to your daughter about how she’d need to choose between her family and her career should she finally find a partner, and that resulted in her screaming at you that you’re wrong. I also know that she’s had boyfriends leave her because she prioritizes work and herself over the relationship and cultivating a home.
It sounds like your daughter is a difficult woman. Perhaps she’s single and childless because of her personality and treatment of others rather than her addiction to work and communist politics?
To answer your main question: Yes, you did fail her by telling her that she could have it all. Do not beat yourself up about it though, because you were also misled by horrendous women like Gloria Steinem. Steinem literally told twice failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that being at home, having children and a loving spouse was a prison (or words to that effect) on her terrible TV show “Gutsy.”
So you need to forgive yourself because you and a whole generation of women took advice from this mentally deranged domestic terrorist. You didn’t know better. Your daughter has been on this planet long enough to know better, so this is on her.
Have you tried explaining to her that if she died today, her boss would replace her by Friday, and she’d be forgotten about by Monday? I got this advice from a close personal friend and mentor, who claims to have gotten it from Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson, and it’s quite magical to realize that one of the most successful men in media is also so humble (most journalists think they’re soooo special).
Your daughter needs to be humbled. While the gift of hindsight will one day show her that she’s wasting her life working to achieve the dreams and profit margins of her employer, it will literally mean nothing after she’s retired or fired. She needs to realize this ASAP before her only option is to work, because no one wants to marry a difficult spinster.
Dear, Kay: My Kid Came Home Insisting On The Pronoun ‘Zhir’. What Should I Do?
https://t.co/U3arvpMnFp— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 26, 2022
Your daughter sounds like a lot of young women I know who actually just need a hefty dose of therapy and reality. Both of these should be enough to help her see that “having it all” actually just means “pleasing everyone instead of myself.”
Have you thought of gifting her a therapeutic weekend away where she’ll be surrounded by women who aren’t you, but will suggest the same things you do? Women are notorious for ignoring good advice if it comes from the wrong mouth, so maybe have someone else show her what life could be like if she had a dual income and could take more time for herself? If she prioritized her own happiness over her manager’s?
Maybe if women her age explain how she’s almost out of time to have a baby and is not going to find a husband if she carries on prioritizing her career over her relationships, she might finally listen and take action to make her life better.
Of course, she might find someone and settle down, have kids via surrogate, carry on working, and your grandchildren will be raised by nannies. Kids raised by nannies with absent parents mostly turn out weird and emotionally stunted. But maybe she’s fine with that?
Maybe she wants the kids to turn out like those of the celebrities I met when I lived in LA: doing cocaine four nights a week, incapable of loving anyone, let alone themselves, caring more about awards, designer shoes, and real estate purchases than being a good, normal, healthy, happy human being. (RELATED: Dear Kay: What Happened To Real Men? Are There Any Left?)
Or perhaps the kids of career parents I’ve met since moving to the south: incapable of even making a dinner reservation for themselves at the age of 24 because they always had someone who was paid to do everything for them.
Honestly, if I was pro-violence, I’d say that your daughter needs a sharp slap. It’s so sad to watch women wasting their best years because they were lied to during their youth by the feminist movement, but most of them are so difficult (like your daughter) that they need to be scared or shocked into listening to good advice when it gets to them.