For decades, legacy conservatives have sent mixed signals about family life. On one hand, they have emphasized family values and spoken about the family as the “cornerstone of society.” On the other hand, to distinguish themselves from the feminist Left, legacy conservatives have created a leaner formulation that emphasizes choice. This focus accommodates the supposed gains of second-wave feminism, allowing legacy conservatives to bypass seemingly lost causes and avoid accusations of wanting to “turn back the clock.” They want an agenda that caters to both conservative girlbosses and full-time mothers—a coalition that winks at having no favorites. Rather than acknowledging the obvious tension of trying to be a full-time mom and a full-time employee at the same time, legacy conservatives have spent decades telling women that they can have it all—motherhood, career, both, or neither—whatever their hearts desire.

This logic has long dominated institutional legacy conservative thinking. Single women, even if they hate a family-first worldview, must be courted, or at least not antagonized. Even organizations that promote the traditional family usually apologize for their benighted traditionalism—“It’s a free country,” “Family life is not for everyone,” “Some of our best employees are career women,” or “We support feminism, but oppose abortion.”

There is some truth in emphasizing choice. It is, in fact, a free country. No one wants to force people to marry or have children. There is no single model of family life, and women are and should be free not to take on family duties. Facing these realities, however, legacy conservatives have punted, retreating to the language of “choice” in the hopes that tensions within the coalition would dissolve on their own, or at least be politically manageable.

Such reluctance is understandable. The Woman Question divides the Republican coalition itself. As many as two-thirds of Republican voters aspire to live by the male-provider, woman-homemaker model. At the same time, a significant minority of Republican women reject traditional sex roles in practice, and a majority may reject them in theory. This may be because they have not been blessed with happy marriages and children, claim that “there are no good men left,” are high-agency women less suited for marriage and family life, or find the duties of motherhood boring or tedious.

Many Republicans have imbibed, perhaps even unknowingly, the diversity ideology and now see male-only spaces or male-only professions as problems to be solved. And many Republican fathers consider careerist women to be role models for their daughters. According to polling, Americans across party lines increasingly hope to see their daughters achieve economic independence rather than pursue marriage and motherhood. As a result, most parents often discourage prioritizing domestic life when their daughters are young, and then urge them to settle down once the biological clock becomes impossible to ignore.

But attempting to please both careerists and family-first mothers compromises the conservative movement’s ability to defend family life. What women in America do is not simply a matter of indifference, and Republican women neither think nor act like their Democratic counterparts. Overly focusing on the exceptions makes it hard to create a norm for women to pursue.

The practical effect of the legacy conservative emphasis on “choice” has been predictable: a narrowing commitment to family life, a weakening of marital norms, a conception of family that increasingly disadvantages the solemn vows between husband and wife, and an unwillingness to put the finger on the scales for a majority of their own voters.

More importantly, the legacy conservative approach ignores that choice is always shaped by larger societal trends—most of which today actively work against family formation. Choice does not take place in a vacuum, especially in our regime of compulsory feminism and sexual liberation. Feminists understand this, which is why they use the state to entrench feminist outcomes and dismantle the traditional family. Legacy conservatism, by contrast, has largely abdicated the field by emphasizing choice—and bears no little responsibility for the results.

This statement obviously leaves unanswered questions that Republicans can no longer defer. Should Republicans offer a “conservative” or libertarian vision of girlbossery? Or should they openly favor women who prioritize motherhood? Is the “gender gap” between Republican men and women serving in Congress and state legislatures a cause of embarrassment, as Kevin McCarthy has said? Or is it largely a salutary reflection of Republican women who, on average, put family first? Should Republicans welcome changes among young conservatives, who are more interested in practicing traditional sex roles than their elders—or should these changes be condemned as endorsements of past “rigid” sex roles?

These are not academic puzzles—they go to the very heart of the Republican coalition’s identity crisis.

Fortunately, The Heritage Foundation, where I work, has shown that some legacy institutions recognize that choice is not enough. Its “Saving America by Saving the Family” encourages American policy to put family first.

A wholesale return to traditional patriarchy is neither realistic nor politically tenable. Marriage and fertility rates from the 1950s are unlikely to be restored, and the breadwinner-homemaker model cannot simply be resurrected. 4chan fantasies about repealing the 19th Amendment or re-instituting coverture are unserious. Nor is it serious to leave the family without public or private monetary support, as the Heritage report emphasizes. Such nonstarters are mere howls at the moon, not credible plans for action.

Rollback of some detrimental policies is necessary to build a culture that values the family. What is possible, however, cannot be known in advance since that is impossible without trial and error.

The Left has never waited for public opinion before acting. They did not factor it in when they started pursuing same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, and the transgender agenda. Gay activists never had a majority—until they triumphed. The successful attempt to mainstream gay rights in the 1990s—achieved with aplomb against great odds—should give conservatives hope. Promoting the family is a much easier task than promoting gay marriage. After all, family life is practiced widely and happily by a majority of Americans.

Still, an ambitious family policy agenda may be non-majoritarian at the outset. With boldness, the Right can mount a counter-revolution and win. The current anti-family regime is creaking and cracking. Something else will inevitably step in and take its place.

Insights from nature are helpful on this front. Women are generally attracted to successful men and expect men to be providers and protectors—to have stable jobs. Men are generally interested in femininity, childbearing, and beautifying the home. They care less about a woman’s career accomplishments than women care about men’s. Women expect men to be interested in being husbands and fathers, just as men expect a future wife to be interested in being a wife and a mother. We used to establish marital norms based on these realities. Under these norms, men and women got along well for millennia. It can happen again.

Restoring a semblance of traditional sex roles that sustain family, beautify life, and perpetuate society is central to the conservative mission. In practical terms, this would entail rejecting the primacy of choice and instead praising and supporting women who are oriented toward family, children, homemaking, community formation, and household reputation as crucial to the conservative mission.

The question conservatives must answer is whether Republicans are able, or willing, to move the ratchet in the other direction—or simply content to manage its consequences indefinitely.