All throughout my 20s and some of my 30s, there was a great war being fought within my mind. It was an unnecessary battle but one that had been waging since my college days. The war was between two Amys: Amy 1 felt it was her moral duty to get out in the workforce and “make something of herself.” Amy 2 longed to stay home with her daughter. It was made clear in college to Amy 1 and 2 that to not get out in the “man’s world” would make her….well…an embarrassment to the female population. Staying home and raising children or “keeping house” was not to be desired in the slightest.

So, for a long time, Amy 1 ruled the roost. I worked at different jobs because I had degrees and, Lord knows, I would waste them if I didn’t do something super duper monumental with them immediately. So, as soon as I graduated with a BS in sociology, I naturally got a “well-paying” job as a waitress. Then I worked in the mall at New York and Company. Then I worked for a bunch of hot-headed, self-absorbed defense attorneys who basically paid me in bread crumbs. From there, I worked at base legal at Wright–Patterson Air Force Base where I, still to this day, have no idea why they created the position I held. There was so little for me to do, I had to get ultra-creative just to fill my time.

Every day, I would drop my daughter off at daycare and wish with all my heart that I could stay home with her. But it was wrong, you see, to think such things. Women had fought hard so that we no longer had to be stuck at home raising “rug rats” and cooking meals for our unappreciative husbands. We had been liberated! We were free to go into the workplace and push elbows around with the big boys. Staying home was relegating women back into the Dark Ages and that was a bad place where the patriarchy ruled the universe. No self-respecting woman would EVER desire to stay home EVER again. If you did, well, it was clear and obvious that you were a weak, brainwashed woman that was a slave to your husband. Shame on you.

So, Amy 1 decided to go back to school and get a Masters in criminology. I thoroughly enjoyed my time back in school and I learned a lot. I interned at a juvenile detention facility which I found rewarding. I decided to specialize in sexual violence crimes and I wrote my whole thesis on the subject. When we moved to Florida, I got an important job as the program director for the rape crisis program at the Salvation Army Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Program. Not only was I a director, but I was also a counselor and an advocate for victims of sexual violence. In addition, I traveled all over a six-county region teaching and educating police, judges, nurses, and high school students about sexual violence. I loved my work and I found it very fulfilling. But…I still ached to be home with my two daughters.

During this period of my life, everything felt rushed. We rushed out to work and school in the mornings. We rushed home to dinner. We rushed to gymnastics practice. We rushed to get the girls to bed on time so that we could rush out the door in the morning. On the weekends, we rushed around trying to prepare for the coming week. While I loved my job, I felt that our family life had taken a back seat. My girls were so little, yet they were growing so fast and I felt I was missing out. Amy 2 kept banging on my heart, but I had to ignore her. Modern feminism told me that my life would amount to nothing if I stayed home. People would think I was boring. People would think that I was lame. I’d have nothing exciting to share about my life at high school reunions. But…still…the ache continued.

Through all this, my husband was extremely supportive. He patiently listened to me battle through this war over and over again. Each time, he’d say, “Amy, if you want to work, I completely support you in that. But, if you want to stay home, I completely support that, too. We’ll adjust our lifestyle and live with less money if we need to.” I told him that I worried that he would find me boring if I was nothing more than a “stay-at-home” mom. He just laughed at my tendency for dramatic notions. “I didn’t marry you because you were a working woman, I married you because I love you.”

Here was my husband, who was leaving the decision of whether to work or stay home up to me. I felt no pressure from him to conform to any particular path. He knew I needed to make this decision on my own and he supported me either way.

Where I felt pressure from was the modern-day feminist movement. I felt under the thumb and critical eye of liberal feminists that told me in college that the “traditional” ways were/are horrible, terrible, bad. I was told that the patriarchy ruled my life and I had to escape its grasp. In all honesty, though, the only grasp I felt squeezed in was the one from the group that supposedly was supposed to set me free. The mental anguish was torture and I hated feeling so trapped.

I am grateful for the courageous women in the past who fought to create equality in the workplace and in our society for women. I’m grateful I can vote. I’m grateful I can take out my own bank account. I’m grateful I can own my own property if I so choose and I’m grateful I can go to just about any college I want. Because of the efforts of numerous women, I can explore pretty …

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It wasn’t until I entered college that I really heard the term feminism. My degree is in criminology which is within the sociology department. I had a few classes that were downright hostile to anyone who was more conservative in thought. Since I have always been one to speak my mind, it brought me into a lot of conflict with a few of my professors. I was never rude or disrespectful, I just challenged their way of thinking and it was clear that they were not interested in being challenged. It had been my understanding that college was a place to debate and challenge each other, but that was not the case in some of my classes.

The class that was the worst was my Women’s Studies class. What I learned in that class was that if you were truly for women you had to 1. Be pro-choice 2. Hate men, unless you could use them for sex 3. Only desire a career and 4. Be completely down with the sexual revolution. I was pretty much the only person who challenged the professor’s way of thinking and, needless to say, I was not her favorite.

For me, if being a feminist meant advocating for abortion, suspiciously eyeing all men as oppressors, desiring only to find success in a career, and touting the freedom of sleeping around than I was NOT a feminist. I wanted to be as far from that word as possible.

There were so many contradictions that I encountered with feminism.

My Women’s Studies class happened to be on the same day as my Air Force ROTC classes and so I was always in uniform. On one particular day, my professor called our American military forces “baby killers.” In another class she went on and on about the “glories” of abortion. To be consistent, one has to condemn the taking of innocent life at all stages, not just when it’s convenient for your agenda.

I have seen through the years the almost idol worship of having the choice to have an abortion. Having the choice to end a child’s life is held up as a right. Yet, I see visceral comments launched at women who choose to have more than 2.5 children. I cannot understand how choice is praiseworthy if one is choosing to end a life, but swatted down if a woman chooses to bring life into the world.

Through the years the messages that I have received is that if I’m not getting in there and doing all the “man” things than I’m somehow letting down women. On the one hand, feminists are yelling that women were just as valuable as men. Then on the other hand, they look down on anything that is deemed feminine, i.e. raising children, traditional female occupations, volunteer work. What I take from this is that I’m only advancing the women’s cause if I’m more like a man. This is not a celebration of womanhood.

I have been told that the reason I’m not a feminist is because my father brainwashed me. This is nonsense, of course, because I’m very outspoken and work very hard to think for myself. I worked as a counselor/advocate for victims of domestic and sexual violence. For three years, I immersed myself in helping fight injustices against women. In my Master’s degree, I chose to focus on sexual violence, because it is so important to me to be there for victims of this terrible crime.

I have been told since becoming Catholic that I am living under a patriarchal institution. This is nonsense, too, coming from people who don’t understand the Church or don’t want to understand the Church. There are volumes upon volumes connected with the Church that upholds the beauty of womanhood and the dignity of the woman.

So, I’ve distanced myself from identifying as a feminist. The other day, though, I listened to a podcast that helped me to understand why I’ve had such trouble accepting feminism.

It was a podcast by a woman who worked for the magazine Cosmopolitan when it first came about in the early 1970s. She worked for the publication for 20 plus years. She talked about how very early in the 60s, the feminist movement was about equality in the workforce for women. She mentioned that feminists were advocating that women be able to sit on juries, enter medical and law colleges, have equal pay for equal work, not be fired for getting pregnant, and be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace. All these things I obviously support. She said that initially abortion and “sexual freedom” were not even an issue on the table for these early feminists.

The interesting thing is that when she went to work for Cosmo, they wanted to merge women’s rights with the philosophies of the sexual revolution. They wanted to feature women who were working successful jobs all while not being burdened with children and free to sleep with whomever. The problem was that they couldn’t really find these women, so their boss encouraged them to make up “Cosmo girls” and “make up” quotes from people in authority and run with the story. So, millions of women were sitting back in the 1970s, reading these made up stories and thinking this is what represents true womanhood. As women read these stories, they soaked up this manipulated ideology of the “free woman” who is out there just loving life. She’s unchained, unburdened, free to jump into bed, and is working with the big boys.

To be honest, I was shocked. Here was a woman who had worked for Cosmo for over 20 years sharing her story about how her boss encouraged them to lie in order to sell a way of life. She even wrote a book about how she feels that she helped the sexual revolution. It’s not something she’s proud of in any way.

One of the greatest surprises I’ve found since becoming Catholic has been the discovery …

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