Mary Rooke Commentary and Analysis Writer
Our society has systematically poisoned the relationship between men and women. Nothing makes this clearer than listening to state Rep. Aftyn Behn speak about her obsession with gaining power.
Behn is the Democratic nominee in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District special election set for Dec. 2 following Republican Rep. Mark Green’s resignation. In an audio recording released Monday, a woman believed to be Behn says that rather than having dreams about marriage and children, she frequently imagines standing in a cafeteria professing her desire for power in front of other women.
“My therapist always asks me to transcribe my dreams when they happen. And the recurring dream I’ve had is standing up in a cafeteria full of women — I don’t know why it was there or whatever — and saying, ‘I don’t want children, I want power,’ and just screaming it at the top of my lungs,” Behn is allegedly heard saying. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
There is actually so much to unpack here, beginning with the reality that it’s fallen out of fashion for women to dream about being married and having children. Polling shows that for the first time in history, fewer 12th-grade girls than boys say they see themselves getting married. A recent Pew Research poll indicates that just 61 percent of 12th-grade girls, compared with 76 percent of boys, express interest in getting married someday, marking a significant drop from 1993, when 83 percent of girls wanted to marry.
The shift is a troubling sign of cultural decline, with the obvious ramifications already present in our society through lower birth rates, weakened family units, and broader societal issues like increased loneliness among both men and women. But in her story, she admits that the culprit of her anti-family, anti-marriage views comes from her own mother.
🚨MORE INSANTIY🚨 Resurfaced video from 2019 shows Democrat Tennessee candidate Aftyn Behn SCREAMING and SOBBING as officers had to forcibly drag her out of Gov. Lee’s office. @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/rcUnwQeXlN
— Nicole Silverio (@NicoleMSilverio) November 24, 2025
“For someone who grew up with my mother telling me never have kids because you’ll have to give up a lot and you’ll have to sacrifice professionally, which is what she was saying. And where I am now with seeing the consequences and the ramifications of women having kids and being in the political field and what they’re able to achieve because we don’t offer … It’s like the political field hasn’t met the challenge of working moms. They really haven’t,” Behn allegedly said in the recording.
“But also the deeply patriarchal structures that these women are involved with because they’ve chosen marriage and they’ve chosen to raise children. And I think in the South it’s incredibly difficult to shake those, especially if you’ve grown up here and that’s all you’ve been told is the definition of success, the metric of success: how many kids do you have, the bigger … that square footage of your house, yeah, where your kids go to school,” the audio continued.
You can see the destruction her mother’s words have caused. Behn is opting out of the parts of life that would truly make her happy in order to pursue power, all because her mother essentially implied that being her mother wasn’t worth it. What other meaning is she supposed to take away from their conversations?
Our society has demonized motherhood and trivialized the blessings of marriage to such a degree that Behn and women like her are openly mocking those of us who saw the options in front of us and still chose tradition and family. Marriage and motherhood were not the stone around my neck holding me back. In fact, the exact opposite is true. My career didn’t start until after all of my children were school-aged. They are the driving force behind my passion and success. (ROOKE: Trump Campaign Promise Could Be The Ticket To Massive Cultural Revolution)
I wish more mothers would tell their children this because the more we fill their heads with negative views on the pursuits that fill them with unbelievable joy that can’t be found through any other life, the more we will see the Behns of the world searching for it in all the wrong places.
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