The Mental-Health Decline of Liberal Women: A Cultural and Biological Crossroads
In recent years, a striking pattern has emerged in discussions surrounding women’s well-being: despite unprecedented educational and professional gains, many women—especially single, liberal women—report higher levels of anxiety, depression, and emotional distress.
Katy Faust, a family-policy advocate, argues that this trend is rooted in deeper cultural and biological tensions that modern feminism has not resolved.
Professional Success, Personal Uncertainty
Women today outperform men at nearly every stage of formal education. They now earn the majority of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Career opportunities, as Faust notes, have never been more abundant.
Yet alongside these gains, many women find themselves struggling with family formation. Faust observes that increasing numbers of women in their early to mid-30s—and even into their 40s—experience a painful realization: the window for having biological children is narrower than the culture led them to believe.
“The biological clock isn’t just ticking,” she says. “It’s reverberating in their brain so they can’t think about anything else.”
Many women, she argues, delay marriage and motherhood while focusing on career advancement, personal exploration, debt repayment, or travel. By the time they feel ready for family life, peak fertility years have passed, creating emotional strain and a sense of missed opportunity.
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The Fertility Gap and Cultural Messaging
Faust contrasts the relative flexibility of male fertility with the limited fertility window for women—roughly two decades of optimal biological conditions. She contends that mainstream feminist messaging has inadvertently encouraged women to devalue these realities.
“We tell young women that their success depends on having a career that looks exactly like a man’s,” she says. “But women’s bodies and life trajectories are different. Feminism often coaches women to reject those natural realities.”
This, in her view, creates an internal conflict: a disconnect between what women’s bodies are naturally primed for and what cultural expectations encourage them to pursue.
Anecdotes Behind the Statistics
Even without relying solely on data, Faust points to the growing number of young women considering egg freezing or other fertility-preservation measures. For many, she argues, these choices reflect genuine longing for a family—not a rejection of family life.
“It gives the lie to a lot of rhetoric coming out of late-stage feminism,” she says, noting that many women who embraced a career-first lifestyle ultimately want marriage and children but start trying later than ideal.
The Mental-Health Divide
One of Faust’s most pointed observations concerns mental health. Citing broad trends, she notes that single liberal women show the highest rates of mental-health struggles.
Her argument: if a worldview encourages women to downplay biological rhythms, relational desires, or maternal aspirations, psychological distress may follow.
“It pits women against their own bodies,” she says. “It bifurcates the self—mind and body moving in different directions.”
While scholars debate the causes of these trends, the pattern itself has become widely discussed: women who delay family formation tend to report lower happiness overall, even when they succeed professionally.
A Different Model of Career and Family
When speaking with young people, Faust challenges the idea that equality requires identical career paths for men and women. Instead, she encourages young women to consider earlier family formation and more flexible professional trajectories.
“Your career probably shouldn’t look just like a man’s,” she tells them. “You will likely peak later if you prioritize children first.”
She suggests that women can maintain a foothold in the workforce during early motherhood—through part-time work, consulting, networking, or creative side projects—and then re-enter more fully once children are older.
This model, she argues, is not a sacrifice but a realistic and fulfilling path.
“The idea that you must be on track to partner at a law firm in your 20s or 30s is sabotaging women,” she says. “Your world should get smaller for a time. That’s okay.”
The Larger Debate
Faust’s perspective is not universally accepted. Critics argue that focusing on early motherhood can pressure women into narrow roles or overlook structural issues such as childcare costs, workplace inflexibility, and unequal household labor. Supporters counter that ignoring biological limits has consequences—both personal and societal—and that women deserve honest information about fertility and long-term well-being.
But regardless of where one falls in the debate, the underlying question is becoming unavoidable: if modern social expectations clash with biological realities, what happens to women’s mental and emotional health?
Faust believes the answer is already visible in the data—and in the lives of countless women navigating the gap between what they were promised and what they genuinely want.
source youtu.be