Should mothers work outside the home? w/ Margaret H. McCarthy

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 11, 2025 | In The Catholic Culture Podcast

Listen to this podcast on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed | YouTube Channel

This is a listener-supported podcast! Thanks for your help!

Should mothers work outside the home? If you want an answer more solid than groundless internet opinion or conveniently vague appeals to personal discernment, this is the podcast for you.

Margaret McCarthy joins the Catholic Culture Podcast to discuss her essay on why anti-sex-discrimination law’s treatment of the sexes as abstract interchangeable units hurts real women, real men, and real children (and real workplaces!). Then we dive into the neglected teachings of St. John Paul II and earlier popes on the differing relationships men and women have to the home and to work outside the home.

Margaret Harper McCarthy is associate professor of theological anthropology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage & Family, at the Catholic University of America. She is the editor of Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture, and Science, serves on the editorial board of the English edition of Communio: International Catholic Review, is a member of the Academy of Catholic Theology, and is a consultant to the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction

2:30 Anti-discrimination law discriminates against real women, children, men, and workplaces

34:30 Sex difference: division of labor and customs

1:03:43 Catholic teaching on working mothers

1:33:08 Contraception and public life vs. the real feminine genius

Links

Margaret H. McCarthy, “The Case for (Just) Sex Discrimination” https://newpolity.com/blog/sex-discrimination

Thomas’s article citing John Paul II and earlier popes on working mothers https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/why-young-catholics-are-rejecting-feminism-pt-2/

Humanum Review https://humanumreview.com/

Some other articles mentioned:

Helen Andrews, “Lean Out” https://americanmind.org/features/rule-not-by-lies/lean-out/

Maria Baer, “Maybe Women Can Have It All—But Can Their Kids?” https://ifstudies.org/blog/maybe-women-can-have-it-all-but-can-their-kids

Matthew Mehan, “Wanted: Men of Purpose” https://americanmind.org/features/restoring-single-sex-education-at-vmi-and-beyond/wanted-men-of-purpose/

Magisterial texts mentioned:

Rerum Novarum, Divini Illius Magistri, Quadragesimo Anno, Laborem Exercens, Familiaris Consortio

Pope Pius XII’s addresses to married couples, Dear Newlyweds https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=12716

Ratzinger/CDF, “On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World” https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040731_collaboration_en.html

Theme music: “Franciscan Eyes”, written and performed by Thomas Mirus. Download the Catholic Culture Podcast soundtrack.