The problem I have with my stay-at-home mom friend

Let’s be honest, on face value I’m very jealous.

I’m jealous of what seems to be a life where she is able to focus on two things: children and keeping herself fit instead of trying to figure out how to make it to soccer practice while also getting a business report done by 8 am next day. How to be a good mom and a good boss. How to pay taxes, the electric bills and the mortgage and the luxury of not having to know how much the mortgage is or even how to get one.

However, I know the grass is always greener and being without knowledge might be worse then having too much. Honestly I don’t know because while her life looks pretty good from the outside, I know she still wants more, we all do.

This is the crux of feminism and being a woman in the 2025. What did we really gain? We are all stressed and still feeling undervalued and underpaid. People (mostly men) don’t want us to be able to make our own choices about our healthcare, bodies and futures. And I get it, they are butt hurt and think that by forcing women to need them will change things.

But the fact is, women don’t really need men anymore and that makes them feel, well, useless. We don’t need men to open a bank account, own property, save us from a life of spinsterhood (because often that’s way better than the alternative) or to even have children.

I don’t know what it’s like to not be needed, but perhaps men should stop feeling sorry for themselves and wanting to push others down. Instead, they should figure out how to actually live with women and have women want to live with them, not because they need to, but because they want to.

How can they do this? Learn what women want and need just like women have done for men for centuries. If she’s tired, give her a message or a night off from the kids where you do everything…without asking her to do anything. Take on some of the day or vacation planning. Buy her flowers that she likes, not just because roses were on sale. Take her out to dinner and pay, tell her you appreciate her, ask her questions about her life and her dreams, brush her hair (that last one is really just my own fantasy).

This doesn’t make one less of a man, in fact, I would say it makes you more of one. Women are longing for the guy who is stronger physically, confident in his own skin, likes theater and opens door. We like when men make us feel special, feminine and wanted. We don’t need a guy who is needing and always taking from us emotionally because that’s what children do. We need someone with follow through, dependability and who is emotionally intelligent and it needs to last long after courtship.

Women are always working whether it’s for their partner, their boss, their parents or children. Men tend to give the minimal effort because they are used to getting a lot for doing very little. This is why they are not evolving and many women, no matter the role they play, are still unhappy.

I don’t really have an issue with my stay-at-home mom friend. What I have an issue with is the fact that our culture hasn’t evolved to allow women to choose their destiny. The fact that I still think that if I was a little less opinionated, a little more demure and more helpless that this would make me more attractive to men troubles me.

We’ve been thinking like this for too long and it needs to stop.