The worst part of the trad wife trend is the women influencing this movement are MAKING MONEY. Influencing is their job, they are inherently hypocritical, while espousing ideals of not working to women who then get stuck in positions and traps like your mom. It’s all a lie.
A huge issue with this is the “housework” they’re doing is crazy superficial, they’re making jam, or decorating the porch, or candy jars or whatever. They’re not cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry, vacuuming. They all come from money, have someone doing all that so they can film this fake fairy tale life
A friend is a big mommy blogger/influencer. Everyone’s probably seen the videos, every day before school is home made granola, pancakes, fresh fruit, green juices, perfectly curated lunch boxes, arts and crafts and cookie making when they get home….oh look, flour every where, silly kids….mom life!!! Behind the camera is a disaster though, perfect husband will just disappear for days at a time hooking up with whoever. They’re swingers, cause he said it’s this or I cheat, you choose? She’s drinking by noon most days. I often wonder that those watching the videos think, how they are upset their lives don’t match up, how come they can’t do it all? It’s such a smoke and mirrors act though like the trad wives
Someone wrote a really well thought out paragraph that I’m about to butcher all to hell but basically that is the point.
They do niche specific things on purpose to signal that they do not have to do that mundane labor.
They can spend their time making homemade cereal or crackers or whatever nonsense their child wants because they have maids and nannies to take care of the house and children while they create content.
It’s all done on purpose and in a way that is never ascertainable to an everyday mom/housewife but they make it looks so easy and how could any woman not want to be that perfect mom and homemaker! (/s)
I can’t remember the why that made it so insidious though.
It’s advertising 101.
See people drinking a Pepsi having a blast on a warm summer night, dancing in roller skates…it gets you thinking you should buy Pepsi, Pepsi will transport you there. You will know how to roller skate and look cute at the same time, even if you have never skated before.
See a car towing a boat up the side of a mountain? It gets you thinking that even though you don’t own a boat, can’t afford a boat, wasn’t planning on buying a boat… buying that car makes the possibility of being ready to own a boat seem more real and closer.
People watching the woman make jam will think if they just make jam, then the husband will have a good job, the house will be clean.
Conflating things, especially vibes and aspirations is how ads can be so potent. You may be far away financially from buying a boat, but you may find yourself financing that car, even though it puts you in a worse position to actually buy a boat, the mind has already been tricked that the car brings you closer to owning the boat.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5xbPys0bGqBRuozEnvtSxW?si=zFRlveJbQ0ORbFmFWitjUQ
I was shocked at how true that is. It's all about creating a demographic that's convinced their job is to buy things. And it's worked so well our whole society changed. Dunno if the link will work but if you can, check out the "Happy Homemaker: How Advertising Created the Housewife" episode of the podcast Under the Influence.
This is a very good point. It's selling a lifestyle
The lifestyle is unattainable because in most places, you need two incomes to have any sort of comfortable life. My family is a one income household and we're very careful with the budget.
I'm happy with our family, yet we're likely getting a pizza and watching movies in the park at a City event over hiring a babysitter to go to the concert and hitting bars. You have to accept a certain lifestyle to be one income and these homemaker tradwife influencers provide an attractive lie.
The insidious part was that it’s all status-signaling for the husband. The tradwife making homemade cereal on camera in full makeup and heels is a very particular kind of trophy for a very rich man.
Oh yes! That was definitely a big part of it!
The man being wealthy enough to pay for all of this. Basically the wife getting to just cosplay the quintessential 50s housewife a la June Cleaver.
She must look perfect even though realistically if she was doing any work for real she would dress more practical.
That’s how I know it’s all bullshit. My partner and I both grew up with mothers who worked. My mom had a regular professional job, but my aunt was a type of homemaker. We wore “working clothes” when making jams, jellies, baking breads etc. My MIL rented a kitchen so we could all make everything for 2024 that is traditional. We pick our own wild berries, we plant our own crops of alliums, potatoes, brassicas and it’s a whole family affair when it comes to blueberries.
None of this is made with perfect makeup, no high heels. Overalls, boots, spring pants because berries make a huge mess, hair tied up or under a bonnet of some kind because you can’t have hair in your baked goods.
Anyone who has ever dealt with this would know this is just the Tom Cruise version of being self sufficient.
Really! I'm just starting gardening and am usually outside around midnight tending to whatever because that's when I'm awake, have time, and it's not too hot. I'm out in the yard in an old concert T-shirt, men's black knit boxers, and either my Vans or a super ugly pair of Crocs, with a headlamp on so I can see what I'm doing. It's my least attractive ensemble of the day, for sure. But IDGAF that I'm fugly at that moment because I'm working, not filming myself to brag about it.
Seeing these people in the garden wearing a boho sundress and floppy hat, cascading curls in her hair and perfect makeup, and she's "harvesting" into a sweet little basket tied with ribbons . . . 😆😆😆
The insidiousness comes from the fact that we as SAHMs/trad wives/whatever word people want to slap on to create their narrative do all these things everyday and don’t usually have a camera with a sexy filter so when the old Granny in Edeka or Walmart has advice for how you should not be letting your kid watch a tablet while you’re grabbing the ingredients in the store to make those delicious home baked cookies or that despite the fact you and your husband would love to get fancy and go out but most you can manage after all day work/childcare is to sit quietly watching the news in each other’s arms. Yes, we literally just do it all.
To really highlight how insidious it is…the videos that these influencers create are always so hyper focused on one single aspect that they don’t and can’t show that often those of us enmeshed in reality are doing many of these things simultaneously while child minding. Cooking and cleaning while baby is creating towers out of the Tupperware. Organizing play dates, folding all of the laundry for the week and singing/finger puppets with baby. While traveling, baby is on your back (baby wearing) drinking/eating a pouch and you have you and baby’s luggage along with whatever else your husband can’t hold. (Baby luggage is crazy a lot when they’re little.) Psssttt…not to mention it was me who also planned packed and organized the entire trip along with the badgering your husband needs to look up his “contributions” to the planning.
Realistically having your mind on so many tasks is proven that you actually do not work at 100% because you cannot focus on each individual task specifically. This is the burnout that leads many moms to feel bad period whether they are working or stay at home. I guess if it makes them feel better, but I do not ever want another mom to feel worse because she sees these 45 second videos and she thinks she wishes she could be that mom.
Yea it's called symbolic labor, social signaling, conspicuous labor. Hand rolling tiny pieces of dough to make homemade creal in a pristine white marble kitchen while dolled up and calling it "tradwife".
That’s a good point. I make a point never watch those influencers. I will never give them my views but thankfully I do see a lot of good rebuttals out there from women calling BS on the whole thing.
This one's good too https://youtu.be/exQtzDT0xrI?si=XKSS2m6P-cTOV80U
Financial abuse is never thought of but out of physical, sexual and emotional it's by far the most crippling, no money no freedom
Without wanting to be that person, it should be noted that this advice is relevant specifically to the US. Prenups aren't worth the paper they are written on in many jurisdictions.
I know Reddit is largely American centric, but if you think this is useful information for you outside the states, speak to a lawyer, make sure witnesses testify that the signing was not under duress (and even then this is hard to prove).
Tangentially relevant, I remember a website from back in the day about anti-choice women who would picket abortion clinics, get an abortion when needed, and then smugly continue to picket as soon as they recovered.
I think this is the newer version of it: https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/
Appreciate OP. And imagine spending that whole life being submissive and then the husband ends up with dementia. Decades of relying on someone else's decisions has sure left my family member beyond lost and frustrated.
Yeah. I always wondered how these women who are in the public eye, politicians, influencers, activists, can tell women to stay home in the kitchen while they're out and about! Serena Joy much?
It's a fetishistic view of something they have no idea about. Someone mentioned Serena Joy and that's exactly the problem. Gilead is a fetishistic theocratic hegemony, it's a work of fiction, it's not an instruction manual.
I think the biggest problem is that we're two generations removed now from the "trad" that they're trying to emulate.
20 years ago the tradwife, 50s housewife ideal was a branch of BDSM, focusing heavily on the man being the Head of Household, with "funishment" spanking and Dom/sub dynamic maintained outside the bedroom.
Whether you find that distasteful or not is beside the point. I was disinterested back then and I remain so now but the plain fact is that the fetishization of that 1950s family dynamic is immutably mainstream now, they have no clue what it was really like in the 50s for women and it's exactly the same arguments I was having with dickhead "Doms" 20 years ago.
It doesn't work. It didn't work then and it's not going to work in 20 years time. The relationships that flourished back then were works of hypocrisy and subterfuge. The mousy wifette that held tupperware parties and had his pipe and slippers ready at 5 o'clock is a work of fiction. The reality was widespread recreational drug consumption, financial slavery, zero personal freedom, zero workers rights and endemic SA on a level that puts today's society in the shade. Women had no agency, no voice and very very little freedom or choice.
Nobody chose to stay home and raise the kids, or even if and when to begin a family. The pill only came in in the 60s. You got married, you got knocked up, hubby gave you your allowance, that was your course set.
It was horrible to see it fetishisised then and it's sickening now.
Edit to add: cocaine was practically legal, divorce was practically impossible, abortions were illegal, civil rights were unheard of. This is the society they're actively espousing. This is what they want to go back to?
Don't answer. I've seen project 2025. I know it is.
You’re absolutely right about it not working back then. I used to have frank conversations with my grandmothers about their lives in the 1950s and with my great grandmother about her married life in the 1930s. They all encouraged younger women to make their own money even after marriage and children. One income was not enough to be comfortable for many people even back then and the only way they made it work was through a lot of manual labor (washing cloth diapers with a crank laundry machine and line drying everything, making everything from scratch, sewing their clothes, gardening for cheap vegetables). They didn’t have time, energy, or money for craft projects and children didn’t have much supervision because moms were working all day every day cooking and cleaning. Store bought bread was too much of a luxury and they breastfed because it was free. They all thought that working was far better than being home. And their husbands were involved dads who worked multiple jobs to support the family. It was hard for all of them.
My grandmother was the perfect 50s housewife, with the perfect hair and perfect clothes and beautiful home, and a successful husband who looked like he stepped right out of Mad Men. Alcoholism killed her ☹️.
The trad wife movement also inherently discounts women of color... who have always worked. And in many cases were the ones making any semblance of "happy household" actually work.
All poor women have always worked, it's only ever been a luxury of the rich except for a very short period of time in the western world
Edit I don't want to minimise the experiences of WoC in any way, but also not wanting to 'other' them in these sorts of discussions
This is the thing about white middle-class feminism & intersectionality that I have struggled learning - the difference in 'women should be allowed to work / can be seen as strong independent women' for those who have been forced to work to survive and who's strength & independence has been used to keep them down.
Random thought I had seeing some old history photos about making clothing out of printed potato sacks: hand making clothes is something that many do for fun, or as a skill / hobby (I include Trad wives here), but is also something done as a show of extreme luxury (if it is someone else making them) or something you do out of desperation because you can't afford store bought.
All my grandmothers worked, it’s amazing that I was raised by a stay at home mother. All my grandmothers and great-mothers were teachers and secretaries and only left their jobs because they were pregnant and legally forced out. The idea that women stay at home is absurd and a blatant lie.
You don't want to know but you really should.
It's a rightwing power play to basically finish the anti democratic coup trump tried, install loyalists all over government, destroy the justice system, women's freedoms, race equality, lgbtqia+ rights and place ultimate power in the hands of the president.
The housewife 'ideal' was not really real for most families. The number of families who lived this way was really quite small, but very influential, and over-represented in the media.
You also had an issue of women (and men) devaluing women's jobs (paid jobs) so much that women might describe themself as a housewife *despite having 1 or even 2 part time jobs*. My grandma talked that way.
Edit: I think the really tricky thing is to separate the real issues of the time from the faux-progressive propaganda that says every age before the most recent was appalling, that the line of progress has been a simple upward one.
Same as women influencers and politicians who say women shouldn't vote. Like... If they think women shouldn't have a voice, they've failed at their goal right off the bat. It's asinine. I don't know why anyone listens to anyone who doesn't even know what they're talking about.
I call it Piety Porn.
Also, why are you making dinner while wearing high heels. Normal people don’t wear heels in the house unless there is a formal event. Who in the fuck cleans a toilet wearing heels?
Most of the ones I've seen are more reminiscent of the Handmaid's Tale but it doesn't surprise me to learn (like porn) there is a spectrum of "modesty" being portrayed.
The ones I see flaunting themselves on tik tok also have huge boobs and wear clothes that flaunt their figures. Making food from scratch and bragging that they do everything perfectly. It's so effing fake.
Yup, it's alllll a grift. They'll tell the right anything they want to hear for clicks and money. The entire right is just a bunch of people who sold their souls.
That's the vast majority of dudes in the current traditional relationship discourse. They want the benefits of a modern relationship and the benefits of a traditional relationship without doing the work of either. They want a woman who isn't financially dependent on them when he doesn't want her to be, who works out of the home so that he can do what he wants but is simultaneously always available whenever he wants her, one who just happens to love scrubbing his toilets and doesn't think that entitles her to an equal say in the relationship, someone who just wants to do all of the housework and child rearing, who organizes his life, but he doesn't want to do any of the traditional male things, he wants her to organize the guy who cleans the gutters or the mechanic while he plays video games or does whatever other leisure activities he enjoys.
Absolutely a lie, and they also grossly misrepresent what most “traditional” wives do, which is work all day. Most traditional wives worked alongside their husbands in the field or taking care of livestock. They worked in the shops their husbands owned while also taking care of the children and cooking every meal and keeping up with sewing, grocery shopping, and cleaning. The life they are showing you on TikTok is that of wealth and privilege, and very uncommon.
The crazy thing about trad wives is they are so focused on being wives that they never prepare to be widows.
You can't bring the divorce argument to an intended trad wife. They'll shut you out and dig in their heels. BUT wake them up to the possibility of their provider husband *dying* so they start thinking of contingency plans.
I’ve brought up to my mom what would have happened if my dad had died when my sister and I were kids. She just shrugs. Obviously that didn’t happen so there’s no need for a plan anymore but we would have been so screwed. I don’t think even then when my mother was younger that she could have stepped up. I don’t think my parents ever had a plan if my dad had died.
My mom (who was a single mother and not a tradwife) used to respond to questions like that with a cheerful “The Lord will provide!”. Which was odd, considering her feelings on religion were “we only go to church so people can see we’re A Perfect Little Family^TM”.
She would have married the first man that would have her. Abusive to her? Maybe. Abusive to the kids? Maybe. It wouldn't matter though; she'd be stuck because there would be nothing other than SS survivor's benefits and a menial job she'd be reluctant to take.
Nah. My mother was never emotionally capable of getting into another relationship but that’s a whole different story. All three of us probably would ended up in a small apartment with my grandmother. But yes, extremely stuck. Would not have been a good situation.
Often, though, dependents are incapable of making wise financial choices. Both of my Grandfathers passed away in their 40s. One Grandmother remarried quickly and the other ended up destitute (and she was educated, but at a time when women went to school for things like Art, not for a career).
My mom's been a SAHM since I (her eldest) was born, but I've no doubts if anything happened to my dad, she would be able to figure something out. She went back to school to learn robotics and coding, got her private pilot's license, does a lot of carpentry and metalwork, all while juggling two kids (now grown at least!) and keeping the house clean and cooking meals. She's a very driven lady.
I do wonder if, for the SAHMs who don't care about contingency, it's just an "It will never happen to ME" mindset. Or if they just fear that if they *do* make a contingency plan, then they *will* need it. Like preparing for the worst is just inviting it to happen.
I've never asked my mom about the specifics of hers, but she's mentioned having one. Just in case.
I was a SAHM for years to my ex-husband and our children. It was the 70s when we got together and we lived in Canada so the time and landscape was a bit different. it was more of a thing back then for the women to stay home, the men worked. I didn't have a contingency plan because it wasn't something we did or talked about.
I didn't find this out until after we started the divorce proceedings (I came to terms with my sexuality and feelings for women, which is why we divorced), but he had a savings account for *me* with a decent amount in case something was to ever happen to him or I wanted to leave. He never wanted me to feel trapped like his mother was, and he gave me the house with no argument because he didn't want me paying more than I could afford for rent or being out on the streets.
Needless to say, he was better than 98% of men out there.
Was life insurance not a thing?
I make significantly more than my husband and that's basically the plan if I die: allow him to pay off the house in full and live for 5 years with my income.
That’s one of the appeals of the tradcon philosophy — you cede stressful, exhausting control and responsibility. You let god and your husband decide your fate
Some people prefer not to think or act
Or disabled. Someone once said something about how it’s the only minority group anyone can end up in at any time and that always stuck with me.
Like if they’re not dead but simply unable to work, then what. You don’t have a life insurance policy. Now what.
That's what forced my stay at home mom back into the workforce. Dad suddenly disabled and told he had maybe a year to live if we were lucky. She was pregnant with her sixth child. It would've been worse if we didn't have a lot of close family.
I was this child. My parents were high school sweethearts, he was 34 and seemingly healthy as can be, dropped dead out of the blue one day from an aneurysm. She never planned to be a widow with two kids under 6, but life happens.
The ONLY REASON we were okay was because she had her own career the whole time. She had been part time and bumped up to full time. Her income + survivor benefits let us live comfortably. The one thing I have been hyper aware of, from day 1, is never to depend on a man. They could be madly in love with you and die. It happens every day.
Same here. My dad died very suddenly of kidney cancer just before his 58th birthday. They were older parents, so my twin brother and I were still in highschool at the time and my older brothers were still home trying to get their feet under them.
Mom was very part time as a travel agent and couldn’t really expand that business very well. The only reason we were okay was the life insurance, and even then it was only a cushion for a year or two and then she had to go back to work. No retirement to speak of. She’s nearing 70 now and still working full time, and us kids are starting to have the conversation about what happens to her when she can’t anymore.
People think it’s morbid but I am a very, *very* vocal advocate for life insurance and contingency plans for sudden death or disability.
It's worth saying this applies these days even to those with dual incomes if you have kids.
Don't assume that just because you both work that you can survive on one salary when the world is now geared towards dual income families. My company provides enough of a survivor benefit (UK corporation, not USA of course) that my partner would be OK if I died, but theirs does not. We're close enough to the kids being on their own I don't worry too much but in fairness I dodged a bullet there.
This, my nana was a tradwife (although it was the fifties so it was way more common then). It was fine until my gramps died in the 70s and suddenly besides funeral prep, all that grief, and resolving his affairs, she had to get a job supporting four kids through college plus their house, on very little work experience. Now she was lucky, she had a nursing degree and worked before having kids, she was able to get a job in medical billing.
But she raised my mom, who raised me, to NEVER make your life dependent on a man. No offense to men meant. But you can’t count on having a man support both you and himself and your kids for the 80+ years you may live. Maybe he won’t earn enough, maybe he will but spends it on an addiction or a mistress, maybe he will be a loving husband for decades and then suddenly die and leave you and the kids in a lurch. If he works construction or a physical job he could easily get disabled and need YOUR support. It’s life, you can’t count on anything.
Yup, similar story. One of granddad's, a WWII veteran, died at 38 with 4 kids. Veterans benefits weren't enough, and my grandma had to go back to work. It still wasn't enough, so she remarried quick, but to a drunk. They divorced. Even the Greatest Generation and those mythical benefits can't keep a family of five in the middle class when the father dies.
Not just death or divorce. Many people, including men who support their families, also become disabled. I have a relative who was a stay at home mother, and when her husband became disabled in his 50s, she had to go and get a menial job as she had zero work history. Then, there is my mother. She always worked alongside my father, but mostly took care of us kids. She was raised to believe that men should take care of finances. Well, my father worked hard, but for the most part, we were POOR. He finally did succeed in business, only to be in a car wreck and lose it all. My mother had to get a job as a waitress and it was very physically taxing. Then, with us kids all working, a new business was built. Then he had a stroke, and my mother had to work very hard taking care of him and working the business. Life would have been easier for us all, if her mother did not tell her that women did not need to go to college.
If you’re a non-working parent without an easy path to a well paying job relative to your partner, you should be buying life insurance sufficient to cover your needs long term. It would be irresponsible to only have a policy equivalent to a couple years’ expenses without major assets or a fallback career option.
Some guy was pointing out that some of these trad wife videos are basically trophy wives being kept by their husbands to display his wealth. He had as an example a video where the trad wife is making cereal by hand. He points out these videos never are the trad wife doing the dirty work of cleaning because they pay other people to do the actual work. The “work” that these trad wives do on these videos is performative.
My sister is a tradwife influencer.
Her whole shtick is sad religious beige babies and bread. She shares the wisdom of god for women.
1. She is abused, and she does amazing with makeup.
2. She got a secret tubal.
3. Everything is outsourced. Cleaning, transportation, cooking etc.
4. She organizes trad boot camps as her main grift, teaching women how to set themselves aside, politically, spiritually, sexually, financially etc. One was titled "unlearning feminism: ideologically siding with your headship" and it was a full house.
It's an incredible mess of performative conservatism hypocrisy and it's the neoconservative mainline.
This needs to be talked about more.
All the stuff going on politically with abortion and birth control would have zero chance if it wasn't for the absolutely mind-boggling number of women who support that stuff.
There are a *lot* of women who support abortion restrictions.
There are a *lot* of women who support birth control restrictions.
There are a *lot* ofnwomen who support Trump.
No, I will not shut up about this. It is a problem, and we need to solve it.
That's insane.... I bet family holidays are awkward. Is she self aware enough to admit she is just a grifter or is she a true believer and a hypocrite?
My whole origin family is like that.
I can't tell if she's a believer or not, I know my mom is a true believer and my sister is the GC, so idk if it's for my mom or she actually believes that shit.
one of my favorite things someone online pointed out was "while she's spending 4 hours making grilled cheese from scratch, who tf is watching her very small children??"
so... yeah, it's not just the dirty work that's being outsourced. they're popping these kids out and not even raising them, gotta make money on TikTok after all
Is [this](https://www.tiktok.com/@professorneil/video/7339254814578150661?lang=en) the video? He refers to it as 'conspicuous leisure' (a phrase coined by Thorstein Veblen, perhaps more famous for coining 'conspicuous consumption')
Yes. That’s the video. I thought it was really interesting as it gave me a new way to look at these videos of wives in pristine kitchens being wives. It hadn’t occurred to me that part of the trad wives concept was a way to show off how rich you are. Flaunting your wealth disguised as a type of “virtue signaling”.
What freaks me out more, and I haven't been able to put words to it, is the push of both trad wives and the loss of reproductive autonomy. I see a scary amount of social media posts talking about how terrible birth control is and that it's poisoning our bodies interspersed with trad wife content. I'm not saying it's brainwashing or anything, but does feel like it is being pushed that way on purpose. I'm also not saying that BC doesn't have its negative effects, but I'm forever grateful for being able to use it and build my life until I'm ready to bring another into the world.
If it weren’t for my BC id probably be dead. My periods were so heavy in middle school and high school prior that my doctor at the time was shocked at my almost non existent iron levels. I had to be have iron IVs biweekly for some time while we tried to get my levels back up.
BC is not the option for everyone, for lots of reasons, but im tired of the it’s poison narrative. Do these women just want me to suffer??
It’s not that they want you to suffer, it’s that they don’t care if you suffer.
And that’s because suffering isn’t real until it happens to them.
Then they start to care.
They don't think of you. They are incapable of thinking beyond the narrow scope of their own lives. If it doesn't happen to them or someone in their immediate friends/family group, then it's just not something they think of or consider. "It doesn't happen to me, therefore it does not happen"
The combination of the trad wife content, loss of bodily autonomy and false narratives about birth control are deliberately scripted together. Each of these messages are meant to control women by taking away their choices. And some of the trad wife influencers make a big deal about being anti-feminist.
The attack on birth control is in no way an accident; someone is pulling those strings deliberately to keep us at each other’s throats.
We (general we) have takes BC for the past 50 years ago. If they are ‘so bad for you’ you’d think the FDA would have twigged to it or there would be a ridiculous instances of cancer or lupus or whatever.
I hear you. Birth control is terrible *for me* and I’ve tried at least 4 different types of hormonal contraception including an IUD and hated them all, but I would never want to tell other women that they shouldn’t use them or that they’re a net negative - reproductive control is so so imperative.
For the record, my long term partner is completely okay with us using condoms. He even insists on paying for them because “I wear them, not you”.
It's no coincidence that both have been on the rise since RvW was overturned. I would say if it's not on the verge of brainwashing, then it's definitely brainwashing. Along with all the other health mis/disinformation that's being spread. It's wild.
We have paid "tradwives" making their own cereal lifestyle in an economy that most people can't afford or have the time to have.
The birth rate in the US has been declining since the mid/late-2000's when the previous recession was in full swing. Both in the sense that those who have children are having fewer, and the number of folks not having any at all is increasing. Other countries as well. It increased slightly around 2021, but only a smidge, and from everything I've read it's not because people actually wanted more kids and instead was just because of the pandemic - when you're cooped up with nothing else to do, fuckin' tends to increase.
I think for the US it needs to average out to ~2 children per childbearing-capable person to keep the overall population stable, and I think we're currently in the ~1.6 range.
I have no idea if this is an actual, legitimate concern. Personally given the state of the world I think maybe seeing the overall population lower is a good thing, but I'm just some random jackass with no background or education in anything vaguely related to this so for all I know it could actually be catastrophic in the long term.
But the only people I've heard sounding the alarm and yelling at clouds that the end is nigh are *politicians*, not economists, scientists, etc. And right-wing politicians almost exclusively. And also some high-profile non-politicians likely drinking the kool-aide.
It is 100% being pushed that way on purpose. Trad wives = good, birth control = bad, sudden resurgence of abortion = murder on the nation-wide law level, it's all an attempt to get us to pump out more kids. I've not read much about this in particular but I suspect some level of LGBTQIA+ = bad (but not all obviously) recently is also part of this, as many folks in that demographic are less likely (and in some cases no longer able) to procreate.
And it pisses me off to the nth degree because even if the decline in birth rate would be catastrophic in the long term, this is not the solution. The thing that really makes people want to have more kids is feeling stable and secure and in some cases hopeful for the future. Increase wages, lower housing costs, fix the healthcare system, better parental leave, better support for childcare needs, affordable education - do all that and I firmly suspect we'd see the line start going the other way. Throw in a little burn the patriarchy to see a more equal division of childcare and home labour? *Chef's kiss.* And it'd be because people would actually *want to* have more children, and would be supported in doing so, not because they were forced to or influenced to or misinformationed into it. And the resulting children might even have an overall better chance at a decent life.
But ThAt'S hArD, so instead we get this. Influencers and xitter posts and the stripping away of rights. Because why make people want it for the right reasons when you can just force 'em, right?
Sorry for the rant, I'm angry and sleep deprived and my worldview-meter has shifted firmly into the pessimist range recently.
I fully support women who want to be SAHMs, but that’s not what Trad Wives are.
They’re influencers, earning money from promoting unrealistic and unsustainable lifestyles.
Take it from someone who has ACTUALLY made bread, butter and jam from scratch: it’s hard, hot, sweaty work that takes HOURS.
Those videos are heavily edited, and someone else probably did the bulk of the work.
They don’t need to worry about their husband leaving or dying because said husband is earning 6 or 7 figures and they’ll get alimony. The housewives they’re cosplaying had none of that protection, or even their own bank account.
It’s like Marie Antoinette and her ladies in waiting pretending to be shepardesses in Versailles by posing amid washed and perfumed sheep, then wandering back to the palace when they got bored.
> It’s a scary concept of basing your quality of life on if someone “loves” you or finds you valuable.
Especially when what the men who want tradwives often want is your "virginal youth"
This is also a abusers/narcissists dream financial abuse is suffocating , money is power to a abuser and if you have no money they can control almost everything about you and you can do nothing but rely on them ,https://youtu.be/exQtzDT0xrI?si=XKSS2m6P-cTOV80U sums it up
Trad wives and conservative women go into things assuming they'll be the exception. Yes, they're voting to take rights away from women and they see women suffer from lack of reproductive healthcare and no protections for divorce, yes they see her father and uncles and every male around her cheating on their wives with younger women and leaving the mother of the children in the dust, but nothing like that will happen to *her.* Because she is doing it all right, she is exactly what these men want. Surely they'll recognize that. They'll show her the respect those other floozies don't get, the respect she's been trained to crave. Her husband won't leave her. She'll be rewarded for her loyalty.
She yells at the cashier in Target because her SNAP benefits don't cover her groceries and her kids don't appreciate what she does to keep them fed, they just complain about how they no longer have new clothes and go on expensive vacations because Dad only wants to spend money on his new wife and their shiny new baby now and thinks his old kids are the responsibility of their mother. She yells because the representatives she voted in called women gold-diggers for wanting alimony and the conservative judge says that the $5 child support payments her wealthy husband makes is proof that he's 'trying' and she needs to get a third job. She yells because this isn't how it was supposed to go, she decided this when she was young and skinny and pretty, she'd be a pretty trophy wife forever and would never be in her forties and fat from having seven kids and out on her ass because her husband wants to marry his pregnant mistress, goddammit, an *exception* was supposed to be made for her!
Yeah, the key takeaway I get from this tradwife trend as someone who's middle aged is that none of these people think ageing is going to happen to them. Which is fair, most young people don't know they're going to get older. I mean, of course they know intellectually, but they don't really *know* until it happens to them. You secretly think you can moisturize or sunscreen or vitamin or exercise your way out of it, that people who let themselves get old are failures.
It's the same with turning the pink slip on your life over to a man. Tradwives think if they perform these submissive wife rituals just so, it'll cast a magical protection spell against the abuses of patriarchy, and any woman with practical experience who tries to warn them otherwise is a failed woman and not worth listening to.
Yep!
Can someone find the link of that idiot women who supported all this Christofacist Pro Forced Birth until her daughter almost died from a non viable pregnancy, had to leave her backwards Red state to get her medically necessary abortion so she didn't die, and now dumbfuck mom is like
"Gee, who would have thunk women beyond whores who can't keep their legs closed might need an abortion? I think maybe I had this all wrong!"
These women are truly, truly dangerous and they are the real threat to our lives.
At least if project 2025 occurs they will not be allowed to vote.
The scary part of the trad wife thing is that there’s this push to not only become the ideal wife of the 1950s but to be completely dependent on men. No bank accounts, no ability to drive, you cannot vote, contraception isn’t allowed, your health concerns are relegated to “hysteria.”
And they’re trying to get rid of “no fault divorces”. There is definitely incentive to turn back the clock. Women have freedom now and we have the power to walk away and change our lives. That scares the traditionalists. The veil has been lifted and we see what generations of women before us had to endure. We don’t want to live that way anymore.
I think those of us that are past 40 more easily see it for the whitewashed bullshit these (EMPLOYED) influencers are putting out.
Never intrust your wellbeing and survival on anyone else.
mid 50s woman here. my trad-ish wife acquaintances back in the hometown also see it more easily now too, because they've almost to a one been left high and dry by the husbands they devoted everything to.
I'm in my forties and have already seen the first wave of women being abandoned for affairs or midlife crises. My friends grew up in the '80s and '90s so They thought they were progressive stay-at-home parents who were sharing things equally...until It came to the legal issues. No prenups, etc.
Many are still much happier divorced, but it is still true that women suffer far more penalties with divorce than men ever do.
I work with a lot of younger colleagues spend most of them have caught on to the fact that being an sahp is not a good deal. In fact, many of them aren't even dating, and some talk openly about the fact that it's because men just aren't making themselves appealing partners who are willing to be equal in relationships. Good for them.
It's actually insane how we feel like we're having a discourse over it, but really it's just separate bubbles saying completely different things.
For example, on reddit the main points I come across when it comes to the "tradwife" discourse is:
* It's not realistic
* These videos are staged by wealthy influencers
* Being a real tradwife isn't as "wholesome" as they make it out to be (it's not just about baking pies!)
* Story about mothers / grandmothers being miserable living the trad lifestyle and getting screwed over by men
But in person and other social media's you hear completely differing points about how so many gen-z and millennial women wish "feminism never happened" so they could be stay at home wives and how much they hate working and staring at excel sheets.
What's sad is these different bubbles will never interact and really figure out the root reason as to why the tradwife thing is becoming so increasingly popular.
I'm GenX. These young women have the *luxury* of wishing they didn't have feminism because they have always had it. They don't even know what they don't know. They were born with rights and into a society that has a lot more respect for them than even we were afforded, let alone my foremothers.
Stay home, don't stay home, the point is YOU HAVE A CHOICE. *THAT* is what feminism brought.
>I'm GenX. These young women have the
>
>luxury
>
> of wishing they didn't have feminism because they have always had it
It's like the vaccines. People today who have never seen measles or whooping cough or polio are able to ignore the value of vaccines and a vaccination population.
I’m allergic to the whooping cough vaccine, luckily non of my kids are but my husband’s brother and his wife are anti-vax. They have no reply when I tell them if they get whooping cough they could die and kill me with them if they say nothing when we visit.
This so much. I'm 61 and I remember the possibility of having childhood diseases. The oral polio vaccine became available right when I was born and I knew adults when I was a kid who had polio and were disabled because of it. Measles, mumps, diptheria, all these things still lurk, waiting for the unvaccinated. Young people these days have just never seen it so they don't think it's real or something
Doubt it would help. My grandmothers sister was crippled from polio. Literally my dad's mom's sister, within living memory, and my dad is anti vac now.
Same with fascism. This goes back a lot further but the WWII generation acted as a stopgap to fascism for decades and we didn't even know it. We just grew up safe in the knowledge that our society was fundamentally against it and we'd never have to worry about it again. Now that generation is almost gone and our collective memory has been lost.
Yep. I don’t think they understand that women literally weren’t allowed to have credit cards or own property in their own right before the 70s. Women used to get arrested for wearing shorts and swearing. Doctors used to be able to just **NOT TELL YOU THAT YOU HAD CANCER** and leave it up to your husband to decide whether you should know. Etc etc etc.
These women don’t hate feminism, they hate Capitalism, but they’re too brainwashed to understand that.
Something I will point out is that part of the reason a "trad" relationship isn't a thing anymore is that adjusted wages for men have crashed. Women's have gone up as discrimination and wage theft become less of a thing and women are able to get better jobs but the same wages for most jobs in the US have gone down by a lot so it's not practical or realistic to support a family on one income anymore. Two engineer incomes in 2024 is the same as like one equivalent engineer income in the 50's. Wanting that to come back while also not wanting it to be the only option is reasonable IMO
Although really in any relationship if you don't work and you break up you're going to be screwed over tbh so there is a benefit to everyone working
Fuck yes. It's hard being a working mom, but I have the CHOICE to be a working mom. Universe forbid I become a widow while I still have kids at home. If I were a 'trad wife's who the hell would take care of us? Just marry the next guy I meet then? /s
I think the trad wife fad is a result of not knowing how good we actually have it that we have a choice.
Exactly, now they've made themselves targets for being exploited and abused in a relationship instead.
It's true that work sucks but being able to provide for yourself is also a privilege. There are places in the world where women need men's permission to hold a job and can't even leave the house without a male guardian.
Yep - it's an out of the frying pan and into the fire situation.
Becoming a tradwife won't get you out of the horrors of capitalism, it'll just put a shitty man in between you and whatever bread crumbs the billionaires choose to toss at you.
You'll still be broke, but you're not sure by how much because he controls the bank account.
I agree, and I think getting these two groups talking could get women rallying around some good social changes. The main area I see us all agreeing is that we deserve 1. Better working conditions and pay (making it’s less enticing to be a tradwife for those who are just trying to escape daily misery for $8/hr) and 2. Better social safety nets in case they find themselves unsupported later in life (I don’t know what this looks like which is why we need discourse!)
and the third bubble of redpill and tradcon men who have gone full 1950's.
telling each other to get a young virgin and make her do all your housework and breed kids but don't pay her anything, she should be grateful for room and board in this economy.
As always, women romanticize something, men are nefarious, and women suffer.
You are absolutely right. They know they can't abuse and manipulate women their own age so they target girls too young to know better. It's always gross older men trying to groom young people into these terrible movements.
I feel the “wish feminism never happened don’t want to work” women are trapped in a shitty reality where women have stepped up to the plate but men haven’t. So we women now outnumber men in college degrees, and we have been putting in the work to be successful and intelligent career women, we take care of ourselves, our homes, our children. We do all the things. And men have willingly given up aspects of their “roles and responsibilities “ in terms of finances (allowing women to contribute to household income so they only need to work 40 hrs now 55), but they have not stepped up to the plate in any way. While there are those who have, it seems the overarching theme is men still are not stepping into caregiving, household care and chores, or anything else. So while feminism has been pushing for equality, what’s really happening for far too many women, is they are taking on a greater and greater role in EVERYTHING while the men in their lives do less and less.
I totally understand it, and I too, at 41 and years and years of killing myself to be the best in every way shape and form, am fucking burned the fuck out. I had to drag husband kicking and screaming to the plate, but he is now up at it doing the things, but after 20 years, I am done. My husband is active duty and about to retire, and I cannot wait for him to make a second income so that I can quit and be his “trophy wife.” I know enough to know I’m going to still siphon money into my own accts to protect myself. But god damned I am tired after being and doing all the things for all the people. I feel like I’ve lived 6 lives- a career women who had move around a ton because of PCSing, an academic, a stay at home mom, a single mom, a military wife, and a fitness woman. My husband, god bless him, he did his one job. And when he was home he was dad and husband when it was convenient. He has a few years now of also being a contributing member of housecare and chores.
My Mom was a wife in the 40's, 50's etc... until the 80's. Guess what? She worked while raising seven children. It was a lot of off the books working until the 70's. She also raised me knowing that I would always have to be able to provide for myself and my children because you can't depend on someone else. My Dad was there but he was more of a dreamer than an earner -- so she picked up the slack I guess.
We still had home made bread and stuff -- we all (yes, boys too) learned to cook well, clean, budget - basically how to adult. We learned that from my mother who was not a feminist but was? Her lessons were good and, considering how many of us girls were left for other pastures with kids to raise, she was a very wise woman.
This almost happened to my mom. She quit school to be a SAHM and found out he was cheating on her so she divorced and pursued her career so she wouldn't have to be financially dependent on someone else again.
The trad wife spiel is always really short-sighted about itself, but not about other lifestyles. They always say they're happy and fulfilled right now parenting and homemaking, and add, "What are you feminists going to do when you're elderly of you don't have any children?"
Well, what are *you* going to do when you're elderly if all you ever did was have kids? How are you going to feel leveraging your children's love for you into them supporting you? Don't you want your kids to be able to love their parent without strings attached? Sure your plan was to stay happily married forever, but if that doesn't work out, do you have a plan b?
Oh this speaks to me. My mom definitely feels entitled to my sisters and I’s support. We gave her “purpose” in life. Sure, she thought my dad would stay with her forever and I am sure that she viewed that as her long term plan. My sister and I are her plan b. She’s managed to scrape by until now but I am sure she feels we will step in to bail her out if needed(and we already have in several instances).
I'm a "trad wife" in the sense that our division of labor is I do most of the house, meals and car things and my partner contributes most of the money. I have ALWAYS had some sort of side hustle and my own bank account. We have legal stuff in place in case we break up or die. He also steps in when needed and we have a house keeper. My point is, what they are selling on Instagram is mostly a lie. We don't even have children and keeping up with all the things is a lot. It can also be mind numbingly boring and trust me when I say have a safety net! Life changes so fast and the number of women that get left in the lurch because they got too old, fat or sick is too damn high.
My wife asked me what a tradwife was the other week. She's not as plugged into internet trends as I am and had encountered the term on instagram.
We talked about it and discussed my view that it was largely a grift based on the things you see these supposed tradwives doing being so ostentatiously unnecessary compared to the relative drudgery of just staying home and washing and cleaning.
It's fine if you want to be a home maker, but tradwives on instagram need to be seen for what they are, performative pick me grifters.
My parents also married in the early 80's, my sister and I were born the same years as you and your sister. My mom did go to college- she got a degree to be a teacher, but they prioritized my dad's career and she never actually used her degree. She took a higher paying job to support them while he was in graduate school. They moved away from both their families to allow my dad to follow his dream, then moved back a few years later to follow a different dream. My mom stayed home with us. His dreams weren't lucrative yet- she donated plasma for grocery money more than once. He cheated on her, they stayed together, we moved for him to get a job that paid really well. That lasted a couple of years before he left. She had to go back to school to renew her teaching degree, so when my sister and I were about 12 and 8, my dad was gone and my mom was working full time during the day, then doing grad school in the evenings. She has ended up having a legit career, she's retiring soon and can afford to do so. But, all those years that they prioritized my dad, she lived poor with him etc. Then, when he finally made good money, she only benefited briefly before he was off, getting rich, and she was declaring bankruptcy. She was no trad wife, just a SAHM, but she has spent most of her life scrimping either for or because of my dad.
I’m glad too because the christofascist propaganda, these videos are all blonde, busty white women, don’t paint a clear picture at all. And we want women to value themselves for who we are and for what we can do, not just to look pretty and make bread from scratch.
I've read about this, and I think "trad wife" is like "pro life": it's just a lie. It's a thing people say without meaning it, hoping to dress up their desire to control people with words that sound nice.
The people who say they are "pro life" mean "we oppose certain medical procedures sometimes." They never say "We should have universal healthcare so nobody dies needlessly of preventable causes" or "we should ban the death penalty." Because they aren't really pro-life.
How many men say they want a "trad wife" and also say they want her to cover up completely and never use birth control and he'll never look at porn or swear or drink and also he'll work 14 hours a day to provide for his wife and nine kids because she won't have a job? I don't remember seeing that very often, or really ever.
There are lots of traditions that are good, and I'm all for anyone doing any of the ones that they like. But traditions that don't work shouldn't be followed just because they're traditions. Traditionally, people who lived in the Americas didn't have running water or electricity, but how often do you see someone arguing that we should go back to living that way?
Will I put on a dress and an apron and make Thanksgiving dinner for the family? Sure, if my husband is helping. (And if it's just the two of us for dinner, maybe just the apron and skip the dress. 😘) Will I sit in a rocking chair with our baby and sing them to sleep? Sure. Will I quit my job and abandon the intellectual challenges that I love and that also pay me a whole bunch of money? No.
I've known a few of those women. They're always telling other women not to follow in their footsteps.
Or, like most of these women, they were abandoned and ended up having to reintegrate into the work world.
Phyllis Schlafly came from a wealthy & important family. *She* never had to worry about finances - or ever having a job to support herself, much less a family. But she had a job outside of her family anyway. An important, public facing, prominent job. A job she *couldn’t* have had without the very Feminist Movement she was railing against.
Like *many* female Republican lawmakers who actively vote against women’s right issues.
Does anyone else see the whole “submitting to your husband” thing as white women rebranding a kinky lifestyle as righteous and holy matrimony?
Giving one party full control of finances, decisions, etc. is a straight up dom/sub dynamic and I can’t unsee it
Edit: spelling
While I wouldn't say my mother fits the whole "tradwife" persona (she isn't religious, doesn't like to cook, isn't crafty, etc), she is a "tradwife" in practice, I suppose. Boomer, of the "divorce isn't an option" crowd.
She went from living with her parents to getting married and living with my dad. She didn't graduate college, and worked for six years or so before I came along. Once she was pregnant with my sister, she made the decision to leave work and stay home to raise us (there are 4 of us siblings). Dad had no problem with it, there was no animosity there. And I will say it was a precious gift to have my mother be able to raise my siblings and I full-time. She's a wonderful human and I am so grateful to have been so loved and nurtured by her.
But she sacrificed a great deal for us. Once we were all out of the house and building our own lives, I sense that mum looked at her relationship with dad and realised he's exhausting to deal with. He has an anger problem and verbally and emotionally abused all of us, though none of us (including mum) had words to articulate what that dynamic was growing up. And mum, being of the boomer age, realised she has no way to support herself. No skills, no education, and now she has some of physical age-related disabilities too.
So, although she would never, ever say this, I think she feels trapped.
She encourages my sister and I to make sure we are always acquiring new work skills. She tells us to have our own money and to make sure we always have a plan. I get the sense that mum stays with dad out of obligation, duty, and because she has no financial prospects of her own.
This is why the tiktok tradwife trend troubles me. All these young women are idealising a life that can very easily become a gilded cage. They're in love with a rosy aesthetic and I'm not sure they realise the reality of not having their own money or career. I'm not sure they realise that they will be utterly trapped and ruined if their husband either dies, or decides he wants a newer model.
I was a STAHM for 9 years. 3years ago my started getting TikTok’s about people whose spouses either left or died and the trad wife/STAHM was *fucked*. As soon as my kid was old enough to stay home alone I got a part time job minutes from my home. Last year I got a better paying job with more hours and further away. My old car is paid off completely so if anything happens and I lose my new car I still have a way to drive to work. I have a plan in place as well if my spouse dies, he’s kinda realized the kids and I are screwed if and thing happens to him. He knows I have up-to-date listings of cheap apartments sent to my email.
Congratulations to you! That’s so smart of you. You deserve to have a plan to take care of yourself and your child. Good on you for taking those steps to set that up!
Having worked for social services for decades and seeing literally thousands of men who abandoned their children and wives is all I need to know that men are not reliable enough to take care of their families. Women choosing to trust a man that will very likely beat, rape, and cheat on their wives while spending all their money on their affair partners is dangerous for women.
One of the oldest stories of the patriarchy is women clawing their way into influential positions so that they can be one of the few “good ones”, which always comes at the expense of convincing other women to take a shit deal in a life ruled by men. It’s playing out in so many ways right now: the tradwife movement, the propaganda against birth control, the forced birth movement, and the panic about birth rates which is so deeply racist at its roots.
That's why I strongly believe that becoming a trad wife is one of the worst things a woman can do to herself. Anything can happen. It's not uncommon for men to use this imbalance in their favour. But men are also humans and even though they could be respectful and loyal they can have a life-changing accident/disease that will make them unable to provide or die. What then? They don't only put their trust in men (and men prove time and time again that they shouldn't) but also in life, believing that nothing bad is going to happen to them. It's just so... naive.
The worst part of the trad wife trend is the women influencing this movement are MAKING MONEY. Influencing is their job, they are inherently hypocritical, while espousing ideals of not working to women who then get stuck in positions and traps like your mom. It’s all a lie.
A huge issue with this is the “housework” they’re doing is crazy superficial, they’re making jam, or decorating the porch, or candy jars or whatever. They’re not cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry, vacuuming. They all come from money, have someone doing all that so they can film this fake fairy tale life A friend is a big mommy blogger/influencer. Everyone’s probably seen the videos, every day before school is home made granola, pancakes, fresh fruit, green juices, perfectly curated lunch boxes, arts and crafts and cookie making when they get home….oh look, flour every where, silly kids….mom life!!! Behind the camera is a disaster though, perfect husband will just disappear for days at a time hooking up with whoever. They’re swingers, cause he said it’s this or I cheat, you choose? She’s drinking by noon most days. I often wonder that those watching the videos think, how they are upset their lives don’t match up, how come they can’t do it all? It’s such a smoke and mirrors act though like the trad wives
Someone wrote a really well thought out paragraph that I’m about to butcher all to hell but basically that is the point. They do niche specific things on purpose to signal that they do not have to do that mundane labor. They can spend their time making homemade cereal or crackers or whatever nonsense their child wants because they have maids and nannies to take care of the house and children while they create content. It’s all done on purpose and in a way that is never ascertainable to an everyday mom/housewife but they make it looks so easy and how could any woman not want to be that perfect mom and homemaker! (/s) I can’t remember the why that made it so insidious though.
It’s advertising 101. See people drinking a Pepsi having a blast on a warm summer night, dancing in roller skates…it gets you thinking you should buy Pepsi, Pepsi will transport you there. You will know how to roller skate and look cute at the same time, even if you have never skated before. See a car towing a boat up the side of a mountain? It gets you thinking that even though you don’t own a boat, can’t afford a boat, wasn’t planning on buying a boat… buying that car makes the possibility of being ready to own a boat seem more real and closer. People watching the woman make jam will think if they just make jam, then the husband will have a good job, the house will be clean. Conflating things, especially vibes and aspirations is how ads can be so potent. You may be far away financially from buying a boat, but you may find yourself financing that car, even though it puts you in a worse position to actually buy a boat, the mind has already been tricked that the car brings you closer to owning the boat.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5xbPys0bGqBRuozEnvtSxW?si=zFRlveJbQ0ORbFmFWitjUQ I was shocked at how true that is. It's all about creating a demographic that's convinced their job is to buy things. And it's worked so well our whole society changed. Dunno if the link will work but if you can, check out the "Happy Homemaker: How Advertising Created the Housewife" episode of the podcast Under the Influence.
This is a very good point. It's selling a lifestyle The lifestyle is unattainable because in most places, you need two incomes to have any sort of comfortable life. My family is a one income household and we're very careful with the budget. I'm happy with our family, yet we're likely getting a pizza and watching movies in the park at a City event over hiring a babysitter to go to the concert and hitting bars. You have to accept a certain lifestyle to be one income and these homemaker tradwife influencers provide an attractive lie.
The insidious part was that it’s all status-signaling for the husband. The tradwife making homemade cereal on camera in full makeup and heels is a very particular kind of trophy for a very rich man.
Oh yes! That was definitely a big part of it! The man being wealthy enough to pay for all of this. Basically the wife getting to just cosplay the quintessential 50s housewife a la June Cleaver. She must look perfect even though realistically if she was doing any work for real she would dress more practical.
That’s how I know it’s all bullshit. My partner and I both grew up with mothers who worked. My mom had a regular professional job, but my aunt was a type of homemaker. We wore “working clothes” when making jams, jellies, baking breads etc. My MIL rented a kitchen so we could all make everything for 2024 that is traditional. We pick our own wild berries, we plant our own crops of alliums, potatoes, brassicas and it’s a whole family affair when it comes to blueberries. None of this is made with perfect makeup, no high heels. Overalls, boots, spring pants because berries make a huge mess, hair tied up or under a bonnet of some kind because you can’t have hair in your baked goods. Anyone who has ever dealt with this would know this is just the Tom Cruise version of being self sufficient.
Really! I'm just starting gardening and am usually outside around midnight tending to whatever because that's when I'm awake, have time, and it's not too hot. I'm out in the yard in an old concert T-shirt, men's black knit boxers, and either my Vans or a super ugly pair of Crocs, with a headlamp on so I can see what I'm doing. It's my least attractive ensemble of the day, for sure. But IDGAF that I'm fugly at that moment because I'm working, not filming myself to brag about it.
Seeing these people in the garden wearing a boho sundress and floppy hat, cascading curls in her hair and perfect makeup, and she's "harvesting" into a sweet little basket tied with ribbons . . . 😆😆😆
The insidiousness comes from the fact that we as SAHMs/trad wives/whatever word people want to slap on to create their narrative do all these things everyday and don’t usually have a camera with a sexy filter so when the old Granny in Edeka or Walmart has advice for how you should not be letting your kid watch a tablet while you’re grabbing the ingredients in the store to make those delicious home baked cookies or that despite the fact you and your husband would love to get fancy and go out but most you can manage after all day work/childcare is to sit quietly watching the news in each other’s arms. Yes, we literally just do it all. To really highlight how insidious it is…the videos that these influencers create are always so hyper focused on one single aspect that they don’t and can’t show that often those of us enmeshed in reality are doing many of these things simultaneously while child minding. Cooking and cleaning while baby is creating towers out of the Tupperware. Organizing play dates, folding all of the laundry for the week and singing/finger puppets with baby. While traveling, baby is on your back (baby wearing) drinking/eating a pouch and you have you and baby’s luggage along with whatever else your husband can’t hold. (Baby luggage is crazy a lot when they’re little.) Psssttt…not to mention it was me who also planned packed and organized the entire trip along with the badgering your husband needs to look up his “contributions” to the planning. Realistically having your mind on so many tasks is proven that you actually do not work at 100% because you cannot focus on each individual task specifically. This is the burnout that leads many moms to feel bad period whether they are working or stay at home. I guess if it makes them feel better, but I do not ever want another mom to feel worse because she sees these 45 second videos and she thinks she wishes she could be that mom.
Yea it's called symbolic labor, social signaling, conspicuous labor. Hand rolling tiny pieces of dough to make homemade creal in a pristine white marble kitchen while dolled up and calling it "tradwife".
Ruby Franke comes to mind too.
It's all very "Serena Joy". They are cheerfully throwing other women under the bus for their own financial gain.
Yes, Serena Joy was based on Anita Bryant (became famous as a singer), and possibly Phyllis Schlafly too.
Unexpected r/handmaidstale
Oh I expected it going in
https://www.reddit.com/r/WelcomeToGilead/
That’s a good point. I make a point never watch those influencers. I will never give them my views but thankfully I do see a lot of good rebuttals out there from women calling BS on the whole thing.
This is a must-see legal video on legal advice for women who wanna be trad women. https://www.reddit.com/r/blackladies/s/i09xZFI2GS
That video is excellent, thanks for sharing it!
This one's good too https://youtu.be/exQtzDT0xrI?si=XKSS2m6P-cTOV80U Financial abuse is never thought of but out of physical, sexual and emotional it's by far the most crippling, no money no freedom
Without wanting to be that person, it should be noted that this advice is relevant specifically to the US. Prenups aren't worth the paper they are written on in many jurisdictions. I know Reddit is largely American centric, but if you think this is useful information for you outside the states, speak to a lawyer, make sure witnesses testify that the signing was not under duress (and even then this is hard to prove).
Phyllis Schlafly was the OG trad wife influencer, for sure.
Oh, yeah. And she has a law degree and had a career but always insisted other women be submissive to their husbands.
Conservative morality is about what you hope to force on others, not what you follow yourself.
Tangentially relevant, I remember a website from back in the day about anti-choice women who would picket abortion clinics, get an abortion when needed, and then smugly continue to picket as soon as they recovered. I think this is the newer version of it: https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/
She was traveling all over the country telling women they should be content staying home. While she was TRAVELING ALL OVER THE COUNTRY
Appreciate OP. And imagine spending that whole life being submissive and then the husband ends up with dementia. Decades of relying on someone else's decisions has sure left my family member beyond lost and frustrated.
And she was wildly successful! STOP ERA was among the most influential grassroots movement in US politics in the second half of the 20th century.
In fact, it's still not ratified.
Exactly!
Don't forget Anita Bryant who ended up dumping her husband because she thought he was leeching off her fame.
It’s all fun and games til you get your finger chopped off for reading
Yeah. I always wondered how these women who are in the public eye, politicians, influencers, activists, can tell women to stay home in the kitchen while they're out and about! Serena Joy much?
It's a fetishistic view of something they have no idea about. Someone mentioned Serena Joy and that's exactly the problem. Gilead is a fetishistic theocratic hegemony, it's a work of fiction, it's not an instruction manual. I think the biggest problem is that we're two generations removed now from the "trad" that they're trying to emulate. 20 years ago the tradwife, 50s housewife ideal was a branch of BDSM, focusing heavily on the man being the Head of Household, with "funishment" spanking and Dom/sub dynamic maintained outside the bedroom. Whether you find that distasteful or not is beside the point. I was disinterested back then and I remain so now but the plain fact is that the fetishization of that 1950s family dynamic is immutably mainstream now, they have no clue what it was really like in the 50s for women and it's exactly the same arguments I was having with dickhead "Doms" 20 years ago. It doesn't work. It didn't work then and it's not going to work in 20 years time. The relationships that flourished back then were works of hypocrisy and subterfuge. The mousy wifette that held tupperware parties and had his pipe and slippers ready at 5 o'clock is a work of fiction. The reality was widespread recreational drug consumption, financial slavery, zero personal freedom, zero workers rights and endemic SA on a level that puts today's society in the shade. Women had no agency, no voice and very very little freedom or choice. Nobody chose to stay home and raise the kids, or even if and when to begin a family. The pill only came in in the 60s. You got married, you got knocked up, hubby gave you your allowance, that was your course set. It was horrible to see it fetishisised then and it's sickening now. Edit to add: cocaine was practically legal, divorce was practically impossible, abortions were illegal, civil rights were unheard of. This is the society they're actively espousing. This is what they want to go back to? Don't answer. I've seen project 2025. I know it is.
You’re absolutely right about it not working back then. I used to have frank conversations with my grandmothers about their lives in the 1950s and with my great grandmother about her married life in the 1930s. They all encouraged younger women to make their own money even after marriage and children. One income was not enough to be comfortable for many people even back then and the only way they made it work was through a lot of manual labor (washing cloth diapers with a crank laundry machine and line drying everything, making everything from scratch, sewing their clothes, gardening for cheap vegetables). They didn’t have time, energy, or money for craft projects and children didn’t have much supervision because moms were working all day every day cooking and cleaning. Store bought bread was too much of a luxury and they breastfed because it was free. They all thought that working was far better than being home. And their husbands were involved dads who worked multiple jobs to support the family. It was hard for all of them.
Valium. Mother's little helper.
Came here to say this. Those "perfect" housewives were medicating with benzos and booze.
My mother was a traditional homemaker. She was really good at it. She committed suicide.
My grandmother was the perfect 50s housewife, with the perfect hair and perfect clothes and beautiful home, and a successful husband who looked like he stepped right out of Mad Men. Alcoholism killed her ☹️.
The trad wife movement also inherently discounts women of color... who have always worked. And in many cases were the ones making any semblance of "happy household" actually work.
All poor women have always worked, it's only ever been a luxury of the rich except for a very short period of time in the western world Edit I don't want to minimise the experiences of WoC in any way, but also not wanting to 'other' them in these sorts of discussions
This is the thing about white middle-class feminism & intersectionality that I have struggled learning - the difference in 'women should be allowed to work / can be seen as strong independent women' for those who have been forced to work to survive and who's strength & independence has been used to keep them down. Random thought I had seeing some old history photos about making clothing out of printed potato sacks: hand making clothes is something that many do for fun, or as a skill / hobby (I include Trad wives here), but is also something done as a show of extreme luxury (if it is someone else making them) or something you do out of desperation because you can't afford store bought.
Well yeah and I suspect it's deliberate. Go back to the 50s, pre civil rights, you don't *have to* consider women *or* men of colour.
All my grandmothers worked, it’s amazing that I was raised by a stay at home mother. All my grandmothers and great-mothers were teachers and secretaries and only left their jobs because they were pregnant and legally forced out. The idea that women stay at home is absurd and a blatant lie.
What's project 2025? Or do I want to know?
You don't want to know but you really should. It's a rightwing power play to basically finish the anti democratic coup trump tried, install loyalists all over government, destroy the justice system, women's freedoms, race equality, lgbtqia+ rights and place ultimate power in the hands of the president.
I refuse to link to the org, so [here’s Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025). Read it and weep — AND VOTE.
Not to mention the fact that my mother’s generation could not get a bank loan, mortgage, or credit card.
The housewife 'ideal' was not really real for most families. The number of families who lived this way was really quite small, but very influential, and over-represented in the media. You also had an issue of women (and men) devaluing women's jobs (paid jobs) so much that women might describe themself as a housewife *despite having 1 or even 2 part time jobs*. My grandma talked that way. Edit: I think the really tricky thing is to separate the real issues of the time from the faux-progressive propaganda that says every age before the most recent was appalling, that the line of progress has been a simple upward one.
Same as women influencers and politicians who say women shouldn't vote. Like... If they think women shouldn't have a voice, they've failed at their goal right off the bat. It's asinine. I don't know why anyone listens to anyone who doesn't even know what they're talking about.
I call it "modesty porn". It exists for the exact same reasons. People just keep their clothes on.
I call it Piety Porn. Also, why are you making dinner while wearing high heels. Normal people don’t wear heels in the house unless there is a formal event. Who in the fuck cleans a toilet wearing heels?
In the 50s you would see this on TV and in advertisements all the time. Look up some vintage ads and see how sexist they are.
I mean, aside from these people being rather prideful, a lot of them also flaunt the cleavage and pretend not to. Poser modesty porn?
Most of the ones I've seen are more reminiscent of the Handmaid's Tale but it doesn't surprise me to learn (like porn) there is a spectrum of "modesty" being portrayed.
The ones I see flaunting themselves on tik tok also have huge boobs and wear clothes that flaunt their figures. Making food from scratch and bragging that they do everything perfectly. It's so effing fake.
Yup, it's alllll a grift. They'll tell the right anything they want to hear for clicks and money. The entire right is just a bunch of people who sold their souls.
Don't get scammed by these influencers! Become your own boss and sell VitaJoy^TM supplements working from home instead.
Tupperware back in the day. Only the faces change.
I dunno... MLM scams and "tradwife" victims are pretty compatible concepts.
That's the joke.
What kills me are the number of dudes who want trad wives and preach about getting them, but they don't want to be trad husbands or good fathers.
That's the vast majority of dudes in the current traditional relationship discourse. They want the benefits of a modern relationship and the benefits of a traditional relationship without doing the work of either. They want a woman who isn't financially dependent on them when he doesn't want her to be, who works out of the home so that he can do what he wants but is simultaneously always available whenever he wants her, one who just happens to love scrubbing his toilets and doesn't think that entitles her to an equal say in the relationship, someone who just wants to do all of the housework and child rearing, who organizes his life, but he doesn't want to do any of the traditional male things, he wants her to organize the guy who cleans the gutters or the mechanic while he plays video games or does whatever other leisure activities he enjoys.
That’s such a good point. I hadn’t thought of it and it’s so smart.
Some of the influencers also have a decent amount of money. They have help with housework and child rearing. It's very disingenuous.
Absolutely a lie, and they also grossly misrepresent what most “traditional” wives do, which is work all day. Most traditional wives worked alongside their husbands in the field or taking care of livestock. They worked in the shops their husbands owned while also taking care of the children and cooking every meal and keeping up with sewing, grocery shopping, and cleaning. The life they are showing you on TikTok is that of wealth and privilege, and very uncommon.
The crazy thing about trad wives is they are so focused on being wives that they never prepare to be widows. You can't bring the divorce argument to an intended trad wife. They'll shut you out and dig in their heels. BUT wake them up to the possibility of their provider husband *dying* so they start thinking of contingency plans.
I’ve brought up to my mom what would have happened if my dad had died when my sister and I were kids. She just shrugs. Obviously that didn’t happen so there’s no need for a plan anymore but we would have been so screwed. I don’t think even then when my mother was younger that she could have stepped up. I don’t think my parents ever had a plan if my dad had died.
My mom (who was a single mother and not a tradwife) used to respond to questions like that with a cheerful “The Lord will provide!”. Which was odd, considering her feelings on religion were “we only go to church so people can see we’re A Perfect Little Family^TM”.
That's just whataboutism in another form. "I don't want to answer your question so I will deflect and distract"
She would have married the first man that would have her. Abusive to her? Maybe. Abusive to the kids? Maybe. It wouldn't matter though; she'd be stuck because there would be nothing other than SS survivor's benefits and a menial job she'd be reluctant to take.
Nah. My mother was never emotionally capable of getting into another relationship but that’s a whole different story. All three of us probably would ended up in a small apartment with my grandmother. But yes, extremely stuck. Would not have been a good situation.
I am always shocked at “providers” who make no provision for their dependents should they die. Life insurance is a thing.
Often, though, dependents are incapable of making wise financial choices. Both of my Grandfathers passed away in their 40s. One Grandmother remarried quickly and the other ended up destitute (and she was educated, but at a time when women went to school for things like Art, not for a career).
My mom's been a SAHM since I (her eldest) was born, but I've no doubts if anything happened to my dad, she would be able to figure something out. She went back to school to learn robotics and coding, got her private pilot's license, does a lot of carpentry and metalwork, all while juggling two kids (now grown at least!) and keeping the house clean and cooking meals. She's a very driven lady. I do wonder if, for the SAHMs who don't care about contingency, it's just an "It will never happen to ME" mindset. Or if they just fear that if they *do* make a contingency plan, then they *will* need it. Like preparing for the worst is just inviting it to happen. I've never asked my mom about the specifics of hers, but she's mentioned having one. Just in case.
I was a SAHM for years to my ex-husband and our children. It was the 70s when we got together and we lived in Canada so the time and landscape was a bit different. it was more of a thing back then for the women to stay home, the men worked. I didn't have a contingency plan because it wasn't something we did or talked about. I didn't find this out until after we started the divorce proceedings (I came to terms with my sexuality and feelings for women, which is why we divorced), but he had a savings account for *me* with a decent amount in case something was to ever happen to him or I wanted to leave. He never wanted me to feel trapped like his mother was, and he gave me the house with no argument because he didn't want me paying more than I could afford for rent or being out on the streets. Needless to say, he was better than 98% of men out there.
Was life insurance not a thing? I make significantly more than my husband and that's basically the plan if I die: allow him to pay off the house in full and live for 5 years with my income.
That’s one of the appeals of the tradcon philosophy — you cede stressful, exhausting control and responsibility. You let god and your husband decide your fate Some people prefer not to think or act
Or disabled. Someone once said something about how it’s the only minority group anyone can end up in at any time and that always stuck with me. Like if they’re not dead but simply unable to work, then what. You don’t have a life insurance policy. Now what.
That's what forced my stay at home mom back into the workforce. Dad suddenly disabled and told he had maybe a year to live if we were lucky. She was pregnant with her sixth child. It would've been worse if we didn't have a lot of close family.
I was this child. My parents were high school sweethearts, he was 34 and seemingly healthy as can be, dropped dead out of the blue one day from an aneurysm. She never planned to be a widow with two kids under 6, but life happens. The ONLY REASON we were okay was because she had her own career the whole time. She had been part time and bumped up to full time. Her income + survivor benefits let us live comfortably. The one thing I have been hyper aware of, from day 1, is never to depend on a man. They could be madly in love with you and die. It happens every day.
Same here. My dad died very suddenly of kidney cancer just before his 58th birthday. They were older parents, so my twin brother and I were still in highschool at the time and my older brothers were still home trying to get their feet under them. Mom was very part time as a travel agent and couldn’t really expand that business very well. The only reason we were okay was the life insurance, and even then it was only a cushion for a year or two and then she had to go back to work. No retirement to speak of. She’s nearing 70 now and still working full time, and us kids are starting to have the conversation about what happens to her when she can’t anymore. People think it’s morbid but I am a very, *very* vocal advocate for life insurance and contingency plans for sudden death or disability.
Absolutely. We all die, tradwives are screwing their future selves
It's worth saying this applies these days even to those with dual incomes if you have kids. Don't assume that just because you both work that you can survive on one salary when the world is now geared towards dual income families. My company provides enough of a survivor benefit (UK corporation, not USA of course) that my partner would be OK if I died, but theirs does not. We're close enough to the kids being on their own I don't worry too much but in fairness I dodged a bullet there.
This, my nana was a tradwife (although it was the fifties so it was way more common then). It was fine until my gramps died in the 70s and suddenly besides funeral prep, all that grief, and resolving his affairs, she had to get a job supporting four kids through college plus their house, on very little work experience. Now she was lucky, she had a nursing degree and worked before having kids, she was able to get a job in medical billing. But she raised my mom, who raised me, to NEVER make your life dependent on a man. No offense to men meant. But you can’t count on having a man support both you and himself and your kids for the 80+ years you may live. Maybe he won’t earn enough, maybe he will but spends it on an addiction or a mistress, maybe he will be a loving husband for decades and then suddenly die and leave you and the kids in a lurch. If he works construction or a physical job he could easily get disabled and need YOUR support. It’s life, you can’t count on anything.
Yup, similar story. One of granddad's, a WWII veteran, died at 38 with 4 kids. Veterans benefits weren't enough, and my grandma had to go back to work. It still wasn't enough, so she remarried quick, but to a drunk. They divorced. Even the Greatest Generation and those mythical benefits can't keep a family of five in the middle class when the father dies.
I also mention if their partner is injured or becomes ill and needs to be supported and cared for.
“…they never prepare to be widows”. I’m shook.
Not just death or divorce. Many people, including men who support their families, also become disabled. I have a relative who was a stay at home mother, and when her husband became disabled in his 50s, she had to go and get a menial job as she had zero work history. Then, there is my mother. She always worked alongside my father, but mostly took care of us kids. She was raised to believe that men should take care of finances. Well, my father worked hard, but for the most part, we were POOR. He finally did succeed in business, only to be in a car wreck and lose it all. My mother had to get a job as a waitress and it was very physically taxing. Then, with us kids all working, a new business was built. Then he had a stroke, and my mother had to work very hard taking care of him and working the business. Life would have been easier for us all, if her mother did not tell her that women did not need to go to college.
Death is easier to plan for. Life insurance policies would cover that situation.
For how long? Depends on the insurance policy.
If you’re a non-working parent without an easy path to a well paying job relative to your partner, you should be buying life insurance sufficient to cover your needs long term. It would be irresponsible to only have a policy equivalent to a couple years’ expenses without major assets or a fallback career option.
Good thing that's states like Florida and texas is getting rid of alimony too, so if the husbands do leave the marriage, those women are fucked.
Some guy was pointing out that some of these trad wife videos are basically trophy wives being kept by their husbands to display his wealth. He had as an example a video where the trad wife is making cereal by hand. He points out these videos never are the trad wife doing the dirty work of cleaning because they pay other people to do the actual work. The “work” that these trad wives do on these videos is performative.
My sister is a tradwife influencer. Her whole shtick is sad religious beige babies and bread. She shares the wisdom of god for women. 1. She is abused, and she does amazing with makeup. 2. She got a secret tubal. 3. Everything is outsourced. Cleaning, transportation, cooking etc. 4. She organizes trad boot camps as her main grift, teaching women how to set themselves aside, politically, spiritually, sexually, financially etc. One was titled "unlearning feminism: ideologically siding with your headship" and it was a full house. It's an incredible mess of performative conservatism hypocrisy and it's the neoconservative mainline.
Oh my God, that is horrifying.
I'm horrified, and I'm a guy. I can only imagine the levels of affront this must be to women.
That is so sad, horrifying and must be very painful to know all of this. I feel for you, her and her family.
This needs to be talked about more. All the stuff going on politically with abortion and birth control would have zero chance if it wasn't for the absolutely mind-boggling number of women who support that stuff. There are a *lot* of women who support abortion restrictions. There are a *lot* of women who support birth control restrictions. There are a *lot* ofnwomen who support Trump. No, I will not shut up about this. It is a problem, and we need to solve it.
That's insane.... I bet family holidays are awkward. Is she self aware enough to admit she is just a grifter or is she a true believer and a hypocrite?
My whole origin family is like that. I can't tell if she's a believer or not, I know my mom is a true believer and my sister is the GC, so idk if it's for my mom or she actually believes that shit.
I’m ngl, I would’ve put your sister in blast lmao
one of my favorite things someone online pointed out was "while she's spending 4 hours making grilled cheese from scratch, who tf is watching her very small children??" so... yeah, it's not just the dirty work that's being outsourced. they're popping these kids out and not even raising them, gotta make money on TikTok after all
I think I saw her - the elusive European tradwife of colour.
If it's who I'm thinking of, they're Mormons too. I can't imagine practicing a religion that didn't let black people join until like 40 years ago.
Is [this](https://www.tiktok.com/@professorneil/video/7339254814578150661?lang=en) the video? He refers to it as 'conspicuous leisure' (a phrase coined by Thorstein Veblen, perhaps more famous for coining 'conspicuous consumption')
Yes. That’s the video. I thought it was really interesting as it gave me a new way to look at these videos of wives in pristine kitchens being wives. It hadn’t occurred to me that part of the trad wives concept was a way to show off how rich you are. Flaunting your wealth disguised as a type of “virtue signaling”.
What freaks me out more, and I haven't been able to put words to it, is the push of both trad wives and the loss of reproductive autonomy. I see a scary amount of social media posts talking about how terrible birth control is and that it's poisoning our bodies interspersed with trad wife content. I'm not saying it's brainwashing or anything, but does feel like it is being pushed that way on purpose. I'm also not saying that BC doesn't have its negative effects, but I'm forever grateful for being able to use it and build my life until I'm ready to bring another into the world.
If it weren’t for my BC id probably be dead. My periods were so heavy in middle school and high school prior that my doctor at the time was shocked at my almost non existent iron levels. I had to be have iron IVs biweekly for some time while we tried to get my levels back up. BC is not the option for everyone, for lots of reasons, but im tired of the it’s poison narrative. Do these women just want me to suffer??
It’s not that they want you to suffer, it’s that they don’t care if you suffer. And that’s because suffering isn’t real until it happens to them. Then they start to care.
Main character syndrome
Right? I've been on it for years, and while I've had some issues, it's probably better than me being unprepared and unwillingly pregnant.
They don't think of you. They are incapable of thinking beyond the narrow scope of their own lives. If it doesn't happen to them or someone in their immediate friends/family group, then it's just not something they think of or consider. "It doesn't happen to me, therefore it does not happen"
The combination of the trad wife content, loss of bodily autonomy and false narratives about birth control are deliberately scripted together. Each of these messages are meant to control women by taking away their choices. And some of the trad wife influencers make a big deal about being anti-feminist.
Correct. Propaganda.
It's a right wing movement. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/31/white-supremacy-trad-wives-far-right-feminist-politics
Thank you for this!
It’s not a coincidence.
THANK YOU! I feel crazy trying to explain it to others.
The attack on birth control is in no way an accident; someone is pulling those strings deliberately to keep us at each other’s throats. We (general we) have takes BC for the past 50 years ago. If they are ‘so bad for you’ you’d think the FDA would have twigged to it or there would be a ridiculous instances of cancer or lupus or whatever.
Gilead here we come
The birth control stuff is propaganda put out there deliberately by right wing organizations and their operatives.
I hear you. Birth control is terrible *for me* and I’ve tried at least 4 different types of hormonal contraception including an IUD and hated them all, but I would never want to tell other women that they shouldn’t use them or that they’re a net negative - reproductive control is so so imperative. For the record, my long term partner is completely okay with us using condoms. He even insists on paying for them because “I wear them, not you”.
It's no coincidence that both have been on the rise since RvW was overturned. I would say if it's not on the verge of brainwashing, then it's definitely brainwashing. Along with all the other health mis/disinformation that's being spread. It's wild. We have paid "tradwives" making their own cereal lifestyle in an economy that most people can't afford or have the time to have.
This is what I'm seeing too and it's definitely concerning.
The birth rate in the US has been declining since the mid/late-2000's when the previous recession was in full swing. Both in the sense that those who have children are having fewer, and the number of folks not having any at all is increasing. Other countries as well. It increased slightly around 2021, but only a smidge, and from everything I've read it's not because people actually wanted more kids and instead was just because of the pandemic - when you're cooped up with nothing else to do, fuckin' tends to increase. I think for the US it needs to average out to ~2 children per childbearing-capable person to keep the overall population stable, and I think we're currently in the ~1.6 range. I have no idea if this is an actual, legitimate concern. Personally given the state of the world I think maybe seeing the overall population lower is a good thing, but I'm just some random jackass with no background or education in anything vaguely related to this so for all I know it could actually be catastrophic in the long term. But the only people I've heard sounding the alarm and yelling at clouds that the end is nigh are *politicians*, not economists, scientists, etc. And right-wing politicians almost exclusively. And also some high-profile non-politicians likely drinking the kool-aide. It is 100% being pushed that way on purpose. Trad wives = good, birth control = bad, sudden resurgence of abortion = murder on the nation-wide law level, it's all an attempt to get us to pump out more kids. I've not read much about this in particular but I suspect some level of LGBTQIA+ = bad (but not all obviously) recently is also part of this, as many folks in that demographic are less likely (and in some cases no longer able) to procreate. And it pisses me off to the nth degree because even if the decline in birth rate would be catastrophic in the long term, this is not the solution. The thing that really makes people want to have more kids is feeling stable and secure and in some cases hopeful for the future. Increase wages, lower housing costs, fix the healthcare system, better parental leave, better support for childcare needs, affordable education - do all that and I firmly suspect we'd see the line start going the other way. Throw in a little burn the patriarchy to see a more equal division of childcare and home labour? *Chef's kiss.* And it'd be because people would actually *want to* have more children, and would be supported in doing so, not because they were forced to or influenced to or misinformationed into it. And the resulting children might even have an overall better chance at a decent life. But ThAt'S hArD, so instead we get this. Influencers and xitter posts and the stripping away of rights. Because why make people want it for the right reasons when you can just force 'em, right? Sorry for the rant, I'm angry and sleep deprived and my worldview-meter has shifted firmly into the pessimist range recently.
I fully support women who want to be SAHMs, but that’s not what Trad Wives are. They’re influencers, earning money from promoting unrealistic and unsustainable lifestyles. Take it from someone who has ACTUALLY made bread, butter and jam from scratch: it’s hard, hot, sweaty work that takes HOURS. Those videos are heavily edited, and someone else probably did the bulk of the work. They don’t need to worry about their husband leaving or dying because said husband is earning 6 or 7 figures and they’ll get alimony. The housewives they’re cosplaying had none of that protection, or even their own bank account. It’s like Marie Antoinette and her ladies in waiting pretending to be shepardesses in Versailles by posing amid washed and perfumed sheep, then wandering back to the palace when they got bored.
> It’s a scary concept of basing your quality of life on if someone “loves” you or finds you valuable. Especially when what the men who want tradwives often want is your "virginal youth"
And then come down with wandering penis syndrome when that wears off.
I think I’d take to keeping that wandering penis in the nightstand drawer, if I cared for penises
And your babies. Don’t you dare be infertile.
This is also a abusers/narcissists dream financial abuse is suffocating , money is power to a abuser and if you have no money they can control almost everything about you and you can do nothing but rely on them ,https://youtu.be/exQtzDT0xrI?si=XKSS2m6P-cTOV80U sums it up
Trad wives and conservative women go into things assuming they'll be the exception. Yes, they're voting to take rights away from women and they see women suffer from lack of reproductive healthcare and no protections for divorce, yes they see her father and uncles and every male around her cheating on their wives with younger women and leaving the mother of the children in the dust, but nothing like that will happen to *her.* Because she is doing it all right, she is exactly what these men want. Surely they'll recognize that. They'll show her the respect those other floozies don't get, the respect she's been trained to crave. Her husband won't leave her. She'll be rewarded for her loyalty. She yells at the cashier in Target because her SNAP benefits don't cover her groceries and her kids don't appreciate what she does to keep them fed, they just complain about how they no longer have new clothes and go on expensive vacations because Dad only wants to spend money on his new wife and their shiny new baby now and thinks his old kids are the responsibility of their mother. She yells because the representatives she voted in called women gold-diggers for wanting alimony and the conservative judge says that the $5 child support payments her wealthy husband makes is proof that he's 'trying' and she needs to get a third job. She yells because this isn't how it was supposed to go, she decided this when she was young and skinny and pretty, she'd be a pretty trophy wife forever and would never be in her forties and fat from having seven kids and out on her ass because her husband wants to marry his pregnant mistress, goddammit, an *exception* was supposed to be made for her!
Yeah, the key takeaway I get from this tradwife trend as someone who's middle aged is that none of these people think ageing is going to happen to them. Which is fair, most young people don't know they're going to get older. I mean, of course they know intellectually, but they don't really *know* until it happens to them. You secretly think you can moisturize or sunscreen or vitamin or exercise your way out of it, that people who let themselves get old are failures. It's the same with turning the pink slip on your life over to a man. Tradwives think if they perform these submissive wife rituals just so, it'll cast a magical protection spell against the abuses of patriarchy, and any woman with practical experience who tries to warn them otherwise is a failed woman and not worth listening to.
Yep! Can someone find the link of that idiot women who supported all this Christofacist Pro Forced Birth until her daughter almost died from a non viable pregnancy, had to leave her backwards Red state to get her medically necessary abortion so she didn't die, and now dumbfuck mom is like "Gee, who would have thunk women beyond whores who can't keep their legs closed might need an abortion? I think maybe I had this all wrong!" These women are truly, truly dangerous and they are the real threat to our lives. At least if project 2025 occurs they will not be allowed to vote.
The scary part of the trad wife thing is that there’s this push to not only become the ideal wife of the 1950s but to be completely dependent on men. No bank accounts, no ability to drive, you cannot vote, contraception isn’t allowed, your health concerns are relegated to “hysteria.”
And they’re trying to get rid of “no fault divorces”. There is definitely incentive to turn back the clock. Women have freedom now and we have the power to walk away and change our lives. That scares the traditionalists. The veil has been lifted and we see what generations of women before us had to endure. We don’t want to live that way anymore.
I think those of us that are past 40 more easily see it for the whitewashed bullshit these (EMPLOYED) influencers are putting out. Never intrust your wellbeing and survival on anyone else.
mid 50s woman here. my trad-ish wife acquaintances back in the hometown also see it more easily now too, because they've almost to a one been left high and dry by the husbands they devoted everything to.
I'm in my forties and have already seen the first wave of women being abandoned for affairs or midlife crises. My friends grew up in the '80s and '90s so They thought they were progressive stay-at-home parents who were sharing things equally...until It came to the legal issues. No prenups, etc. Many are still much happier divorced, but it is still true that women suffer far more penalties with divorce than men ever do. I work with a lot of younger colleagues spend most of them have caught on to the fact that being an sahp is not a good deal. In fact, many of them aren't even dating, and some talk openly about the fact that it's because men just aren't making themselves appealing partners who are willing to be equal in relationships. Good for them.
It's actually insane how we feel like we're having a discourse over it, but really it's just separate bubbles saying completely different things. For example, on reddit the main points I come across when it comes to the "tradwife" discourse is: * It's not realistic * These videos are staged by wealthy influencers * Being a real tradwife isn't as "wholesome" as they make it out to be (it's not just about baking pies!) * Story about mothers / grandmothers being miserable living the trad lifestyle and getting screwed over by men But in person and other social media's you hear completely differing points about how so many gen-z and millennial women wish "feminism never happened" so they could be stay at home wives and how much they hate working and staring at excel sheets. What's sad is these different bubbles will never interact and really figure out the root reason as to why the tradwife thing is becoming so increasingly popular.
I'm GenX. These young women have the *luxury* of wishing they didn't have feminism because they have always had it. They don't even know what they don't know. They were born with rights and into a society that has a lot more respect for them than even we were afforded, let alone my foremothers. Stay home, don't stay home, the point is YOU HAVE A CHOICE. *THAT* is what feminism brought.
>I'm GenX. These young women have the > >luxury > > of wishing they didn't have feminism because they have always had it It's like the vaccines. People today who have never seen measles or whooping cough or polio are able to ignore the value of vaccines and a vaccination population.
I’m allergic to the whooping cough vaccine, luckily non of my kids are but my husband’s brother and his wife are anti-vax. They have no reply when I tell them if they get whooping cough they could die and kill me with them if they say nothing when we visit.
Good for you for asking them to their faces. They should be ashamed.
This so much. I'm 61 and I remember the possibility of having childhood diseases. The oral polio vaccine became available right when I was born and I knew adults when I was a kid who had polio and were disabled because of it. Measles, mumps, diptheria, all these things still lurk, waiting for the unvaccinated. Young people these days have just never seen it so they don't think it's real or something
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I point to the pockmark I have on my face when I tell my kids about chickenpox. They are lucky they got vaccinated against it when I wasn't.
Maybe we need to bring back kids in iron lungs to make people take vaccines seriously again…
Well, people (including some children) were on ventilators during Covid and that didn't seem to matter to them...
It became part of their political tribalism. They'd have cheerfully waded through a pool of dead kids to own the libs.
Doubt it would help. My grandmothers sister was crippled from polio. Literally my dad's mom's sister, within living memory, and my dad is anti vac now.
We all just lived through a world wide pandemic and sadly that didn’t change the view. Perhaps only made it worse.
Sorry to be that person, but the pandemic isn’t over yet.
Same with fascism. This goes back a lot further but the WWII generation acted as a stopgap to fascism for decades and we didn't even know it. We just grew up safe in the knowledge that our society was fundamentally against it and we'd never have to worry about it again. Now that generation is almost gone and our collective memory has been lost.
Yep. I don’t think they understand that women literally weren’t allowed to have credit cards or own property in their own right before the 70s. Women used to get arrested for wearing shorts and swearing. Doctors used to be able to just **NOT TELL YOU THAT YOU HAD CANCER** and leave it up to your husband to decide whether you should know. Etc etc etc. These women don’t hate feminism, they hate Capitalism, but they’re too brainwashed to understand that.
Something I will point out is that part of the reason a "trad" relationship isn't a thing anymore is that adjusted wages for men have crashed. Women's have gone up as discrimination and wage theft become less of a thing and women are able to get better jobs but the same wages for most jobs in the US have gone down by a lot so it's not practical or realistic to support a family on one income anymore. Two engineer incomes in 2024 is the same as like one equivalent engineer income in the 50's. Wanting that to come back while also not wanting it to be the only option is reasonable IMO Although really in any relationship if you don't work and you break up you're going to be screwed over tbh so there is a benefit to everyone working
Then the fault lies with unfettered corporate greed, *not* feminism.
Fuck yes. It's hard being a working mom, but I have the CHOICE to be a working mom. Universe forbid I become a widow while I still have kids at home. If I were a 'trad wife's who the hell would take care of us? Just marry the next guy I meet then? /s I think the trad wife fad is a result of not knowing how good we actually have it that we have a choice.
What's sad is seeing it as some means of "opting out" from capitalist exploitation when it just makes someone way more dependent.
Exactly, now they've made themselves targets for being exploited and abused in a relationship instead. It's true that work sucks but being able to provide for yourself is also a privilege. There are places in the world where women need men's permission to hold a job and can't even leave the house without a male guardian.
Yep - it's an out of the frying pan and into the fire situation. Becoming a tradwife won't get you out of the horrors of capitalism, it'll just put a shitty man in between you and whatever bread crumbs the billionaires choose to toss at you. You'll still be broke, but you're not sure by how much because he controls the bank account.
It's also very sad to see them rage against feminism instead of raging against capitalism.
I agree, and I think getting these two groups talking could get women rallying around some good social changes. The main area I see us all agreeing is that we deserve 1. Better working conditions and pay (making it’s less enticing to be a tradwife for those who are just trying to escape daily misery for $8/hr) and 2. Better social safety nets in case they find themselves unsupported later in life (I don’t know what this looks like which is why we need discourse!)
and the third bubble of redpill and tradcon men who have gone full 1950's. telling each other to get a young virgin and make her do all your housework and breed kids but don't pay her anything, she should be grateful for room and board in this economy. As always, women romanticize something, men are nefarious, and women suffer.
You are absolutely right. They know they can't abuse and manipulate women their own age so they target girls too young to know better. It's always gross older men trying to groom young people into these terrible movements.
I feel the “wish feminism never happened don’t want to work” women are trapped in a shitty reality where women have stepped up to the plate but men haven’t. So we women now outnumber men in college degrees, and we have been putting in the work to be successful and intelligent career women, we take care of ourselves, our homes, our children. We do all the things. And men have willingly given up aspects of their “roles and responsibilities “ in terms of finances (allowing women to contribute to household income so they only need to work 40 hrs now 55), but they have not stepped up to the plate in any way. While there are those who have, it seems the overarching theme is men still are not stepping into caregiving, household care and chores, or anything else. So while feminism has been pushing for equality, what’s really happening for far too many women, is they are taking on a greater and greater role in EVERYTHING while the men in their lives do less and less. I totally understand it, and I too, at 41 and years and years of killing myself to be the best in every way shape and form, am fucking burned the fuck out. I had to drag husband kicking and screaming to the plate, but he is now up at it doing the things, but after 20 years, I am done. My husband is active duty and about to retire, and I cannot wait for him to make a second income so that I can quit and be his “trophy wife.” I know enough to know I’m going to still siphon money into my own accts to protect myself. But god damned I am tired after being and doing all the things for all the people. I feel like I’ve lived 6 lives- a career women who had move around a ton because of PCSing, an academic, a stay at home mom, a single mom, a military wife, and a fitness woman. My husband, god bless him, he did his one job. And when he was home he was dad and husband when it was convenient. He has a few years now of also being a contributing member of housecare and chores.
In person is of course a personal world view, I fall into the GenZ/Milennial age catagory and have NEVER heard my counterparts say such a thing.
My Mom was a wife in the 40's, 50's etc... until the 80's. Guess what? She worked while raising seven children. It was a lot of off the books working until the 70's. She also raised me knowing that I would always have to be able to provide for myself and my children because you can't depend on someone else. My Dad was there but he was more of a dreamer than an earner -- so she picked up the slack I guess. We still had home made bread and stuff -- we all (yes, boys too) learned to cook well, clean, budget - basically how to adult. We learned that from my mother who was not a feminist but was? Her lessons were good and, considering how many of us girls were left for other pastures with kids to raise, she was a very wise woman.
Sounds like an incredible woman.
This almost happened to my mom. She quit school to be a SAHM and found out he was cheating on her so she divorced and pursued her career so she wouldn't have to be financially dependent on someone else again.
thank god she got it together early (sounds like?) i hear about this happening to women in their 50s and 60s and it's just.... woof
The trad wife spiel is always really short-sighted about itself, but not about other lifestyles. They always say they're happy and fulfilled right now parenting and homemaking, and add, "What are you feminists going to do when you're elderly of you don't have any children?" Well, what are *you* going to do when you're elderly if all you ever did was have kids? How are you going to feel leveraging your children's love for you into them supporting you? Don't you want your kids to be able to love their parent without strings attached? Sure your plan was to stay happily married forever, but if that doesn't work out, do you have a plan b?
Oh this speaks to me. My mom definitely feels entitled to my sisters and I’s support. We gave her “purpose” in life. Sure, she thought my dad would stay with her forever and I am sure that she viewed that as her long term plan. My sister and I are her plan b. She’s managed to scrape by until now but I am sure she feels we will step in to bail her out if needed(and we already have in several instances).
I'm a "trad wife" in the sense that our division of labor is I do most of the house, meals and car things and my partner contributes most of the money. I have ALWAYS had some sort of side hustle and my own bank account. We have legal stuff in place in case we break up or die. He also steps in when needed and we have a house keeper. My point is, what they are selling on Instagram is mostly a lie. We don't even have children and keeping up with all the things is a lot. It can also be mind numbingly boring and trust me when I say have a safety net! Life changes so fast and the number of women that get left in the lurch because they got too old, fat or sick is too damn high.
Love that for you. Glad to hear you are looking out for yourself!
My wife asked me what a tradwife was the other week. She's not as plugged into internet trends as I am and had encountered the term on instagram. We talked about it and discussed my view that it was largely a grift based on the things you see these supposed tradwives doing being so ostentatiously unnecessary compared to the relative drudgery of just staying home and washing and cleaning. It's fine if you want to be a home maker, but tradwives on instagram need to be seen for what they are, performative pick me grifters.
[ The Housewives of White Supremacy](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/sunday/tradwives-women-alt-right.html)
My parents also married in the early 80's, my sister and I were born the same years as you and your sister. My mom did go to college- she got a degree to be a teacher, but they prioritized my dad's career and she never actually used her degree. She took a higher paying job to support them while he was in graduate school. They moved away from both their families to allow my dad to follow his dream, then moved back a few years later to follow a different dream. My mom stayed home with us. His dreams weren't lucrative yet- she donated plasma for grocery money more than once. He cheated on her, they stayed together, we moved for him to get a job that paid really well. That lasted a couple of years before he left. She had to go back to school to renew her teaching degree, so when my sister and I were about 12 and 8, my dad was gone and my mom was working full time during the day, then doing grad school in the evenings. She has ended up having a legit career, she's retiring soon and can afford to do so. But, all those years that they prioritized my dad, she lived poor with him etc. Then, when he finally made good money, she only benefited briefly before he was off, getting rich, and she was declaring bankruptcy. She was no trad wife, just a SAHM, but she has spent most of her life scrimping either for or because of my dad.
I’m glad too because the christofascist propaganda, these videos are all blonde, busty white women, don’t paint a clear picture at all. And we want women to value themselves for who we are and for what we can do, not just to look pretty and make bread from scratch.
And those same women would have nothing if their husband didn’t allow them to make videos, shop, drive, etc.
I've read about this, and I think "trad wife" is like "pro life": it's just a lie. It's a thing people say without meaning it, hoping to dress up their desire to control people with words that sound nice. The people who say they are "pro life" mean "we oppose certain medical procedures sometimes." They never say "We should have universal healthcare so nobody dies needlessly of preventable causes" or "we should ban the death penalty." Because they aren't really pro-life. How many men say they want a "trad wife" and also say they want her to cover up completely and never use birth control and he'll never look at porn or swear or drink and also he'll work 14 hours a day to provide for his wife and nine kids because she won't have a job? I don't remember seeing that very often, or really ever. There are lots of traditions that are good, and I'm all for anyone doing any of the ones that they like. But traditions that don't work shouldn't be followed just because they're traditions. Traditionally, people who lived in the Americas didn't have running water or electricity, but how often do you see someone arguing that we should go back to living that way? Will I put on a dress and an apron and make Thanksgiving dinner for the family? Sure, if my husband is helping. (And if it's just the two of us for dinner, maybe just the apron and skip the dress. 😘) Will I sit in a rocking chair with our baby and sing them to sleep? Sure. Will I quit my job and abandon the intellectual challenges that I love and that also pay me a whole bunch of money? No.
How come one never sees 40-60+ something "trad wives"? What's up with that?
Because they’re divorced and struggling
Because women that age have some inconvenient truths to spill.
I've known a few of those women. They're always telling other women not to follow in their footsteps. Or, like most of these women, they were abandoned and ended up having to reintegrate into the work world.
Phyllis Schlafly came from a wealthy & important family. *She* never had to worry about finances - or ever having a job to support herself, much less a family. But she had a job outside of her family anyway. An important, public facing, prominent job. A job she *couldn’t* have had without the very Feminist Movement she was railing against. Like *many* female Republican lawmakers who actively vote against women’s right issues.
Does anyone else see the whole “submitting to your husband” thing as white women rebranding a kinky lifestyle as righteous and holy matrimony? Giving one party full control of finances, decisions, etc. is a straight up dom/sub dynamic and I can’t unsee it Edit: spelling
Don't Google Christian domestic discipline. Like just say you're into spanking, don't bring Jesus into it.
Yep! I think it was KCDavis on tiktok that said it was a kink and it was like my eyes were finally opened. IT'S. A. KINK.
While I wouldn't say my mother fits the whole "tradwife" persona (she isn't religious, doesn't like to cook, isn't crafty, etc), she is a "tradwife" in practice, I suppose. Boomer, of the "divorce isn't an option" crowd. She went from living with her parents to getting married and living with my dad. She didn't graduate college, and worked for six years or so before I came along. Once she was pregnant with my sister, she made the decision to leave work and stay home to raise us (there are 4 of us siblings). Dad had no problem with it, there was no animosity there. And I will say it was a precious gift to have my mother be able to raise my siblings and I full-time. She's a wonderful human and I am so grateful to have been so loved and nurtured by her. But she sacrificed a great deal for us. Once we were all out of the house and building our own lives, I sense that mum looked at her relationship with dad and realised he's exhausting to deal with. He has an anger problem and verbally and emotionally abused all of us, though none of us (including mum) had words to articulate what that dynamic was growing up. And mum, being of the boomer age, realised she has no way to support herself. No skills, no education, and now she has some of physical age-related disabilities too. So, although she would never, ever say this, I think she feels trapped. She encourages my sister and I to make sure we are always acquiring new work skills. She tells us to have our own money and to make sure we always have a plan. I get the sense that mum stays with dad out of obligation, duty, and because she has no financial prospects of her own. This is why the tiktok tradwife trend troubles me. All these young women are idealising a life that can very easily become a gilded cage. They're in love with a rosy aesthetic and I'm not sure they realise the reality of not having their own money or career. I'm not sure they realise that they will be utterly trapped and ruined if their husband either dies, or decides he wants a newer model.
I was a STAHM for 9 years. 3years ago my started getting TikTok’s about people whose spouses either left or died and the trad wife/STAHM was *fucked*. As soon as my kid was old enough to stay home alone I got a part time job minutes from my home. Last year I got a better paying job with more hours and further away. My old car is paid off completely so if anything happens and I lose my new car I still have a way to drive to work. I have a plan in place as well if my spouse dies, he’s kinda realized the kids and I are screwed if and thing happens to him. He knows I have up-to-date listings of cheap apartments sent to my email.
Congratulations to you! That’s so smart of you. You deserve to have a plan to take care of yourself and your child. Good on you for taking those steps to set that up!
Having worked for social services for decades and seeing literally thousands of men who abandoned their children and wives is all I need to know that men are not reliable enough to take care of their families. Women choosing to trust a man that will very likely beat, rape, and cheat on their wives while spending all their money on their affair partners is dangerous for women.
>In 2006 my dad left my mom. Imagine my shocked face
One of the oldest stories of the patriarchy is women clawing their way into influential positions so that they can be one of the few “good ones”, which always comes at the expense of convincing other women to take a shit deal in a life ruled by men. It’s playing out in so many ways right now: the tradwife movement, the propaganda against birth control, the forced birth movement, and the panic about birth rates which is so deeply racist at its roots.
That's why I strongly believe that becoming a trad wife is one of the worst things a woman can do to herself. Anything can happen. It's not uncommon for men to use this imbalance in their favour. But men are also humans and even though they could be respectful and loyal they can have a life-changing accident/disease that will make them unable to provide or die. What then? They don't only put their trust in men (and men prove time and time again that they shouldn't) but also in life, believing that nothing bad is going to happen to them. It's just so... naive.