How to Convert ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Into Loving Wives and Mothers

The traditional role of wife and mother is becoming more popular among women.

Childrearing is challenging, but it comes with plenty of rewards for those who are willing to embrace them. Christin Lola/Shutterstock

Some headlines are so countercultural that one can’t help but do a double-take upon reading them. That’s basically what happened to me the other day when I read the following headline from The Guardian: “I chose to be childfree. I didn’t think I was choosing isolation, too.”

What followed was a surprisingly honest article about the little-discussed impacts a childfree future can bring. Although such a life is often framed as carefree and fun, author Cassidy Randall admits her surprise to discover that such a life actually comes with a lot of exclusion, as more and more friends have children and get sucked up in the parenting culture.

This story seems to signal once again that the ideological winds are changing. One can see this in the rise of the trad wife movement on Instagram, or even in the explosive pro-family comments of Kansas City Chiefs football player Harrison Butker in early 2024. Whereas once it was popular for women to choose a high-profile career, now it’s growing ever more popular to be barefoot and pregnant—all while wearing a cute dress and gathering eggs in the chic henhouse out back.

But a byproduct of this trend is the rising popularity of shaming women who are not following this traditional path, whether by choice or otherwise. Titles along the lines of “feminazis” or Taylor Swift cat-cuddlers are affixed to these women, with people gleefully telling them to enjoy their lonely lives.

A Golden Opportunity

Obviously, it can be appealing to engage in this shaming because, of course, now the shoe is on the other foot of the feminism that seemed so long ascendent. But have you ever realized that when we condemn and criticize these women, we are also missing a golden opportunity to actually change their minds and turn their hearts toward children?

One part of Randall’s article gives us a clue as to how this can be done. She mentions that she was reaching out to friends with children, inviting them to spend time with her in fun activities, but they were already busy doing fun activities with mutual parent friends and their children. “No invitation to join them was forthcoming,” Randall says, admitting that perhaps her friends thought she wouldn’t want to be burdened by a child-filled event.

In essence, Randall is suggesting that she would be thrilled to receive an invite to participate in such child-filled events, even if they are more chaotic, messy, or unstructured than those to which she’s accustomed.

Single friends and childless couples may still appreciate an invitation to a child-filled event. Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

And this, I believe, is where we are missing our golden opportunity to turn the hearts of more women toward a loving acceptance of children. What if families took a childless friend—or a younger woman acquaintance—and began incorporating her into their daily lives more often? It doesn’t have to be big or fancy. It could be something as simple as an invite to a child’s basketball game, an evening visit to the playground, or an impromptu dinner invite.

Sure, this means that these women will see a lot of the bad and ugly parts of raising children, including battles to eat the peas on the plate or tired meltdowns. You as a parent will likely be embarrassed, while she, as a childless woman, will suddenly realize just how hard child-rearing is!

But as you incorporate these women into the daily demands of family life—even making them honorary aunties—something else will happen: They will get to experience the love and joy and wonder that comes from having a close bond with a child. And as any parent knows, that love changes you as a person.

The Joys of Childrearing

For starters, it makes us less selfish. A portion of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, “Cranford,” illustrates this when, in one chapter, two of the characters sit down to read old letters that span the courtship, marriage, and then motherhood of a young woman. While the courtship letters were filled with requests and desires for a fashionable garment, the letters on motherhood show how the young woman’s whole perspective changed, for she apparently cut up and recommissioned that same fashionable garment into clothes for her little one. “It was pretty to see from the letters, which were evidently exchanged with some frequency between the young mother and the grandmother, how the girlish vanity was being weeded out of her heart by love for her baby,” Gaskell writes.

Secondly, children help us consider the future. When we’re not surrounded by children, we tend to simply focus on ourselves and the pleasure we can get out of the present. But make children a close part of your life, and you’re suddenly considering how they are impacted by the decisions—both personal and political—you make today. And we’re often far more willing to make those difficult decisions and sacrifices for ourselves today in order that those children may have a better life tomorrow—something illustrated by John Adams when he noted that he had to study war and politics in order that his sons might have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, and his grandchildren the arts.

Finally, children direct our thoughts toward God. As I’ve noted before, it was a child who caused the late author Whittaker Chambers to begin considering the reality of a Higher Power, a fact he notes in his autobiography, “Witness.” Those thoughts eventually led him out of communism and into a life of standing for truth and right, even at great personal cost. If the presence of a child could instigate such a massive change of thought in a hardened communist spy, then why couldn’t children also change the hearts and minds of today’s women who are caught up in the feminist ideology?

The popularity pendulum is always swinging back and forth from generation to generation. Right now, that pendulum appears to be on the side of traditional families and children. Let’s not waste such an opportunity by weaponizing it against those who hold the opposite view. Instead, let’s use it to welcome them into our families with open arms to show them what they’re missing.