The Weekend Project is our exclusive lifestyle feature where we highlight the real after-get off work days of some of culture’s most exciting people.
this weekend, Emma WatersThe Heritage Foundation’s senior policy analyst and author of the forthcoming book “Rethinking Fertility: The Package Deal of Marriage, Sex, and Reproduction” talks to The Daily Telegraph about the beauty of long walks and French lessons with her kids, why she’ll never be the mom hosting a bake sale, and how she hopes to heal America’s infertility cause by empowering everyone to have the family they’ve always dreamed of and pregnancy crises.
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I admit to Emma Waters that the first time I heard of her was from a headline calling her “Reasons why you can’t have children”. This is a strange thing for someone who advocates for family. She put the mean-spirited clickbait behind her, telling me, “The rest of the sentences in the actual article end with ‘Or Emma Waters could be the reason why you are.'” able Just minutes into our conversation, it became clear that helping women heal their bodies so they could have babies was her entire mission.
Emma became curious about the behavior of men and women after discovering an interest in public policy on marriage and families in college. “Study after study finds that when men and women marry, when they have children, when they obtain sustainable, meaningful employment, we find that men and women self-report the highest levels of happiness,” she explains, citing the Bible as support.
“This is not just a minor social issue. This is a critical issue for America’s national strength and prosperity over the next 250 years.”
She describes how women’s health in the 1980s and 1990s splintered into two distinct paths: the natural fertility movement benefited women and families, while its other side involved “the trifecta of abortion, birth control, and reproductive technology that essentially sought to destroy, suppress, or circumvent women’s bodies and, in the case of abortion, children’s bodies.”
“These technologies have shaped our culture to some extent and also shaped our philosophical thinking about children. Without them, you couldn’t reasonably say that we could delay the mother’s age of having her first child until her 40s,” Emma points out. “This promise of control is deeply deceptive because it leads many, many women to realize that, despite their financial means, despite the opportunity for egg freezing and IVF, children are not guaranteed.”
Emma is in her twenties, a married mother of three, and has a fulfilling life. But she’s not telling everyone to have kids by a certain age, or else. (Nor is she opposed to birth control or in vitro fertilization.) Instead, she asked: “How do we help, not hinder, marriage and children in America? That’s a complicated question for many people.”
The first step, in her view, is informed consent, or “how do we use technology to really help us achieve family goals and then career goals, rather than putting women in a position where they have to choose.”
100,000 babies Born within one year in the United States through in vitro fertilization. Emma explains how the intervention began to highlight the ways in which it has failed families. “When IVF was developed, it was specifically for two conditions,” she said. “The first is a blocked fallopian tube…The second is in the case of a cancer diagnosis, where the woman won’t be able to access eggs or certain reproductive parts. It’s a way to preserve fertility in cases where a woman can’t get treatment.”
Infertility is on the rise due to environmental toxins and preservatives in food (Gen Z women have the highest rates of infertility and subfertility), and reproductive technology and research lag behind modern medicine. Emma says this is where IVF becomes a universal Band-Aid for health problems – such as “endometriosis, PMOS [polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome]uterine fibroids, and hormonal imbalances”—problems that could have been resolved years ago.
“For many women, when they experience painful or irregular menstrual cycles, they are offered birth control pills, but little or no diagnostic work is done to understand why,” Emma said. “So a high school girl might go on birth control pills to suppress painful symptoms, only to find out she has stage one endometriosis, and then when she’s really ready ten years later
“That’s when it becomes a big problem for your fertility. We’re starting to see the painful reality that there’s a lot more going on than we notice.”
Holding her nine-week-old daughter in her arms, Emma described the inner “shock” of the recent election results that expanded access to abortion. If we truly want to change our culture to support “strong, thriving families,” now is the time.
“Many young couples consider the cost of housing, child care and groceries and wonder how they can afford a family or more children,” she said. “We have to make family life more affordable and address this issue head on.”
“Pro-life culture starts with helping women and men understand and love their bodies. If a woman feels mystified by her body, or feels like her body is working against her, how can we expect her to value the life growing inside her? Women’s health cannot just be about whether we want more or less abortions. The goal must be to promote root cause care, body literacy, and real answers.” Emma claims to be optimistic about the future of culture, and she is optimistic about the future of her life.
team effort
Contrary to anything you may have read about Emma’s family life other In the eyes of the media, she was not playing up to traditional family values while secretly employing paid child care behind the scenes. In fact, she is a very present mother, with the help of her devoted husband Jack. She just hopes that her mother, who lives 13 hours away, can be close enough to her to fulfill the shadow conspiracy of the “stay-at-home grandma” on the Internet.
“We’re basically in full-on toddler mode,” Emma said. She is currently on maternity leave raising three children under the age of 4 and loving every minute of it. “I have to give my husband credit because he made this the sweetest season of rest I’ve ever had.”
I don’t have kids of my own, but that sounds like a bit of a luxury. “He takes care of all the bedtime tasks with the toddlers and takes care of all the morning tasks. He wakes them up in the morning, gets them ready, and makes breakfast for the whole family,” she added. Because of this, Emma can go to bed at 8pm and wake up at 8am if she wants to, focusing on cuddling her baby, breastfeeding and “getting as much rest as possible”.
When she wakes up, she’ll have a cup of coffee and sit down for breakfast—usually eggs, sausage, and oatmeal (“Choline is good for my brain and baby’s brain”)—just as Jack goes to work. “A lot of people have said to me, ‘Emma, you look more relaxed around your newborn than we’ve ever seen,'” she said with a laugh.
Emma recalls that, as newlyweds, she and her husband envisioned taking turns taking charge of meal times for a few weeks. “It lasted about a week and a half, and I realized I really loved cooking — and I loved my cooking,” she said. Currently, Emma is enjoying Creamy Sausage Potato Soup and White Chicken Chili Soup, and she’s also enjoying the Crock-Pot Teriyaki Chicken, Beef and Broccoli to round out the fall lineup. “[Jack] He made all the dishes, so we were both very happy with the trade-offs we made here. “
As for baking? “I really liked the idea of being a baker, but baking requires a level of technical precision that I’m not always able to achieve,” she laughs. “I keep doing it because I love it, but you never know how it’s going to turn out.”
simple life
Emma and her family live in a small town outside of Pittsburgh and enjoy exploring their neighborhood on foot. “This is a very walkable community,” she said. In addition to friends with young children nearby, she noted, “there are four parks, a farmer’s market, a library and lots of kid-friendly shops within a 10-minute walk.”
She loved getting her children active on the playground, reading and listening to stories with them in the library, and nurturing their imaginations. “Both of our daughters are really into ballet now, so there’s definitely at least one ballet party every day,” she said. “We listened to Tchaikovsky, danced to ‘The Nutcracker,’ and practiced pirouettes. Our three-and-a-half-year-old has been doing ballet for a year and a half, so she only occasionally says, ‘Mom, look at my arabesque!’ It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
The family is also taking French classes. “Our girls spend most of their time listening and playing, but it’s fun as a way to improve our language skills,” she told me. “In French class, our child walked away and somehow dumped a whole bag of flour on her head. You just see the footprints of flour and you know, ‘This is going to be bad.'”
Charge the battery
After talking to Emma, I’m convinced that families that prioritize sleeping together will prosper together. “Naps are a staple in our family,” she explains. “Just to give everyone a space to sleep and recharge, and give me a space to sort myself out and have time to read, chat with friends, work and mentally rest.”
“I’m a firm believer in good skincare and good, proactive preventative health habits,” Emma points out. In addition to her morning and night skincare routine, she also makes time for monthly facials and medical-grade red light treatments and adjustments at her local chiropractor. “It’s the little things that make me feel energized and I feel like I have the space to do things that make me feel good, but also a proactive measure that I’ll be grateful for from now on.”
Luckily, this family-friendly community welcomes kids into adult spaces. After taking her newborn to the chiropractor a few times, Emma said, “When I was doing red light therapy, one of the ladies would look at her and she’d say, ‘Bring her in every time. We love her so much!'”
On Emma’s bedside table you’ll find Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. “Most of my work is reading medical literature and social sciences, which I really find interesting, or reading about technological developments,” she said. “When I read for fun, I try to choose books that are different from what I normally read.”
a season of life
“I’m really focused on the theme of seasonal living,” Emma said. “There are so many different seasons in a woman’s life. It’s easy to feel like the moment you’re in is the way your life is going to be indefinitely, and that how you feel at any given moment is how you’re going to feel indefinitely.”
“Life has its ebbs and flows, and some seasons are more demanding than others,” she explains, noting the transformative changes of childbirth and welcoming a new baby into the family. “It’s sobering because when things are going well, it reminds you that there may be tougher seasons to come. You don’t want to get too comfortable that you can’t endure and weather the storm. But it’s also hopeful, because in the tough moments when things feel frustrating or difficult or exhausting, it’s a good perspective because that’s not what all life is like.”
This seasonal mentality of living seems to match the changing leaves of autumn. “It gave me the strength to embrace difficult moments,” Emma said. “It’s just an expression of a season, not the whole of my life.”