Fatherhood Quote by Patricia Schroeder

The sting here is how ordinary the sentence feels. Schroeder isn’t delivering a grand manifesto; she’s holding up a small, everyday question and letting its asymmetry indict the whole system. The line works because it points to a cultural reflex so ingrained it rarely registers as bias: public ambition is presumed compatible with fatherhood, but suspicious in a mother. That “Nobody ever says to men” is doing the heavy lifting, exposing the unspoken baseline of male normalcy. Men get to be both; women are asked to choose, justify, apologize.

Schroeder, a trailblazing congresswoman and mother, knew this wasn’t just about hurt feelings. It was about the gatekeeping mechanisms that police who is allowed to pursue power without being read as defective. The question “how can you be” pretends to be practical, even concerned. Subtext: your priorities are wrong; your presence is an anomaly; your work is a kind of neglect. By flipping it onto men, Schroeder reveals the question’s true function: not to solve a logistical problem, but to enforce a moral hierarchy where caregiving is feminized and leadership masculinized.

In the broader context of late-20th-century American politics, it also gestures toward institutions built around a “wife at home” model: punishing schedules, constant travel, informal networks after hours. Schroeder’s line doesn’t just critique attitudes; it quietly argues that the workplace isn’t neutral. It was designed with a default man in mind, then surprised when women arrived with lives that wouldn’t pretend otherwise.