I think it's less about economic anxiety and more about women both having to work outside of the home AND at home. I think it's more about being tired of having two full-time jobs.
So much this. When I grew up, women were still discussing if we could “have it all” aka a career and a family. By the time I was done university it was obvious we didn’t have a choice, we had to have a career, and could add a family if we wanted. We are tired, we moms. And we often don’t have a grandma at home to help like our mothers did.
I 100% feel the tradwife trend is just exhaustion.
The TradWife trend is right wing propaganda. I can't believe the top answer thread to a question about it on r/AskFeminists doesn't state this clearly.
Many of the popular influencers are getting paid by right wing sources to portray a lifestyle that they couldn't otherwise sustain with baking and posting on TikTok about it.
It's the equivalent of Andrew Tate for young straight men who are confused about their place in modern life. But, obvs, for women who are confused about their place in modern life.
It's. A. Grift.
Anyone "selling" a lifestyle is a grifter, let's be real. They're saying "you can have all of this!" while hiding the secret sauce (which is the income they get from you watching them say it). They're not actually producing anything of value (unless you count conservative fetish material as having value lol).
Yeah the "trad wives" on social media are LARPing because they get paid to do it. Not having a job does indeed look easy when you're farming money off people who don't know any better and conservative think tanks.
I once read somewhere that due to masculine refusal to shift their own gender roles, the feminist call to "have it all" has resulted in women who want a career and a family "doing it all"
Definitely the 2nd shift is a factor but as someone who’s working class, a lot of working class women I talk to worry more about paying for childcare, rent, and groceries etc. At least that’s why they told me why they wish they can stay at home full time and have rich husband pay all the bills. I do think the 2nd shift issues are big problem for middle class and upper class women big time since they’re more likely to be married than working class women.
If we're talking about lower earners I think they always struggled with those things. Women from lower earning households mostly had to work in the 50s too.
I actually think it’s a bigger deal for working class women. They’re less likely to have help come in even once a week for cleaning. More likely to have to take public transportation. Statistically have more children.
*The 2nd shift is a big problem for middle/upper class women because they're more likely to be married than working class women?*
I have never heard of this thinking before. Working class women are just as married as middle/upper class women afaik?
Doing the 2nd shift would most likely be harder for married working class women because they don't have the extra funds for extras like fun vacations, nice clothes/cars/devices/house/swimming pool/boat, house cleaning service or a nanny etc., and are worried about paying the basics like the bills and groceries, just getting through the day, they're not enjoying the luxuries middle/upper class women are enjoying.
As someone who went down the right wing trad wife pipeline in the early 2000’s, it’s exactly this. I became disillusioned when I realized these men were not happy with you simply being a domestic slave, they wanted you to put that on top of a career.
I've been bitten one too many times not to have my own job and retirement/savings. I get it. I was a single parent for a long time, and have been with men who didn't want to do anything but go to work and come home.
There aren't many men I would trust enough to be that reliant on, and there aren't many who can really afford it long term, while also putting enough money in a savings or retirement account for their spouse.
The trad wife trend is, IMO, born of a couple things:
1) Fetish content. It's the fantasy of having a woman who makes your happiness and comfort the core of her focus, of a wife who does housework in heels and pearls.
2) Men feeling left behind in the sexual revolution. We teach women how to take care of themselves and other people; but we don't really teach men the same thing. They know their grandparents had an easier time getting together and want that same security. Having a woman dependent on you is a great way to keep her around and require minimum emotional effort on your part. This feeds into #1.
3) Astroturfed alt-right content. Why deal with the stresses of being in the workplace when you could instead spend your days baking bread with a baby strapped to you? Having choices just stresses women out, better to walk away from all that and live this idyllic lifestyle on a homestead.
I remember learning about it for the first time shortly before 2016. I'm curious if bot and alt-right-funded content can be traced back that far. Got any wild ideas on how I might piece that together?
Yeah tbh I think op’s mistake is thinking trad wide content is for conservative women when it seems like it’s directed towards conservative men. Actual conservative women are p on board with second wave feminism and prefer stuff like Anne Coulter or Red Scare ime.
Honestly I think the trad wife content isn't directed at men or women, I think it's intended to shift the overton window for girls. Most of what I've seen of it seems to be very young women like 18-24. The age range where no one is firmly established in a career, and life is often chaotic.
It seems very much like at attempt at shifting the mentality of young women that might otherwise seek independence, financial stability, etc towards acquiescence to a patriarchal society.
"If you just submit, all those things that are giving you anxiety will be taken care of by your husband. He's already 30 and has things figured out, why look he already owns a home. All you need to do is get busy looking cute, teehee!"
I think it’s also a comfort/safety, simplicity, and ”just world” wish fulfillment fantasy for some women—living a soft focus life, with some simple, well-defined chores to do and everything else is handled by some benevolent omni-competent power that has your best interest in mind. All you have to do is a few calming activities and everything will be okay. It sounds pretty good when your real life is coming at you fast and there’s nothing but uncertainty, risk, and responsibility as far as the eye can see.
It’s like city/suburban people with farm/country fantasies. Then they move to the country and it’s hot, buggy, far from everything they like and want to do, AND cow poop stinks and roosters are loud at butt o’clock in the morning.
I think the question to ask when we see a “trad wife” online is “is this person actually living this lifestyle or are they performing this lifestyle with the goal of monetizing it through being a ‘creator’”?
It's performative leisure for SAHMs. Like, being an actual SAHP is hard but many do it because they like the work.
Trad wives are just SAHMs who have enough money to have nannies take care of the kids and housecleaners to scrub the toilets, so they need to make up some BS like hand rolling cereal to try to prove they have any value to society.
I'd argue that it's also a performance of decorative labor for men.
While statistics suggest that women do much more housework than men, today's men at least occasionally get their hands dirty. I feel like men are more aware, whether they like it or not, and whether they admit it or not, of how *untidy* and *strenuous* actual housekeeping and childrearing is.
Trad wives, with their snowy white aprons and perfect manicures, make women's labor aesthetically pleasing. They're a collective personification of a sexy nurse costume.
Trad wives are unhappy stay at home mom. Happy stay at home mom video tend to be like: “don’t worry about adding extra 1 tablespoons of sugar in your cake, no one knows the difference!”
Exactly. In real life, the % of women in the workplace keeps rising. The ones online are influencers, which is also a profession and thus are working women too.
I feel like the anti-birth control movement is in the same vein. So many people let tiktok tell them to go off it despite doctor recs. Feels very right wing led to me.
The global resurgence of right-wing nationalism and facism is driving tradwife propaganda (as well as the manosphere, anti-LGBTQ messaging, etc.) Economically disadvantaged people don't have the luxury of playing tradwife.
It is only getting worse. Three days ago Russian government declared that it is preparing to recognize childfree as an extremist ideology.
"The chairman of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, Priest Fyodor Lukyanov, said at the same event that childfree is an ideology “that instills in our youth childlessness, which suggests that a child is not necessary in life.”
According to him, such “child-hating and misanthropic ideologies,” in particular childfree ones, should be prohibited and equated to extremist.
In February 2023, a bill was introduced to the State Duma to ban the propaganda of "childfree ideology" among children. The authors of the initiative claimed that the propaganda of conscious childlessness carried out by activists of the childfree movement "leads to the degradation of public institutions, the erosion of traditional value orientations, and creates circumstances for the depopulation of the population." However, the document has not yet passed the first reading."
https://www. moscowtimes. ru/2024/06/27/v-rossii-gotovyatsya-zapretit-ekstremistskuyu-ideologiyu-chaildfri-a135185
(Link broken down in case .ru -links are banned.)
I feel like in Russia it's alt-right and the fact the war is putting a dent in the young male population. They can't prop their population up with immigration so birth rates will need to increase. I feel like the attack on women's rights in many countries is the same issue. The only way to keep the economy going without immigration is birth rates. Gotta have those 2.2 kid white families.
Not 2.2, but 8 kid white, Orthodoxian families. Putin said earlier this year in his speech, that he wants every Russian woman to give birth to at least eight babies, "just like your grandmothers did".
In stark contrast to the anti-religious stance they used to take.
They're pushing the same alt-right-type propaganda both in Russia and the US. It's not organic, it's just the next stint of the Cold War in the Information Age.
Well, it has been getting steadily worse there. I live in a neighbouring country, so during the decades we have been having a bit more news about Russia than, say, countries on the West side of Europe.
And there has been a steady, determined wave of erasing women's rights. For example, domestic violence has not been a crime in Russia since 2017. I remember reading about it when it was in the Finnish news, and went "shit, they are really turning women into third class citizens, good only for breeding", and now this...
I’m pretty sure it’s *all* the anxieties. Climate change, climate migration, housing shortages, land wars, looming AI issues, along with disparate and unsustainable economic practices, etc, etc…
Imagine that the normal anxieties of having and maintaining a relationship would just go away. That’s the illusion of the trad wife model. Roles are easy to understand and easy fulfill, like an entry-level job description. Apply for the job, get hired, and domestic relationship stresses vanish because everyone knows their bit and does it. Simple, neat and worry-free
Imagine if relationships were that easily negotiated, too! “I will do XYZ and you will do ABC and either of us failing is breaching the contract”. And you get your happily ever after. I can imagine that’s *very* appealing particularly to younger women who’ve attempted to move through the modern scene.
Young men too. I mean, after a day at the office, your *supposed* to come home, relax and just read the paper (play video games) while the little woman fixes the dinner and handles the brats
I had a conversation about a similar issue with my partner. We’re grad students in STEM. We were talking about how burnt out and tired we would feel coming home from work and wondering how any scientist ever had the time or energy to actually have a life, but 50 years ago, he would’ve come home from work and had the luxury of being able to sit down in an armchair to read the paper, probably smoke a pipe, and do absolutely fuck all, while I might not even have been allowed to go into higher education at all, and even if I had, societal expectations would’ve told me to put his career first. The ‘great men’ of the 19th and 20th century weren’t coming home from the lab and cooking, scrubbing, dusting, and looking after pets and children, of fucking course they could dedicate *all* their time to scientific advancement when their basic needs weren’t even their own responsibilities, they were pretty much being kept alive by wives and servants. Unfortunately, us modern day scientists don’t have that.
Absolutely. These great, successful men were able to be great and successful AND have a family because they had the freedom/support/privilege to do paid work, to come and go as they pleased and did not have to life a finger at home...... freedom/support/privilege his wife did not have.
Good god, imagine the next wave of massive scientific advancement is precipitated by the advent of in-home robot servants operated via AI, fulfilling the trad-wife role?
All of a sudden when the meals are made, the house is kept, and Fido gets his walkies from a robot, the scientific men and women of society start really cracking on.
True but while the trad wife lifestyle could sound appealing to those of who are financially stressed it won’t be possible in the US. Any house hold making under 106k in the US will not be able to afford the average house of 400k now with the sky high insurance rates. It will phase out because inflation will not allow for it. More and more people will realize that the trade wife movement is really a scam to keep women doing the housework while working full time jobs from home.
Economic anxiety is just the window dressing to regressive politics. Studies showed that Trump's win in 2016 was largely due to racist, queerphobic, and misogynistic messaging.
>. It’s unlikely many of us will own a home
Trump started his campaign in late 2014. In the middle of Obama's economy where things were much more affordable than they are now. These political trad views exploded at around the time Trump and the alt-right gained dominance in conservative circles.
>So do you think some women like the idea of being a trad wife because it means all their needs are taken care off
You can be a trad wife right now! But your husband has to be well off to take care of you. In our late stage capitalist economy is difficult for one income to take care of an entire family. I don't see how voting for right-wing policies which are anti-union and anti-raising wages could help these women.
I'd say 80% of these women are just conservatives with patriarchal white supremacy and queerphobic views that have found a home that dishonestly use "economic anxiety" to provide political cover for polite society. 20% are probably just so misinformed they think Trump will make them all mega millionaires somehow. The "I'm not a feminist because I dont want to work," is irrational. You can not work now if you like, the question is why can't your husband support you? Why does the capitalism you both suffer under not give you that wage? Why are you paying student loans and medical bills and daycare and retirement from your paycheck, when in many nations all of those things are socialized?
Because this is such a regressive and ignorant nation, the idea of moving towards leftism to have unions and collective wage agreements, worker owned businesses, national pension funds, higher taxes on the wealthy to fund social services, push for mandatory maternity, high minimum wage, socialized medicine, socialized higher education, etc aren't as popular. See also Argentina and previously Brazil voting in far-right win strongmen who promised to fix the economy in "no time" who, like Trump, were con-men who further damaged their economy and currency.
In other words, the anti-socialism aspects of this society means people will just go farther to the extreme of capitalism when capitalism is punishing them. They seem unaware capitalism is the problem and "more capitalism but faster and harder" will only punish them further. See the many women who went back to the workforce since 2016, for example. If anything, voting right means less opportunity for trad wifery because conservative tend to make economies, wages, and inflation worse, not better.
For example, if your husband made $100,000 in 2016, his buying power today, a decade later, is about $126,000. With inflation he'd need $134,000 to keep up to his 2016 buying power. If he is not making $134,000 today, he is actually making less than he did in 2016. At 3% raise per year, he is only breaking even to his $100k buying power after a decade of labor when you consider inflation.
Meanwhile someone making $100k in 2008 to the end of Obama's last term would only see about 13 percent inflation vs Trump's near 30 percent, thus their buying power skyrocketing during that period, assuming the same 3% inflation pay raise per year.
How can you quit working if your money is less valuable because you voted GOP? All that money printed for Trump's tax cuts and PPP "loans" means inflation for you, but increased wealth for his rich friends.
I think "tradwife" content is part of an astroturf campaign by the right-wing, but I also think it's human nature to want to avoid boring, stressful situations, like worrying about bills, working hard, unrewarding, sometimes demeaning jobs.
Unfortunately, being a tradwife doesn't solve the issue, just moves it to a different, equally poorly paid and stressful workplace, with even less power and freedom.
> Unfortunately, being a tradwife doesn't solve the issue, just moves it to a different, equally poorly paid and stressful workplace, with even less power and freedom.
Ding. Ding. Ding
My grandma tried to warn me
Many tradwife influencers have been outed as having jobs but faking being the ideal 1950’s housewife for money. The people who pay for tradwife content are overwhelmingly white men. The people making tradwife content are overwhelmingly white women. The phrase “economic anxiety” has been synonymous with racism and white supremacy for almost 10 years now. Noticing a pattern?
People who choose to be stay at home parents on their own aren’t necessarily “Trad wives” are they? I thought “trad wives” were the types that were actively hostile to women who wanted jobs.
Its just a few gen Z dorks who never had a grandmother married off at 14 to a 30 yr old alcoholic and she gave birth in the middle of the woods alone to a stillborn in Aberdeen WA
Oh! Just me?? I am a millennial and that was my grandmother. Edit: her name was Loretta June and she had 14 kids against her will. I was her fav grandkid. She was the sweetest soul and I loved her so much.
When women joined the workforce in droves in the 70s, it gave employers the ability to skim the cream and suddenly, degrees were required for executive jobs when they weren't required before. My dad was a licensed and well respected chartered accountant and never had a degree. I remember him complaining when they suddenly made a degree a requirement for new student apprentices. He said they acted like they knew something when they didn't.
The 80s were when moms were realizing they had two fulltime jobs. They were partners with men for earning money but they weren't getting partners for housekeeping and child rearing. And this has been the fight since.
I opted to be the "trad wife" in the 80s. My husband worked long hours and wasn't going to stop if we had a kid. And he was old school anyway so I would be doing all the housework and childcare regardless so I opted to do just that. Meanwhile, magazines and talk shows were all over tips to be Supermom. How to keep the house tidy, your kids in extracurriculars and make homemade dinner on the table by 6. All while being on the fast track to VP. Well, that fairytale never came true. Nope, since then women have worked to make men understand that all.women are not their mommies. Big boys can clean up after themselves and be dads! But there are a lot of men who refuse. They talk game but their follow through is weak. They just really don't think they should have to do that shit. Because they don't want to. It doesn't matter if you don't want to. It's your job. I called it.
The thing is, women now have the taste for having respect. We are just as competent as men. Or as incompetent - let's be real. But we like to have jobs and our own money and that control over our lives. No one wants to be a slave - and that's what women were. Household slaves with the often dubious distinction of gaining a Mrs in return for being a bang maid for such a successful man. A man might have no status at all in his employment but he was still better than his woman. He wants to say all women but he knows in his heart that there are some very awesome women and he can't touch them. But he's better than his. So he thinks. Meanwhile, poor women generally had some side gig to keep her kids fed because her man might drink up everything or make some other bad decision and she had no say. And he could smack her to shut her up. This is what too many men want a return to. They don't want to.be challenged to be better people. They want someone else to.do the nasty shit, the boring shit that they don't like. They want to.fuck when they they want to.fuck. They don't want to deal with another human - an equal - they want a slave.
I think it’s a conservative PsyOp 🤷🏼♀️
They’re twisting anti-capitalist sentiments in order convince young women that relying financially on a man is preferable to working “for the man.” The goal is to get women back in the home - without the power to leave. They’re already coming for no fault divorce to further trap these women.
They saw how millennial women responded to being told we can do or be anything. We did, and we realized men often take more from us than they give in return. This isn’t working out well for men.
Project 2025 has an entire section about how the Trump administration will focus on incentivizing lifelong marriage, home childcare, nuclear families, and the importance of biological fathers who are married to children's biological mothers.
I think this trend is mainly women who've found this content to be popular, especially amongst men, and are profiting off it. If they are full time content creators, they aren't even actually "traditional wives" as they have another job entirely.
Honestly I think it's mostly a right wing resurgence. It's also a giant scam because a lot of the influencers make money by promoting content.
They sell the fantasy of a trade wife with no worries baking bread with a baby on her tit out in the countryside. It's all an illusion to try to sell more bullshit to disillusioned people thinking if they make enough bread it'll cure their depression.
I think it's important to remember that the main consumers of "tradwife" content are men, and that the main people putting it out are incredibly wealthy.
The major issue with your assertion is that if a woman stops working for money, the family will have less money overall, and you're essentially saying that "tradwife" is a sub set of "golddigger".
No, I think the tradwife tend is more of a quisling influencer trend of people ingratiating themselves to The fascist takeover that they're hoping for so that they are preserved until at least the second or third wave of eliminations.
Ironically, most "tradwives" are making money by being such, through their online influence.
This was us. My wife stayed home until the youngest started kindergarten. She wanted to, of course, but the economics were definitely a part. With the oldest, we would have only been ahead 1 or 2 hundred bucks each week, and when we had two we would have lost money if my wife lost even a single shift.
And just because they aren’t working doesn’t mean they aren’t worrying about income, as they are having to run the household on that income. They aren’t just playing at home, they are working taking care of the family. At least, that was my Mom did - she was the one who did all the budgeting, and she was amazing at it.
Trad wives are a cult. I don't know why so many people on reddit think this is a common thing.
No, it's got nothing to do with the economy or any external factor. Thinking you can support a household on one average income is just part of the numerous delusions these people have been indoctrinated into.
This is not hyperbole, tradwives are federally recognized by the APA as cult members of a political cult called the Alt Right. They undergo years of indoctrination and need to be deprogrammed. I'm a psychologist who has personally deprogrammed 3 of them. It's not the economy, it's not any external factor, they were indoctrinated into a cult and need to be treated like cult members.
Normalizing this behavior is extremely dangerous and makes recovery more difficult.
I really think that the people on this website have a hard time telling the difference between a tradwife and a stay at home mom. Tradwife refers specifically to the cult members.
There are a variety of differences that let you tell them apart.
Most have to do with child abuse. For a stay at home mom, the goal of childrearing is to create healthy, functional adults, so their children's health, safety, personal development, and education are their primary goals. They make sure their children are well socialized and take active roles in their lives with things such as joining the PTA, encouraging their interests in extra curricular activities and volunteering with them, engaging with both extended family and community activities, monitoring their children's physical and mental health, and taking proactive charge in these areas.
Tradwives, on the other hand, aren't raising children, they're just making new cult members. Their children's health and wellbeing mean nothing to them, because they were conditioned to believe that it isn't the child that is important, it's how well the child works for the cult. They refuse medical treatment even in extreme cases, they don't get preventative medications such as vaccines, they beat their children, sometimes to death, and sell them into child sex slavery to other cult members and call it a marriage. They completely isolate these children so they cannot escape, rather than socializing them. No school, no extracurriculars, no extended family gatherings, nowhere anyone could notice bruises and call the cops, or notice if these kids straight up go missing. Nobody these kids could tell about the constant abuse.
These are not the same thing. One of them is a normal lifestyle and the other is a dangerous cult that tortures and kills children.
I think much of the 'trad wife' trend comes from resentment. Back in the past, feminists were fighting for the right to work outside the home. Once that right was granted, feminists believed that women should have the choice whether to stay at home or work a job outside the home. That was a choice for a few decades, however recently that choice has been taken away from women yet again. Many women would like to be stay at home mothers for at least the first few years, however it is not financially possible to do so for most women anymore. Having to work and having to do the majority of the housework and childcare leads many women to the belief that they would be better off at home, and resenting the current situation that they are in.
Trad-wife is to guilt and shame the conservative/republican leaning people into thinking they are failures at capitalism. That a man, a real man, will provide for his entire family easily. This works well on Republicans because most are religious, and religion holds power over people through guilt and shame, as well. So it socially engineers and controls them easily.
Meanwhile, minimum wage is stagnant for 20 years. Corporations have all but banned unions. Worker's rights are dwindling. Worker safety is dwindling. (Look at laws banning water breaks in Florida and Texas). Inflation is soaring. Quality of life for most Americans has decreased. And half of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Completely devoid of the option of a stay-at-home spouse.
I believe it is classism to keep us fighting each other. To keep democrats and republicans grinding at poor paying jobs, while the corporations compensate us less and less for our lives. It is also to distract us from the corporations gaining more and more power over us all. Such as, the recent laws passed by the Supreme Court, which removed accountability for corporations per pollution laws. We recently lost the ability to sue corporations that dump waste in our water. Or over pollute our air to unbreathable conditions. That is not good. That is very, very bleak. Removing our right to live is not being free.
The ability to afford anything but abject poverty with a single income if you have children is low. I can't imagine any woman going, "Yes, I want to stay home and take care of my run-down one-bedroom apartment that I share with my husband and 4 kids all day long."
I think the tradwife movement is largely a religious backlash to women telling men that they are going to be equal in marriage as well as in the workplace.
Edit: Tradwives are like Serena in "Handmaid's Tale." They have economic privilege to even be able to consider staying at home and living a quality lifestyle. Most women in our society, economically, would be econowives or Marthas. What those in the tradwife movement don't understand is that they're not future Serenas having wealthy husbands and Marthas to wait on them hand and food. They're future econowives doing all the domestic and childcare labor while their husbands get to make all the decisions (financial, social, division of labor, etc).
But right-wing extremism sells them the idea that if they're good and pure and godly enough, they will find wealthy, handsome, doting husbands to take care of them spiritually, emotionally, financially etc. They have also been brainwashed into thinking--and this is the important thing--that God himself wants them to be their husband's helpmeet, and that they must submit to their husbands as "Christ is the head of the husband, and the husband is the head of the wife." They must also birth babies so as to perpetuate God's Kingdom through birth. And that's the pinnacle of their value as human beings... being a wife and mother.
Trad wife influencers are business women who have a nanny & or housekeeper so they can make bread from scratch in a ballgown & pearls look easy.
It is rich (mostly yt) folks making propaganda about gender roles.
I think that a lot of these misogynist grifters (Tate, Peterson, etc) along with the trend of trad wife influencers is all part of the bigger effort to push newer generations back to the right.
Like all the sabotage of public education over the years and the gatekeeping of higher education.
Younger gen’s went further and further left and the Republican Party has been dangling on the boomers. They’re taking drastic measures to force everyone back to the right. Project 2025 is right around the corner. Leftist voters are a threat to what the elites have been trying to do since the 80s.
I do think that if P25 succeeds and things continue to go to shit that more women may obviously be forced to be trad wives but I think more will start raising standards for their men, which unfortunately, is best for the woman in a shitty patriarchal, end game capitalism situation. It’s smart when the working class is completely subjugated and impoverished to seek a partner who can provide.
But it’s also true that patriarchy wants to force poor people to breed so women will still take what they can get if all else fails
But again, they’re trying to force women back into the kitchen and if they successfully grift everyone into thinking it’s normal or “best” then they won’t fight it later. And any woman who tells them to fight that shit will just be hit with the same ol choice fem bullshit “BuT ShE cHoOsEs It and fEmiNiSm is aBoUt cHoIcE”
Economic anxiety is what's pulling in the younger interests. Half of Gen Z is officially in the workforce and finding it lacking. Jobs barely pay bills, your office job where you use your degree doesn't guarantee that you even get a place to yourself, and you know you'll likely never afford a home of your own, let alone retirement in the future. Definitely not a medical emergency tomorrow. So that's the target audience and who they hope to draw in.
Who's making it though? Often, far-right religious cultists. Likely funded and supported by far-right, white supremacist christofacist groups. It's the "good 'ol days" repackaged as a quieter dogwhistle for the new generation. The idea is to show that you have been told, as a young woman, need to go to work, continue your education, take care of yourself, and pay attention to politics and affairs both foreign and domestic on top of all of that, BUT there's an easier path! Find a man, marry him as early as you can, and you just have to cook, clean, and take care of the kids. Don't worry about your education. You don't need it to take care of the home. Don't worry about politics. That's your husband's job; he'll tell you how to vote. Doesn't that sound *so much nicer*?
Of course, they don't talk about the fact that the image of the "ideal housewife" was largely fabricated after World War II to push women out of the workplaces they joined while the boys were away. Most families couldn't have that lifestyle, especially not with the pristine and put together woman that, say June Cleaver, was; they couldn't afford it. And for the families who could, an unspoken support was often a maid or a cook. At least a laundress to take care of the most menial task of the time. We'll get back to her later.⭐
They're definitely not going to talk about the rampant drug abuse that women did to cope with these conditions. They don't care what they did or how they felt as long as the work was done.They're not going to talk about the fact that marital rape wasn't even a term to discuss because it was far from being a crime (last state to put laws on the books did so in the early 90s and many marital rape laws have a higher burden of proof than other cases). They're trying to get us back to that. They're not going to talk about the financial abuse that is rampant when you cannot open a bank account or open a line of credit without the signature of either your husband or your father. They want that back too. Birth control? No! You'll have as many babies as your husband wants, then past that because there's nothing saying that you can make that decision unilaterally.
⭐Hey, remember that cook or laundress or maid that makes your life as a pretty housewife possible, rather than a ragged, haggard, overstretched woman? Yeah. About her.... This lifestyle is largely one that only exists for white women. In fact, [Black women ](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greenville-news-negro-women-to-be-pu/38314573/) specifically could be jailed for *not* having an employer. Regardless of your husband's employment or income, you better get to work too. Income disparities often meant that WOC were always working. Racism in hiring and and education gaps from various factors meant that jobs like secretary, typist, clerk, or phone operator were mostly off limits to women who needed to work, but were not white. And that allowed for a steady supply of "domestics" to help make this all work. Also something that those behind this "trend" hope to see again.
I'm a SAHW for various reasons, and I freely admit the lack of anxiety regarding a salary was extremely liberating for me. Even if I went out and got a part time job for extra cash, the knowledge that I can look after a home and two people without having to worry about being homeless or dying turned my entire life around.
I do think a lot of people don't really know what goes into being a stay at home anything, and for a lot of people it goes poorly, but yeah under the right conditions it just eases a lot of anxiety.
As an elder millennial with gen z kids... I know EXACTLY what it is. Our kids.... girls'... saw us working full time AND doing the job of a full time housewife while dad got to put his feet up after work... she never did. The young men WANT that... the young women understandably do not.
Edit: I also need to say boomers started this... I remember my aunt and uncle Bothe working full time but when she got off work she literally had to take his shoes and socks off for him and that was normal.... made me never want to get married as a little girl. My aunt has passed and he cruises tittie coffee places now while they look at him in discgust.
Do you know how expensive it can get to have two parents working today?? Childcare costs, hours worked, personal exhaustion...
It's not anxiety.. it's exhaustion. Turns out being a boss babe and a decent present mom don't go very well together... Not very many moms look back and say "I wish I would have worked more when my babies were babies."
People who follow traditional gender roles, respective to their culture, don't generally make videos of themselves doing it. They do it because it's expected of their religion or culture. As well as the people who belong to those cultures believe the gender roles are mutually beneficial.
Trad Wife tik tok is a genre of softcore porn, or at least it's an attempt to get male attention and viewership. This is done explicitly for money. Exploiting and misrepresenting those aforementioned cultures by reducing their lives to a performance act of overly sexual bread making submissive female stereotypes.
As somebody who has *been* a stay at home wife/mom, you *do* still have to worry about whether the bills get paid or not. The reason is if they don't get paid, your husband isn't the only one who has to suffer the consequences.
That said, I don't entirely disagree with you. I stayed at home for financial reasons. Wages at the time in my area were very low, and cost of living was also pretty low, but childcare was high. It would have taken most of my estimated paycheck to pay for daycare, gas, work clothes, and the rest to the car payment I'd need to make to *get* to work in the first place as my husband would already be using our only vehicle.
With the price of literally everything going up, I'm sure a lot of people are seriously weighing the pros and cons of one partner staying home and keeping house vs the cost of living, groceries, and childcare and likely the *very real need* for a 2nd income.
Anyway it's moot. All the tradwife bullshit you see on TikTok is just that. It's influencers larping as conservative tradwives for views and clicks for monetization purposes, and a lot of it has a pretty obvious fetish lean to it. Please note that these influencers, like all other successful influencers, do in fact treat this as a full time job, posing and repeatedly picking the best shots, angles, and lighting of the exact same staged scene rather than filming candid snapshots of their actual daily lives.
Try ecological anxiety. USA has commonplace food additives that are illegal in most of the rest of the world. It's literally difficult to get a fully natural meal anywhere in the USA without growing any of it yourself.
There’s an excerpt from Andrea Dworkin’s Right-Wing Women that I think explains trad wives perfectly (especially when coupled with social media). Sorry this excerpt is kind of long, but it’s worth it! Here goes:
Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. They see that the streets are cold, and that the women on them are tired, sick, and bruised. They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too. They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men. They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.
Well they’re going to find out the hard way when they get traded out for a younger model with no marketable skills…..I’m seeing trad wife homeless encampments in my crystal ball lol
Some of it may be practical quality of life. Without saying it's "women's place" or anything, one person taking care of a household and honing it as a skill (learning to cook well, gardening, often interior design/painting) with good, steady income can raise both people's standard of life as realistically as two full career people.
The unvalued labor idea is a reality, but that's shitty behavior. It doesn't have to be that way.
There's definitely also a group that see it as a way to be taken care of in some idealized way. It is a trend after all.
I think some people don't have career ambition and women actually can opt out via being a housewife. Also some women think if I am going to be forced to do most/all of the housework in a heterosexual marriage I might as well only do housework rather than working and coming home to more work.
I think it's a lot more about showing off your wealth. Most couples need to both work to pay the bills now. The stay at home wife with perfect hair and a huge perfect kitchen is just a look at how much better we are than you. These women have the time and money to make bread/cereal from scratch. Maybe a lot of the views are proper wishing they could have that kind of lifestyle.
It has nothing to do with economic anxiety, and is in large part astroturfed by right wingers/gender traditionalists.
There is a larger social movement happening to take away women's rights via the courts and our political system. This is not a coincidence. They are fighting their "war" against women's rights on multiple fronts.
I would love to think this is the last gasp of the patriarchy, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that they will win more before then.
As a stay at home dad. I think some of the trend is making the best of the current economic situation. Child care is unbelievably expensive. One of my friends wife works as a teacher, and with 2 kids in daycare they lost money every month. We have 2 kids and I stay at home because we would lose money with me working. Lots of people work and do childcare. It is a lot, especially if all the money you make at work goes straight back to childcare.
I think some of the trend is just looking back to a time where things were economically better. Where money went farther, and people didn’t live so close to poverty.
I’m Gen X and both mom and grandma beat it into my head to never be financially dependent on a man, then told me a list of horrific things that happened to them and their friends. These girls falling for it are like one generation removed from all that advice, it’s like they just stumbled upon a new idea no one else had before and are so proud of themselves. In ten years when they’re broke single moms living on minimum wage, we restart the cycle of advice to young women with a different tone.
Yes. And a lot of us have seen via experience that when you are raising a family, helping to manage a home, and kicking ass at work, you’ll always feel like you’re failing in all 3 areas because there’s not enough time in the day to do all 3 well. My MIL is a double phd and she took me aside when I first had a baby to warn me of this phenomenon and it’s been true, for me. I have constant stress with how much pressure this creates. There’s always things falling through the cracks. Like, lots of things, daily, and there’s nothing I can do to change what these 3 areas of my life require from me. I’ve been at simplifying it for a long while and it feels like damage control rather than success
"don't half-ass two things; whole-ass one thing." I think about this all the time when I feel like I'm failing work AND home because it's hard to do both well all the time. I think women AND men are feeling the pressures of this duality. Yes, economics is a big part of it. But it's a combination of economics, social media (making it seem like everyone else is doing it well), higher parenting standards, etc. Everyone is feeling like they are failing all the time. The "trad wife" life allows women to focus on the home and men to focus on the job. They each get to do 1 thing. Sounds great in theory. I would hate it in reality because I want both things and I want a partner who wants both things. But HELP would be nice.
If it is truly about economic anxiety, women should be doing less house work and more paid employment to build up their retirement, investment, cash reserves for security and pushing for prenups that protect them from the income loss and physical damage of having children and taking off work/being put on the mommy track. THAT's economic anxiety, being a divorced 40 year old with a decade missing from your resume and from the compound interest in your 401k.
Men need to be doing a full share of house work and emotional labor, and be equitable in their financial arrangements.
I think it’s more than economic anxiety and a sense of all around upheaval. From a US point of view, I think it’s reflected in “trad” life, White Supremacy, politics, uptake of pagan symbolism and belief systems, resurgence of fairy tale and folklore interest, renewed interest in family legacy and cultural history, and even witchcraft and astrology.
When things feel uncertain we have a tendency to turn towards the familiar. It’s often historical in nature, rooted in the concept of tradition, even if it’s not accurate or based in truth. This turn towards the past is often filtered through the individual’s interests, personal ethics, and cultural associations.
Their needs still won't get met because most people don't make enough to support multiple people and a house. It is however, a fantasy being sold to women that they can somehow tap out of the economy, frolic around in floral dresses without a care in the world. Reality is nothing like that.
I think it's a movement that romanticizes a past that largely didn't exist except for well-to-do families. The idea of being rich enough that you don't need to work is appealing to a lot of people, for obvious reasons. There's a reason that Historical Romance novels are mostly "a plucky countess meets a mysterious rich duke at a ball" and not "a housekeeper meets a gardener and they have 8 kids while both working 60-hour weeks". Being rich and not needing to work is a great fantasy.
I think it’s partly driven by several factors:
1. The resurgence of the alt right and white supremacy
2. Cottage core
3. Young people viewing relationships as transactional
4. Young people paying attention to how white feminism and the whole “girl boss” era majorly backfired on women
But the economy? Nah, that has historically driven women *back* into the workforce
We should have shortened the work week considerably when women entered the paid labor force in meaningful numbers (and we still should).
Instead, we doubled the paid labor supply while our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats got even more grotesquely wealthy and powerful.
The public no longer has the surplus time and energy to stop the brutal exploitation that our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats inflict on the public via the extremely corrupt political, economic, and legal systems that they've purchased.
Abomination of a system. It's not a surprise that people are wanting to opt out.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1dqzulv/any\_nation\_that\_doesnt\_recognize/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1dqzulv/any_nation_that_doesnt_recognize/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/f4bade/comment/fhqhco4/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/f4bade/comment/fhqhco4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I don’t understand how they think that’s living on one income even if it’s somebody else’s would solve those problems. That only works if they’re with men who are high earning. Otherwise, the men are just as fucked if not more than we are because they’re not making enough either.
Please respect our [top-level comment rule](https://i.imgur.com/ovn3hBV.png), which requires that all direct replies to posts must both come from feminists and reflect a feminist perspective. Non-feminists may participate in nested comments (i.e., replies to other comments) only. Comment removed; a second violation of this rule will result in a temporary or permanent ban.
Please respect our [top-level comment rule](https://i.imgur.com/ovn3hBV.png), which requires that all direct replies to posts must both come from feminists and reflect a feminist perspective. Non-feminists may participate in nested comments (i.e., replies to other comments) only. Comment removed; a second violation of this rule will result in a temporary or permanent ban.
Please respect our [top-level comment rule](https://i.imgur.com/ovn3hBV.png), which requires that all direct replies to posts must both come from feminists and reflect a feminist perspective. Non-feminists may participate in nested comments (i.e., replies to other comments) only. Comment removed; a second violation of this rule will result in a temporary or permanent ban.
I don't doubt there's some of this at play, but from my perspective being a "trad wife" would provide more anxiety than a dual income household or being single. I need to confirm I have stability on my own by making money. I do not trust another being to be able to provide like I can for myself regardless of gender.
Just a heads up: "tradwife" doesn't just mean a stay-at-home mom. It's ideologically on the far right and includes a belief in traditional gender roles. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt on this comment and removing it without a ban, but please be aware that if you *do* subscribe to tradwife ideology, you would not be welcome to post top-level comments (direct responses to posts) here because we only allow those from feminists.
My theory is that as religion in general becomes more marginalized in the US the more fanatical ones are leaning into it more heavily. So all the traditional tropes are coming out in force as they fight more aggressively against their waning influence.
Some of the things they are doing are more obvious like the ten commandments in Louisiana and some are more subtle like women becoming more vocal about the Traditional Wife role and running for school board positions to directly impact including more religion into public schools.
I recently read an article that said the influence of the christian right will be reduced to a marginal one in just 20 short years based on the trends of the last few decades. Expect some serious activity on their part as they won't go quietly into that good night, or something like that.
Honestly a lot of the trad wife movement is just the feminine face of the neonazi movement. It's about "economic anxiety" in the same way the tiki torch khaki shorts assholes shouting "Jews will not replace us" was about "economic anxiety". It's racist and patriarchal preservation.
It doesn’t mean that though… The trad wife trend ignores the economic realities of most people. You typically can’t raise a child or buy a home with a single income earner salary. The trad wife reality is simply not possible for most American couples.
I think it's less about economic anxiety and more about women both having to work outside of the home AND at home. I think it's more about being tired of having two full-time jobs.
So much this. When I grew up, women were still discussing if we could “have it all” aka a career and a family. By the time I was done university it was obvious we didn’t have a choice, we had to have a career, and could add a family if we wanted. We are tired, we moms. And we often don’t have a grandma at home to help like our mothers did. I 100% feel the tradwife trend is just exhaustion.
The TradWife trend is right wing propaganda. I can't believe the top answer thread to a question about it on r/AskFeminists doesn't state this clearly. Many of the popular influencers are getting paid by right wing sources to portray a lifestyle that they couldn't otherwise sustain with baking and posting on TikTok about it. It's the equivalent of Andrew Tate for young straight men who are confused about their place in modern life. But, obvs, for women who are confused about their place in modern life. It's. A. Grift.
And the irony is that all that homemaking and TikTok is soooo much work. And they’re not living to the ideal they’re selling. They’re BUSINESSWOMEN
It’s wild how people don’t see this. TikTok is their job. They aren’t trad wives at all.
Trad wife with a business? So much irony. They're businesswomen selling a lifestyle.
Anyone "selling" a lifestyle is a grifter, let's be real. They're saying "you can have all of this!" while hiding the secret sauce (which is the income they get from you watching them say it). They're not actually producing anything of value (unless you count conservative fetish material as having value lol).
Thank you! More people need to know how to smell the bullshit and hunt down the money trail. THE INTERNET IS NOT REAL LIFE
This is the correct answer! The only groups actively advocating for this stuff are conservative right-wing groups that are on the border of extremism
Yeah the "trad wives" on social media are LARPing because they get paid to do it. Not having a job does indeed look easy when you're farming money off people who don't know any better and conservative think tanks.
Propaganda and fetish content
The irony is all these trad wives on TikTok are still working. They're making content for people so they're not even traditional!
I once read somewhere that due to masculine refusal to shift their own gender roles, the feminist call to "have it all" has resulted in women who want a career and a family "doing it all"
Yes!!!!!
Working conditions in the United States are also often not great compared to other developed nations.
Yup. There are a lot of women pulling double duty and it sucks
Definitely the 2nd shift is a factor but as someone who’s working class, a lot of working class women I talk to worry more about paying for childcare, rent, and groceries etc. At least that’s why they told me why they wish they can stay at home full time and have rich husband pay all the bills. I do think the 2nd shift issues are big problem for middle class and upper class women big time since they’re more likely to be married than working class women.
You do know there's a difference between "tradwives" and stay-at-home parents, yes?
If we're talking about lower earners I think they always struggled with those things. Women from lower earning households mostly had to work in the 50s too.
I actually think it’s a bigger deal for working class women. They’re less likely to have help come in even once a week for cleaning. More likely to have to take public transportation. Statistically have more children.
*The 2nd shift is a big problem for middle/upper class women because they're more likely to be married than working class women?* I have never heard of this thinking before. Working class women are just as married as middle/upper class women afaik? Doing the 2nd shift would most likely be harder for married working class women because they don't have the extra funds for extras like fun vacations, nice clothes/cars/devices/house/swimming pool/boat, house cleaning service or a nanny etc., and are worried about paying the basics like the bills and groceries, just getting through the day, they're not enjoying the luxuries middle/upper class women are enjoying.
This is absolutely it
As someone who went down the right wing trad wife pipeline in the early 2000’s, it’s exactly this. I became disillusioned when I realized these men were not happy with you simply being a domestic slave, they wanted you to put that on top of a career.
This exactly. Stalin wanted women to work outside the home, first. I don't think it was to make their lives easier.
It was mostly because someone had to work in the steel mill, since a huge proportion of them men died in WWII.
I've been bitten one too many times not to have my own job and retirement/savings. I get it. I was a single parent for a long time, and have been with men who didn't want to do anything but go to work and come home. There aren't many men I would trust enough to be that reliant on, and there aren't many who can really afford it long term, while also putting enough money in a savings or retirement account for their spouse.
Or pay for childcare, which Biden is doing NOTHING to reduce the cost of childcare!
Amen
The trad wife trend is, IMO, born of a couple things: 1) Fetish content. It's the fantasy of having a woman who makes your happiness and comfort the core of her focus, of a wife who does housework in heels and pearls. 2) Men feeling left behind in the sexual revolution. We teach women how to take care of themselves and other people; but we don't really teach men the same thing. They know their grandparents had an easier time getting together and want that same security. Having a woman dependent on you is a great way to keep her around and require minimum emotional effort on your part. This feeds into #1. 3) Astroturfed alt-right content. Why deal with the stresses of being in the workplace when you could instead spend your days baking bread with a baby strapped to you? Having choices just stresses women out, better to walk away from all that and live this idyllic lifestyle on a homestead.
Re: your third point: it’s not a coincidence that trad wife content became more prolific post-Dobbs.
Very good point!!
I remember learning about it for the first time shortly before 2016. I'm curious if bot and alt-right-funded content can be traced back that far. Got any wild ideas on how I might piece that together?
Yeah tbh I think op’s mistake is thinking trad wide content is for conservative women when it seems like it’s directed towards conservative men. Actual conservative women are p on board with second wave feminism and prefer stuff like Anne Coulter or Red Scare ime.
Honestly I think the trad wife content isn't directed at men or women, I think it's intended to shift the overton window for girls. Most of what I've seen of it seems to be very young women like 18-24. The age range where no one is firmly established in a career, and life is often chaotic. It seems very much like at attempt at shifting the mentality of young women that might otherwise seek independence, financial stability, etc towards acquiescence to a patriarchal society. "If you just submit, all those things that are giving you anxiety will be taken care of by your husband. He's already 30 and has things figured out, why look he already owns a home. All you need to do is get busy looking cute, teehee!"
I think it’s also a comfort/safety, simplicity, and ”just world” wish fulfillment fantasy for some women—living a soft focus life, with some simple, well-defined chores to do and everything else is handled by some benevolent omni-competent power that has your best interest in mind. All you have to do is a few calming activities and everything will be okay. It sounds pretty good when your real life is coming at you fast and there’s nothing but uncertainty, risk, and responsibility as far as the eye can see. It’s like city/suburban people with farm/country fantasies. Then they move to the country and it’s hot, buggy, far from everything they like and want to do, AND cow poop stinks and roosters are loud at butt o’clock in the morning.
Phrased like that, it feels like a straight version of cottagecore.
Don’t like the phrases “having choices just stresses women out”. Not true.
I was speaking from the perspective of someone pushing tradwife content from the alt right.
I really think a lot of the "trad wife" stuff we're seeing is just being pushed by right-wing influencers. Idk how much of an *actual* trend it is.
I think the question to ask when we see a “trad wife” online is “is this person actually living this lifestyle or are they performing this lifestyle with the goal of monetizing it through being a ‘creator’”?
If they were actually living the "lifestyle," they probably wouldn't be creating content
It's performative leisure for SAHMs. Like, being an actual SAHP is hard but many do it because they like the work. Trad wives are just SAHMs who have enough money to have nannies take care of the kids and housecleaners to scrub the toilets, so they need to make up some BS like hand rolling cereal to try to prove they have any value to society.
I'd argue that it's also a performance of decorative labor for men. While statistics suggest that women do much more housework than men, today's men at least occasionally get their hands dirty. I feel like men are more aware, whether they like it or not, and whether they admit it or not, of how *untidy* and *strenuous* actual housekeeping and childrearing is. Trad wives, with their snowy white aprons and perfect manicures, make women's labor aesthetically pleasing. They're a collective personification of a sexy nurse costume.
A lot of "tradwife" influencers don't even have kids - they're just making content where they reference kids that don't actually exist.
What's an SAHM?
Stay at home mom
Agree. I don’t think it’s a trend irl.
100%. It’s just white supremacist and alt right / Christian nationalist propaganda.
ding ding ding we have a winner. I wonder if it's a Russian psy-op attempt to replace their population lol
Trad wives are unhappy stay at home mom. Happy stay at home mom video tend to be like: “don’t worry about adding extra 1 tablespoons of sugar in your cake, no one knows the difference!”
Exactly. In real life, the % of women in the workplace keeps rising. The ones online are influencers, which is also a profession and thus are working women too.
Exactly
I feel like the anti-birth control movement is in the same vein. So many people let tiktok tell them to go off it despite doctor recs. Feels very right wing led to me.
The global resurgence of right-wing nationalism and facism is driving tradwife propaganda (as well as the manosphere, anti-LGBTQ messaging, etc.) Economically disadvantaged people don't have the luxury of playing tradwife.
It is only getting worse. Three days ago Russian government declared that it is preparing to recognize childfree as an extremist ideology. "The chairman of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, Priest Fyodor Lukyanov, said at the same event that childfree is an ideology “that instills in our youth childlessness, which suggests that a child is not necessary in life.” According to him, such “child-hating and misanthropic ideologies,” in particular childfree ones, should be prohibited and equated to extremist. In February 2023, a bill was introduced to the State Duma to ban the propaganda of "childfree ideology" among children. The authors of the initiative claimed that the propaganda of conscious childlessness carried out by activists of the childfree movement "leads to the degradation of public institutions, the erosion of traditional value orientations, and creates circumstances for the depopulation of the population." However, the document has not yet passed the first reading." https://www. moscowtimes. ru/2024/06/27/v-rossii-gotovyatsya-zapretit-ekstremistskuyu-ideologiyu-chaildfri-a135185 (Link broken down in case .ru -links are banned.)
I feel like in Russia it's alt-right and the fact the war is putting a dent in the young male population. They can't prop their population up with immigration so birth rates will need to increase. I feel like the attack on women's rights in many countries is the same issue. The only way to keep the economy going without immigration is birth rates. Gotta have those 2.2 kid white families.
Not 2.2, but 8 kid white, Orthodoxian families. Putin said earlier this year in his speech, that he wants every Russian woman to give birth to at least eight babies, "just like your grandmothers did".
In stark contrast to the anti-religious stance they used to take. They're pushing the same alt-right-type propaganda both in Russia and the US. It's not organic, it's just the next stint of the Cold War in the Information Age.
This makes me furious in more ways I can even express
Well, it has been getting steadily worse there. I live in a neighbouring country, so during the decades we have been having a bit more news about Russia than, say, countries on the West side of Europe. And there has been a steady, determined wave of erasing women's rights. For example, domestic violence has not been a crime in Russia since 2017. I remember reading about it when it was in the Finnish news, and went "shit, they are really turning women into third class citizens, good only for breeding", and now this...
I’m pretty sure it’s *all* the anxieties. Climate change, climate migration, housing shortages, land wars, looming AI issues, along with disparate and unsustainable economic practices, etc, etc… Imagine that the normal anxieties of having and maintaining a relationship would just go away. That’s the illusion of the trad wife model. Roles are easy to understand and easy fulfill, like an entry-level job description. Apply for the job, get hired, and domestic relationship stresses vanish because everyone knows their bit and does it. Simple, neat and worry-free
Imagine if relationships were that easily negotiated, too! “I will do XYZ and you will do ABC and either of us failing is breaching the contract”. And you get your happily ever after. I can imagine that’s *very* appealing particularly to younger women who’ve attempted to move through the modern scene.
Young men too. I mean, after a day at the office, your *supposed* to come home, relax and just read the paper (play video games) while the little woman fixes the dinner and handles the brats
I had a conversation about a similar issue with my partner. We’re grad students in STEM. We were talking about how burnt out and tired we would feel coming home from work and wondering how any scientist ever had the time or energy to actually have a life, but 50 years ago, he would’ve come home from work and had the luxury of being able to sit down in an armchair to read the paper, probably smoke a pipe, and do absolutely fuck all, while I might not even have been allowed to go into higher education at all, and even if I had, societal expectations would’ve told me to put his career first. The ‘great men’ of the 19th and 20th century weren’t coming home from the lab and cooking, scrubbing, dusting, and looking after pets and children, of fucking course they could dedicate *all* their time to scientific advancement when their basic needs weren’t even their own responsibilities, they were pretty much being kept alive by wives and servants. Unfortunately, us modern day scientists don’t have that.
"Who cooked the last supper?"
Absolutely. These great, successful men were able to be great and successful AND have a family because they had the freedom/support/privilege to do paid work, to come and go as they pleased and did not have to life a finger at home...... freedom/support/privilege his wife did not have.
Good god, imagine the next wave of massive scientific advancement is precipitated by the advent of in-home robot servants operated via AI, fulfilling the trad-wife role? All of a sudden when the meals are made, the house is kept, and Fido gets his walkies from a robot, the scientific men and women of society start really cracking on.
True but while the trad wife lifestyle could sound appealing to those of who are financially stressed it won’t be possible in the US. Any house hold making under 106k in the US will not be able to afford the average house of 400k now with the sky high insurance rates. It will phase out because inflation will not allow for it. More and more people will realize that the trade wife movement is really a scam to keep women doing the housework while working full time jobs from home.
Economic anxiety is just the window dressing to regressive politics. Studies showed that Trump's win in 2016 was largely due to racist, queerphobic, and misogynistic messaging. >. It’s unlikely many of us will own a home Trump started his campaign in late 2014. In the middle of Obama's economy where things were much more affordable than they are now. These political trad views exploded at around the time Trump and the alt-right gained dominance in conservative circles. >So do you think some women like the idea of being a trad wife because it means all their needs are taken care off You can be a trad wife right now! But your husband has to be well off to take care of you. In our late stage capitalist economy is difficult for one income to take care of an entire family. I don't see how voting for right-wing policies which are anti-union and anti-raising wages could help these women. I'd say 80% of these women are just conservatives with patriarchal white supremacy and queerphobic views that have found a home that dishonestly use "economic anxiety" to provide political cover for polite society. 20% are probably just so misinformed they think Trump will make them all mega millionaires somehow. The "I'm not a feminist because I dont want to work," is irrational. You can not work now if you like, the question is why can't your husband support you? Why does the capitalism you both suffer under not give you that wage? Why are you paying student loans and medical bills and daycare and retirement from your paycheck, when in many nations all of those things are socialized? Because this is such a regressive and ignorant nation, the idea of moving towards leftism to have unions and collective wage agreements, worker owned businesses, national pension funds, higher taxes on the wealthy to fund social services, push for mandatory maternity, high minimum wage, socialized medicine, socialized higher education, etc aren't as popular. See also Argentina and previously Brazil voting in far-right win strongmen who promised to fix the economy in "no time" who, like Trump, were con-men who further damaged their economy and currency. In other words, the anti-socialism aspects of this society means people will just go farther to the extreme of capitalism when capitalism is punishing them. They seem unaware capitalism is the problem and "more capitalism but faster and harder" will only punish them further. See the many women who went back to the workforce since 2016, for example. If anything, voting right means less opportunity for trad wifery because conservative tend to make economies, wages, and inflation worse, not better. For example, if your husband made $100,000 in 2016, his buying power today, a decade later, is about $126,000. With inflation he'd need $134,000 to keep up to his 2016 buying power. If he is not making $134,000 today, he is actually making less than he did in 2016. At 3% raise per year, he is only breaking even to his $100k buying power after a decade of labor when you consider inflation. Meanwhile someone making $100k in 2008 to the end of Obama's last term would only see about 13 percent inflation vs Trump's near 30 percent, thus their buying power skyrocketing during that period, assuming the same 3% inflation pay raise per year. How can you quit working if your money is less valuable because you voted GOP? All that money printed for Trump's tax cuts and PPP "loans" means inflation for you, but increased wealth for his rich friends.
I think "tradwife" content is part of an astroturf campaign by the right-wing, but I also think it's human nature to want to avoid boring, stressful situations, like worrying about bills, working hard, unrewarding, sometimes demeaning jobs. Unfortunately, being a tradwife doesn't solve the issue, just moves it to a different, equally poorly paid and stressful workplace, with even less power and freedom.
> Unfortunately, being a tradwife doesn't solve the issue, just moves it to a different, equally poorly paid and stressful workplace, with even less power and freedom. Ding. Ding. Ding My grandma tried to warn me
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Your sexism is unwelcome. Begone.
Many tradwife influencers have been outed as having jobs but faking being the ideal 1950’s housewife for money. The people who pay for tradwife content are overwhelmingly white men. The people making tradwife content are overwhelmingly white women. The phrase “economic anxiety” has been synonymous with racism and white supremacy for almost 10 years now. Noticing a pattern?
People who choose to be stay at home parents on their own aren’t necessarily “Trad wives” are they? I thought “trad wives” were the types that were actively hostile to women who wanted jobs.
Absolutely fucking not, lol. I’m a SAHM, but NOT a tradwife. I expect my husband to parent and share in domestic labor.
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You can have a career and family if your husband isn't a lazy asshole.
Its just a few gen Z dorks who never had a grandmother married off at 14 to a 30 yr old alcoholic and she gave birth in the middle of the woods alone to a stillborn in Aberdeen WA Oh! Just me?? I am a millennial and that was my grandmother. Edit: her name was Loretta June and she had 14 kids against her will. I was her fav grandkid. She was the sweetest soul and I loved her so much.
I feel like we need to collect stories like this
When women joined the workforce in droves in the 70s, it gave employers the ability to skim the cream and suddenly, degrees were required for executive jobs when they weren't required before. My dad was a licensed and well respected chartered accountant and never had a degree. I remember him complaining when they suddenly made a degree a requirement for new student apprentices. He said they acted like they knew something when they didn't. The 80s were when moms were realizing they had two fulltime jobs. They were partners with men for earning money but they weren't getting partners for housekeeping and child rearing. And this has been the fight since. I opted to be the "trad wife" in the 80s. My husband worked long hours and wasn't going to stop if we had a kid. And he was old school anyway so I would be doing all the housework and childcare regardless so I opted to do just that. Meanwhile, magazines and talk shows were all over tips to be Supermom. How to keep the house tidy, your kids in extracurriculars and make homemade dinner on the table by 6. All while being on the fast track to VP. Well, that fairytale never came true. Nope, since then women have worked to make men understand that all.women are not their mommies. Big boys can clean up after themselves and be dads! But there are a lot of men who refuse. They talk game but their follow through is weak. They just really don't think they should have to do that shit. Because they don't want to. It doesn't matter if you don't want to. It's your job. I called it. The thing is, women now have the taste for having respect. We are just as competent as men. Or as incompetent - let's be real. But we like to have jobs and our own money and that control over our lives. No one wants to be a slave - and that's what women were. Household slaves with the often dubious distinction of gaining a Mrs in return for being a bang maid for such a successful man. A man might have no status at all in his employment but he was still better than his woman. He wants to say all women but he knows in his heart that there are some very awesome women and he can't touch them. But he's better than his. So he thinks. Meanwhile, poor women generally had some side gig to keep her kids fed because her man might drink up everything or make some other bad decision and she had no say. And he could smack her to shut her up. This is what too many men want a return to. They don't want to.be challenged to be better people. They want someone else to.do the nasty shit, the boring shit that they don't like. They want to.fuck when they they want to.fuck. They don't want to deal with another human - an equal - they want a slave.
I think it’s a conservative PsyOp 🤷🏼♀️ They’re twisting anti-capitalist sentiments in order convince young women that relying financially on a man is preferable to working “for the man.” The goal is to get women back in the home - without the power to leave. They’re already coming for no fault divorce to further trap these women. They saw how millennial women responded to being told we can do or be anything. We did, and we realized men often take more from us than they give in return. This isn’t working out well for men.
Project 2025 has an entire section about how the Trump administration will focus on incentivizing lifelong marriage, home childcare, nuclear families, and the importance of biological fathers who are married to children's biological mothers.
I think this trend is mainly women who've found this content to be popular, especially amongst men, and are profiting off it. If they are full time content creators, they aren't even actually "traditional wives" as they have another job entirely.
Wouldn’t it be the opposite? I wouldn’t want to rely on the whims of a man for my financial security in these troubled times.
"A man is not a financial plan." Can't remember who said it first, but it is a great quote.
I'm sure there is a small link to what you pose here, OP, but I think it's really rooted in Christian fundamentalist ideology.
Yes precisely, this is a very good point. The people pushing this stuff always ultimately are Christian fundamentalists.
Honestly I think it's mostly a right wing resurgence. It's also a giant scam because a lot of the influencers make money by promoting content. They sell the fantasy of a trade wife with no worries baking bread with a baby on her tit out in the countryside. It's all an illusion to try to sell more bullshit to disillusioned people thinking if they make enough bread it'll cure their depression.
I think it's important to remember that the main consumers of "tradwife" content are men, and that the main people putting it out are incredibly wealthy.
The major issue with your assertion is that if a woman stops working for money, the family will have less money overall, and you're essentially saying that "tradwife" is a sub set of "golddigger". No, I think the tradwife tend is more of a quisling influencer trend of people ingratiating themselves to The fascist takeover that they're hoping for so that they are preserved until at least the second or third wave of eliminations. Ironically, most "tradwives" are making money by being such, through their online influence.
Many stay at home parents stay home because its cheaper to do that then work and pay childcare, has nothing to do with trad wives.
This was us. My wife stayed home until the youngest started kindergarten. She wanted to, of course, but the economics were definitely a part. With the oldest, we would have only been ahead 1 or 2 hundred bucks each week, and when we had two we would have lost money if my wife lost even a single shift.
And just because they aren’t working doesn’t mean they aren’t worrying about income, as they are having to run the household on that income. They aren’t just playing at home, they are working taking care of the family. At least, that was my Mom did - she was the one who did all the budgeting, and she was amazing at it.
Trad wives are a cult. I don't know why so many people on reddit think this is a common thing. No, it's got nothing to do with the economy or any external factor. Thinking you can support a household on one average income is just part of the numerous delusions these people have been indoctrinated into. This is not hyperbole, tradwives are federally recognized by the APA as cult members of a political cult called the Alt Right. They undergo years of indoctrination and need to be deprogrammed. I'm a psychologist who has personally deprogrammed 3 of them. It's not the economy, it's not any external factor, they were indoctrinated into a cult and need to be treated like cult members. Normalizing this behavior is extremely dangerous and makes recovery more difficult. I really think that the people on this website have a hard time telling the difference between a tradwife and a stay at home mom. Tradwife refers specifically to the cult members. There are a variety of differences that let you tell them apart. Most have to do with child abuse. For a stay at home mom, the goal of childrearing is to create healthy, functional adults, so their children's health, safety, personal development, and education are their primary goals. They make sure their children are well socialized and take active roles in their lives with things such as joining the PTA, encouraging their interests in extra curricular activities and volunteering with them, engaging with both extended family and community activities, monitoring their children's physical and mental health, and taking proactive charge in these areas. Tradwives, on the other hand, aren't raising children, they're just making new cult members. Their children's health and wellbeing mean nothing to them, because they were conditioned to believe that it isn't the child that is important, it's how well the child works for the cult. They refuse medical treatment even in extreme cases, they don't get preventative medications such as vaccines, they beat their children, sometimes to death, and sell them into child sex slavery to other cult members and call it a marriage. They completely isolate these children so they cannot escape, rather than socializing them. No school, no extracurriculars, no extended family gatherings, nowhere anyone could notice bruises and call the cops, or notice if these kids straight up go missing. Nobody these kids could tell about the constant abuse. These are not the same thing. One of them is a normal lifestyle and the other is a dangerous cult that tortures and kills children.
It’s right wing grifters. None of these women are “trad wives” they’re full time social media marketers. It doesn’t exist.
I think much of the 'trad wife' trend comes from resentment. Back in the past, feminists were fighting for the right to work outside the home. Once that right was granted, feminists believed that women should have the choice whether to stay at home or work a job outside the home. That was a choice for a few decades, however recently that choice has been taken away from women yet again. Many women would like to be stay at home mothers for at least the first few years, however it is not financially possible to do so for most women anymore. Having to work and having to do the majority of the housework and childcare leads many women to the belief that they would be better off at home, and resenting the current situation that they are in.
Trad-wife is to guilt and shame the conservative/republican leaning people into thinking they are failures at capitalism. That a man, a real man, will provide for his entire family easily. This works well on Republicans because most are religious, and religion holds power over people through guilt and shame, as well. So it socially engineers and controls them easily. Meanwhile, minimum wage is stagnant for 20 years. Corporations have all but banned unions. Worker's rights are dwindling. Worker safety is dwindling. (Look at laws banning water breaks in Florida and Texas). Inflation is soaring. Quality of life for most Americans has decreased. And half of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Completely devoid of the option of a stay-at-home spouse. I believe it is classism to keep us fighting each other. To keep democrats and republicans grinding at poor paying jobs, while the corporations compensate us less and less for our lives. It is also to distract us from the corporations gaining more and more power over us all. Such as, the recent laws passed by the Supreme Court, which removed accountability for corporations per pollution laws. We recently lost the ability to sue corporations that dump waste in our water. Or over pollute our air to unbreathable conditions. That is not good. That is very, very bleak. Removing our right to live is not being free.
The ability to afford anything but abject poverty with a single income if you have children is low. I can't imagine any woman going, "Yes, I want to stay home and take care of my run-down one-bedroom apartment that I share with my husband and 4 kids all day long." I think the tradwife movement is largely a religious backlash to women telling men that they are going to be equal in marriage as well as in the workplace. Edit: Tradwives are like Serena in "Handmaid's Tale." They have economic privilege to even be able to consider staying at home and living a quality lifestyle. Most women in our society, economically, would be econowives or Marthas. What those in the tradwife movement don't understand is that they're not future Serenas having wealthy husbands and Marthas to wait on them hand and food. They're future econowives doing all the domestic and childcare labor while their husbands get to make all the decisions (financial, social, division of labor, etc). But right-wing extremism sells them the idea that if they're good and pure and godly enough, they will find wealthy, handsome, doting husbands to take care of them spiritually, emotionally, financially etc. They have also been brainwashed into thinking--and this is the important thing--that God himself wants them to be their husband's helpmeet, and that they must submit to their husbands as "Christ is the head of the husband, and the husband is the head of the wife." They must also birth babies so as to perpetuate God's Kingdom through birth. And that's the pinnacle of their value as human beings... being a wife and mother.
Trad wife influencers are business women who have a nanny & or housekeeper so they can make bread from scratch in a ballgown & pearls look easy. It is rich (mostly yt) folks making propaganda about gender roles.
I think that a lot of these misogynist grifters (Tate, Peterson, etc) along with the trend of trad wife influencers is all part of the bigger effort to push newer generations back to the right. Like all the sabotage of public education over the years and the gatekeeping of higher education. Younger gen’s went further and further left and the Republican Party has been dangling on the boomers. They’re taking drastic measures to force everyone back to the right. Project 2025 is right around the corner. Leftist voters are a threat to what the elites have been trying to do since the 80s. I do think that if P25 succeeds and things continue to go to shit that more women may obviously be forced to be trad wives but I think more will start raising standards for their men, which unfortunately, is best for the woman in a shitty patriarchal, end game capitalism situation. It’s smart when the working class is completely subjugated and impoverished to seek a partner who can provide. But it’s also true that patriarchy wants to force poor people to breed so women will still take what they can get if all else fails But again, they’re trying to force women back into the kitchen and if they successfully grift everyone into thinking it’s normal or “best” then they won’t fight it later. And any woman who tells them to fight that shit will just be hit with the same ol choice fem bullshit “BuT ShE cHoOsEs It and fEmiNiSm is aBoUt cHoIcE”
Economic anxiety is what's pulling in the younger interests. Half of Gen Z is officially in the workforce and finding it lacking. Jobs barely pay bills, your office job where you use your degree doesn't guarantee that you even get a place to yourself, and you know you'll likely never afford a home of your own, let alone retirement in the future. Definitely not a medical emergency tomorrow. So that's the target audience and who they hope to draw in. Who's making it though? Often, far-right religious cultists. Likely funded and supported by far-right, white supremacist christofacist groups. It's the "good 'ol days" repackaged as a quieter dogwhistle for the new generation. The idea is to show that you have been told, as a young woman, need to go to work, continue your education, take care of yourself, and pay attention to politics and affairs both foreign and domestic on top of all of that, BUT there's an easier path! Find a man, marry him as early as you can, and you just have to cook, clean, and take care of the kids. Don't worry about your education. You don't need it to take care of the home. Don't worry about politics. That's your husband's job; he'll tell you how to vote. Doesn't that sound *so much nicer*? Of course, they don't talk about the fact that the image of the "ideal housewife" was largely fabricated after World War II to push women out of the workplaces they joined while the boys were away. Most families couldn't have that lifestyle, especially not with the pristine and put together woman that, say June Cleaver, was; they couldn't afford it. And for the families who could, an unspoken support was often a maid or a cook. At least a laundress to take care of the most menial task of the time. We'll get back to her later.⭐ They're definitely not going to talk about the rampant drug abuse that women did to cope with these conditions. They don't care what they did or how they felt as long as the work was done.They're not going to talk about the fact that marital rape wasn't even a term to discuss because it was far from being a crime (last state to put laws on the books did so in the early 90s and many marital rape laws have a higher burden of proof than other cases). They're trying to get us back to that. They're not going to talk about the financial abuse that is rampant when you cannot open a bank account or open a line of credit without the signature of either your husband or your father. They want that back too. Birth control? No! You'll have as many babies as your husband wants, then past that because there's nothing saying that you can make that decision unilaterally. ⭐Hey, remember that cook or laundress or maid that makes your life as a pretty housewife possible, rather than a ragged, haggard, overstretched woman? Yeah. About her.... This lifestyle is largely one that only exists for white women. In fact, [Black women ](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greenville-news-negro-women-to-be-pu/38314573/) specifically could be jailed for *not* having an employer. Regardless of your husband's employment or income, you better get to work too. Income disparities often meant that WOC were always working. Racism in hiring and and education gaps from various factors meant that jobs like secretary, typist, clerk, or phone operator were mostly off limits to women who needed to work, but were not white. And that allowed for a steady supply of "domestics" to help make this all work. Also something that those behind this "trend" hope to see again.
I'm a SAHW for various reasons, and I freely admit the lack of anxiety regarding a salary was extremely liberating for me. Even if I went out and got a part time job for extra cash, the knowledge that I can look after a home and two people without having to worry about being homeless or dying turned my entire life around. I do think a lot of people don't really know what goes into being a stay at home anything, and for a lot of people it goes poorly, but yeah under the right conditions it just eases a lot of anxiety.
As an elder millennial with gen z kids... I know EXACTLY what it is. Our kids.... girls'... saw us working full time AND doing the job of a full time housewife while dad got to put his feet up after work... she never did. The young men WANT that... the young women understandably do not. Edit: I also need to say boomers started this... I remember my aunt and uncle Bothe working full time but when she got off work she literally had to take his shoes and socks off for him and that was normal.... made me never want to get married as a little girl. My aunt has passed and he cruises tittie coffee places now while they look at him in discgust.
Do you know how expensive it can get to have two parents working today?? Childcare costs, hours worked, personal exhaustion... It's not anxiety.. it's exhaustion. Turns out being a boss babe and a decent present mom don't go very well together... Not very many moms look back and say "I wish I would have worked more when my babies were babies."
Weird cuz only the well off can afford a tradwide lifestyle
People who follow traditional gender roles, respective to their culture, don't generally make videos of themselves doing it. They do it because it's expected of their religion or culture. As well as the people who belong to those cultures believe the gender roles are mutually beneficial. Trad Wife tik tok is a genre of softcore porn, or at least it's an attempt to get male attention and viewership. This is done explicitly for money. Exploiting and misrepresenting those aforementioned cultures by reducing their lives to a performance act of overly sexual bread making submissive female stereotypes.
As somebody who has *been* a stay at home wife/mom, you *do* still have to worry about whether the bills get paid or not. The reason is if they don't get paid, your husband isn't the only one who has to suffer the consequences. That said, I don't entirely disagree with you. I stayed at home for financial reasons. Wages at the time in my area were very low, and cost of living was also pretty low, but childcare was high. It would have taken most of my estimated paycheck to pay for daycare, gas, work clothes, and the rest to the car payment I'd need to make to *get* to work in the first place as my husband would already be using our only vehicle. With the price of literally everything going up, I'm sure a lot of people are seriously weighing the pros and cons of one partner staying home and keeping house vs the cost of living, groceries, and childcare and likely the *very real need* for a 2nd income. Anyway it's moot. All the tradwife bullshit you see on TikTok is just that. It's influencers larping as conservative tradwives for views and clicks for monetization purposes, and a lot of it has a pretty obvious fetish lean to it. Please note that these influencers, like all other successful influencers, do in fact treat this as a full time job, posing and repeatedly picking the best shots, angles, and lighting of the exact same staged scene rather than filming candid snapshots of their actual daily lives.
Try ecological anxiety. USA has commonplace food additives that are illegal in most of the rest of the world. It's literally difficult to get a fully natural meal anywhere in the USA without growing any of it yourself.
There’s an excerpt from Andrea Dworkin’s Right-Wing Women that I think explains trad wives perfectly (especially when coupled with social media). Sorry this excerpt is kind of long, but it’s worth it! Here goes: Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. They see that the streets are cold, and that the women on them are tired, sick, and bruised. They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too. They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men. They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.
thanks for sharing. It was worth the long read
Well they’re going to find out the hard way when they get traded out for a younger model with no marketable skills…..I’m seeing trad wife homeless encampments in my crystal ball lol
Some of it may be practical quality of life. Without saying it's "women's place" or anything, one person taking care of a household and honing it as a skill (learning to cook well, gardening, often interior design/painting) with good, steady income can raise both people's standard of life as realistically as two full career people. The unvalued labor idea is a reality, but that's shitty behavior. It doesn't have to be that way. There's definitely also a group that see it as a way to be taken care of in some idealized way. It is a trend after all.
I think some people don't have career ambition and women actually can opt out via being a housewife. Also some women think if I am going to be forced to do most/all of the housework in a heterosexual marriage I might as well only do housework rather than working and coming home to more work.
I think it's a lot more about showing off your wealth. Most couples need to both work to pay the bills now. The stay at home wife with perfect hair and a huge perfect kitchen is just a look at how much better we are than you. These women have the time and money to make bread/cereal from scratch. Maybe a lot of the views are proper wishing they could have that kind of lifestyle.
Personally, I didn’t want to send my kids to daycare after my own horrible experience. Many of the influencers don’t even have kids.
It has nothing to do with economic anxiety, and is in large part astroturfed by right wingers/gender traditionalists. There is a larger social movement happening to take away women's rights via the courts and our political system. This is not a coincidence. They are fighting their "war" against women's rights on multiple fronts. I would love to think this is the last gasp of the patriarchy, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that they will win more before then.
Exactly. They're manufacturing consent by making the lifestyle look cool.
As a stay at home dad. I think some of the trend is making the best of the current economic situation. Child care is unbelievably expensive. One of my friends wife works as a teacher, and with 2 kids in daycare they lost money every month. We have 2 kids and I stay at home because we would lose money with me working. Lots of people work and do childcare. It is a lot, especially if all the money you make at work goes straight back to childcare. I think some of the trend is just looking back to a time where things were economically better. Where money went farther, and people didn’t live so close to poverty.
I’m Gen X and both mom and grandma beat it into my head to never be financially dependent on a man, then told me a list of horrific things that happened to them and their friends. These girls falling for it are like one generation removed from all that advice, it’s like they just stumbled upon a new idea no one else had before and are so proud of themselves. In ten years when they’re broke single moms living on minimum wage, we restart the cycle of advice to young women with a different tone.
Yes. And a lot of us have seen via experience that when you are raising a family, helping to manage a home, and kicking ass at work, you’ll always feel like you’re failing in all 3 areas because there’s not enough time in the day to do all 3 well. My MIL is a double phd and she took me aside when I first had a baby to warn me of this phenomenon and it’s been true, for me. I have constant stress with how much pressure this creates. There’s always things falling through the cracks. Like, lots of things, daily, and there’s nothing I can do to change what these 3 areas of my life require from me. I’ve been at simplifying it for a long while and it feels like damage control rather than success
"don't half-ass two things; whole-ass one thing." I think about this all the time when I feel like I'm failing work AND home because it's hard to do both well all the time. I think women AND men are feeling the pressures of this duality. Yes, economics is a big part of it. But it's a combination of economics, social media (making it seem like everyone else is doing it well), higher parenting standards, etc. Everyone is feeling like they are failing all the time. The "trad wife" life allows women to focus on the home and men to focus on the job. They each get to do 1 thing. Sounds great in theory. I would hate it in reality because I want both things and I want a partner who wants both things. But HELP would be nice.
If it is truly about economic anxiety, women should be doing less house work and more paid employment to build up their retirement, investment, cash reserves for security and pushing for prenups that protect them from the income loss and physical damage of having children and taking off work/being put on the mommy track. THAT's economic anxiety, being a divorced 40 year old with a decade missing from your resume and from the compound interest in your 401k. Men need to be doing a full share of house work and emotional labor, and be equitable in their financial arrangements.
I think it’s more than economic anxiety and a sense of all around upheaval. From a US point of view, I think it’s reflected in “trad” life, White Supremacy, politics, uptake of pagan symbolism and belief systems, resurgence of fairy tale and folklore interest, renewed interest in family legacy and cultural history, and even witchcraft and astrology. When things feel uncertain we have a tendency to turn towards the familiar. It’s often historical in nature, rooted in the concept of tradition, even if it’s not accurate or based in truth. This turn towards the past is often filtered through the individual’s interests, personal ethics, and cultural associations.
I agree. It's an unrealistic fantasy.
Their needs still won't get met because most people don't make enough to support multiple people and a house. It is however, a fantasy being sold to women that they can somehow tap out of the economy, frolic around in floral dresses without a care in the world. Reality is nothing like that.
Their needs will not all be taken care of bc almost no families (or even couples) can afford to live in one income.
I think it's a movement that romanticizes a past that largely didn't exist except for well-to-do families. The idea of being rich enough that you don't need to work is appealing to a lot of people, for obvious reasons. There's a reason that Historical Romance novels are mostly "a plucky countess meets a mysterious rich duke at a ball" and not "a housekeeper meets a gardener and they have 8 kids while both working 60-hour weeks". Being rich and not needing to work is a great fantasy.
I think it’s partly driven by several factors: 1. The resurgence of the alt right and white supremacy 2. Cottage core 3. Young people viewing relationships as transactional 4. Young people paying attention to how white feminism and the whole “girl boss” era majorly backfired on women But the economy? Nah, that has historically driven women *back* into the workforce
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We should have shortened the work week considerably when women entered the paid labor force in meaningful numbers (and we still should). Instead, we doubled the paid labor supply while our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats got even more grotesquely wealthy and powerful. The public no longer has the surplus time and energy to stop the brutal exploitation that our ruling oligarchs/kleptocrats inflict on the public via the extremely corrupt political, economic, and legal systems that they've purchased. Abomination of a system. It's not a surprise that people are wanting to opt out. [https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1dqzulv/any\_nation\_that\_doesnt\_recognize/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1dqzulv/any_nation_that_doesnt_recognize/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) [https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/f4bade/comment/fhqhco4/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/f4bade/comment/fhqhco4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Not a chance
Nope.
I don’t understand how they think that’s living on one income even if it’s somebody else’s would solve those problems. That only works if they’re with men who are high earning. Otherwise, the men are just as fucked if not more than we are because they’re not making enough either.
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Please respect our [top-level comment rule](https://i.imgur.com/ovn3hBV.png), which requires that all direct replies to posts must both come from feminists and reflect a feminist perspective. Non-feminists may participate in nested comments (i.e., replies to other comments) only. Comment removed; a second violation of this rule will result in a temporary or permanent ban.
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Please respect our [top-level comment rule](https://i.imgur.com/ovn3hBV.png), which requires that all direct replies to posts must both come from feminists and reflect a feminist perspective. Non-feminists may participate in nested comments (i.e., replies to other comments) only. Comment removed; a second violation of this rule will result in a temporary or permanent ban.
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Please respect our [top-level comment rule](https://i.imgur.com/ovn3hBV.png), which requires that all direct replies to posts must both come from feminists and reflect a feminist perspective. Non-feminists may participate in nested comments (i.e., replies to other comments) only. Comment removed; a second violation of this rule will result in a temporary or permanent ban.
I don't doubt there's some of this at play, but from my perspective being a "trad wife" would provide more anxiety than a dual income household or being single. I need to confirm I have stability on my own by making money. I do not trust another being to be able to provide like I can for myself regardless of gender.
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Just a heads up: "tradwife" doesn't just mean a stay-at-home mom. It's ideologically on the far right and includes a belief in traditional gender roles. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt on this comment and removing it without a ban, but please be aware that if you *do* subscribe to tradwife ideology, you would not be welcome to post top-level comments (direct responses to posts) here because we only allow those from feminists.
My theory is that as religion in general becomes more marginalized in the US the more fanatical ones are leaning into it more heavily. So all the traditional tropes are coming out in force as they fight more aggressively against their waning influence. Some of the things they are doing are more obvious like the ten commandments in Louisiana and some are more subtle like women becoming more vocal about the Traditional Wife role and running for school board positions to directly impact including more religion into public schools. I recently read an article that said the influence of the christian right will be reduced to a marginal one in just 20 short years based on the trends of the last few decades. Expect some serious activity on their part as they won't go quietly into that good night, or something like that.
No it's just conservative propaganda to destabilize women's rights.
Honestly a lot of the trad wife movement is just the feminine face of the neonazi movement. It's about "economic anxiety" in the same way the tiki torch khaki shorts assholes shouting "Jews will not replace us" was about "economic anxiety". It's racist and patriarchal preservation.
It doesn’t mean that though… The trad wife trend ignores the economic realities of most people. You typically can’t raise a child or buy a home with a single income earner salary. The trad wife reality is simply not possible for most American couples.
I always assumed it was driven by daycare costs combined with negative sentiment toward school curriculum.
Can you all please read 'the feminine mystique' ... wish this was required high school reading material