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In a scene from “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” villainous fashion editor Miranda Priestly (played by Meryl Streep) laments missing out on much of her twin daughters’ lives. Climbing the fashion industry ladder comes at a cost, but to her, it was worth it because, as she puts it, “I love working. I really do … I just love it.”

In an interview, Streep revealed that the last line was an ad-lib, a nod to the generation of women who chased work instead of being dedicated to motherhood. Streep called the feeling of loving work analogous to sneaking a cigarette because women’s pursuit of work was labeled “selfish.”

A generation of modern feminists is aghast at younger women’s embrace of traditional roles, traditional families, and traditional values. Streep is coy in this interview, but Sheryl Sandberg, former Facebook chief operating officer, is more explicit with her disdain toward the traditional wife movement. The woman who spent over a decade telling women to “lean in” to work outside of the home blasted the trad wife movement as “very detrimental to women” and founded on “sexist” notions of women’s roles. In a social media post, she chided us to “leave the 1950s where they belong: in the past.”

The alarmism over how trad wives might derail women’s economic progress is overblown. Women continue to opt to work for different reasons, some for fulfillment and others out of necessity. The labor force participation rates among those of prime working age (25 to 54) have surged since the pandemic, with women driving more of the increase than men.

The number of moms with underage children in the workforce has been rising over the past two decades. The labor force participation rate for mothers with children under age 18 was 73.9% in 2025, little changed from 2024, but up from 72.3% in 2019, 70.9% in 2010, and 72.3% in 2000.

Not surprisingly, unwed mothers are consistently more likely to participate in the labor force than married mothers (78% and 72%, respectively, in 2025). Mothers of older kids are more likely to participate in the labor force than mothers with young children (78% and 68%, respectively). Those shares have all risen since 2000, indicating that female workers are still “leaning in” to work outside of the home.

Coming out of the pandemic, anecdotally, some high-earning women decided they didn’t want to miss the moments in their children’s lives that girl bosses like Sandberg gave up. Their spouses could sustain the household financially.

As prices surged in 2022 and onward, other women may have given up the lifestyle that two paychecks afforded them by quitting to save on childcare costs while gaining time with their little ones. Surveys consistently indicate that high childcare costs push some mothers out of the workforce or force them to reduce hours because the math no longer works. Deregulation and tax reforms are needed to expand childcare options for parents.

For some women, motherhood is their aspiration. Some “trad wife” influencers certainly go overboard and create unrealistic expectations for what you have to do to be a “good” mom or wife. But at its core, the “trad wife” movement is simply the modern version of “homemaking,” a term all but erased from modern vernacular by feminists. Many women find dignity, beauty, and value in fully dedicating their time to their spouses and children. That should not be denigrated.

Here’s what Sandberg gets right. It should be a woman’s choice to decide how much to prioritize family life over work. The good news is that women don’t just have a binary choice of girl boss or trad wife. Millions of women are engaged in a third way that grants them the flexibility to be a present mother while earning a respectable living or supplementing the household budget.

From full self-employment to gig work, about half of the over 70 million Americans who freelanced last year were women. Nine out of 10 women who left a traditional job to become an independent contractor did so for flexibility. This arrangement provides them the freedom to work while nestling a newborn at home or attending an afternoon soccer game. Employment without the motherhood guilt.

As women and couples raise children farther away from longstanding caregiving support networks, such as grandparents, aunts, and cousins, self-employment through freelancing and gig work is all the more important. Not every mother can afford an army of nannies.

This third way has champions in Washington. The Trump administration, which has several working mothers in high-ranking positions, recognizes that independent work is important to women. In a win for women, the Department of Labor recently proposed a sound and welcome worker classification standard that protects independent contracting. This rule is a 180-degree change from President Joe Biden’s anti-flexible work regulatory approach. However, unless Congress codifies this effort through pro-worker legislation such as the Modern Worker Empowerment Act, another freelancer-unfriendly administration could overturn it, as happened before.

This Mother’s Day, American women don’t need scoldings or slights, but respect for the choices we make. Thankfully, we live in a nation that generates pathways for women to craft fulfilling lives without the mommy guilt.

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Patrice Onwuka is the vice president for economic policy and director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women. She also cohosts WMAL’s O’Connor & Company.

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