E306: Why Modern Women Hate Motherhood w/Leah Sargeant | Lila Rose Show
The Lila Rose Show
Lila Rose
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 133 minutes
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Summary
Leah Sargeant was a proud atheistic feminist who experienced a deep conversion to Christ. But she couldn't fully ditch the term "feminism," and in today's episode she explains why. She also shares her struggles with fertility and policy solutions for stronger families, and we discuss whether gender roles are helpful.
*Leah's book*: https://amzn.to/4m2FMo5
Leah's X: https://x.com/LeahLibresco
Substack: https://www.otherfeminisms.com/
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00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:10 - The question Feminism asks:
00:03:44 - Where men are shortchanged
00:04:49 - From Atheist to Christian
00:08:40 - Kant’s morality
00:09:44 - Self identity before Christianity
00:10:44 - CS Lewis steps in
00:11:41 - GK Chesterton follows up
00:12:21 - Christianity is radical…and sensible
00:12:52 - Alasdair McIntyre
00:16:19 - Atheist to Christianity
00:20:22 - Morality is…a person?
00:23:33 - Jesus…loves me?
00:28:14 - Why abortion is not logically consistent
00:34:24 - Life after conversion
00:36:43 - Struggles with fertility
00:37:56 - Handling miscarriages
00:41:57 - Accepting the cross and understanding God’s will
00:43:00 - Advice for struggling women
00:46:10 - How did you achieve fertility?
00:47:13 - The female body
00:48:10 - How did feminism get so radical?
00:53:23 - Radical support for abortion
01:01:28 - Feminist manifesto
01:05:04 - Does feminism have a toxic root?
01:06:09 - Where feminists do better
01:06:46 - Marital r*pe
01:09:14 - Bible says not to deny sex…
01:12:06 - Intimacy comes easier when:
01:14:02 - You can’t be “generically good” at sex
01:14:56 - How modesty leads to better sexuality
01:19:19 - Tradwives
01:23:36 - Does it matter who earns more?
01:27:16 - What does it mean to be a father?
01:28:19 - What does it mean to be a mother?
01:29:30 - Women in workforce
01:34:56 - Are women at war with their motherhood?
01:36:50 - Repeal the 19th Amendment?
01:40:52 - Do men have it worse off today?
01:44:48 - What is good masculinity?
01:46:14 - What should we tell men?
01:50:06 - Military draft vs Pregnancy
01:53:21 - Unnecessary “war of the sexes”
02:00:14 - The word ‘feminism’
02:02:01 - Public policy advice?
02:04:35 - Should birth be made free?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Feminists have always been concerned with this core question. What does it mean to be just to women as women, not as generic unsexed human beings or as defective men? |
| 0:09.4 | You would think that if you live in a slightly sexist society, one of the benefits of it would be that the kitchen where people are picturing women, would have counters that are at the height that is typical for women. |
| 0:18.6 | You went to Yale University, but before that you were atheist. Can you share about that story of going from atheist to passionate Christian? I think part of the attraction is there are moments in our history. We'll see the feminist movement as the primary one talking about a real injustice. And I think they deserve credit for that. Should birth be made free by the government? I put the due date and the trimesters on my calendar because I was so excited and I never did that again because going through my Google calendar and deleting each event was horrible. |
| 0:44.2 | Anyone listening today who currently doesn't know what's going to happen to your baby, you are this baby's mother or father today. |
| 0:50.0 | We're primed to be at war with our motherhood. |
| 0:51.7 | We have to be comfortable saying pregnancy does burden women, aging burdens to the people around you, and we respond to that burden with love and support for the caregiver, not by annihilating the person who is interrupting the life you imagined you would lead. |
| 1:06.0 | Leah Sargent, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me on. You recently have a book out called The Dignity of Dependence, |
| 1:12.5 | and you call it in the subtitle, a feminist manifesto. I do. So I think the title has, every word that is not a |
| 1:20.7 | definite or indefinite article is a word that someone warned me against putting in the book along the way. |
| 1:26.7 | Dignity, dependence, feminist. |
| 1:29.5 | I think manifesto people were more willing to grant because they knew it was truth in advertising. |
| 1:34.1 | There are already people listening right now who are a little bit triggered by the word |
| 1:37.2 | feminist. You are a Catholic mother of three. You are a wife. You are a convert to Catholicism. You're very passionate about your faith. And yet you very publicly identify with the word feminist. |
| 1:50.4 | You know, I think part of it is just telling the truth for me. I don't feel urgently that everyone needs to identify or not. But it was the feminism of my second wave mother that helped me connect to kind of core |
| 2:03.0 | truths about men and women that helped lead me here, even though I think my mother would |
| 2:07.1 | disagree about some of the places I've extended them. I think from the beginning, feminists have |
| 2:12.0 | always been concerned with this core question. What does it mean to be just to women as women, not as generic, |
| 2:20.8 | unsexed human beings, or as defective men? And I think the feminist movement has always been |
| 2:25.8 | kind of a rowdy scrum and has produced wrong answers to that question, but that animating question, |
| 2:33.1 | what does it mean to be just to women as women, |
| 2:35.1 | is what animates my book? And I think the more that even contemporary feminists kind of lean |
| 2:41.0 | into that question, the more hopefully they'll wind up where I am with a feminism that can |
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