The rising challenge of the MAGA girl boss

As a mother, there is nothing more meaningful you can do with your life than to raise your children. No career can compare. Even an achievement like winning the midterms and advancing conservatism and preserving family values in the public square pales in comparison to the seemingly mundane work of motherhood and homemaking.   

Arguments on the right over whether women should or should not be working miss the point. The real battle regarding women’s careers is one of priorities. In other words, a mother’s children deserve her best energies, with other tasks performed as relatively minor work compared to this primary focus. It is difficult to imagine that a mother working in a high-profile position in the federal government or influencer politics is really organizing her priorities correctly. Those whose priorities are properly aligned are seldom working the kind of job that has them traveling regularly or working weekends and holidays.   

Kayleigh McEnany, the former White House Press Secretary under Trump during his first term as president, provided a glimpse into how she balanced motherhood and work in a recent USA Today profile. In 2020, she moved to Washington, D.C., to serve as press secretary while her husband and mother cared for her baby down in Florida. This mother was able to visit her baby regularly. The piece notes that McEnany “made sure to have dinner with them when they were all together.” This is hardly a picture of well-ordered priorities, although McEnany assured readers at the end of the piece that her now 6-year-old daughter was “proud” of how her mother spent her infant years.   

Karoline Leavitt served in McEnany’s former position during Trump’s second term. She recently resigned from her post shortly following the birth of her second child, rightly realizing what few women in politics ever do.   

“I think the birth of my second daughter … really just showed me that [there are] two children at home who deserve and need their mother's 24/7 constant attention and presence," she told reporters as she left. “They are very young. This is a very impressionable time. And of course, we never get these years back with our young kids.”   

One employee at a conservative organization posted on X in August that she came back from her maternity leave bursting with pride that she had chosen to work instead of staying home longer.   She wrote: “I could have easily stay [sic] home, soak up every second of my long awaited daughter, and tell myself that’s enough.” 

Yet it is enough. It is more than enough. This new mother’s outlook on her role towards her newborn daughter sells herself short. For her, staying home with her baby is the easy route. Mothers who really care about changing society, some conservatives argue, won’t “sit the midterms out.”

Eager to encourage women to take on motherhood, the right has made the mistake of convincing mothers they can do so without sacrificing their careers. Influential conservatives such as Abby Johnson and Kristan Hawkins have explicitly stated that women can “have it all” and that they “don’t have to choose” between motherhood and a career. A 2025 article from The Atlantic notes that some conservatives are reviving the advice of feminist icons such as Sheryl Sandberg.    

Of all people, conservatives should eschew a mindset that leads young women to believe that the years of young motherhood are best spent in politics. The idea that women can, or should, “have it all” is an older version of feminism. Modern feminists realize something conservatives have yet to see—that in the tradeoff between young motherhood and a full-time career, one nearly always suffers. Feminists have simply decided the children should suffer, rather than the mother’s autonomy and earning potential. The response to this from conservatives should not be empty promises that neither career nor motherhood will suffer. It should instead be the assurance that although giving up her career may be the sacrifice a mother has to make, it is the most consequential thing she can do for her children and for her country.    

As a mother, raising children in a country so immoral and so divided is a daunting task. It is easy to believe that the best thing one can do for one’s children is to attack what appears to be the root problem and “fix the country” for the sake of the children. But this is a reversal of proper priorities. Fixing the country will be no quick task. More than likely, the culture will be changed on the home fronts as just and upright citizens are raised by committed mothers who understand that the unglamorous and often thankless work of parenthood is better for the country than the snappiest answer one could muster to a liberal correspondent or a Republican sweep in the midterms.