Friedan referred to the home as “a comfortable concentration camp” and she pushed the idea that the only “productive” work for women was work performed outside of the home. Those ideas took root in the culture at large, and I must admit, I struggled with them too.

I was blessed to attend a Catholic university, and it was through this education that an entirely new world began to open to me. I could see that the pressure I had felt all those years was really the pressure to imitate men, not to discover my call to be the woman God had created me to be.

I could also see that this attack on women and motherhood was nothing new. Open the Bible to Genesis 1, and you will see that, in the beginning, there was a marriage, and that marriage was very good. You will also see a serpent who hated that marriage and their union with God. You will witness his efforts to break their trust in God and each other and to lose sight of the good life they had been given. He began with the woman, and soon after the man followed. They allowed themselves to be duped, and sin entered into the world.

The beauty of our merciful God is that he gave to that couple and to us a promise of redemption in Genesis 3:15. God foretold the ultimate triumph of the “woman and her seed” against the “serpent and his seed.” But with that promise, came a warning of the hatred that would continue between Satan and the woman, between her seed and his seed. Ultimately, Mary and Jesus were the fulfillment of that promise, but this promise also points out that motherhood would be the battleground that Satan would choose, over and over, in his attempts to overcome and defeat God’s plan for the family and the world.

Why attack motherhood? Perhaps it’s because a good mother can do so much good in the world and a bad mother can do so much harm.

Yes, fathers are incredibly important, but mothers have always been the gatekeepers for young children, and it is the mother’s connection to the child that protects and enfolds the soul of that child, to nurture and form them until they are ready to fight their own battles.

The truth is that mothers make countless decisions for their little ones — from the food they will eat to the influences that will form and mold their imaginations as they grow up. She is a natural teacher to them, and often is the first to introduce them to Jesus and the truths of the faith from a very young age. Given the influence that a mother has, it makes sense that Satan would go after the mother to get to the family.

Feminism in many ways mimics the lie of that serpent in the Garden. It promises women so much but delivers so little. Modern day feminism ignores the fact that a woman is different from a man and those differences go down to her very heart and soul.

To try to define success the way that feminism is telling us to define success would be to ignore the fact that we are different from men, and our fulfillment in this world could never be defined by job titles, bank accounts, or rejecting our own children.

Ultimately, both husband and wife share the same mission, for it is “in the family that one learns the love and faithfulness of the Lord and the need to respond to these.” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 210) Because men and women are different, their roles will look different, too.

A woman’s body is a marvelous thing! She can grow and birth and nourish her child for the first few years, but the mother is also specially equipped to grow and nourish her child’s soul in profound ways. The mother has a special place in preparing a child for their God-given destiny.

St. John Paul II’s Letter to Families (1994) states: “Love causes man to find fulfillment through the sincere gift of self.” This is the paradox of the Gospel message, and we see this lived out in motherhood every single day.

Truly, it is in our pouring ourselves out as a gift to others that we discover the woman that we were created to be; that amazing woman God had in mind from the beginning of time.

Many women are biological mothers. But some take on a role of “spiritual motherhood” in the lives of their “spiritual children;” the role of nurturing, advising, and praying for them. To every mother and spiritual mother reading this, I hope you know that your life of love for others has immeasurable value. Your love is irreplaceable, and you have a very special role in that battle which is going on around us for the soul of our culture and especially for the soul of our own family members. So thank you for all you do.

As Catherine of Siena said, “Be who you were created to be, and you will set the world ablaze.” May your motherhood set the world around you ablaze with the fire of God’s love.