Amy Coney Barrett’s new book, Listening to the Law, is, prima facie, about her understanding of law, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court. As such, it is worthwhile reading for anyone seeking a better understanding of the judicial branch of government. And yet, learning more about the American legal process was not the primary reason I trekked to New York City to attend a live interview with Barrett. Instead, I was more interested in Barrett as a person, and particularly as a woman. The hysteria on both the right and left over Barrett’s nomination to the Court and subsequent decisions betrays a deeper cultural crisis over the meaning of American womanhood. While Barrett’s very existence as a stereotype-defying conservative, Catholic, professionally successful mother of seven has provoked the ire of many, I also believe her example can lead America toward a better understanding of the role of women in America—past, present, and future.
Barrett first came to my attention in 2017, when Sen. Dianne Feinstein memorably remarked that “the dogma lives loudly within you, and that is of concern” during Barrett’s confirmation hearing for the 7th Circuit. Along with many other Americans, I was impressed by Barrett’s performance in the face of such criticism, and I began to perceive her as a role model for conservative Christian women determined to combine traditional family life with professional success.
In her book, Barrett does not present herself as a political symbol, and she admits to preferring a quieter, less public life. And yet, like it or not, she has become an American icon. There is no better proof of this than the hostility she has provoked from both the progressive left and the reactionary right.
With the potential to cast a deciding vote in overturning Roe v. Wade, any Trump nominee to the Supreme Court in 2020 would inevitably agitate the left. And yet, her vilification specifically as a conservative, Christian woman was highly revealing. Much was made of her membership in the ecumenical Christian organization People of Praise, which used to refer to its female leaders (including Barrett) as handmaids. (In the interview I attended, Barrett ruefully acknowledged that she has received plenty of “handmaid” costumes in the mail from detractors). She was portrayed in popular media as a subjugated, passive wife and mother who somehow was also poised to wield power that could strip her fellow American women of their hard-earned rights. The left treated her as a threat because she was: her life exposed the falsity of the core progressive narrative that traditional Christian values and women’s progress must be at odds.
Barrett has also drawn the ire of some on the political right as well for failing to toe the MAGA line on cases like Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. Any Trump-appointed justice would have faced criticism, and yet I suspect that the response to Barrett was particularly vitriolic because the modern political right never coalesced around a vision of American womanhood amenable to both motherhood and public, professional success. On the contrary, reactionary tendencies such as the “tradwife” aesthetic and calls to “repeal the 19th (Amendment)” have become worryingly commonplace. Barrett never fit neatly into any conservative model for womanhood. Getting in the way of Trump’s agenda, even slightly, has gotten her labeled a “DEI hire“—a woman where she doesn’t belong.
Barrett, perhaps more than any other contemporary figure, has revealed the deep fissures in American society over what it means to be a woman. In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the strength of America lies in its women. Is it therefore any wonder that upheaval in and disagreement about the role of women would contribute to a broader crisis of American identity? Much of the culture wars can be explained by Americans’ failure to create a cultural model for womanhood that encompasses both their equality with men in terms of innate dignity, rights, and intellectual capacity in conjunction with their distinctive ability to bear and mother children, what legal scholar Erika Bachiochi has termed “sexual asymmetry.”
While Barrett’s rise to the highest court in the land has exposed contradictions in our approach to “the woman question,” she also offers insights to help craft a realistic and positive vision of American womanhood. She does so primarily through her treatment of two remarkable women: her own great-grandmother, and American founding mother Abigail Adams.
Listening to the Law opens and closes with Barrett’s reflections on a photo of her great-grandmother’s house that she keeps on her desk. She recounts that, despite the house’s small size, her widowed great-grandmother managed to raise a large family while also lodging multiple relatives and allowing homeless men to take shelter under the porch or stop for dinner. Reflecting on her own jam-packed family and work life, Barrett writes:
“Somehow, she always managed to find the resources, space, and time. With much less than I have, she took on much more. Looking at the photo reminds me of a woman who stretched herself beyond all reasonable capacity…(S)he motivates me to keep trying.”
Midway through the book, Barrett describes another picture displayed in her office: a portrait of Abigail Adams. In Adams, Barrett finds a role model and kindred spirit. She notes Adams’ “confidence and grit”—words that would aptly describe Barrett herself—and her busy home life as the mother of many children. Although barred from holding public office or even voting, she nonetheless “kept a hand in two worlds, attending to both the needs of her family and the concerns of government. Sometimes, she felt torn between them.” In one of the book’s most introspective passages, Barrett writes:
“Abigail reminds me of the sacrifices made to get our nation off the ground. And if she could look down from her portrait, I hope she would be proud…I can do something Abigail could not: work simultaneously as a mother and a justice of the Supreme Court. Her life, like the Constitution itself, evokes both history and hope.”
By drawing connections between her own life and those of her great-grandmother and Abigail Adams, Barrett shows us that remarkable American women were “stretch(ing)” themselves “beyond all reasonable capacity” long before the concept of having it all took hold.
And yet, for Barrett and the women she models herself on, it was never about having it all; it was about giving it all. This, I suspect, is the key to understanding Barrett’s ability to gracefully manage career and family. It is also essential to understanding what has gone wrong in today’s discourse on women. When the conversation centers on having it all (or not), self-sacrificial love, the most powerful force in the universe, goes unacknowledged.
Barrett, as much as anyone, embodies American women’s long tradition of selfless dedication to family, community, and country. Embracing this tradition can not only propel a mother of seven to the SCOTUS, but can also help resolve the identity crisis over what it means to be an American woman, and, by extension, what it means to be American . We need not reinvent American womanhood; we need only reclaim the attitude of so many women who helped build our nation and repurpose it for the 21st century. With her dedication to family, faith, and public service, Barrett offers a powerful example of how this can be done.
