Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on social media where women and men alike explain to men why women are choosing to do without men. Basically it boils down to “men take too much and give too little. And they don’t get it.” Women are tired of the “mental load” of having to do most of the work to support the relationship and the home and the family.

This is a new shift in our culture, and it’s only been made possible by the last 60 years of women fighting to get access to the good jobs. Once women started earning a living wage, they started looking with narrowed eyes at their husbands and partners and asking them “what are you contributing, exactly?” It’s no longer necessary–or enough–for men to bring home a paycheck. Women want a partner who goes equal shares with them on everything: parenting, housework, chores, planning the family vacations, etc. And they really want someone who will help support their dreams too. If they don’t have that, if it all falls on them, they’re saying “it’s actually easier not to have to carry the dead weight of a useless partner too.”

Stranger Things is set in the 1980s, when women were still working on getting the good jobs. But it reflects a 2020s sensibility in how it treats women. There’s only one actual involved father in the whole story, Hopper–unless you count Steve, who is still a teen when the story begins but is a natural caretaking type and ends up looking after fatherless Dustin. Steve’s own father is abusive, and his girlfriend Nancy’s father has checked out entirely, spending most of his days oblivious to his kids, his wife, and the very weird things happening in his town. The brothers Will and Jonathan have a deadbeat dad who only takes an interest when he thinks there might be money to be made.

So it falls on the females, the moms and the girls, to take charge. Nancy’s mom starts out seeming frivolous and self-concerned, but when she realizes her kids are in danger, her mama tiger side erupts and despite being seriously injured, she manages to take out three demagorgons. Joyce, mother of Will and Jonathan, likewise goes hypermom to the point that everyone thinks she’s crazy–and she is, because she even dares to sneak into Russia to rescue Hopper from a prison camp. They do what must be done, even the impossible.

So do their kids. How could they not, with such role models?

Nancy herself goes from being a pretty little shrinking violet to a sharpshooting, take-no-prisoners badass over the course of the show. Nancy doesn’t hesitate to rush in, even in her first job as a journalist where she desperately wants to write pieces exposing corruption but instead gets laughed at by the older male journalists and then sent for coffee.

Both Steve and Jonathan fall in love with her, and she reciprocates for a while (Steve first, as he’s the campus idol, and then Jonathan as she matures and comes to appreciate his quieter strength). But in the end she chooses to go her own way, because neither of them is what she needs. Steve and Jonathan come to recognize this as well. Steve wants a simple life. He wants to be a dad, and he ends up as a teacher and coach, working with and mentoring kids all day long. He’s content (although still dreaming of the woman who will happily give him “six little nuggets” of his own). Jonathan has larger dreams and makes it into film school at NYU in pursuit of them.

But Nancy is still a work in progress. When we first meet her, she wants nothing much more than to look pretty and get the campus heartthrob to notice her, like most of the girls in school. She then spends years of her life battling the demons of the Upside Down and discovers that she’s far more than her looks. She’s only now thinking about what it is she wants to do with her life. And she knows that if she were to take on the role of supporter and cheerleader for either young man, it would be at the cost of finding herself and her true purpose. She drops out of college because it too demands too much effort for little return and she wants to keep all her energy and drive for–whatever it is she’s here to do and be.

Some might say this is selfish, but it’s no more so than the star athlete who eschews relationships and partying in favor of keeping their body tuned, or the artist who isolates themself and single-mindedly creates and creates in pursuit of that painting or sculpture or piece of music that they know is in them, but have only caught glimpses of so far. Nancy knows that someday she will write something meaningful, maybe even something that changes lives, but until then, she is determined to live the life that will get her there.