January 1, Working Mother Exposes SHOCKING Double Standard at Major Conservative Outlet

Wyatt’s Take

• Conservative news company preached family values while punishing working mothers behind the scenes
• Women shamed for having kids appear on Zoom or working from playground — then pushed out
• The Daily Wire shows how pro-family workplaces actually operate when you walk the walk

Plenty of conservative companies love to talk big about family. Have children. Motherhood matters. Family comes first. All the stuff Middle America believes in.

But one working mom just pulled back the curtain on a major conservative news organization that preached those values while punishing mothers in private. And the difference between lip service and actually living it out couldn’t be more stark.

Before having kids, she admits she was part of the problem. Then motherhood hit. Suddenly she understood the panic of trying to juggle work and a newborn — terrified that someone in management might decide the two couldn’t coexist.

At her former workplace, working mothers were talked about negatively if their children appeared on Zoom. Or if they were caught working from a laptop at the playground during summer while their kids played nearby.

Think about that for a second. A mother wasn’t skipping work. She was literally doing her job from the playground, laptop open, making sure her children had a summer. That was treated as a problem.

One colleague was frequently working from her laptop while caring for her children. She was pushed out. There might have been official explanations, but senior people involved admitted her inability to secure childcare was at the heart of the issue. So much for practicing what you preach.

Then came maternity leave. When she had her first child, the baby suffered health issues during those critical first three months. She was a brand-new mother navigating doctors, sleepless nights, and the overwhelming realization that this tiny human depended entirely on her.

And she was contacted about work. Numerous times. On maternity leave. Instead of focusing entirely on her newborn, work stress hung over her too.

Fast-forward to today. She’s now at The Daily Wire, and she’s never felt more empowered to be a working mother.

If she needs to step away to feed her baby, nobody interrogates her. If she needs to take her kids somewhere or give them one-on-one time, she can do it. She’s not made to feel guilty. In fact, it’s encouraged.

And here’s something that might surprise people: One of her biggest advocates for putting motherhood first isn’t another mother. It’s her direct report. A father.

Imagine that. A man who celebrates the work she does while also celebrating the fact that she’s a mom. He doesn’t treat motherhood as an inconvenience he has to work around. He reminds her that it’s more important than anything happening on a homepage that day.

She’s been told numerous times that nothing she does at work will ever be more important than being a mother. And here’s the funny thing: That mentality doesn’t make her want to work less.

It makes her want to work harder.

She realized that one morning at 2 a.m. She woke to feed her baby and planned to get back to sleep right after. Then she looked at her phone. Senator Lindsey Graham had tragically and unexpectedly died. Suddenly, there was major breaking news to cover.

So when the baby finished eating, she didn’t go back to sleep. She grabbed her laptop and got to work. And strangely enough, she felt blessed.

There she was in the middle of the night, exhausted, with her baby next to her, and she got to be the person awake to cover one of the biggest stories while most Americans were still sleeping. She wasn’t annoyed. She wasn’t frustrated. She felt lucky that being a mom was the reason she happened to be awake when her team needed someone.

Nobody told her to cover breaking news at 2 a.m. She wasn’t scared of what would happen if she didn’t.

She did it because she wanted to. And that difference means everything.

Her colleagues have been a blessing too. She’s surrounded by mothers whose children are older, women who have already survived the sleepless nights and toddler meltdowns she’s living through. They check in on her. They remind her she’s not alone. And they make sure she knows that when motherhood feels overwhelming, she has women around her who have been there.

Recently, she had a brutal night with both kids. She woke up exhausted and defeated and happened to see a tweet about postpartum struggles from a coworker. The woman hadn’t written it for her. She probably had no idea it was needed.

But it was. Her words pulled her up that morning more than she’ll ever know.

“If you ever need a mom to chat with give me a call!!”

Now that her children are older, this colleague can look back and see what’s nearly impossible to see in the trenches with little kids. The sacrifices were worth it. Sometimes that’s exactly what another mom needs to hear.

Maybe the biggest difference between the two workplaces can be summed up by something as simple as a child wandering into the camera. At her old job, she would panic if her four-year-old made a sound during a Zoom call.

She would find herself getting angry with her daughter for being a completely normal four-year-old because she was scared of how managers would react. Think about how backwards that is.

At The Daily Wire, when colleague Tim Rice had one of his young children climb onto his lap during a live appearance on “Wired In,” nobody freaked out. Host Cabot Phillips celebrated it.

“We practice what we preach. At the Daily Wire we love children.”

He called children a gift and a blessing from God.

That moment stuck with her. A toddler climbed onto Dad’s lap while Dad was working, and everyone kept going. Nobody shooed the child away. Nobody acted embarrassed. Nobody treated being a parent like some unprofessional secret that needed to be hidden from the audience.

That’s what being pro-family actually looks like.

Being a working mother shouldn’t require pretending you stop being a mother between 9 and 5. Children make noise. Babies need to be fed. School closes. Babysitters cancel. Kids wander into Zoom calls.

That’s life.

A company can put “family values” in a mission statement. It can publish a thousand articles about the importance of motherhood.

But you learn what an organization actually believes when a baby cries during a meeting.

For years, she thought being a great employee meant making sure nobody could see that she was also a mom. Now she works somewhere that has taught her the exact opposite.

She doesn’t have to choose. Being given the freedom to put her children first has made her more dedicated to her career than she’s ever been.

The Daily Wire gave her family life back. And in doing so, it made her enjoy working again.

Every day she wakes up thankful that she gets to be part of this mission without sacrificing the most important mission she’ll ever have: being a mom.

Wyatt Matters

This is what separates talk from action. Conservative values mean nothing if companies don’t live them out when it’s inconvenient. Working moms shouldn’t have to hide their kids to keep their jobs. They shouldn’t be punished for doing both well. When family comes first in deed and not just words, everybody wins — including the bottom line.