Modern Fragility
“A society that devalues the home shouldn’t be surprised when the home begins to fall apart.”
Roughly 65% of all legal apartments in the United States have installed dishwashers. In addition, many households commonly include conveniences such as air fryers, toaster ovens, washing machines, robotic vacuums, microwaves, coffee makers, and even smart home devices like voice assistants and automated thermostats. These tools significantly reduce the time and effort required for daily chores compared to 30 years ago. In addition, if your apartment or house doesn’t come with some of these conveniences, no worries, you can buy them.
It can be said, without much argument, that in today’s society many women have advantages in terms of household efficiency compared to their mothers and certainly their grandmothers. Tasks that once required hours of manual labor, such as washing dishes by hand, doing laundry, or cleaning floors, can now be completed more quickly and with far less physical effort. Access to ready-made meals, grocery delivery services, online shopping, and meal-planning apps further simplifies daily responsibilities.
“The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims… instead of as successful creators of their own lives.” - Phyllis Schlafly
The Mental Load
The first time I heard this term was during my postgraduate clinical training. A very distinguished professor and supervisor was sharing her own case with us trainees during supervision, and her impression of the issue within the family system was the wife’s mental load. She proceeded to explain that the wife was constantly worrying, making plans for her family, and managing schedules, and that this was overwhelming.
I was the only one who laughed out loud and, upon realizing it, covered my mouth with my hand but the damage was done, and everyone looked at me like I had grown a second head. My professor was not amused. She asked me why I was being rude and what I found funny. I told her that I thought a mental load meant that the wife was making life-and-death decisions or maybe going through a traumatic experience that took up her entire bandwidth and overwhelmed her. She was stressed over her family’s calendar…
I thought to myself, who am I to pass judgment on how someone processes their feelings, emotions, and thoughts? After all, as a clinical therapist in that context, I was expected to be a “yes person” to validate, authenticate, and gently support every possible expression of womanhood, no matter how obscure, minimal, or performative it might seem to me.
In the last 50 years, women’s priorities have shifted from discipline, honor, loyalty, love, self-accountability, and family to trendy complaining “Karens” with narcissistic tendencies. Where once there was a focus on responsibility and commitment, now there seems to be more emphasis on entitlement and performing victimhood. This change has influenced family dynamics, personal relationships, and even society’s expectations of women. Many women today appear more concerned with expressing grievances and seeking validation than with cultivating resilience or accountability. The rise of social media and a culture of instant gratification have amplified this trend, encouraging people to showcase their struggles in performative ways rather than addressing them privately or constructively.
“The ideology of revolution, whether in the name of communism or radical feminism, often replaces one form of coercion with another.” - Simone Weil
I grew up around women who worked, cooked, cleaned, managed schedules, and maintained impeccable personal grooming all at the same time. Because I lived on three different continents, I had the unique opportunity to witness women in their prime running households, raising children, excelling in their careers, and handling every challenge that life threw at them. These women were disciplined, organized, and unflinching under pressure. They demanded excellence from themselves and from those around them, teaching by example that nothing worthwhile comes without effort. Iron sharpens iron period.
Growing up in that environment, I learned that resilience, responsibility, and strength are forged, not inherited, and that true competence is always visible in action. There were no dishwashers or rumbas in the Soviet Union or Israel back in the day. No one complained about coming home from work and making dinner or running a load of laundry (by hand, yeah.)
“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” — Bruce Lee
Modern Women or Disassociated Fairies?
Today, many typical women are thirty going on thirteen in both emotional maturity and intellectual capacity, displaying impulsiveness, short attention spans, and an inability to handle serious responsibility. Their responses often lean toward drama over reason, sentiment over judgment, and convenience over discipline. Did a life of convenience rob women of instinct, intuition, and self-awareness? Every topic begins and ends with masculine toxicity and unfairness toward women. The mothers complain that their husbands don’t change diapers or take them on dates, and most of the grandmothers are pulling their hair out trying to come to terms with the fact that when they were taught to use “positive and gentle” parenting forty years ago, it was a huge mistake.
Resilience has been replaced with complaining. Today, it’s considered “cool” to be a “boss bitch,” run a firm, or compete with a refrigerator over the emptiness inside. But women of the past were made of entirely different stuff, true survivors with calloused minds who pushed through adversity without whining. They faced hardship head-on, ran households, raised children, worked, and navigated life’s challenges with grit, discipline, and relentless determination. They didn’t measure their worth by social media likes, emotional convenience, or daily validation. They measured it by tangible results, endurance under pressure, and the ability to keep moving forward when no one was watching. Strength wasn’t performative; it was forged through action, responsibility, and the refusal to surrender to comfort, excuses, or complaint. These women understood that resilience is built in the fire of real life, not in the pursuit of attention or validation.
“Modern feminism has become an ideology that often exaggerates women’s victimization.” - Camille Paglia
There are more meditation apps, step trackers, and fitness programs than ever before, yet modern women are curled up on the couch, vegging out on vegan snacks, scrolling endlessly through their phones, and posting about the stress and anxiety they feel just at the thought of “showering.” Despite all the tools designed to improve health, productivity, and well-being, too many people remain sedentary, distracted, and emotionally fragile. Convenience has become a substitute for effort, comfort a replacement for discipline, and virtual validation a replacement for real accomplishment. We live in a world where wellness is marketed, but resilience is ignored; activity is tracked, yet real endurance the kind that builds character is rare these days. It wasn’t always like this at all.
My great-grandmother lost her husband during World War II. She was left with a young child my grandmother and absolutely no financial support. She hustled, raised my grandmother, and managed to do it all in the Soviet Union. There was no time for weakness or laziness. She didn’t turn into a fragile fairy, hoping to be rescued from hard work, challenges, and difficult truths.
To me, she was extraordinary, but she wasn’t the only woman who fought her way out of poverty. There were many like her and still are many like her. These types of women didn’t have the luxury of collapsing under the weight of their circumstances. These women simply got up and handled it, because there was no other option. She didn’t sit around complaining about her life or dwell on how hard it was to function. She didn’t label herself with some “mental health disorder” or wait for someone to understand her struggles. She was too busy making sure her child survived, was fed, and had a future.
By today’s social standards, my great-grandmother would probably be framed as a victim of a man’s world another overlooked woman shaped by hardship. But that’s not how she lived. She didn’t see herself as a victim; she saw a problem, and she solved it. She understood something that often gets lost: hardship isn’t just something to endure it’s something that shapes strength, perspective, and character. It refines you, if you let it.
She also knew that joy and happiness aren’t projects to be completed or rewards waiting at the end of perfect circumstances. They are states of mind choices made in the middle of imperfect, sometimes difficult lives. The greatest threat to a family system, with or without children, is a woman who believes the world owes her. My great-grandmother believed the opposite: that life gives you challenges, and it’s up to you to meet them with resilience, responsibility, and grace.
My 2 cents.
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There's a weirdness here in the unspoken expectation that a woman is burdened by that care as if that care were unnatural vs. the very fiber of her being. Moreover, that is also the care that women weaponize to explain why they're better, more empathetic, more connected, more networked, more relational, than men. Yet, the second they feel the slightest burden from that, they claim victimization. As if it shouldn't exist.
The other challenge is the pervasive idea that men don't have these feelings. There's not a day that goes by where I watch my kids playing, desperate to join them, or my wife is cleaning, and I'd love to help but I have to close my office door, or just watch the kids from the window, while locked on a telcon helping people solve other problems so I can earn the wages to give my family a high standard of living.
So yes, my wife worries and cares about different things in the family and I do to, but she's good at it, and more importantly, fulfilled by it because she carries her 'burden' as a validation of her capacity. I too, bear my burden, and together we raise a healthy, happy, and balanced family.
Wonderfully written, Karina!! My wife is one of these women. She doesn’t complain - she just does what needs to be done. And she’s grateful for her life rather than resenting it.