One Woman’s thought on Harrison Butker

We have all heard various discourse on the speech made by Harrison Butker at the Benedictine College 2024 commencement in Atchison, Kansas. As a feminist and mother, I felt it was my duty to women to add my voice to that discourse. This week, twenty years ago, this week I gave birth to my first biological child. I knew the second she was placed in my arms that my life would never be the same. My husband and I had made the decision together that I should be a stay-at-home mother. My husband is a traditional Christian man, however his input into this decision was one supporting my decision. Before we got married, we discussed if I should stay home or not... I WANTED to stay at home and care for my children, but I also knew It was a privilege to stay at home, one that many others do not have. To be honest I had no desire for a career and the only thing I was trained for was being a childcare teacher. I wanted to be a SAHM.

I was a traditional wife, I cleaned house, I always had fresh baked cookies when the kids came home, made homemade bread, and dinner was almost always homemade. I enjoyed getting to be part of my children’s every day, but I was also bored, exhausted, and frustrated most of the time. Which is the feminine mystique; the assumption that we as women are fulfilled by being a paragon to motherhood, when we are not fulfilled, we wonder what we are doing wrong.

I volunteered at school, did the PTA, I helped at the church day care and senior programs (all with my kids of course). I tried not being so perfect, I tried being more perfect, I tried medication, nothing helped. This went on for almost fifteen years. When my youngest started school I looked around and realized I had nothing to do and was spending all day watching tv series. This is only so much a person could take so I decided to go back to school and get a degree just so I could get a job and not be bored. It turned out that going back to school was what I needed all along.

When I graduated college, it was different that the young ladies Harrison was addressing because I was not in my twenties envisioning my life. However, I do not think the women who I took classes with and cried over papers with were picturing all that time as just part of getting their M.R.S degree. I realize that Harrison is an outspoken Christian and many like him do believe that a Christian woman’s job is in the home, raising children and supporting their husbands. That a ring by spring and an M.R.S degree is just a precursor to a life inside the home. Harrison is privileged to make enough money for their family to live off of.

I feel like history, literature, and experience have shown us that women in general feel fulfilled when they have a balance in their life. Spending all day with children catering to their needs and those of your husbands is not balanced. We may feel blessed to have that opportunity, but it is normal to want something outside of that as well.

            When we live our lives in isolation surrounding ourselves with only our family or those who think like us, we as humans do not get a whole world view. This is in part where the danger lies both as a stay-at-home parent and as a Christian. We forget that there are other people in the world. Which is what the traditional values people want. Live in the world not of the world. But the real world is not the simplistic idealist place they have been isolated in.

            A meme went around right after Harrison Butker’s speech crediting him with saying “we should go back to a better time, like the 50’s & 60’s. When men were men, and women had more babies than thoughts” This was later proved as satirical post from thesportsmemery (Cercone). It might have been a satirical post, but a lot of Christians think this way. They truly believe that the 50’s & 60’s and the Regan administration were the greatest times to be alive, and for some elite few they might be right but not everyone was part of that elite few.

            This is why we need to have a whole view of the world and not one of isolation. If the 50’s &60’s where an amazing time for women Betty Friedan would not have written the Feminine Mystique and got women thinking about their lives giving birth to the third wave of Feminism. Even this movement though was isolated to upper class women who were able stay at home. The civil rights movement and the LGBTQ movement were also born in the 60’s. If anything, this so-called simpler time was a time of change and dissent.

            People were realizing their world views were born out of isolation and were opening their eyes to the greater world around them. I know this is going to seem controversial, but we need people like Harrison Butker to remind us that we have to broaden our word view. We have to remember that our work is not done.

            We have to lift suppressed voices. We have to teach that the standards of masculinity are harmful to men. We have to show we support one another. We have to be active in our communities. We need to be loud in our dissent but also know that there is a time to listen and learn. If we do not learn from other people, learn from history, then we are no better, only isolating ourselves in the voices we are trained to listen to.