Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently announced that, at 36, she is freezing her eggs. She has chosen to make the deeply personal process public, describing the decision as one that has given her a greater sense of control over her life and left her feeling empowered.
I don’t begrudge her that decision. I hope she gets the family she wants, when she wants it.
But her announcement made me think about the message my generation of women received about motherhood — and the one we are now passing down to future generations of girls.
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When did postponing motherhood become a symbol of female empowerment?
AOC and I are essentially the same age. We came of age during the rise of the "girl boss," when female empowerment was increasingly defined by independence, achievement and personal fulfillment. Travel. Build yourself. Establish yourself. Prove yourself.
The message was relentlessly centered on the self: What do I want? What makes me happy? What life do I want to build? Put yourself first. Everything else can come later.
Motherhood doesn’t fit neatly into a "me first" culture. Children require sacrifice and rearrange our priorities around someone other than ourselves. No wonder a generation taught to prioritize the self learned to see children as something that might get in the way.
I believed it.
I believed it so deeply that, for years, I wasn’t even sure I wanted children.
I wasn’t a 25-year-old woman desperately longing for babies but forcing myself to wait. I was a woman who had absorbed a culture that made motherhood look limiting. Children seemed like something that might interrupt the exciting life I was supposed to be building.
We didn’t just teach women to delay motherhood. We taught some women not to want it at all.
Then God changed my heart.
I became a mother, and so much of what I thought I understood about fulfillment was turned upside down. The children I once feared might hold me back became the greatest blessing of my life. But by the time I understood that, I was racing the clock.
I’m 37 now, just a few months older than AOC, and I gave birth to my third child earlier this year at 36. I had three children back-to-back-to-back because once I realized how much I wanted a larger family, I knew I did not have unlimited time.
I would do it all over again. My regret is that I waited so long to understand what I was missing.
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Starting younger might have meant having more children. But even more than that, I think about the years I could have had with the children I already have. More birthdays. More Christmas mornings. More bedtime stories and ordinary Tuesdays. And, God willing, I want to be there when my daughters become mothers and my son becomes a father — to have the energy to help them and the years to know my grandchildren and watch them grow.
But I don’t just wish I had more years with them. I wish I had become their mother sooner because of what motherhood did to me.
Having children reordered my priorities without erasing my ambitions. The work I do, the causes I fight for, my faith and the future of this country became more personal because I’m no longer thinking only about the world I live in, but also the world my children will inherit.
My life is more chaotic now, but it is also richer, more purposeful and better. Motherhood didn’t make my world smaller. It made it bigger.
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You don’t think about those years when you’re 25 and the world is telling you that you have plenty of time. But time matters, and my story is part of a much larger trend.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently documented what it calls "The Rising Age of Motherhood in the United States." Women are becoming mothers later, and between 2016 and 2023, first births among women 35 and older increased 25 percent.
Of course, not every woman who becomes a mother later chose to wait. Finding the right person matters. Infertility is real. Life doesn’t always unfold according to our plans, and this isn’t about judging women for circumstances beyond their control.
But reproductive technology can make postponing motherhood feel less consequential than it is. Having more options later is not the same as having a guarantee.
Children aren’t products we manufacture when life finally becomes convenient. Motherhood is a gift, not something women should be taught to postpone until everything else comes first.
Why have we defined female freedom in a way that so often requires putting motherhood off? When delaying it is celebrated as progress, younger women hear the same message my generation heard: There will always be time later.
There may not be.
This isn’t an argument that women should abandon their ambitions. I certainly haven’t. I have a career I care deeply about, and women are doing consequential work while raising families. Karoline Leavitt was pregnant while serving as White House press secretary. Fox News' Rachel Campos-Duffy built a major television career while raising nine children. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna became a mother while serving in Congress. And my friend Erika Kirk is leading one of the most influential conservative organizations in the country while beautifully raising two young children after losing her husband.
Some women will stay home with their children. Some will build major careers. Some will move between the two.
That’s not the debate. The question is why we’ve spent a generation telling women to postpone motherhood in the first place, treating family and ambition as competing forces.
What if we have that backward? Motherhood didn’t diminish my ambition. It gave much of that ambition a deeper purpose.
There is no perfect time to start a family. After the next promotion, after we make more money, after we travel, after we buy the house — there will always be another reason to wait.
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AOC has millions of young women watching her. There is nothing empowering about teaching another generation to put motherhood last. We spent decades treating motherhood like something women needed to escape. Now we celebrate our ability to postpone it.
Motherhood is not something women need to be liberated from.
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If I could speak to my younger self, I wouldn’t tell her to abandon her dreams. I’d tell her to dream bigger. Marriage and children aren’t consolation prizes after you’ve accomplished everything important. They may be among the most important things you ever build.
So I’ll tell young women what I wish someone had told me:
Don’t wait because the culture convinced you motherhood will hold you back. Build the career. Chase the dream. Take the trip. But don’t be afraid to build the family, too.
It’s a life worth living.