Rescue Gen Z’s women — and heal America

Charlie Kirk made it his life’s work to turn the hearts of young men toward family, faith and nation. 

Now Erika Kirk is taking that mission to young women.

Gen Z men skew far more conservative than previous generations.

Gen Z women lean substantially left.

This is far more than a political divide over President Donald Trump and social issues.

It speaks to a stark difference as to what young men and women think is important in their lives and for their futures.

Charlie Kirk’s influence helped pull many young men away from an empty existence of endless video games, late-night drinking sessions and strings of meaningless situationships.

Can the same be done for young women — or are they too steeped in the girl-boss vibes on which they were raised?

This month an NBC News poll found that Trump-voting men age 18 to 29 put marriage and children near the top of the list when asked to choose what makes for “success” in life — and women in that age bracket ranked money, career and “personal fulfillment” far ahead.

But if Gen Z women continue following the “moral” guidance of the left, they will find what so many of their Millennial counterparts have learned: A career is not enough to fulfill the yearnings of the heart.

Young American women have been taught to seek liberation from femininity, motherhood and partnership.

Erika Kirk is here to show them that there is liberation to be found within those institutions. 

Erika Kirk was a wife and is a mother — and now she’s the CEO of a massive enterprise that has only grown in the weeks since her husband’s murder.

As a living witness to young women that there is another path, one centered on love, virtue and meaning, she will tell them that her greatest achievement was being a partner to Charlie and a mother to her growing children.

In a healthy marriage, she explains, men and women must serve each other, neither is subservient — and in the words of the Kirks, the way to achieve this is for both to serve a higher purpose. 

Erika Kirk said that Charlie’s “greatest cause” in life “was trying to revive the American family.”

His memorial last week, which I attended, was full of young families, moms and dads in their 20s and 30s chasing after toddlers in their Sunday best.

Those children, and their parents’ evident love, brought joy and life to a day that was centered on heartbreak and death.

At State Farm Stadium, I spoke to several women who have strong and vibrant careers — but what we most wanted to talk about was our children.

It was in sharing their milestones reached, their hopes, their laughs and loves, that our smiles returned. 

What so many Millennial and Gen X women didn’t learn until it was almost too late — and what some never learned at all — is that motherhood is not the life-ending scourge we had been taught it was, and career is not the greatest love of all.

There is immense strength in being a mother and wife, and it does not demean women to say so; it lifts us up.

“Charlie Kirk came and converted the young men,” Turning Point’s Tyler Bowyer posted last week. “Erika Kirk is coming to convert the young women.”.

But her message may be a harder pill for young American women to swallow than Charlie’s was for young men seeking structure and meaning. 

America’s young women have been sold a lie — and Erika Kirk is telling them the truth.

In her speech at Charlie’s memorial, she encouraged young men to be “be a leader worth following,” so that they “can serve.”

“I have a challenge for you too,” she told women: “Be virtuous.”

This is not something young women are used to hearing.

“Our strength is found in God’s design for our role,” she said. “We are the guardians. We are the encouragers. We are the preservers.

“Guard your heart. Everything you do flows from it.”

Yet America’s young women have been instructed that they can have and do it all — alone.

They’ve learned that men are their playthings, that sex bears no consequence either emotionally or physically, and that family is a burden that short-circuits a carefree life.

And they’ve grown into miserable adults, steeped in a victimhood mentality, using prescription drugs, endless therapy sessions and massive workloads to ease their suffering.

It hasn’t worked.

Maybe American women are ready for a new message, one of hope, one that asks them to look beyond their own impulses for fulfillment.

One that brings men and women back together.

When a woman is steadfast, when she partners with a man who is worth following, there is nothing the two can’t do.

Libby Emmons is the editor-in-chief at the Post Millennial.