How the very system that excluded women from power now blames their absence for society’s problems
When faced with urban decay, rising crime rates, educational failures, or community breakdown, a familiar refrain emerges from certain corners of American discourse: “It’s the breakdown of the American family and the lack of strong male role models.” This explanation, often wrapped in appeals to “traditional Christian values,” has become a political and cultural touchstone, particularly among conservative voices seeking to explain complex social problems through a simple lens.
But what if this diagnosis fundamentally misunderstands both the problem and its origins? What if the very system that spent centuries systematically excluding women from positions of power, influence, and decision-making is now pointing to their historical absence as evidence of their inadequacy? And what if the rigid gender roles that this narrative seeks to restore are precisely what created many of the social problems we face today?
As someone who has spent years examining these questions through a feminist lens, I find myself increasingly frustrated with the intellectual dishonesty of this argument. It’s time to flip the script and ask a different question entirely: What if the real problem isn’t the breakdown of patriarchal family structures, but the breakdown that inevitably results from patriarchal structures themselves?
The Historical Sleight of Hand
Let’s start with the most glaring logical flaw in the “absent male role model” argument: it treats the historical exclusion of women from power as evidence of their natural unsuitability for leadership, rather than recognizing it as the result of deliberate, systematic oppression.
For most of American history, women were legally barred from participating in the very institutions that shape society. They couldn’t vote until 1920. They were excluded from most professions, prevented from accessing higher education, and legally considered the property of their fathers and then husbands. When women were present in communities, their contributions were systematically devalued, unpaid, and rendered invisible in historical records.
The “male role model” narrative performs a remarkable feat of historical amnesia. It looks at communities struggling with problems—poverty, violence, educational failure—and concludes that what’s missing is strong male leadership, without ever asking why women’s leadership was systematically suppressed in the first place. It’s like burning down all the libraries and then declaring that literacy isn’t important because nobody can read.
Consider the economic sphere. For generations, women were barred from business ownership, denied access to credit, and prevented from entering lucrative professions. When we look at economically depressed communities today, the legacy of this exclusion is everywhere: women-owned businesses that never had the chance to grow into generational wealth, educational institutions that never benefited from women’s intellectual contributions, and community organizations that were forced to operate in the shadows because women’s public participation was deemed inappropriate.
The historical record is clear: societies flourish when they harness the full range of human talent, regardless of gender. Yet for centuries, we deliberately restricted half our population from contributing to public life, and now we’re surprised that communities are struggling?
The International Mirror: What Equality Actually Looks Like
If we want to understand what happens when societies embrace gender equality rather than rigid patriarchal structures, we don’t need to theorize—we can simply look around the world. The data is remarkably consistent: countries with greater gender equality consistently outperform those with rigid gender hierarchies across virtually every measure of social wellbeing.
Take the Nordic countries—Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland—which consistently rank highest on global gender equality indices. These nations also happen to lead the world in measures of social cohesion, economic prosperity, educational achievement, and citizen satisfaction. They have lower rates of violent crime, stronger social safety nets, more stable democracies, and higher levels of trust between citizens.
Is this correlation or causation? The evidence increasingly points to causation. When women are full participants in economic and political life, societies benefit from diverse perspectives in decision-making, more stable family economic situations, and stronger community networks. Norway’s corporate board quotas for women, initially controversial, have been linked to improved company performance and more ethical business practices. Finland’s education system, consistently ranked among the world’s best, has been shaped significantly by women educators and policymakers who brought different approaches to child development and learning.
Meanwhile, societies that maintain strict gender hierarchies—regardless of their religious or cultural traditions—tend to struggle with the very problems that American conservatives attribute to the “breakdown of the family.” Countries with the most rigid gender roles often have higher rates of domestic violence, lower economic growth, weaker educational systems, and more social instability.
The lesson is clear: the problem isn’t the absence of male authority—it’s the presence of systems that artificially limit women’s contributions to society.
The Christian Values Confusion
Perhaps nowhere is the intellectual confusion more apparent than in the conflation of “Christian values” with patriarchal family structures. This conflation does a disservice both to feminist analysis and to the rich tradition of Christian thought about human equality and dignity.
The Christian narrative that conservative voices often invoke—the nuclear family with a male breadwinner and female homemaker—is neither historically universal nor biblically mandated. It’s a relatively recent invention, largely a product of post-World War II American prosperity, and it was never accessible to most families throughout history. Poor families, immigrant families, and families of color have always required multiple income earners to survive. The “traditional family” was a luxury that only certain demographics could afford, and even then, only for a brief historical moment.
More importantly, many of the most progressive Christian traditions have long recognized that rigid gender hierarchies contradict core Christian principles about human dignity and equality. The Quakers, for instance, have been ordaining women as ministers since the 17th century, based on their understanding that the divine spirit moves through all people regardless of gender. Liberation theology traditions throughout Latin America have emphasized how systems of oppression—including gender oppression—contradict the Christian call to justice and human flourishing.
Even within more conservative Christian traditions, there’s growing recognition that the “complementarian” view of gender roles—where men and women are considered equal in worth but different in function—often serves to justify inequality rather than celebrate diversity. When “different functions” consistently place men in positions of authority and women in positions of subordination, the equality becomes merely theoretical.
The early Christian communities described in the New Testament actually present a remarkably egalitarian picture for their time. Women like Phoebe, Prisca, and Junia held leadership roles in early churches. The revolutionary message of Christianity was precisely that existing social hierarchies—including gender hierarchies—were not divinely ordained but human constructions that could be challenged and transformed.
What conservative voices often describe as “Christian values” might be more accurately described as “1950s American suburban values with a Christian veneer.” These are not the same thing, and the conflation serves neither good theology nor good social policy.
The Damage of Rigid Gender Roles
The “strong male role model” narrative assumes that what communities need is a return to clearly defined gender roles where men are leaders and providers while women are caregivers and supporters. But the evidence suggests that rigid gender roles actually harm both men and women, and by extension, the communities they’re part of.
For men, the pressure to be the sole provider and emotional rock of the family creates enormous stress and limits their ability to form deep, meaningful relationships. The masculine ideal that discourages emotional expression and vulnerability contributes to higher rates of suicide, substance abuse, and mental health problems among men. When men are expected to be strong and stoic at all times, they’re denied the full range of human experience and relationship.
The “strong male role model” often translates into men who are emotionally distant, authoritarian in their parenting style, and unable to model healthy emotional regulation for their children. Research consistently shows that children benefit most from parents—regardless of gender—who are emotionally available, responsive, and capable of both nurturing and setting boundaries.
For women, rigid gender roles mean economic vulnerability, limited opportunities for intellectual and professional development, and the burden of carrying all emotional labor within families. When women are confined to the domestic sphere, families lose their potential economic contributions, and society loses their contributions to innovation, leadership, and problem-solving.
But perhaps most importantly, rigid gender roles teach children that their value and potential are determined by their gender rather than their individual talents and interests. Boys learn that they must suppress their emotional and nurturing sides to be “real men.” Girls learn that their primary value lies in supporting others rather than pursuing their own goals and dreams.
These lessons create adults who are fundamentally ill-equipped to navigate a complex world that requires flexibility, emotional intelligence, and the ability to collaborate as equals. The very gender roles that are supposed to create “strong families” often create dysfunctional ones instead.
The Economics of Exclusion
One of the most devastating aspects of the historical exclusion of women from economic life is how it created artificial scarcity and instability that we’re still dealing with today. When families are forced to rely on a single income—traditionally the male income—they become extraordinarily vulnerable to economic shocks.
The post-World War II period that conservatives often hold up as the ideal was only possible because of massive government investment in education, housing, and infrastructure—investments that were disproportionately available to white families while being systematically denied to families of color. Even then, this model was economically fragile and began breaking down as soon as economic conditions changed.
The entry of women into the workforce wasn’t a betrayal of family values—it was an economic necessity that also happened to unleash enormous creative and productive potential that had been artificially suppressed. Families where both partners can contribute economically are more stable, not less stable, because they’re not dependent on the fortune of a single earner.
Moreover, the skills that women bring to the workforce—often developed through their traditional roles as caregivers and community builders—are increasingly valuable in a modern economy that prizes collaboration, communication, and emotional intelligence. The idea that these skills are somehow less valuable than traditional “masculine” skills is both sexist and economically shortsighted.
Communities with higher rates of women’s workforce participation tend to have stronger economies, more diverse business sectors, and more resilient economic systems. This isn’t coincidence—it’s the predictable result of utilizing the full range of available human talent rather than artificially restricting it.
Redefining Strength and Leadership
What would it mean to redefine our understanding of strength and leadership in ways that don’t privilege one gender over another? What if instead of looking for “strong male role models,” we looked for strong human role models who could demonstrate the full range of human capabilities?
Research on effective leadership consistently shows that the most successful leaders—in business, politics, education, and community organizing—combine traditionally “masculine” traits like decisiveness and confidence with traditionally “feminine” traits like empathy, collaboration, and emotional intelligence. The most effective parents are those who can be both nurturing and firm, both supportive and challenging.
In communities around the world that have embraced more egalitarian approaches to gender roles, we see different models of what strength looks like. Strength becomes the ability to be vulnerable when appropriate, to ask for help when needed, to collaborate effectively with others, and to adapt to changing circumstances. Leadership becomes about empowering others rather than dominating them.
These communities often have lower rates of violent crime—not because they have more authoritarian male figures, but because they’ve created cultural norms that don’t equate masculinity with aggression and dominance. They have stronger educational systems—not because they’ve returned to patriarchal authority structures, but because they’ve recognized that learning requires both challenge and support, qualities that aren’t inherently gendered.
The Role of Faith in Gender Justice
For those who do find meaning and guidance in Christian tradition, there’s a rich legacy of faith-based gender justice that contradicts the rigid patriarchal model often promoted by conservative voices. Throughout Christian history, women have been leaders, theologians, mystics, and social reformers who understood their faith as calling them to challenge unjust systems.
Contemporary Christian feminists like Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessey, and Nadia Bolz-Weber have articulated visions of faith that embrace full gender equality as a theological imperative, not a departure from Christian values. They argue that the radical message of Christianity—that all people are created in the image of God and called to use their gifts for the flourishing of creation—is incompatible with systems that artificially limit people’s potential based on gender.
Even more conservative Christian traditions are grappling with these questions in new ways. The Southern Baptist Convention, long a bastion of complementarian theology, has seen growing internal debate about women’s roles in church leadership. Catholic feminist theologians continue to challenge their church’s exclusion of women from ordination while affirming their faith commitments.
The point is not that all religious people must embrace feminist theology, but rather that equating patriarchal gender roles with Christian faithfulness is a theological and historical oversimplification that does justice to neither feminism nor Christianity.
Moving Beyond the False Binary
Perhaps the most important insight from feminist analysis of these issues is that we don’t have to choose between strong families and gender equality. In fact, the evidence suggests that the strongest families are those that reject rigid gender roles in favor of more flexible, egalitarian approaches to sharing responsibility and authority.
Children benefit most from having multiple strong role models—both male and female—who can demonstrate different ways of being in the world. They need to see men who are emotionally available and nurturing, and women who are confident and assertive. They need to learn that their value doesn’t depend on conforming to narrow gender stereotypes, but on developing their individual talents and contributing to their communities.
The “breakdown of the family” that conservatives worry about isn’t caused by the rejection of patriarchal authority—it’s caused by economic inequality, racial injustice, inadequate social support systems, and the stress that comes from trying to maintain outdated family structures in a changed world.
Communities thrive when they support all families—single-parent families, dual-career families, same-sex parent families, multigenerational families, and yes, even traditional nuclear families where the parents have chosen their roles freely rather than having them imposed by social expectations.
The Path Forward
So where does this leave us in conversations with family members, friends, and community members who continue to promote the “male role model” narrative? How do we respond to arguments that seem to blame women’s liberation for society’s problems?
First, we can insist on historical accuracy. The problems facing many communities today—economic disinvestment, educational underfunding, systemic racism, and social fragmentation—have complex roots that predate and transcend changes in gender roles. Blaming these problems on the absence of male authority is both intellectually dishonest and politically convenient for those who don’t want to address the structural issues that actually matter.
Second, we can point to positive examples. Communities that have embraced gender equality aren’t falling apart—they’re thriving. Countries that have invested in women’s education and workforce participation have stronger economies and more stable societies. Families that share responsibilities equitably report higher levels of satisfaction and lower levels of stress.
Third, we can challenge the underlying assumptions. Why should strength be defined in exclusively masculine terms? Why should leadership require the subordination of others? Why should family stability depend on inequality rather than mutual respect and shared responsibility?
Finally, we can offer a different vision. Instead of looking backward to a mythologized past that never existed for most families, we can look forward to communities where all people—regardless of gender—are empowered to contribute their gifts, where families are supported by strong social institutions, and where children learn that their potential is limited only by their effort and imagination, not by their gender.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Narrative
The “breakdown of the American family” narrative is powerful precisely because it taps into real anxieties about social change and community fragmentation. People are right to be concerned about rising inequality, educational failures, and social isolation. These are serious problems that deserve serious attention.
But the solution isn’t to scapegoat women’s liberation or to nostalgize a past that was never as golden as memory suggests. The solution is to build communities and institutions that support all families, that harness the full range of human talent, and that measure success not by how well people conform to rigid gender roles, but by how well they’re able to flourish as full human beings.
The patriarchal system had its chance. For centuries, it was the dominant organizing principle of society. And what did it produce? Wars, oppression, environmental destruction, economic inequality, and the very social problems that its defenders now claim it can solve.
Maybe it’s time to try something different. Maybe it’s time to listen to the voices that were silenced for so long and to build communities based on equality rather than hierarchy, on collaboration rather than domination, on the full flourishing of all people rather than the privilege of a few.
The evidence is clear: when women are full participants in society, everyone benefits. It’s time to stop treating this as a controversial proposition and start treating it as the foundation for building the just, prosperous, and peaceful communities we all want to live in.
The choice isn’t between strong families and gender equality. The choice is between artificial limitations and human flourishing. And when we frame it that way, the answer becomes obvious.