I was not immune from the siren call of Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker recently telling women that their highest purpose is to stay home and have kids. Not "siren call" in the sense that I was persuaded by it, but just that I could not resist listening to it and laughing.
Stay home? Raise kids? In this economy? What the fuck is this fool even talking about? Young people with jobs can’t afford rent or mortgage payments. Where are all these stay-at-home moms supposed to live? Where are all these jobs that pay well enough that a dad can support a family on his income alone?
There’s a whole genre of men who are like, “Make yourself small so I can feel big.” It should be embarrassing that a successful football player at the top of his game, on a Super Bowl-winning team, doesn’t feel like things are right in his life if women don’t curtail our aspirations around him. He could pay to go to therapy, or he could get paid to tell women to get in the kitchen. He’s made his choice.
Y’all, as you hear people rushing to Butker’s defense, ask yourself this question: Do they live the lifestyle they are rushing to defend? If men and women in complementarian marriages are so fulfilling, why is Bill Maher single? If her husband is the head of her household and the public face of her family, why is Tavia Hunt out here publicly defending Harrison Butker? Everyone picks and chooses what of their stated beliefs they’re actually going to take seriously, but if they’re advocating for you to do something they’re not doing, maybe it’s not as great as they’re making it out to be.
I think it’s especially important to really mull over why Harrison Butker, of all people, wants women to stay home and be mothers and to find that the most fulfilling thing they could do with their time. One is probably sour grapes, because one of his teammates is jetting around the world doing fun shit with his billionaire girlfriend. But the other is probably much closer to home. It was tickling the back of my brain when he started going on about “the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion.” But reading Andrea Williams’ astute analysis of what bullshit it is that Butker is railing against the tyranny of diversity when he has a Black quarterback clicked it into place for me.
Williams writes:
I think it’s important, however, to acknowledge how and why he was given that platform. Butker is an NFL kicker, a position that is crucially important on the field but decidedly less so off of it.
Kickers don’t get State Farm or Subway commercials; their jersey sales don’t sell out on NFL.com; most casual fans wouldn’t even recognize them on the street.
Except there is one football kicker whose name immediately sprang to my mind, even though this kicker only played a couple of college games: Sarah Fuller. Why does a kicker want women to stay home and find fulfillment in being wives and mothers? Because kicker is the position in football most vulnerable to going to women. And Butker is a fine kicker. Fine. But he’s not the best. Don’t get me wrong — he’s up there. But he’s not at the top.
There’s a very real possibility history will be made during Vanderbilt’s football game today at Missouri, as the Commodores will put an SEC ch…
Think of how good a female kicker would have to be to overcome the inertia and the traditions of the NFL. No team is going to field a female kicker who’s mediocre. That’s too much trouble for not enough payout. So if they were going to go this route, they’d need to bring in someone who could post Butker-like numbers — otherwise, it would just seem like a gimmick. Women, in general, are not ever going to take huge numbers of spots in the NFL away from men. But if the league were to bring in a female player, she would be good enough to threaten Butker.Â
It's unlikely that women will ever be in the NFL, I think. But if you’re a traditionalist weirdo on a team being lauded for “bringing women to football,” you might get paranoid.
Anyway, listen: Even if you have the greatest husband in the land, and he has a job that supports you and your children, and you are perfectly fulfilled by staying at home being a mom, women outlive men. You need to make sure that your family has a financial plan for you for when your husband isn’t around anymore. Spend some time talking to older people to understand the obstacles ahead. Even though banks aren’t supposed to do it, women are still finding that their joint bank accounts are frozen after their husbands die. Do you have a source of money you can use to feed yourself and whatever dependents you may have while you fight with the bank? Do you know how to write a check? Do you have a credit score? Do you know what bills you have and how they get paid? If you haven’t been in the workforce, you won’t have your own social security benefits, because you haven’t paid in and the benefits you’re eligible for are less than what a worker gets. What you pay for Medicare may be more than a woman who worked pays.
You and your spouse should be on the same page financially before you get married, no matter what. But if you’re putting yourself at a financial disadvantage in order to take on all these stay-at-home duties, you must have a clear understanding of the household finances, and the two of you must have a plan for how your life is going to go after he’s gone.
In this economy, having a stay-at-home wife is like having a Tesla Cybertruck — it’s a way of flaunting your wealth. But in this economy, being a stay-at-home wife is also like having a Tesla Cybertruck — you won’t know until you start driving it if it’s even going to take you where you want to go, and you won’t have a way to recoup your costs if it doesn’t.
