America is supposed to be the land where hard work, faith, and family build a good life, not an experiment in social engineering that leaves our daughters hollow and exhausted. Too many on the cultural left have sold the idea that women must become carbon copies of men to be liberated, then wonder why so many women say they feel less satisfied and less secure. It’s time to stop treating unhappiness as a mystery and start treating it as the predictable consequence of policy and culture run wild.

That exact concern was aired plainly on a recent Actual Friends podcast episode, where Dave Rubin and his co-hosts Jillian Michaels, Sage Steele, and Dr. Drew Pinsky argued that a “feminization crisis” and shifting social expectations are driving rising female unhappiness. The hosts connected the dots between dating dynamics, workplace pressure, and the emotional burden placed on women by modern narratives that promise fulfillment but deliver stress. Their conversation is a useful mirror for conservatives who’ve been warning that cultural experiments often come with unintended human costs.

The hard numbers back up the anecdotes: government data shows mental-health indicators among teenage girls remain troublingly high, with female students reporting far higher rates of persistent sadness, poor mental health, and suicidal thoughts compared with boys. This is not a small or isolated trend; it’s a nationwide signal that something in the way we are raising and socializing girls is failing them. Conservatives should treat these figures as a call to restore stable communities and commonsense parenting rather than double down on the very institutions that helped create the problem.

At the same time, the structure of relationships and family life has changed dramatically, and Pew data make clear that marriage and long-term partnerships are no longer the default path for many adults. Young people are dating less, marrying later, and increasingly substituting apps and hookup culture for the stable commitments that once undergirded emotional wellbeing. Those shifts have real consequences for women’s happiness because stable families and dependable partners historically provided the social support and security that studies show make life livable.

International and comparative research also shows the gender gap in life satisfaction is persistent even in wealthy countries, and that factors like personal safety and social support matter more for women’s wellbeing than abstract measures of equality. In other words, the rhetoric of empowerment rings hollow if women don’t feel safe, supported, or able to build family life without punitive policy or cultural scorn. Any serious conservative response must focus on the concrete foundations of flourishing—security, community, and meaningful relationships—rather than symbolic victories in boardrooms or social media.

Let’s be blunt: much of what passes for empowerment today emphasizes public recognition and workplace status while neglecting the private, stabilizing institutions that actually produce happiness. Social media amplifies insecurity, hookup culture erodes trust, and many institutions push one-size-fits-all “solutions” that shame women who choose marriage, motherhood, or homemaking. The conservative case is not to deny women opportunities, but to insist they be real options, not moral caricatures, and to defend the right of women to choose secure family lives without being labeled backward or unambitious.

Policy matters. We should promote tax and workplace policies that reward marriage and child-rearing, expand access to community-based mental health and addiction services, and push back on curricula that infantilize young people or prioritize ideology over character formation. Stop subsidizing bureaucratic DEI theater that drives wedges in workplaces and schools, and start investing in childcare, local faith-based groups, and mentorship programs that restore real support networks for women and families. These are the kinds of practical, pro-family moves that actually increase wellbeing, not the virtue-signaling projects that create hollow victories.

Patriots and hardworking Americans should stand with women who are tired of being told the path to fulfillment is only through conformity to a cultural experiment that hasn’t worked. We can offer a truer, tougher kind of freedom—one that protects innocence, honors family, and rewards responsibility. If conservatives lead with courage and common sense, we can stop the slide and help women reclaim the happiness they were promised by a healthier, more humane vision of society.