Is Michelle Williams still implying that women must choose between children and career?

Actress Michelle Williams recently made remarks about parenthood that seem to bolster the pro-abortion view that parents cannot be equally successful in both their careers and their parenting at the same time.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Actress Michelle Williams has credited a past abortion with her career success.

• Her fourth child was born to a surrogate.

• Williams’s recent comments on a podcast about balancing parenthood and career — in light of her choices to abort a child and later use a surrogate — support the narrative that women must choose between their children and their careers.

• Parents deserve to know that they can advance their careers and be successful parents — and the pro-life movement stands ready to offer tangible help and resources to those in need.

THE DETAILS:

Appearing on the “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard” podcast, Williams discussed balancing motherhood with her job. Yet while many mothers have credited motherhood for their career success, Williams has largely claimed the opposite.

Michelle Williams | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

She told Shepard:

Kids are such great life checkers. They force you to put your best self in front of them.

You can’t abdicate your life and your work and your own desires, but you do have to put them in check and figure out which master you’re going to serve.

Because the truth is, if work is going well, somebody else is taking care of the kids. And if you’re in a high point with your kids, the work is shoved to the side. So you can’t be equally good at them at the exact same time.

And you have to allow for that give and take, but then also replenish the other things. If you have a big period of being at home, you need to go back to what you’ve left unattended and put some light over there.

So I think it’s just this constant back and forth, but making sure that you don’t leave one of them unattended for too long.

She added that her best day with her children is always better than her best day at work, but that she wants to set a certain example for them. “I want them to see their mom working, all of my kids,” she said. “So it’s not something that I want to neglect for too long.”

WHY IT MATTERS:

This is a familiar refrain for Williams, who seems to have internalized a narrative that pits parenthood against career.

Williams won a Golden Globe award for her role as Gwen Verdon in “Fosse/Verdon” in 2020, accepting the award while visibly pregnant — and insinuated that she had only achieved career and life success because she had been able to kill her preborn child:

I’m grateful for the acknowledgment of the choices I’ve made, and I’m also grateful to have lived at a moment in our society where choice exists. Because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice.

I’ve tried my very best to live a life of my own making, and not just a series of events that happened to me, but one that I could stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over — sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise — but one that I had carved with my own hand.

And I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose, to choose when to have my children and with whom.

Williams recently exercised her ‘right to choose’ in a different way — by hiring someone else to carry her fourth child.

THE OTHER SIDE:

At the time of Williams’ Golden Globes remarks, another working mother, Leah Darrow, publicly disagreed. Darrow, a former contestant on America’s Next Top Model who is now a public speaker and author, responded to Williams from her hospital bed.

“I’m here getting ready to deliver my fifth baby,” Darrow said. “And I want to let all you women know, all you young ladies who haven’t had babies or are maybe listening to what the culture says about birth, and women, and babies, and choice. Babies don’t keep us from our dreams. I’m getting ready to deliver a baby that will not keep me from my professional growth, but will make me better because of it.”

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Williams’ comments, coming from a well-known wealthy celebrity, do little to give hope to women who are not as wealthy or advanced in their careers. They do not deserve to be pushed toward killing their preborn children as their only option. Sometimes all parents need is an encouraging word and a promise that says, “we are here for you. You’re not alone.”

Women can achieve career success while parenting their children — and the truth of the matter is this: being a successful parent must first begin with the act of choosing life for one’s children. For the steps after, there is help and support available, and the pro-life movement stands ready to give it.