As Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings conclude, the exhaustive week of questions has prompted discussions on everything from policies and the role of the Supreme Court to originalism — and just how the mother of seven manages to juggle seven children, marriage, and her law career. That juggling act is why Barrett is especially inspirational and thought-provoking, both for my generation of mothers balancing careers and the young girls coming behind me.
In Barrett, we see several simultaneous truths: She is a dedicated wife, mother of seven, and attorney at the top of her field heading to the Supreme Court. She is an inspiration to young girls who aspire to such a high-profile career and an inspiration to the average mother who has tried to juggle helping a child with algebra, pleasing a demanding boss, cooking a delicious and healthy dinner, and keeping a clean (enough) home.
Yet we also observe, as this New York Times opinion piece points out, Barrett is somewhat of a rarity: So rare, in fact, this author attempts to explain just “Why Only Amy Coney Barrett Gets to Have It All.” Barrett is rare and her accomplishments are exceptional, so it’s important to recognize a few things when observing Barrett’s success and also heralding her as an inspiration to women.
At least from what we’ve seen in witness testimony from her colleagues and students, personal history, and legal career, Barrett does, in fact, seem to have it all. Not only does she have seven children, two of whom are adopted, but she praised her husband’s willingness to balance her workload. Her legal prowess is impressive, to say the least. Her character, integrity, and demeanor seem unmatched and are perhaps a result of her robust Catholic faith. After watching her this week endure the endless hubris of arrogant politicians, it’s clear Barrett has intellect, ferocity, grit, compassion, empathy, discipline, time management, and humor.
So, if Barrett has it all and is an example to so many, why aren’t there more of her? That’s what Katelyn Beaty asks in her New York Times piece, specifically questioning the Catholic Church: “If Judge Barrett’s Catholic faith and indisputable career accomplishments make her such a young heroine of the Christian right, why doesn’t the traditional Christianity to which she adheres encourage more women to be like her?”
Beaty poses an answer and blames the Christian community. “There’s another reason few Christian women can simultaneously pursue career ambitions and family life in the ways Judge Barrett has: In traditional Christian communities, women are often asked to sacrifice the former at the altar of the latter,” she writes.
Beaty bases this conclusion on research she compiled for a book she wrote about the “roles of Christian women” that “suggests that Judge Barrett is the exception, not the rule, to traditional Christian teachings on women’s work and vocation. Most of the 125-plus women I interviewed over two years said they had heard from a peer, pastor or professor that being a wife and mother was, by God’s design, their highest calling — and that a career would distract from that. As such, many Christian women with professional ambitions feel less than Christian, or woman, if they follow those ambitions in the way that Judge Barrett has followed her own.”
As a Christian, woman, mother, and writer, I found this fascinating, if not puzzling. I grew up in a Christian culture, and I only received encouragement to pursue my career aspirations in law and motherhood. My parents were incredibly supportive, paying for all my law school applications and classes to learn how to take the blasted LSAT. In fact, the only discouragement I received was from non-Christian attorneys I worked for, who, 20 years ago, found balancing their careers as attorneys and mothers difficult. The attorneys I know who balance both now have applied many of the solutions Beaty suggests in her conclusion to help them juggle the two different worlds. The culture has shifted in favor of working women — not enough, perhaps, but it has shifted.
For starters, I’m not sure Beaty’s anecdotes support her thesis, though I have no doubt they are real. According to the Pew Research Center, over half of women identify as Christian, Protestant, or Catholic. There are over 328 million people in the country, about half of whom are women. That means more than 75 million women identify as Christians. Millions and millions of those women are mothers. I’m not knocking Beaty’s frustrations that Barrett is a rarity; she clearly is. I’m just not entirely sure Christian women have only their church to blame or that, just because Barrett is rare, that’s indicative of rampant sexism.
There are a few more things to keep in mind when observing Barrett the Christian, mother, wife, and soon-to-be Supreme Court justice. Interviewing 125 women who say their church didn’t support balancing a home and career is hardly demonstrative of a trend, just like showcasing Amy Coney Barrett’s rise to the Supreme Court hardly shows a trend in the other direction: a tiny sliver of a tiny sliver of attorneys reach that pinnacle. But it also doesn’t mean there aren’t women doing both.
Research alone shows there are plenty of working, Christian women (and lawyers, at that): There are more than 1 million lawyers in the United States, and surprisingly, almost half of those are women. If even less than half of those women are mothers, that’s still at least 100,000 to 200,000 people balancing the same thing Barrett is, with probably half of those mothers Christians, if not more.
More women are balancing motherhood and careers than we realize. They just aren’t usually famous for getting nominated for the Supreme Court, so they aren’t dominating the news. Some careers are reserved for the elite, and that’s by design: You wouldn’t want an average or mediocre lawyer on the Supreme Court, or an average person with a biology degree to be your heart surgeon, or an average math geek designing rockets to fly into space. That’s not sexism or a lack of support from a faith community; that’s just reality, and an important one.
In her conclusion, Beaty suggests that if more women are to have it all like Barrett does, “they will need explicit support from religious leaders” — the church community should encourage the dignity of all kinds of work, encourage “pro-family workplace policies,” confront sexism and sexual harassment, and more. I agree with some of these, particularly sexism and sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (which is an ongoing problem) and the idea that pro-family policies should truly become the norm, not the exception.
But there’s a fine line between looking at Barrett and pointing out that since there aren’t more women like her, there should be, or that the blame is somehow on Christianity. While this could be true in some parts of the country, I’d blame that on cultural roots, not Christianity as a whole, which describes the ideal woman in Proverbs 31 as one who is a successful businesswoman and a grateful mother. (Check out verses 16-18: “She goes to inspect a field and buys it; with her earnings she plants a vineyard. She is energetic and strong, a hard worker. She makes sure her dealings are profitable; her lamp burns late into the night.”)
We shouldn’t be naive enough to believe Barrett never experienced naysayers or discouragement. Instead, she clearly designed her life to be this way. Barrett has repeatedly discussed having significant help in raising her children. She describes in this talk with Notre Dame how much she and her husband are a team. When she was working, her husband was caring for the children, and sometimes, the two flipped roles. She clearly possesses unusual grit, drive, and determination, as her testimonies showed. What I’m saying might be hard for feminists to hear, but even if all roads were cleared for all women and all policies made work family-friendly and all churches denounced sexism, Barrett would still be rare.
The reason there aren’t more Amy Coney Barretts is because she herself is exceptional and she vied for one of the most exclusive jobs available. That’s good! Women and girls should be inspired by her. Barrett didn’t get to this point by accident, by herself, nor in spite of the obstacles of her Christian faith. Rather, from the sound of it, she’s reached the pinnacle of the legal profession because of her faith.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
