Why young women are rejecting the ‘girl boss’ script

A recent article in the Daily Mail covering Turning Point USA's Women’s Leadership Summit portrayed the event as nothing more than a gathering of aspiring “tradwives,” a sort of beauty pageant for young conservative women longing for marriage, motherhood, and a life of submission.

Reading the piece, I found myself wondering whether the author attended the same conference as my wife and daughters. Because the women who came home to my house had a very different experience; they came home energized. They came home encouraged. They came home with a renewed sense of purpose and confidence. Most importantly, they came home knowing they were not alone.

As a husband and father of four children, including two daughters, I often feel like I am raising my family against the current of modern culture. The messages my wife and I teach at home are routinely challenged by a cultural narrative that insists fulfillment can only be found through personal autonomy, career achievement, and the rejection of traditional distinctions between men and women.

My daughters are constantly told that strength looks a certain way. Success looks a certain way. Empowerment looks a certain way.

The message is clear: If you want to be taken seriously, you must become a version of the modern “girl boss” archetype. You must view dependence as weakness, motherhood as a limitation, marriage as optional, and traditional femininity as something to be overcome rather than celebrated.

What my wife and daughters encountered at the TPUSA summit was something radically different. They heard that women are uniquely and gloriously created by God. They heard that the differences between men and women are not flaws to be erased but gifts to be embraced.

They heard that fulfillment can take many forms. A woman may choose to build a career, start a business, enter public service, raise children, or do some combination of all three. But a woman should never feel compelled to apologize for wanting a husband, a family, or a life centered on the people she loves.

That is not oppression.

That is freedom.

The conference presented a vision of womanhood grounded in biblical truth and conservative first principles. It affirmed something increasingly controversial in modern America: Men and women are equal in dignity, value, and worth before God, but they are not interchangeable.

Far from diminishing women, that truth elevates them.

One of the most striking omissions from the article was the conference's emphasis on men and fathers. Again and again, speakers highlighted the importance of healthy masculinity. Not the caricatured masculinity often portrayed by critics, but the biblical model of masculinity defined by strength, responsibility, protection, sacrifice, and love.

The modern world spends an enormous amount of energy criticizing men. In many corners of our culture, masculinity itself is treated as a problem to be solved. Yet the women at this conference were not asking for weaker men. They were asking for better men.

They were looking for husbands who would love their wives sacrificially, fathers who would lead their families faithfully, and men whose strength would be used in service to others rather than themselves.

My wife came home wearing a T-shirt that reads, “Normalize Liking Your Husband.” The shirt made me laugh, but it also made me think. What a remarkable statement that has become in our culture. At a time when popular entertainment routinely portrays husbands as selfish, immature, incompetent, or unnecessary, there is something refreshingly countercultural about celebrating marriage, family, and mutual devotion.

The women at this conference were not aspiring to become handmaids. They were not seeking lives of servitude under abusive patriarchs. They were not trying to retreat from the world. They were preparing to engage it.

They want to contribute to their communities, advance causes they believe in, and make the world better. They want to build strong families, pursue meaningful work, and live lives of purpose. They simply reject the idea that they must abandon biblical truth in order to do so. That is why the article ultimately made me sad. Not because it criticized conservative ideas. In a free society, every worldview should be open to scrutiny. What saddened me was the author’s inability to recognize that many women freely choose this path because they find it beautiful, meaningful, and true. 

The women who attended the TPUSA summit do not need pity. They do not need rescuing. They certainly do not need journalists explaining why their aspirations are misguided. What they need, and what they found, was reassurance that there are others who share their convictions.

As a father, I am grateful my daughters were exposed to that message. I want them to grow into strong women. I want them to be confident, capable, and independent. I want them to understand their worth is rooted in the God who created them, not in the approval of the culture around them. And if one day they choose marriage and motherhood, I want them to know those callings are not lesser ambitions. They are among the highest callings God has given.

The women who attended this conference were not celebrating weakness. They were celebrating womanhood. In a culture increasingly confused about what that means, that is a message worth hearing.