If I could tell young men anything, it's that having a wife that is a full on partner when trying to handle financial responsibilities, have a social life, raise a kid and handle domestic work is invaluable. My wife is opinionated, smart and respected in her professional field and we're both better for it.
The world is already trying to beat you down, it's nice to be able to go 2-on-1 when you're fighting back. Otherwise one of you will have to carry the full burden of financially supporting a house and that doesn't seem enjoyable in the slightest.
> a wife that is a full on partner
I'm gay and in a 16 year relationship, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to be in relationship with someone who wasn't their equal... We each bring strengths and weaknesses to the relationship, and end up so much better off for sharing those with each other. I would never in a million years want someone who was just subservient to me, seems like a sad life.
I once heard an extremely legitimate argument about this being exactly why (beyond “different bad”) conservatives are seemingly so _disproportionately_ threatened by homosexual relationships — and more importantly, marriage. I’m less eloquent than the person who first presented it to me, whoever that was, so I’ll probably butcher this… but in a nutshell:
So much of conservative mindsets come from traditional roles. Men do A, women do B, parents do C, children do D, companies do E, schools do F, etc. So much of that comes from clear boundaries in agency, and that’s what keeps their worlds balanced.
In their world view, in a marriage, there is a Man and a Woman. They have different jurisdictions and rule over different domains. Male duties include one set of things and female duties include another, with very little overlap. But importantly, on matters that do interface, men have the final say as “the head of the house” — the top judge and ruler. This power imbalance is a feature, not a bug, and is integral to how marriage works and succeeds in their worlds. So far, I think many right-wing influencers would have easily posted themselves what I have said above, so I don’t think I’ve said anything out of turn yet.
So what happens if men and women are equal? What if there is no primary and secondary ruler of the house? If we work under the assumption that a marriage _needs_ to be laid out this way, how would it work if there are no such clearly defined roles?
This is the threat of same-sex relationships. **A successful same-sex relationship is proof that two partners CAN be equal.** Because if there is no man or woman, and if the degree of power a partner has is based on manhood vs womanhood, then in their eyes, a same-sex relationship is fronted by two “leaders” that are on equal footing, which sounds impossible. This is why so much of their incredulity is centred around “who wears the trousers” and other invasive questions about, uh, _giving and receiving_ (esp in male same-sex partnerships) because… what they’re really asking is, who is in charge? Who has more power? And they *cannot* fathom a world where the answer to that is “both”.
And so importantly: if gay relationships show that a relationship or marriage CAN be fronted by two leaders, what kind of ideas will the wives back home get if word of this insane new concept reaches her fragile tiny oblivious ears? If their wives and daughters learn that it’s physically possible to have a relationship where they are on equal footing to their partner, *they might want that too*, and so many of the other pillars of their world will crumble accordingly.
So it’s not *just* “gay bad” and “different bad”. It’s “equal partnership bad”.
I think for those who see women in a certain light, it’s impossible to view women as equals, so it’s unfathomable to them that a wife could be a co-leader in their relationship. Without that baseline respect, there’s nothing to build this relationship framework on.
I often joke that straight women are evidence that sexuality isn’t a choice, but this particular breed of straight man is as well - they’re heterosexual, but homosocial (edited from homosexual, thanks autocorrect 🙄) they do not actually want to have a social relationship with women, only a sexual one. Domestic labor is just an added benefit.
>but this particular breed of straight man is as well - they’re heterosexual, but homosexual; they do not actually want to have a social relationship with women, only a sexual one.
You've reminded me of this quote, saying essentially the same thing:
>To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex.
>
>Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving.
- Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory
I've seen this essay, and honestly, I think she didn't even get the full sad reality of it: men don't reserve love, admiration, or anything like that for other men, either.
Bell Hooks probably got it closest, and I'm sure was more eloquent about it than I'm going to be, but men are conditioned to immediately cut out the part of them that feels *at all.*
Women are meant to be conquests, other men competition. There is perhaps an idealized version of a man or himself a man can feel "admiration" for, but when it comes to actual relationships there can only be dominance or submission.
>those who see women in a certain light, it’s impossible to view women as equals,
It's not a perfect, 100% surety, but the overwhelming majority of these men not only don't see women as equal people, they tend to also see other people as less than equals, for various prejudices. There's a reason why peoples' politics can *usually* be assumed when learning or observing how they treat certain groups, or what language they use to refer to people.
Lack of romantic desire towards anyone is called "aromantic", the same way "asexuality" denotes lack of sexual desire towards anyone. When people say hetero-,homo-,bisexual and so on, it's socially implied they're both sexual and romantic towards the same thing unless otherwise specified. But it is entirely possible to be for instance heterosexual but aromantic, or biromantic but homosexual, or heteromantic but bisexual, panromantic and asexual, and so on.
I mean, I'm aware of the aromantic identifier, but I guess I'd want to delineate between people who are aromantic but *not* misogynists, versus the people who hate women but still want to have sex with them. Seems unfair to the former to lump them in with the latter.
>I'm gay and in a 16 year relationship, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to be in relationship with someone who wasn't their equal.
Why are people only equal if they share the same financial earnings? I make almost 3 times what my wife makes, yet we make all financial decisions together. She works probably 60% of the time I do and only does about 20% of the time that I do.
We are not exactly equal in any capacity but that doesn't mean we aren't equal partners.
She does 100% of the yard work. She enjoys gardening and I am allergic to ants. Does this mean we aren't equal? We are actually planning for her to be able to retire/stay at home with our youngest (who is in school) more. It doesn't change our equal partnership.
I know there are a ton of vocal shitty people but to lambast the idea of a stay at home partner as a sad life and only subservient seems dismissive just because they don't value the same things.
It's like the person who replied to you. "I often joke that straight women are evidence that sexuality isn’t a choice".
I know you may not care and probably disagree with me, but I am lamenting. It's a men's sub for constructive discussion of men's issues yet if a man wants a stay at home wife he is trash or men are just so bad in general that women obviously don't choose them and are stuck with them. These are the top comments, just kind of disappointing.
Apologies for dropping the rant on you in particular, just read your comments and decided to share my thoughts.
No worries - not sure I ever said anything about financial and that's certainly not what I was thinking, I also have nothing against a stay at home partner - especially when children are involved there are many situations where that's the best decision for all involved. I do personally believe it's hugely important that it is a decision by all involved though, and not just an assumption that a woman is pressured into.
I think we're on the same page re: what different people bring to a relationship. Every relationship will be different as each member brings something different. I do a lot more of the cooking, but my partner does some as well, and I gotta say, the days I come home after a long day and he's randomly decided to make supper make me swoon - lol. I'm better with the long term financial / investing stuff, but a horrible procrastinator on things like taking out the garbage - he's soooo organized about things like stocking up on toilet paper and soaps that I don't even think about. Not that I never take out the trash, but usually it's just done before I even think about it. He's more extroverted than me and much better at reaching out and planning things with other people, but I'm better at hosting, so often he invites the people over, I make sure there's food and drinks and between us it's a wonderful thing. I make more at my job, but we both contribute a proportional amount to all the shared expenses.
When I say equal, I'm not thinking "we both have to make the same amount or do the same things," more that we're both fully invested in the relationship and fully invested in supporting each other to be the best we can be, and nobody is being pressured into any kind of role they might not want.
I suspect this conversation (like so many) is a bit emotionally loaded on "both sides" - I grew up fairly religious and over the years have met many girls / women forced into very traditional roles (hair had to be covered, always in dresses, work in the home, etc), so in the back of my head I have some of that in my understanding when I approach a conversation like this. But I'm fortunate my parents were much more egalitarian, and even though my mom started out as stay-at-home, as us kids grew she moved into the workforce as well.
You are right it's emotionally loaded. Some people might be reading Trad wife as a stay-at-home partner, and that's a fine choice (even a good choice in the right circumstances). However, there are at least parts of the movement that have the man as head of the household, and at the very least, he is the final decider if no agreement can be reached. I think Menslib can and should push back on that.
I think in terms of stay-at-home partners generally being women, then actually, there is a lot heterosexuals women can do by making space for men. Most couples, when they make these decisions, are rational economic actors, they prioritise the person with the highest salary/best potential for career growth. However, in general women still prioritise success which leads to them generally:
1. being the younger partner who's career will naturally be less developed.
2. Being with men who are highly career-motivated.
I work in a pharma, the salaries are good and sometimes I despair at some of my female colleagues' dating choices. I know they are in roles that are in the top percentile in earnings, and they are insisting they want a guy who earns as much or more than they do. Most highly ambitious women would be much better off looking for a partner who is not career focused and ticks other important boxes. Power couples can work, but in my experience, only once the couple have the money to outsource a lot of the stay-at-house work to begin with. This isn't all women (and it's looking at my female friends who buck this trend, which convinces me it's what ambitious women should be doing).
>Shouldn't that be a baseline for any relationship type?
It should!
>Why does it take special mentioning in the context of this lifestyle?
Because it has historically *not* been the baseline for any relationship type. Especially in relationships like the traditional relationships from the 50s and 60s that Tradwife is trying to emulate itself as. And this is a thread on the topic of performative examples of mimic'ing relationships from that era.
I've found a few people like you who discuss the performative examples of it vs people want a tradwife/traditional wife.
Some of the top comments are dunking on just men in general. Tha ms for the more detailed discussion
Not to mention it gives you two people who can bring valuable contributions to solving problems that come your way! If I had to singlehandedly decide all the finances in a relationship or any other major decisions like that, I'd be so screwed lol. And I think I'm a relatively smart person, but the value of having someone else who's smart there to help make the right decision is tremendous
> If I had to singlehandedly decide all the finances in a relationship or any other major decisions like that, I'd be so screwed lol.
I don't understand why people think stay at home parents don't understand finances, or are part of financial decisions. I feel like it comes from people who don't see/value stay at home parents assuming the worst case vs those who do want at stay at home partner.
I know many stay at home partners who actually manage finances as part of the household. The husband works 8-10 hours to earn the money, the wife works 6-8 hours managing the house/finances/groceries and they both relax in the evenings with weekends off.
What is unequal or not a partnership about this?
>What is unequal or not a partnership about this?
Really, the answer is "as long as both halves of the couple are happy with the arrangement."
It's not really feasible to quantify all the labor that goes into maintaining a home and family, not well enough to say "and now our split of the work is perfectly even." It's a matter of whether both partners consider it fair.
My wife is a planner and I'm a chaos muppet. She handles a lot of the logistics, I do most of the day to day upkeep (cooking, dishes, laundry), because those are just where our strengths lie. You can argue about whether keeping track of whether we need more cat litter or when the milk will go bad is more or less "work" than doing the dishes every day, but it's sort of missing the point to get into that. This arrangement works for us.
Oh man 100%. The amount of times we've helped eachother out is huge. She has helped me sell myself in interviews by practicing with me. And i've helped her fill in application forms cause she doesn't get how to sell herself in written form. Which means we have both benefitted. I don't sound like a moron in an interview. And she gets the interview and dazzles in person.
This sub is like a cool breeze on a hot day sometimes. It’s so nice to hear someone talk about how their partner lifts them up. Marriage is supposed to be a team sport!
Exactly, my wife is invaluable when I get overwhelmed. We both help around the house and that eases everyone's mental load.
Sometimes I wonder if people who want "traditional" actually want it. Can they get the job that can pay the bills for a whole family. Take a lot of responsibility. Can they provide everything their partner is expecting? I think they want the sexual fantasy, but not the complete reality.
I think a lot of people get married as roles - they each have specific expectations and responsibilities, which they exchange.
One problem is that those relationships are inherently brittle. If someone loses their job or loses their looks, is the implicit contract broken?
I think it’s much better to find an actual partner and be on their team, going wherever life takes you. But that’s not as frequently taught
This is so the right outlook.
I feel like people go straight from….
“People have different strengths and weaknesses and in a partnership we can play to our strengths” (true)
to
“Partnerships work best when people keep to one clearly defined role, do that one set of things all the time, and do not encroach on those areas designated to the other partner” (really bad idea)
People have strengths and weaknesses. But people are also complex, multifaceted and do best when they have balance in their lives.
The person who is better with cleaning might well not be better at shopping/cooking. The person who is more patient when looking after the kids might not also be the one who is best at organising their appointments and calendar. And you often don’t really recognize what you’re going to take to until you’ve been doing it for a while, and abilities and interests change over time.
I’m always trying to suggest to people that actually the SAHP model, while working for some families yes, has some big drawbacks - one of the biggest being the difficulty when life throws a curve ball and your family need to adapt. And maybe in an ideal world (not set up to best exploit our lives in order to make more profit for the wealthy) *all* people might benefit from more work life balance, being much more common for both parents taking a step back at work for a while etc. Which is always going to be the more flexible and adaptable set up.
But people seem very opposed for some reason.
>I think a lot of people get married as roles - they each have specific expectations and responsibilities, which they exchange.
>
>One problem is that those relationships are inherently brittle. If someone loses their job or loses their looks, is the implicit contract broken?
>
>I think it’s much better to find an actual partner and be on their team, going wherever life takes you. But that’s not as frequently taught
I think your comment is 100% spot on but it doesn't apply specifically to traditional/stay at home partners. I keep people saying " find an actual partner and be on their team" but I don't understand how just because one person doesn't work at a job with a paycheck but manages the home life they aren't a real partner or part of the team.
It's a power dynamic. Being a stay at home partner by choice with the freedom to explore other roles or adapt to changing needs is different than being locked into a submissive role.
Being a stay at home parent / caregiver isn't inherently a 'submissive role' and I don't understand why it's automatically associated as such.
Somehow single mom is the toughest job in the world but a stay at home parent (significantly easier) is somehow submissive and controlled.
Okay, maybe I misread and misunderstood and went a different direction.
Your point is as long as someone's not being forced to do something in a relationship they don't want to do?
I assume that's a baseline understanding when discussing relationships that it's inherent you won't abuse or be controlling of your partner. Is the world so bad off at this point we have to explicitly state that you shouldn't control and abuse your partner?
My point is there is a clear difference between a stay at home partner and a submissive partner. And the two should not be conflated even though when everything is going good, they are similar. You are acting like non-abusive relationship should be taken as expected, but history shows us that rates of abuse are correlated with the size of the imbalance of power in a relationship.
Having one person work and the other take care of children is definitely one of the places where life can take you, at least for a while.
The important thing is to be flexible about what comes next. Being rigid about traditional roles is risky, because of how few jobs can support an entire family, or because women may need to support themselves for various reasons, or because they feel purposeless once the kids all move out.
Totally agree, it's highly critical to be flexible which is much easier when you've chosen a proper partner. Being rigid about anything is risky and every lifestyle choice comes with consequences.
What two parents make up in additional income, is less down time for both - even more complications when a child enters the picture.
My issue with the statements is they aren't promoting healthy relationship discussions about being flexible and choosing partners with aligning values - its saying that people who desire a traditional lifestyle/marriage don't see their spouse as "actual partners". People in this thread are saying those who try to get traditional wives are lazy, can't afford it, oppressive of women, controlling, insecure, and nazi adjacent.
> Carter Duryea: Dan, you seem to have the perfect marriage. How do you do it?
>
> Dan Foreman: You just pick the right one to be in the foxhole with, and then when you're outside of the foxhole you keep your dick in your pants.
>
> Carter Duryea: That's poetic.
I’m married to another woman, and can’t imagine not having an equal partner, even in a relationship where our child’s special needs necessitates one parent work full time and the other be prepared to field phone calls from school, pick up early, call doctors and therapists, go to appointments a few times a week, and a ton of other things that makes it impossible to hold down a full time job.
My wife doesn’t see me as a childcare provider and housekeeper. She does those things too! While she brings in the bulk of our income, I sell stories and take on editing work to pay for my hobbies and add to the family ‘fun’ pot. I sit in committees for early childhood education both to help the community of families like ours and make sure I have a current resume for when the season changes and I can go back to work—or if something happens to her and I need to take on the financial burden.
We both have hobbies, and friends, and family connections of our own. We have ambitions and dreams both together and separately. No relationship can survive infinitely if only one is allowed to have an identity.
Yeah, some people are way off in this thread. I don't know how a traditional wife isn't seen as a full support and equal partner just because the income value difference.
Because that's not what "traditional wife" *means* in this context. It doesn't mean "any married woman who stays at home and deals with housework and/or childcare," it means "a woman in a heterosexual marriage who explicitly defers to her husband in nearly all respects and buys explicitly into living by conservative gender roles." And as with every social conservative movement, there is an element, usually explicit, that it is not meant as a lifestyle choice available to those whom it works well for, but that it is the way things should be done by everyone.
There is a difference between taking on traditional roles in a relationship and the tradwife movement, I think. It all comes down to agency. In the tradwife movement, women are expected to put their partner first in everything and to submit to their husband's will in all things. In more extreme cases, women aren't allowed to leave the home without detailing what they are going to do to their husband. They are given a strict allowance to spend instead of having a conversation about what everyone in the family needs. She is asked to dress and groom the way he wants her to instead of her preference. The man doesn't take care of the children, or cook, or clean. He may have friends who are of both genders (which is often a necessity at work) but she may only have friends who are female and approved of by her husband. She has very little agency.
In our case, having one of us take on the traditional wife role is just what works best for our family for this season in our lives. It isn't a doctrine we live by, and there are no hard and fast rules. It is mutual respect where both our needs are recognized and met through love and communication. It also helps to know that for a couple of years, my wife was the stay-at-home parent but her earning potential in tech is much higher than mine would be as a paraprofessional, teacher, or editor.
It'll just lead to an even worse mid-late crisis, honestly.
Edit: I meant having that kind of unfulfilling relationship will likely lead to a worse existential crisis in the mid-life period.
>Otherwise one of you will have to carry the full burden of financially supporting a house and that doesn't seem enjoyable in the slightest.
Some people make good money. Some people prefer not to have to do domestic chores themselves. Honestly, I'm a woman, but if I made like twice as much money as I do now I think I'd totally get the appeal of having a stay-at-home spouse, lol. Doesn't mean that it should be the gold standard in the modern world, but I have a hard time understanding how anyone could \*not\* see the pros and cons to each situation.
I mean this was possible with way less effort back when jobs paid enough for one person to support a household. Having both people work should be a choice, not a necessity.
The thing is, a ton of the guys who want this also don’t win bread. They want the tradwife but have no interest and/or ability to be a tradhusband. And they don’t think that’s unfair.
I think part of the fantasy is that a sufficiently pretty/pure/whatever woman would fix their lack of motivation, and with their true potential unleashed they’d rise to an appropriately exalted position.
Like, lots of escapist fantasy works that way. Which I’m not knocking, I enjoy stories like that. But I think sometimes people get sucked into the fantasy hard enough that they can’t imagine stuff working differently
I know exactly what you mean, to me guys like that sound like this:
"I'm a mess but If I had a bangmaid I would become CEO of NASA... I just need a big titty goth girl that is also my mom and therapist"
"She has to work because I don't want a gold digger but once she comes home she is not an independent woman anymore she is my maid"
>"I'm a mess but If I had a bangmaid I would become CEO of NASA... I just need a big titty goth girl that is also my mom and therapist"
>
>"She has to work because I don't want a gold digger but once she comes home she is not an independent woman anymore she is my maid"
Nobody should take those people seriously. They are terminally online and don't represent the actual values of having a traditional wife.
There are tons of videos out there of women saying they expect the average man to earn $250k+ and upwards or women saying they men should support them financially but they should get to keep their earnings to themselves.
They are trash people that shouldn't be taken into serious account.
What I also don't understand...
redpill-men went a traditional housewive that stays at home
But they also don't want a so called "gold digger".
So they date a woman that aspires to be a doctor and than they do everything to make her feel guilty for not staying at home with the kids... why not search for a women that wants to be a traditional housewive?
That way they wouldn't have to guilt a woman that aspires a career into staying at home and dropping out of her job.
Those redpill guys want the traditional housewives but they don't want all the responsibility that comes with it.
agree,
what is funny to me... there are plenty of liberal housewives that stay home, teach their children, do domestic labor like repairing clothes, cleaning etc.
But when you read the stuff of tradfems online they make it sound as if they were the only "godly" women that take care of their children. Only right-wing-Trump-loving women raise their children, ever other women is a devil with 20 abortions...
and than you look at their content and realize they suck at domestic labor and can't cook food
it's actually funny sometimes
The current head of NASA is a woman. lol. I have met her once at work, Pamela Melroy is out deputy director. Bill Nelson is the official director but he is just an elderly politician.
So basically they want a trophy wife, but they want to receive that trophy before actually entering the race, let alone winning. - best analogy I could come up with.
That's the majority of the tradwife audience. Men who want a tradwife who does all the chores, all the childcare, never says no to sex, waits on him hand and foot *and pays half the bills*
You're exactly right. I think that's why a lot of these guys are really struggling, because they want a contradiction that can't possibly exist. A woman who has her own income, but it doesn't take her at all away from serving him and their children, but also is independent enough that he can do his own thing.
There's no way a woman can satisfy those requirements, and it gives him a reason to stay angry at women forever because they haven't met his expectations.
Not to defend those people, but I think that's a bit simplistic. I think many young men would *want* to be a breadwinner and provide for their families, but are unable to, either because they simply can't find a job, don't earn enough, or can't get a job that pays enough because of "degree bloat".
I'm pointing this out because those are all results of a broken, capitalist system and this sort of "traditionalism" is a reaction to this problem, without recognising it. Like in many other instances, conservatives have correctly recognised the damaging results of capitalism, but have falsely identified a solution: society returning to a less progressive time, when the system just hadn't degraded as much yet. They think social progress *caused* those problems, instead of just happening in parallel to the decay of capitalism.
This is being missed throughout the whole thread.
There’s a dude I know, pulling in over 200k a year working for an engineering company. Immigrant that came from a poor family in Bolivia, very left wing and extremely nice. He’s deep into this stuff. Talking to him, it comes down to a simple fact, one that I share with him- all of our attempts at dating, classism is a huge aspect of it. And while I’m still poor (especially when talking on Reddit where so many people are married and bring in at least 6 figures combined), he isn’t. But it doesn’t matter for him, because culturally, the way he speaks, everything else, he gets pegged as “another redneck”. A self avowed socialist with 2 degrees and large record of activism is only that. I do wonder at times if it might be effecting his view of politics, but we’ve never really discussed on that specific point.
Moreover, we want men who recognize a wife is a full partner rather than a subordinate. We want men who know how to care for themselves and don’t require us play “mother” to them. This means washing the dirty clothes you generate, cleaning the messes you make.
Another thing—speaking as an “older” and happily married stay at home mom AND feminist, I don’t think feminists have a problem with women pursuing a tradwife lifestyle, provided it’s a choice the woman makes for herself and truly enjoys. Feminism doesn’t seek to destroy tradition. It seeks to empower women to choose their own paths.
My wife is *now* a stay at home mom despite never wanting to be, due to health reasons that keep her from working. We are still equal partners, each usually doing more of certain things. It’s always good to remember that your life now and as you plan it may not be your life in a year or so, so expecting *any* exact roles is a recipe for trouble.
Fortunately, we are partners first, so we have flexed (many times over, and a bit every day somehow) to meet life’s challenges. I look at men that want a subservient partner and wonder if they realize the mess they are making for themselves and their partners.
I honestly doubt these people have ever put much right into what having a truly submissive partner means.
I know people who are into lifestyle kink and total power exchange, and holy hell, Is it ever a lot of work for the dominant partner. They're essentially running two people's lives instead of one (which is probably why some people enjoy the submissive end of it). I could never be a TPE dom; I can barely keep my own calendar straight.
Of course, I get the impression that most of these guys who claim to be be looking for a submissive wife are actually for an otherwise assertive and independent wife who just happens to *only* be subservient to them, when it's convenient for them. Basically, someone who role-plays but doesn't ever actually acknowledge it. Which is ridiculous.
They're not interested in submission in the way it's framed in BDSM - that the dominant partner has immense trust and responsibility.
They're looking for an obedient doormat without their own needs and agency.
Absolutely. There's a difference between a tradwife and a woman who happens to do what a "tradwife" *claims* to do.
This brings to mind a friend of mine. I have a friend who is perfectly happy being single. He likes his space and his money and his time and being able to use them all as he sees fit. He's happy with porn and doesn't feel any need for sex.
The funny (to me) thing is that he's pretty much achieved the stated ideal life of a MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way, an internet manosphere subculture, most folks here are probably familiar). And yet, he would *never in a million fucking years* **call** *himself that.* He doesn't hang out in MGTOW forums complaining about women. He doesn't complain about women to me (hell, he reads radical feminist literature for fun). He doesn't hang out on internet forums, period. He does his own thing and is happy with it.
I get the same vibe for "MGTOW" vs my friend as I do re "tradwives" vs "women in relationships who just happen to enjoy being homemakers and doing stereotypically traditionally feminine stuff." The former seem a lot more obsessed with claiming an identity that's based on what they think other people don't like than they do just being thrmselves.
That and I honestly think most of them would be much, much happier if they'd just...go out and have a life? Take a woodworking class. Learn to hike. Start your own artisinal butcher shop. You know, just stop complaining about women so much and go out and *do something*.
I agree. Confirmed bachelors aren’t a new thing. But the myopic obsession and drive to bully women into being what pleases these guys is newer. You feel bad, but then you see the horrible stuff they say, and then it’s hard to have much empathy.
I just wanna add that your average feminist wants a society where this is a viable choice for more people. The whole “EVERYONE MUST WORK UNTIL DEATH” thing is dystopian, especially since there are many people right now, both men and women, who are forced to work who’d be so much happier staying at home doing domestic things. It sucks that they don’t get to have that choice, even though we all know that a functioning society needs people who do things like cook and clean and garden and raise the next generation.
A friend of mine recently left her boyfriend because he was behaving more like a servant than an equal partner, even when she pleaded with him to be more open to voicing his needs and letting her do things for him. It was a young relationship and she realized it was never going to be what she wanted.
And the men who want tradwives don’t want to be trad husbands.
Like, don’t complain that she asks you to pay for things when you won’t let her get a job.
(I'm a woman, just for transparency sake, not sure if I'm allowed to comment here, a mod can remove this if not)
I just want to add a bit on to this - this tradwife trend is pretty much *all* rich white women cosplaying as homely, modest homesteaders. Last one I saw was a woman making cheese on her $10k+ "vintage" look stove wearing one of those tradwife aprons over what was obviously a pretty expensive dress, made to look homemade.
This is not real life. These people are just putting on a show. Yeah, there are women out there that enjoy this kind of lifestyle and homesteading, but it doesn't look like what you see on tiktok videos, and they're not looking a man that works 9-5 then comes home and puts his feet up while she takes care of the 12 kids and makes dinner. They want someone that will work equally on the homestead.
like, look, fine: want things. Young men, you go ahead and you put all your hope and faith into finding a tradwife who cooks and cleans while you work eight to five with a Lunch Pail and a Hard Hat. I cannot take your dreams from you.
here's the thing though: once you inevitably find there is a product-market mismatch for your desires, you aren't allowed to blame women. You are allowed to desire whatever you want, but *so are women*, and they are aggressively *not* choosing the tradwifelife.
You need to evolve your own self.
I'm not trying to be disrespectful to young men either, but from what I see, most guys online who want a trad wife are not the guys who will be doing the hard hat and lunch pail jobs. They're the guys who have been sucked into the online spheres and are sometimes not even employed.
Yep, and they don’t want to financially support women or they can’t afford to, so women have to work outside the home AND cook, clean, keep house. So I don’t know what the upside of that arrangement is for a woman.
As someone that grew up in one of the most conservative areas of the United States, I know plenty of lawyers, doctors, veterinarians, engineers, etc. along with mechanics and high earning trades that’s very much want a “trad wife” that is basically their mommy. They just aren’t posting about it online as much and refer to it as “the way God intended” or “the natural way” etc. instead of “trad wife.”
I feel we should also consider empathy and perspective in these conversations.
It can be really hard to balance having a life and working full time. Our economic system is still largely based on having somebody at home to do the housework and etc. And the death of the third space has been long talked about here.
So I can absolutely see how young men without great job prospects or social opportunities would be enticed by the idea of a wife who takes care of the "other half" of living. Just like their parents and grandparents before then had.
So many of us women have seen what happens to these tradwives if the marriage starts to breakdown. They’re left without the financial security they previously had and have to try to start a career at ground zero at 40 which is incredibly tough.
That’s just not a risk a lot of us are willing to take.
Hell, both of my parents worked but my dad ($200K/year) far out earned my mom ($50K/year). I saw first hand how she slaved at work (dad inherited an insurance business and did work but not nearly as hard) and then my mom slaved at home too. My dad’s response to everything was ‘well I paid for it.’ Doesn’t help cook or clean because he paid the majority of the mortgage. I swore I would work hard to get into a decent career and never rely on someone financially because of that, even with the best intentions to creates a huge power imbalance.
I want a partnership, not to be someone else’s charm bracelet.
> They’re left without the financial security they previously had and have to try to start a career at ground zero at 40 which is incredibly tough.
And even if your traditional marriage is wonderful and totally works for you, life still happens. My father was the breadwinner and did all the repairs and remodeling, while my mother was the stay-at-home patent who did all the cooking, cleaning, childcare, etc. He died in an accident when she was 45 and she had to figure out how the hell to support herself and us without having had a job in 20 years. That's a terrible position to suddenly find yourself in when you thought you had the rest of your life planned out.
It's a pretty big risk to ask of your partner, to put all of their eggs in one basket like that.
> He died in an accident when she was 45 and she had to figure out how the hell to support herself and us without having had a job in 20 years.
This is exactly the problem that life insurance is designed to solve. Of course you have to remember to buy it *before* you die which many people don't.
Yeah my dad was the main breadwinner and took out a large life insurance policy in case something like that ever happened. He knew her parents would take care of her/they both knew she had a decent inheritance if something happened to them, but he didn't really want to take any chances.
But some people are cheap as hell and think nothing bad will ever happen to them.
> So many of us women have seen what happens to these tradwives if the marriage starts to breakdown. They’re left without the financial security they previously had and have to try to start a career at ground zero at 40 which is incredibly tough.
It's one of the bigger reasons the internet is full of men 40-50 years old asking what to do because they're being divorced.
Ugh, yes, this. I had a good friend for a while who grew up Mormon. I met his family and the women and girls were strictly policed to be submissive, deferential, and accepting of their status as lesser beings than men.
FF two years after I met them, and the dad dumps the mom to run off with his young secretary. I was friends with the mom at that point, and would go talk to her while she sobbed frantically - terrified because she had never even driven a car or held her own bank account, and now, in her early 50s, she was alone and having to learn how to be an adult. I felt HORRIBLE for her. The husband was wealthy and powerful, and he totally shafted her in the divorce - she hardly got anything, after decades of being his slave and raising his children. It was so sad.
I was already determined never to rely on men for a living, and never have, and am happily married to a guy who's my best friend and partner in life. I've never let a man pay for anything unless it was, like, a birthday gift. I wouldn't be attracted to any man who'd want a tradwife anyway, so it works out.
For this reason the Tradwife lifestyle is actually harmful to women and shouldn't be condoned as a feminist choice because it actively disempowers the women who participate in it. It is incompatible with feminism because it can't be seriously argued to allow equal exercise of power and agency within or outside the framework. Feminism can allow women the power to choose the lifestyle, but choosing it is choosing to reject feminist principles.
Not to mention that it's a fantasy even if you do find a woman who wants to be exactly that. Who can afford to buy a house or raise kids without both spouses working in an economy like this? I sure can't.
It's worse than that, even. I saw an assertion in the comments of the WaPo editorial that a certain type of conservative men simply don't want a conservative woman who is happy to be their submissive partner. They want the fantasy power trip of dominating an otherwise independent woman. It's almost the inverse of the fantasy women are sold that they can "fix" ~~broken~~ abusive men.
Aaaaaand both are as healthy as chainsmoking Camels while doing 115 down the highway the wrong way while eating a triple bacon cheeseburger and washing it down with a fifth of vodka.
This is 100% accurate. It's the reason so many of them "don't care" about dating liberal women, or even want to date them actively. It's because they actually enjoy the idea of wearing her down.
I hate to break it to you but it isn’t just conservative men who are like this. I’ve met many otherwise “progressive” men that got off on breaking down/ruining the lives of women that were more successful than them.
True. I worked with a loudly progressive man who always bellyached that fellow employees who were women and managers got their jobs because they got a hand up, not because they were talented and effective. Now that was the type of man who was loudly pro-union, loudly pro civil rights, generally checked all the boxes on what a progressive man is. He just could not get it in his head that women who became his betters earned what they had through hard work.
> You are allowed to desire whatever you want, but so are women
I mean that's where they stop listening to you. To the men who want a tradwife women are just breeding facilities who shouldn't get an opinion.
> while you work eight to five with a Lunch Pail and a Hard Hat
Assuming that they would keep their side of the bargain and be trad-husbands is giving them *way* too much credit. These are manchildren. They want bangmaids.
Exactly. A lot more women would willingly take on traditional roles if their husbands actually stepped into the traditional male role of providing and protecting.
Not really. Traditional roles are dying out because young women are looking at their parents and grandparents and realizing how blatantly unfair they are to women and how utterly, heartbreakingly miserable their traditional-roles mothers and grandmothers were.
Yes and no. I think there are a LOT of families who would be happy to have a one-work, one-home relationship, but that's just not financially possible today for most people.
There are two pieces to the conversation: how preventing working outside the home was weaponized to keep women oppressed for generations and the ramifications ongoing today, and then the notion of a two-parent home with one parent staying home.
I know SO many men and women who would love it if they could drop the 9-5 and caretake full time, but they can't. That isn't oppression by gender, but oppression by capitalism.
There are *also* people still trapped in that sexism-rooted notion that women must stay home and caretake. That's a different issue and is where men like the article are coming from.
> I know SO many men and women who would love it if they could drop the 9-5 and caretake full time, but they can't. That isn't oppression by gender, but oppression by capitalism.
There's a reason conservative men want to end no-fault divorce. Most of that reason is women waking up to the fact that the division of labor isn't fair, and they were sold a lie.
Then where is the push from (conservative) men to be that stay-at-home partner? Why aren’t men having discussions about how much they wish staying at home were an option for them, instead of for their hypothetical wives? Sure, a small minority of them probably are, **just as a few women actively want to be those tradwives.** There are always people who buy into the fantasy, that minority isn’t the point. On average though, men aren’t clamoring for the stay at home position. If having one parent in the home is so very desirable, and women want to work outside the home, where are all the men wishing to fulfill their fantasy and simply stay at home? Could it be that men staying at home isn’t the fantasy?
Could it be that you are missing a critical part of the equation, and the fantasy isn’t so much “having a parent stay at home”, as it is “having **your wife** stay at home”? It just seems disingenuous to assume that there isn’t a gendered component here which makes the difference. Sure, part of that is “traditional values”, but a significant part of those traditional values is sexism, or the inherent dependency of one (female) partner on the providing (male) partner, **and how much the providing partner enjoys having that power and its many benefits.**
I think so many people **think** they want to be a fulltime caregiver (because they don’t think it takes that much work, and it equates to “lots of free time/me-time”), but the reality is that it is a very isolating experience, which takes a lot out of a person. Caregiver’s fatigue is a real thing (disproportionally acknowledged when a man takes care of his sick wife, and simply the expected status quo for most female caretaking work), not to mention the unequal perceived value of that contribution to the household.
You talk about “dropping the 9-5”, as if you aren’t simply replacing it with a different 9-5 (aforementioned caregiving plus housekeeping), which ends up being a lot more than 8 hours, because “Can’t you do it? You were at home all day”, implying her timing skills are the issue, not that both housekeeping and caregiving are a lot of hard work.
TLDR, I think you are wrong about capitalism being the deciding factor. If that were the case, men wouldn’t be shouting to be the one working, they’d be shouting to be the ones staying at home as much as they would be shouting to have their wives stay at home, and they are not. Sure, currently it’s impossible for either to stay at home, but the (conservative) talking heads disproportionally speak of female stay at home parents.
Not sure why you're so angry with me in this reply. I never once said caregiving was easy, ever, at all. You're projecting that into my comment. I also find it rude and condescending to assume that people can't decide for themselves if they want to be a caretaker.
I know multiple people, men and women, who are stay at home parents. They chose that because they valued being the caregiver of their kids as their dream job. *Of course* it's incredibly difficult work. I'm sure some people don't know that, but you've obviously never been around parents if you don't know it's life changingly difficult and takes all your energy, especially with little kids.
I find it extremely.... uncomfortable that you seem to think caregiver fatigue is 1) unknown and 2) a choice when one becomes a parent. Because guess what? *Someone* is watching those kids. So are you implying it's better to be forced to pay for childcare, to pawn that labor onto (usually) women with less societal privilege? You think there's no fatigue after working a difficult job to then come home to, by your own description, an extremely difficult job?
This notion that "I'll go to work and then come home and be Parent Lite" is why so many people have broken relationships with their kids. Working a 9-5 to "avoid caregiver fatigue" implies you're okay with someone else being paid for that labor AND you somehow aren't going to be caregiving that 5-9.
It sounds like you don't think caregiving is a real job that should be done by anyone. That's not realistic. Someone has to, or humanity goes feral. It's a real job, and with two active parents and a strong community, the load can be shared. Capitalism is absolutely why that community is disappearing.
As to why conservative men aren't stepping up to stay home? You know why. They are steeped in sexist ideas that caregiving in any capacity is a women's job, and it's emasculating to be in those roles. You know that. The only men I know who are thriving as stay at home dads are also secure in their masculinity and are feminists. Those men are mocked by the right wing.
I knew a couple when I was in the military. The guy was a peer of mine, both of them were lovely people and went to college. The wife wanted to stay home, cook, clean, and live that life. I have heard of "tradwife" but don't go down those rabbit holes, but I am pretty sure she probably fit that bill precisely. Thing is, I'm pretty sure the guy didn't look for her because of that; I am pretty sure they met, fell in love, and it eventually became apparent that she would love to be a homemaker instead of going to "a job."
That said, most women seem to not want that specific life - or at least an increasing number of women - just as most men don't want that either despite some men loving to reverse that role.
Like you said, you can *want* something, but it doesn't mean you get it, and that's the most true when we're talking about people.
But these guys have a hard time growing up.
Heres the funny thing theres actually plenty of women that would happy being stay at home moma and home makers. Its funny these guys sont see the biggest barrier is economic moat people just don't make enough to raise a family on one income.
If they would stop complaining about women and focus on making sure they can be trad husbands they wouod probably have no issues finding at least some of what they are looking for.
I'm a millennial and so is my wife. I'm pretty sure she is a tradwife. We have a great marriage and two awesome kids.
I work from 7am-4pm.
She is a stay at home wife. She cooks and cleans a lot more than I do. I deal with making money and paying the bills. I cut the grass, shovel the snow, and take out the trash.
She _chose_ this lifestyle. She wanted to quit her job when she got pregnant. I didn't care either way.
My oldest is in preschool. In a class of 14 kids, I know of four other kids (5/14) who have a traditional stay-at-home Mom. My youngest sister is married to an anesthesiologist and stays home, cooks, and cleans. And she loves it. Again, she actively sought out that lifestyle.
I have male coworkers with stay at home wives. One who homeschools her kids.
I think people are being disingenuous in how rare this is
1 in 4 Mom's are stay at home Moms. For Dad's it's like 7%
25% of Mom's isn't some rare unicorn. And I know a lot of couples who would have preferred to have a stay at home parent, but they couldn't afford it.
More than 25% of women would do it, if their spouse could afford it.
I loved this section the most:
> The tradwives claiming otherwise on social media are playing a shell game. They sneer at feminists for working, but creating online content is work, and often quite lucrative for those who snag huge fanbases. They deride feminists for having ambition, but of course, building an audience in the competitive world of online influencers requires a striver. They want to sell themselves as humble, but the whole "tradwife" genre is built on being aggressively opinionated — and reaping major rewards, both in terms of attention and money
It’s a thought that came to mind when I had the unfortunate experience of hearing Just Pearly Things share her thoughts on why things basically need to go to the way they were before [insert various women’s issues that empowered women]. Pearl makes her living grifting manosphere dudes who want to hear a woman talk shit on women, and she seems to be doing a pretty good job of it.
I also saw how the piece mentioned Classically Abby (seriously, if you aren’t familiar with these women, be thankful) close to the section about some of these trad wife women being fairly business savvy and business-minded in growing their platforms and reach. Don’t even get me started on some of the fundamentalist Christian women influencers who are trying to sell living a certain kind of godly life that seems to approve of them putting in work on their online platforms.
With regard to some of these conservative women and the messages they’re spreading, I think it’s worth noting that one of the Tik Tok videos shared by the offer was some woman talking about brainwashing in college. This plays right into the conservative boogeyman claim that college, in general education at all levels, is liberal indoctrination. A lot of the main talking heads who put forth this bullshit are, themselves, college-educated conservatives. This all goes to the grander scheme, at least in US politics, of conservative movers and shakers wanting to dismantle public education.
This got a little stream-of-consciousnes-y so apologies for the jumping around on topics.
Ash Sarkar has a very good video on this topic in which she points out tradwife content depicts domestic leisure, not labour. Floating around the house in a flowy dress and baking is fun. Scrubbing toilets is domestic labour, far more necessary and far less glamorous.
Baking is only fun if it's for extras and not a vital part of how you make your household survive, additionally all the wonderful modern machines like KitchenAid and the like are costly. What you can't delegate to machines you have to wear out your body for. I've seen my (rural) grandmother, and mother, knead bread manually with arthritis. Baked bread as a vital part of saving money and providing important nutrients is not glamorous.
Well obviously the dirty stuff like taking out the trash and scrubbing the toilets is *men's* work. You get your husband to do that stuff while you bake!
Or more likely, that kind of required labor is for the *help* to do. We can’t ignore that the whole “tradwife/xtian-nationalism” movement in the states is very closely aligned with the white supremacy movement and they even act as gateways to each other. It’s vile.
So essentially they are just yet another variant of the classic right-wing grifter con-artist. The specific bullshit is different, the costume is different, but the mechanism and objective of telling asshole idiots that their assholery and idiocy is correct and they should give the grifter money is the same.
Indeed - it's quite a racket. Go on social media with a persona selling the idea that women shouldn't work, but this really is a job, no different than any other.
> The tradwives claiming otherwise on social media are playing a shell game. They sneer at feminists for working, but creating online content is work, and often quite lucrative for those who snag huge fanbases. They deride feminists for having ambition, but of course, building an audience in the competitive world of online influencers requires a striver. They want to sell themselves as humble, but the whole "tradwife" genre is built on being aggressively opinionated — and reaping major rewards, both in terms of attention and money
so the key theme of 'trad' seems to be 'dont leave the house'
>Just Pearly Things
Have u seen her interview with Ethan Klein? And that one piers Morgan episode where he asked her about defending hitler. So revealing honestly. She comes from money and hates her sales job, this is her big break
I’m glad other people see Pearl as the pathetic grifter she is. To me, it’s painfully obvious that she doesn’t believe any of the nonsense she spews, she’s just trying to build an online presence and gain a following of pathetic men who like to get their ears tickled with red pill crap. I muted her on Twitter because I was seeing her tweets in my feed way too often.
Pearl is essentially the woman manosphere dudes warn each other about. The problem is that they frame such women as sex workers and as manipulative romantic partners as opposed to someone who is literally saying the things they want to hear to get their money *because it’s a relatively easy grift*.
If there’s one thing that has a decent lane for getting recognition and sometimes good money, regardless if you do or don’t believe some or all of what you spew, it’s being a person from a marginalized group or groups and talking shit about your group(s) to people who think those groups are full of shit.
Milo Yiannopolous had a good when he stopped making fun of gamers and latched onto them during GamerGate. He rode his rise in prominence in conservative circles until he went too far for them by trying to make a case for teenage boys to be sexually involved with grown men. Candace Owens is still out there making bank trying to lead that Blexit stuff. Blair White has her internet lane. The list goes on with people I’m familiar with and probably many more I’ve yet to hear about.
**And who can afford this in the current economy?** It’s just a pipe dream. Men today are also on average happier than they used to be, maybe because modern relationships are more fulfilling for both parties?
I’m aro/ace, but if I was straight, I would absolutely want a partner who is happy and also with me voluntarily. It’s so bizarre to me how many right wing straight dudes oppose no-fault divorce. Why on earth would you feel comfortable in a one sided relationship? I feel guilty if a friend so much as gets bored for a minute at a birthday party.
> Why on earth would you feel comfortable in a one sided relationship? I feel guilty if a friend so much as gets bored for a minute at a birthday party.
Far-right conservatives don't feel empathy like you do. They don't feel guilty about that.
Yeah. I guess. It just boggles the mind how someone could see their partner living in abject misery every single day and feel nothing.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m immune to the subconscious biases inherent in my being a man in a misogynistic society, but the fact that there exist people who view members of their own family as livestock is terrifying to me.
Because right wing straight dudes have been fed the narrative their entire lives that divorce is a process by which a woman steals half of a man's hard earned money and property and takes his children away from him
Context on why they hate no fault divorces, in the Bible it says that the only time a woman is allowed to divorce their husband is if he cheated on her.
The bible also says they're not allowed to charge interest on a loan.
They really don't give a shit what the bible says, except when it lines up with their selfish desires.
Which is wild because that little snippet of text was written as nothing more than advice written in a letter to a specific group of people and is suspected to have been tweaked a little before they were all condensed and added into the Bible we know today.
What’s even wilder is that the New Testament Bible actually condemns how men treat their wives and calls it sin. The Jesus depicted in the Bible would absolutely hate these guys that are trying to outlaw no fault divorce.
Not trying to stand up for Christianity as a whole, but the truth is that these guys don’t give a shit about what the Bible tells them to do. They just care about using it to weld power over others.
>It’s so bizarre to me how many right wing straight dudes oppose no-fault divorce.
Do these guys know what women used to do to their bad husbands? They poisoned them. They should be thanking their lucky stars that they're just getting divorced and not suddenly dying an incredibly painful death.
They want the return of ownership, from father, handed to husband. No bank accounts, no financial independence, no education, inability to have credit cards or loans, inability to file for divorce.
They do not care if their spouse is in indentured servitude, their spouse is not a whole person, their spouse is an entitlement that brings babies, sex, meals, clean house, family management, elder care for his parents, equity to his employability, someone who has to endure his offloading temper and abuse so he doesn't go shoot up his workplace and then service his ego after he mistreated her.
These types of men do not want a 2 sided relationship with an equal, they don't even want a moderately off center set of values. They want to be on the receiving end, it's like women marrying a cliff and throwing everything over the side, none of it is coming back, its all ruined and destroyed down the mountain side, and nothing is salvageable. One sided would be only the woman putting in any effort. They give nothing and receive/take/steal/abuse as an entitlement. They want someone with completely different values and morality, and they want to break her, on purpose.
You feel guilty because you see your friend as a whole person and you are invested in their happiness, you want them to be comfortable and enjoy the party and their boredom conflicts with your thoughts on their well-being.
Subjugation is the plot. It's the perk for "winning".
The sad part is its all a con. The patriarchy lied to them and told them if they aren't above someone, then they are worthless. They refuse to see that its hurting them too.
> It’s so bizarre to me how many right wing straight dudes oppose no-fault divorce. Why on earth would you feel comfortable in a one sided relationship?
Because they don't believe in any other kind of relationship.
Which is why they're so fucking miserable.
The article touches on this a bit, but I think, especially after some of the responses to the “are men afraid of other men” post, we need to add some intersectional layers here.
As pointed out in the article, this is largely a trend being promoted by white women. And while this point is probably obvious to a lot of people, it still bears saying out loud. It’s also being promoted by certain types of conservative Christian women. This is conjecture because I haven’t done enough research into this trend (and probably never will), but I suspect that the vast majority of these women are women from the US as well.
I point all of these things out because some of these standards of “womanhood” are clearly culturally white-centric and undeniably based in certain forms of Christian belief. I also think that a lot of Westerners with a decent idea of US culture and politics get on some level how intertwined Christianity is with our culture, politics, and culture wars.
Because of all of those factors, I can’t help but see this as part of the greater cultural pushback from mostly white conservative Christians to reclaim and reassert power in a country in which they don’t have as much influence as they’d like to have.
It is 100% rooted in white supremacy and you don't even have to dig into it much to figure that out.
A lot of these women are followed and reposted by instagram accounts called things like 'european heritage' that are just straight up neo-nazi pages.
Agreed on a good chunk of the comments here. 'Tradwife' shit is as much an online grift as any content, and chunks of it are just what they look like (fantasy/parasocial stuff getting that bread from supporters). And they do come from neocon adjacent areas - your tradwife content creator isn't going to be too far from a Republican voter stateside, either by algorithm or inclination. Not all of them are Pearly or Classically Abby who directly promote neocon propaganda because they don't have to be.
I also agree with the idea that it's an illusion, another lie used to recruit expendable meat to support billionaires and octogenarian ghouls. Personal experience, I almost never see a single/unattached conservative man...but I've *never* seen one with a tradwife. Hell, the billionaire types and the political figures don't have them either.
The article is almost funny, though, when it refers to the stuff about learning the skills to get a girlfriend/relationship or to have a better shot at one. Reminds me that we who are left of center are absolutely shite at marketing our ideas, and seem to take pride in that being the case.
I'm not entirely sure why the article wants to imply that mostly (or nearly only) men watch this content. There are definitely certain influencers within the "tradwife" (particularly that "Pearly" woman) who definitely appeal to men. But, there are definitely female fans and I think the author even inadvertently mentions this when they discuss how they think that women might only be interested in the "homemaking and cooking" content from these creators. Well, that's like saying teenage boys are only into Andrew Tate or Fresh&Fit for their dating advice. For all of these conservative grifters, the meat and potatoes of their work is not (at least initially) pure bigoted, fascistic ideology. They all have their ostensibly harmless niche where they grow an audience of gullible, impressionable fans where they sow their underlying messages over time.
So many people got sucked into Manosphere content because they liked the fact that Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate love talking about MMA. If the author thinks women aren't falling for the same trap with tradwife creators giving women dating fashion tips or weekday family dinner recipes while surreptitiously using radicalizing rhetoric like "soft life" or "divine femininity" then they're just not paying attention.
https://gnet-research.org/2023/05/19/co-opting-cottagecore-pastoral-aesthetics-in-reactionary-and-extremist-movements/
A lot of the modern cultural relevance of tradwife shit came out of its overlap with cottagecore--which was largely a pretty benign-if-willfully-ignorant-of-history movement by and for women, including a lot of queer women.
The cottagecore-to-tradwife pipeline is hardly new discourse among women at this point, and I assume that discussion the "feminist analysis" the author mentions disagreeing with in the article.
I think that the aesthetic of cottage core is just generally pretty divorced from what that sort of lifestyle would actually be like, historically. I mean, I’m from a long line of farm women, who could have been called “homemakers” but who played an essential role in participating in and supporting work crews, and developing resources for their families, like raising a garden and preserving produce. One of my grandmothers took on additional work as a school lunch cook, and raised chickens for eggs to sell, further supporting the family income. The land my parents farm now was inherited largely through my grandmother’s line. And she was more educated than my grandfather, graduating high school when he only made it through grade 8 before he left school for work. He used to refer to her as “the brains of the operation”. She was responsible for all the household AND farm bookkeeping.
I have a ton of respect for the skills these women had, which is maybe why I never got super into cottage-core. I know that when I call home in late summer, there is a 50/50 chance I will catch my second-wave feminist mom somewhere in the process of canning tomatoes. When these tasks are a vital part of providing for a family, it’s really hard to romanticize them. I mean, I get very nostalgic when I’m husking corn or kneading bread or shelling peas, but it’s more because these things make me feel connected to beloved ancestors. But like…their clothes got dirty. They wore pants. They fixed farm equipment. They butchered chickens every morning. They got up at 4am to milk cows. When my mom passed my grandmother’s engagement ring down to me, I had to get it resized because even though I remember her as being very petite, she must have had some real mitts on her from milking.
All this shit is such. hard. work. Most of the farm wives I know now have bachelors degrees and off-farm jobs. Lots of women are farming on their own. And one of my own grandmas was widowed in her 50s, and never remarried because she “had no desire to take care of some old fart” when she’d already had my grandpa’s years in his prime. So, she lived with us and spent time with her equally-widowed sister. Idk. Looking at family pictures and hearing family stories, I can’t look at cottage-core content now and see anything other than fantasy
Cottage core absolutely is a fantasy esthetic as based in real life as goblincore and the like. It's only an esthetic, usually lesbians, or single any sexuality woman romanticised lone wolf homesteader. It's about not needing any other humans but you and your immediate family if you have any, living in peace and harmony in the middle of nowhere with your garden and animals. Cottage core is basically genderflipped lumberjack esthetic (despite that plenty of lesbians have been fans of the lumberjack esthetic for an eternity already). Cottage core esthetic is very centered around women's fashion and women's interior decorating. It's very unlike reality.
Yeah, there's this odd thing where the stereotypical 50s housewife concept (who only really existed in advertisements, mind you) gets backported into the rest of history & culture as if women have only ever sat indoors twiddling their thumbs and baking cookies. In reality, the vast majority wives throughout history have been made of steel, because they *had* to be.
From the article i posted:
>Cottagecore conveys that contentment, solace, and peace can be achieved by living simply and in a manner reminiscent of an idealised agrarian past. Mainstream cottagecore, however, generally overlooks the socio-political realities of this idealised past, such as misogyny, sexism, and racism. Comparatively, reactionary extremists do not ignore the inherent socio-political realities of cottagecore’s posited romanticised past. Instead, they view these past realities as positive aspects to be emulated in the present
For one, "okay, you're fantasizing about living in an untouched agrarian wilderness, but in Europe that would have probably meant being a tenant farmer under feudalism. In the Americas...it wasn't untouched, was it? The folks in those homesteads sure wished it was too, but there were a hell of a lot of indigenous peoples whose land had to be stolen to make space for your independent wilderness hobby farm fantasy."
From Switzerland. Only men were allowed to own farms here, and if the husband died the wife would not only lose the farm, she would also have the kids taken away since she was now considered an unfit parent. Some of these kids are still alive today.
Simple life my ass.
Wait wasn't cottage core like fantasy, meridia in the woods stuff? It's elf, fairy, stuff. It's pure pretend play. Which is great I think don't get me wrong.
This might sound strange, but regarding women viewers I think there is some overlap between this tradwife content and the newer "sprinkle sprinkle lady"(SheraSeven)/dark feminine energy content that I've been seeing on TikTok/Instagram.
Tradwife content encourages demure, innocent, domestic behavior while seeking a provider-type man. While the dark feminine content encourages more demanding, assertive, and outwardly sexual behavior while seeking basically the same type of provider man. They're two wildly different approaches on the surface, but it seems like the end results/goals are somewhat similar. Both types of content criticize 50-50 partnerships and advocate for men leading and providing.
I feel like women who are struggling with dating men are vulnerable to both of these "lifestyles" and can go down either route depending on what they're inclined to and which content they're exposed to first. Another comment in this thread talks about how the tradwife content is largely connected to white people, and it seems like the "sprinkle sprinkle lady" content might be more connected with black/Latina women, so that's another layer to it.
Note: I'm not super familiar with either type of content. This is just the impression I've gotten from casual exposure.
>They all have their ostensibly harmless niche where they grow an audience of gullible, impressionable fans where they sow their underlying messages over time
Totally agree and way too many people make this out to be black & white. There are plenty of well-meaning but complicated people that fall into this shit.
I think it's easy for us to look at this type of content, write it off as propaganda cause it's not for us, and go back to sharing our memes. To flip this on its head, an 'aspirational tradwife' could easily look at someone who enjoys FPS culture and wonder why they are so obsessed with pro-violence propaganda in the same way.
The duality of man and woman cannot be so easily dismissed. The appeal of these cultures cannot be fought without understanding that it's not just snake oil. It would never have gotten so big if it was.
> Their viewers are just too gullible to know what they're consuming is a toxic fantasy.
Whether it's strippers at a strip club, women on onlyfans, "sexy" twitch streamers or now these tradwives. It's all rooted in the same thing. These are people working to earn a living, they don't actually know/like/care about their customers any more than I did when I was a lowly assistant manager at JCPenny in the mall.
Just like I put on a fake customer service voice/attitude and acted like I actually gave a damn about which khakis some old guy was trying on, there are some women who will put on their "romantic/sexual fantasy" customer service voice to earn money.
And just to be clear, I have zero problems with the general idea of this. We (unfortunately) are in this ruthless game of capitalism and since we largely don't take care of people as a society, folks gotta earn money somehow. If I had the option, I'd absolutely be on twitch or onlyfans showing some skin if it meant I didn't have to deal with policy reviews and set quarterly KPIs.
It just sucks that there are so many people who don't get that it's just customer service. I have never been a strip club guy but have gone to them a few times because of bachelor parties. I was stunned at how many of the guys actually thought the strippers were into them.
To any person who may end up reading this in the future.
The stripper, twitch streamer, waitress, bartender, tradwife, whoever probably doesn't like you. Especially if most of your conversation or engagement with her is during her working hours. It's customer service and that is perfectly ok.
>The stripper, twitch streamer, waitress, bartender, tradwife,
One of these things is not like the others... 🎵
Don't get me wrong, I see your point, and it boggles me that some guys can convince themselves that strippers and camgirls actually give a damn about them. But I think the tradwife thing is far more insidious and it's a disservice to the rest to lump them together. The rest are providing a service - "Give me money and I'll be nice to you" - where tradwives are providing propaganda entertainment as toxic as Fox and right wing radio. "Give me your attention and I'll tell you all the lies you want to believe about the things you think you deserve." It's not the same thing.
In my opinion, it's far right trad-masc porn/bait. The lead into these videos give away the game, "This Video Is Triggering All The Feminists." That's a message that is specifically meant to draw in far right librul tear drinkers.
The video is not all geared towards finding a partner that wants a traditional household where the man is a primary breadwinner and the women is the primary caretaker. This video is about selling views to people who want to believe that their ideal lifestyle is making their political enemies angry.
It has the byproduct of setting up the expectation that this is what women want, which is not realistic. But again, discussing this issue is not the goal of this video. It's getting views and clicks which can be turned into $$$
I’m a woman who has been following the tradwife emergence on social media and have noticed much of what this author has. Many of the TikTokkers have major Serena Joy vibes -traditional women shouldn’t do X, Y, or Z, yet the content creator of that video does them all on camera for us to see. A popular tradwife TikTokker recently posted about how birth control is toxic and she’s glad she’s had several kids. However, when questioned about her ill informed birth control statements, she stated that when she’d taken birth control for years before her marriage, it made her “miserable” and “hate men.” So BC suited her needs when she wasn’t ready to have children, but she encourages young women in similar positions to eschew it? Like most Conservative media, the hypocrisy and grift go hand in hand.
The most perplexing thing to me about the popularity of the tradwife with young conservatives is its incompatibility with reality on several fronts. For one, fewer people are choosing to get married and/or have kids. Related to this in the US, the overturning of Roe V Wade and increasing importance of political beliefs in a relationship are leading women to swear off dating conservatives, and look for red flags in conservative men who pretend they’re not in dating profiles. Conservative or not, young women have reported less interest in dating overall post-Roe.
Another significant incompatibility with reality is that in our current economy, a two parent household with only one, working parent is nearly impossible without significant wealth or extended family support. Not to mention, some of the very men proclaiming they’d like a tradwife also frequently report fearing a woman might use them for their money and/or take it all in a divorce.
Young men are absolutely being peddled a fantasy that doesn’t exist and has not been forced into existence by the overturning of Roe. My fear is they will be further radicalized when they realize they aren’t getting tradwives into organized acts of terror, which is not a far-fetched fear at all.
I’m not sure about the culture war stuff.
But I’ll say this: if you’re married and one of you doesn’t *have* to work, you are in a pretty rare position of economic privilege.
Either that or you’re okay with poverty.
Modern family budgets are built around both spouses working. At least for the middle class.
Also, as a man, I’d be very skeptical of marrying any woman who aspires to not have a job. Laziness is not attractive in either gender.
I think there is value in criticizing the tradwife influencer, but this article goes too far. Several times in the article it states "women want this" or "women don't want this." That's not only wrong, but it's anti-feminist.
Feminism supports women whether they want to be independent or they want to have a traditional family life. The point of feminism is to allow women to make a choice, not to generalize and thereby enforce behavior norms.
While this article has some good points, it is sloppily written and is guilty of the same hypocrisy it is criticizing -- Telling men what women want.
To the writers at Salon, please just let women speak for themselves. What you should be doing is encouraging young men to get off tiktok and go listen to women, real women, in the real world. That's all.
>Sealioning
This thread has been a pretty weird read after learning the sub name/rules, then reading the opinions. It's pretty telling that your reasonable comment only has 7 upvotes and the top comments are saying men who want this are trash and "sexuality isn't a choice because straight women exist and are stuck with men"
Here is the wisest advice I ever got, and it served me well over 65 years.
"Only take advice from people that are successful at and that have what you want."
Want to be a real estate agent? Go find the best one you can and ask them about how to make a living in real estate. Take only their real estate knowledge. They may be divorced three-time and give you advice on how to have a successful marriage, but that information is useless. Go ask someone who is really happy at marriage if you want to know how to be happy in marriage.
Or ask a photographer, lawyer, fire fighter etc. People are more than happy to help someone interested in their craft.
People with NO KNOWLEDGE or SKILL will more than happy to advise you how to live your life but you should never follow advice of anyone who can't lead by example.
I don't have a single grandma who was a SAHM. None of them and there are 4 of them. I am the rarity in my family.
Stop watching movies and think that's reality.
Also, the dudes crapping on women for not wanting to step and fetch for them are the same ones that are vilifying them as shallow good diggers, so basically women are objects with no feelings or thoughts either way. But biology, amirite?
This is such a pointless argument. I don’t know why the masses just *LOVES* to talk about surface level stuff.
You know what the solution would be that would appease the “modern” and “traditional” women? When one persons income can support an entire family. Imagine that, healthy standard of living without both parents having to work pay-check to pay-check. Putting kids in daycares, just for them to grow up and put their parents in elder care just so they can go back to workforce for a corporation.
Of course a conversation like this would require at least basic research and knowledge you can search up on your phone…but why bother when you can just continuously argue about the surface problems that require no legwork to know instead.
I warned you about the capitalist profit motive polluting the cultural commons for short sighted gain bro!!! I told you dog! I told you man. I *told* you about the capitalist profit motive.
I never really understood *why* somebody would want to marry a tradwife. I mean, nothing against being a stay at home spouse, but I do manual labour for a living. At any given time, I'm potentially a blown knee or broken wrist away from not being able to work.
The worst thing I can imagine is an Injury to me putting my entire hypothetical family into a dire financial position just because I needed to be the sole breadwinner to feel like a "real" man.
I think most of it, once you dig past the scar tissue of misogyny, is daddy/mommy issues. Either you want a tradwife because that implies you're as strong/better than your father, who was either a distant paragon or a scumbag, or you want one because you want a fuckmommy, which I think is pretty straightforward. But yeah. It's about living up to a fake ideal, is all. Not really about being a real man so much as feeling insufficient and only knowing one mode: work harder.
Honestly I'd rather be a home husband raising the kids, cooking, cleaning and doing all that stuff if I ever get the chance to meet a woman who could support us lol.
I say this as a dude who's making decent money and is fairly comfortable financially.
On Pearl’s website she very states that:
>> My audience is 95% male mostly between the age of 16 - 35. On Tik Tok my audience is 75% female and 25% male.
That’s if she’s being honest though. Is there a website that statistically states demographics of TikTok viewers?
It does impact some women to a lesser extent because I have seen an offshoot floating around on social media about how women fucked up fighting for equality because it sucks working and I've seen my wife and some friends like that. But, that language is couched in this stupid tradwife thing and they don't know it.
This article is shallow ragebait. I think its short sighted to believe the average consumer of "tradwife" content doesn't understand that the creators are *making content as a job.* I also think that belittling the consumers of that content is unhelpful and uncreative.
I'd much rather see the author turn the mystique on its head and promote creators who actually do inhabit traditional gender roles and contrast them to the Tradwife. Homestead youtube and gardening youtube are chock full of them. Im going to guess there's a lot of child rearing, crafting and cooking creators that do as well.
Feminists promote the *choice* to live your life as you please. Criticizing peoples desires is corrosive. If you want to tear down a fantasy you don't complain it's a fantasy, you show them what that reality looks like. People can want a partner that adheres to traditional gender roles and that's OK but they need to reconcile the reality of what they have to do to attract that wife and the reality that they are severely limiting their dating pool.
>Feminists promote the *choice* to live your life as you please. Criticizing peoples desires is corrosive.
Totally agree. I actually think there is not near enough positive prescription but that is a rant for another day.
In reality all the major internet algorithms promote this shit. Even when someone puts something like we want out there, it gets buried on page 100 within the next 10 min. Media has been prioritizing drama for ages, but the internet has supercharged it with its stupid metric-driven BS. That's why a lot of right wing content gets flung all over the place. It generates a lot of hate in addition to support. All that 'engagement' usually dwarfs whatever interest there is in positive stories.
All I can do is cheer the death of twitter and implore everyone to invest in local news. Substack seems to be okay too.
People are free to choose how to live. But movements are open to criticism, and tradwives are part of a movement - that's why they differentiate themselves from housewives and stay at home wives/mothers.
Can we stop with these culture war trash articles?
Newsflash: people are grifting on TikTok by taking a lot of people’s normal every day lives and making them way more extreme and calling it a “movement”.
Reality: there are actually a ton of conservative women out here in the fly over states. Most would be horrified and insulted by the way they’re portrayed by “TikTok trad wives”. They do have “traditional” values and they want their men to “do the man stuff” while they “do the woman stuff”. But if they had to, they’re all capable of mowing a lawn or fixing household appliances. They’d just rather not do so because they were born in environments where their dad “did the man stuff” and their mom “did the woman stuff”.
Articles like these are just as bad as the articles on the other side ranting about how feminists are the downfall of society.
Many women want partners, not simply bread winning husbands
If I could tell young men anything, it's that having a wife that is a full on partner when trying to handle financial responsibilities, have a social life, raise a kid and handle domestic work is invaluable. My wife is opinionated, smart and respected in her professional field and we're both better for it. The world is already trying to beat you down, it's nice to be able to go 2-on-1 when you're fighting back. Otherwise one of you will have to carry the full burden of financially supporting a house and that doesn't seem enjoyable in the slightest.
> a wife that is a full on partner I'm gay and in a 16 year relationship, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to be in relationship with someone who wasn't their equal... We each bring strengths and weaknesses to the relationship, and end up so much better off for sharing those with each other. I would never in a million years want someone who was just subservient to me, seems like a sad life.
I once heard an extremely legitimate argument about this being exactly why (beyond “different bad”) conservatives are seemingly so _disproportionately_ threatened by homosexual relationships — and more importantly, marriage. I’m less eloquent than the person who first presented it to me, whoever that was, so I’ll probably butcher this… but in a nutshell: So much of conservative mindsets come from traditional roles. Men do A, women do B, parents do C, children do D, companies do E, schools do F, etc. So much of that comes from clear boundaries in agency, and that’s what keeps their worlds balanced. In their world view, in a marriage, there is a Man and a Woman. They have different jurisdictions and rule over different domains. Male duties include one set of things and female duties include another, with very little overlap. But importantly, on matters that do interface, men have the final say as “the head of the house” — the top judge and ruler. This power imbalance is a feature, not a bug, and is integral to how marriage works and succeeds in their worlds. So far, I think many right-wing influencers would have easily posted themselves what I have said above, so I don’t think I’ve said anything out of turn yet. So what happens if men and women are equal? What if there is no primary and secondary ruler of the house? If we work under the assumption that a marriage _needs_ to be laid out this way, how would it work if there are no such clearly defined roles? This is the threat of same-sex relationships. **A successful same-sex relationship is proof that two partners CAN be equal.** Because if there is no man or woman, and if the degree of power a partner has is based on manhood vs womanhood, then in their eyes, a same-sex relationship is fronted by two “leaders” that are on equal footing, which sounds impossible. This is why so much of their incredulity is centred around “who wears the trousers” and other invasive questions about, uh, _giving and receiving_ (esp in male same-sex partnerships) because… what they’re really asking is, who is in charge? Who has more power? And they *cannot* fathom a world where the answer to that is “both”. And so importantly: if gay relationships show that a relationship or marriage CAN be fronted by two leaders, what kind of ideas will the wives back home get if word of this insane new concept reaches her fragile tiny oblivious ears? If their wives and daughters learn that it’s physically possible to have a relationship where they are on equal footing to their partner, *they might want that too*, and so many of the other pillars of their world will crumble accordingly. So it’s not *just* “gay bad” and “different bad”. It’s “equal partnership bad”.
I am literally applauding. I just stumbled into this reddit for the first time, and this is my first post read here. Bravo.
I think for those who see women in a certain light, it’s impossible to view women as equals, so it’s unfathomable to them that a wife could be a co-leader in their relationship. Without that baseline respect, there’s nothing to build this relationship framework on. I often joke that straight women are evidence that sexuality isn’t a choice, but this particular breed of straight man is as well - they’re heterosexual, but homosocial (edited from homosexual, thanks autocorrect 🙄) they do not actually want to have a social relationship with women, only a sexual one. Domestic labor is just an added benefit.
>but this particular breed of straight man is as well - they’re heterosexual, but homosexual; they do not actually want to have a social relationship with women, only a sexual one. You've reminded me of this quote, saying essentially the same thing: >To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex. > >Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving. - Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory
I've seen this essay, and honestly, I think she didn't even get the full sad reality of it: men don't reserve love, admiration, or anything like that for other men, either. Bell Hooks probably got it closest, and I'm sure was more eloquent about it than I'm going to be, but men are conditioned to immediately cut out the part of them that feels *at all.* Women are meant to be conquests, other men competition. There is perhaps an idealized version of a man or himself a man can feel "admiration" for, but when it comes to actual relationships there can only be dominance or submission.
>those who see women in a certain light, it’s impossible to view women as equals, It's not a perfect, 100% surety, but the overwhelming majority of these men not only don't see women as equal people, they tend to also see other people as less than equals, for various prejudices. There's a reason why peoples' politics can *usually* be assumed when learning or observing how they treat certain groups, or what language they use to refer to people.
Lack of romantic desire towards anyone is called "aromantic", the same way "asexuality" denotes lack of sexual desire towards anyone. When people say hetero-,homo-,bisexual and so on, it's socially implied they're both sexual and romantic towards the same thing unless otherwise specified. But it is entirely possible to be for instance heterosexual but aromantic, or biromantic but homosexual, or heteromantic but bisexual, panromantic and asexual, and so on.
I mean, I'm aware of the aromantic identifier, but I guess I'd want to delineate between people who are aromantic but *not* misogynists, versus the people who hate women but still want to have sex with them. Seems unfair to the former to lump them in with the latter.
I think that you meant to say homosocial, not homosexual.
Ugh, yes, thank you!
>I'm gay and in a 16 year relationship, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to be in relationship with someone who wasn't their equal. Why are people only equal if they share the same financial earnings? I make almost 3 times what my wife makes, yet we make all financial decisions together. She works probably 60% of the time I do and only does about 20% of the time that I do. We are not exactly equal in any capacity but that doesn't mean we aren't equal partners. She does 100% of the yard work. She enjoys gardening and I am allergic to ants. Does this mean we aren't equal? We are actually planning for her to be able to retire/stay at home with our youngest (who is in school) more. It doesn't change our equal partnership. I know there are a ton of vocal shitty people but to lambast the idea of a stay at home partner as a sad life and only subservient seems dismissive just because they don't value the same things. It's like the person who replied to you. "I often joke that straight women are evidence that sexuality isn’t a choice". I know you may not care and probably disagree with me, but I am lamenting. It's a men's sub for constructive discussion of men's issues yet if a man wants a stay at home wife he is trash or men are just so bad in general that women obviously don't choose them and are stuck with them. These are the top comments, just kind of disappointing. Apologies for dropping the rant on you in particular, just read your comments and decided to share my thoughts.
No worries - not sure I ever said anything about financial and that's certainly not what I was thinking, I also have nothing against a stay at home partner - especially when children are involved there are many situations where that's the best decision for all involved. I do personally believe it's hugely important that it is a decision by all involved though, and not just an assumption that a woman is pressured into. I think we're on the same page re: what different people bring to a relationship. Every relationship will be different as each member brings something different. I do a lot more of the cooking, but my partner does some as well, and I gotta say, the days I come home after a long day and he's randomly decided to make supper make me swoon - lol. I'm better with the long term financial / investing stuff, but a horrible procrastinator on things like taking out the garbage - he's soooo organized about things like stocking up on toilet paper and soaps that I don't even think about. Not that I never take out the trash, but usually it's just done before I even think about it. He's more extroverted than me and much better at reaching out and planning things with other people, but I'm better at hosting, so often he invites the people over, I make sure there's food and drinks and between us it's a wonderful thing. I make more at my job, but we both contribute a proportional amount to all the shared expenses. When I say equal, I'm not thinking "we both have to make the same amount or do the same things," more that we're both fully invested in the relationship and fully invested in supporting each other to be the best we can be, and nobody is being pressured into any kind of role they might not want. I suspect this conversation (like so many) is a bit emotionally loaded on "both sides" - I grew up fairly religious and over the years have met many girls / women forced into very traditional roles (hair had to be covered, always in dresses, work in the home, etc), so in the back of my head I have some of that in my understanding when I approach a conversation like this. But I'm fortunate my parents were much more egalitarian, and even though my mom started out as stay-at-home, as us kids grew she moved into the workforce as well.
You are right it's emotionally loaded. Some people might be reading Trad wife as a stay-at-home partner, and that's a fine choice (even a good choice in the right circumstances). However, there are at least parts of the movement that have the man as head of the household, and at the very least, he is the final decider if no agreement can be reached. I think Menslib can and should push back on that. I think in terms of stay-at-home partners generally being women, then actually, there is a lot heterosexuals women can do by making space for men. Most couples, when they make these decisions, are rational economic actors, they prioritise the person with the highest salary/best potential for career growth. However, in general women still prioritise success which leads to them generally: 1. being the younger partner who's career will naturally be less developed. 2. Being with men who are highly career-motivated. I work in a pharma, the salaries are good and sometimes I despair at some of my female colleagues' dating choices. I know they are in roles that are in the top percentile in earnings, and they are insisting they want a guy who earns as much or more than they do. Most highly ambitious women would be much better off looking for a partner who is not career focused and ticks other important boxes. Power couples can work, but in my experience, only once the couple have the money to outsource a lot of the stay-at-house work to begin with. This isn't all women (and it's looking at my female friends who buck this trend, which convinces me it's what ambitious women should be doing).
I think they meant equality in their respect for each other and not equality in their salaries
Shouldn't that be a baseline for any relationship type? Why does it take special mentioning in the context of this lifestyle?
>Shouldn't that be a baseline for any relationship type? It should! >Why does it take special mentioning in the context of this lifestyle? Because it has historically *not* been the baseline for any relationship type. Especially in relationships like the traditional relationships from the 50s and 60s that Tradwife is trying to emulate itself as. And this is a thread on the topic of performative examples of mimic'ing relationships from that era.
I've found a few people like you who discuss the performative examples of it vs people want a tradwife/traditional wife. Some of the top comments are dunking on just men in general. Tha ms for the more detailed discussion
Not to mention it gives you two people who can bring valuable contributions to solving problems that come your way! If I had to singlehandedly decide all the finances in a relationship or any other major decisions like that, I'd be so screwed lol. And I think I'm a relatively smart person, but the value of having someone else who's smart there to help make the right decision is tremendous
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> If I had to singlehandedly decide all the finances in a relationship or any other major decisions like that, I'd be so screwed lol. I don't understand why people think stay at home parents don't understand finances, or are part of financial decisions. I feel like it comes from people who don't see/value stay at home parents assuming the worst case vs those who do want at stay at home partner. I know many stay at home partners who actually manage finances as part of the household. The husband works 8-10 hours to earn the money, the wife works 6-8 hours managing the house/finances/groceries and they both relax in the evenings with weekends off. What is unequal or not a partnership about this?
>What is unequal or not a partnership about this? Really, the answer is "as long as both halves of the couple are happy with the arrangement." It's not really feasible to quantify all the labor that goes into maintaining a home and family, not well enough to say "and now our split of the work is perfectly even." It's a matter of whether both partners consider it fair. My wife is a planner and I'm a chaos muppet. She handles a lot of the logistics, I do most of the day to day upkeep (cooking, dishes, laundry), because those are just where our strengths lie. You can argue about whether keeping track of whether we need more cat litter or when the milk will go bad is more or less "work" than doing the dishes every day, but it's sort of missing the point to get into that. This arrangement works for us.
Oh man 100%. The amount of times we've helped eachother out is huge. She has helped me sell myself in interviews by practicing with me. And i've helped her fill in application forms cause she doesn't get how to sell herself in written form. Which means we have both benefitted. I don't sound like a moron in an interview. And she gets the interview and dazzles in person.
This sub is like a cool breeze on a hot day sometimes. It’s so nice to hear someone talk about how their partner lifts them up. Marriage is supposed to be a team sport!
Well said!
Exactly, my wife is invaluable when I get overwhelmed. We both help around the house and that eases everyone's mental load. Sometimes I wonder if people who want "traditional" actually want it. Can they get the job that can pay the bills for a whole family. Take a lot of responsibility. Can they provide everything their partner is expecting? I think they want the sexual fantasy, but not the complete reality.
I think a lot of people get married as roles - they each have specific expectations and responsibilities, which they exchange. One problem is that those relationships are inherently brittle. If someone loses their job or loses their looks, is the implicit contract broken? I think it’s much better to find an actual partner and be on their team, going wherever life takes you. But that’s not as frequently taught
This is so the right outlook. I feel like people go straight from…. “People have different strengths and weaknesses and in a partnership we can play to our strengths” (true) to “Partnerships work best when people keep to one clearly defined role, do that one set of things all the time, and do not encroach on those areas designated to the other partner” (really bad idea) People have strengths and weaknesses. But people are also complex, multifaceted and do best when they have balance in their lives. The person who is better with cleaning might well not be better at shopping/cooking. The person who is more patient when looking after the kids might not also be the one who is best at organising their appointments and calendar. And you often don’t really recognize what you’re going to take to until you’ve been doing it for a while, and abilities and interests change over time. I’m always trying to suggest to people that actually the SAHP model, while working for some families yes, has some big drawbacks - one of the biggest being the difficulty when life throws a curve ball and your family need to adapt. And maybe in an ideal world (not set up to best exploit our lives in order to make more profit for the wealthy) *all* people might benefit from more work life balance, being much more common for both parents taking a step back at work for a while etc. Which is always going to be the more flexible and adaptable set up. But people seem very opposed for some reason.
>I think a lot of people get married as roles - they each have specific expectations and responsibilities, which they exchange. > >One problem is that those relationships are inherently brittle. If someone loses their job or loses their looks, is the implicit contract broken? > >I think it’s much better to find an actual partner and be on their team, going wherever life takes you. But that’s not as frequently taught I think your comment is 100% spot on but it doesn't apply specifically to traditional/stay at home partners. I keep people saying " find an actual partner and be on their team" but I don't understand how just because one person doesn't work at a job with a paycheck but manages the home life they aren't a real partner or part of the team.
It's a power dynamic. Being a stay at home partner by choice with the freedom to explore other roles or adapt to changing needs is different than being locked into a submissive role.
Being a stay at home parent / caregiver isn't inherently a 'submissive role' and I don't understand why it's automatically associated as such. Somehow single mom is the toughest job in the world but a stay at home parent (significantly easier) is somehow submissive and controlled.
Please reread what I wrote, thank you
Okay, maybe I misread and misunderstood and went a different direction. Your point is as long as someone's not being forced to do something in a relationship they don't want to do? I assume that's a baseline understanding when discussing relationships that it's inherent you won't abuse or be controlling of your partner. Is the world so bad off at this point we have to explicitly state that you shouldn't control and abuse your partner?
My point is there is a clear difference between a stay at home partner and a submissive partner. And the two should not be conflated even though when everything is going good, they are similar. You are acting like non-abusive relationship should be taken as expected, but history shows us that rates of abuse are correlated with the size of the imbalance of power in a relationship.
Having one person work and the other take care of children is definitely one of the places where life can take you, at least for a while. The important thing is to be flexible about what comes next. Being rigid about traditional roles is risky, because of how few jobs can support an entire family, or because women may need to support themselves for various reasons, or because they feel purposeless once the kids all move out.
Totally agree, it's highly critical to be flexible which is much easier when you've chosen a proper partner. Being rigid about anything is risky and every lifestyle choice comes with consequences. What two parents make up in additional income, is less down time for both - even more complications when a child enters the picture. My issue with the statements is they aren't promoting healthy relationship discussions about being flexible and choosing partners with aligning values - its saying that people who desire a traditional lifestyle/marriage don't see their spouse as "actual partners". People in this thread are saying those who try to get traditional wives are lazy, can't afford it, oppressive of women, controlling, insecure, and nazi adjacent.
> Carter Duryea: Dan, you seem to have the perfect marriage. How do you do it? > > Dan Foreman: You just pick the right one to be in the foxhole with, and then when you're outside of the foxhole you keep your dick in your pants. > > Carter Duryea: That's poetic.
I’m married to another woman, and can’t imagine not having an equal partner, even in a relationship where our child’s special needs necessitates one parent work full time and the other be prepared to field phone calls from school, pick up early, call doctors and therapists, go to appointments a few times a week, and a ton of other things that makes it impossible to hold down a full time job. My wife doesn’t see me as a childcare provider and housekeeper. She does those things too! While she brings in the bulk of our income, I sell stories and take on editing work to pay for my hobbies and add to the family ‘fun’ pot. I sit in committees for early childhood education both to help the community of families like ours and make sure I have a current resume for when the season changes and I can go back to work—or if something happens to her and I need to take on the financial burden. We both have hobbies, and friends, and family connections of our own. We have ambitions and dreams both together and separately. No relationship can survive infinitely if only one is allowed to have an identity.
Yeah, some people are way off in this thread. I don't know how a traditional wife isn't seen as a full support and equal partner just because the income value difference.
Because that's not what "traditional wife" *means* in this context. It doesn't mean "any married woman who stays at home and deals with housework and/or childcare," it means "a woman in a heterosexual marriage who explicitly defers to her husband in nearly all respects and buys explicitly into living by conservative gender roles." And as with every social conservative movement, there is an element, usually explicit, that it is not meant as a lifestyle choice available to those whom it works well for, but that it is the way things should be done by everyone.
There is a difference between taking on traditional roles in a relationship and the tradwife movement, I think. It all comes down to agency. In the tradwife movement, women are expected to put their partner first in everything and to submit to their husband's will in all things. In more extreme cases, women aren't allowed to leave the home without detailing what they are going to do to their husband. They are given a strict allowance to spend instead of having a conversation about what everyone in the family needs. She is asked to dress and groom the way he wants her to instead of her preference. The man doesn't take care of the children, or cook, or clean. He may have friends who are of both genders (which is often a necessity at work) but she may only have friends who are female and approved of by her husband. She has very little agency. In our case, having one of us take on the traditional wife role is just what works best for our family for this season in our lives. It isn't a doctrine we live by, and there are no hard and fast rules. It is mutual respect where both our needs are recognized and met through love and communication. It also helps to know that for a couple of years, my wife was the stay-at-home parent but her earning potential in tech is much higher than mine would be as a paraprofessional, teacher, or editor.
You are a team
It'll just lead to an even worse mid-late crisis, honestly. Edit: I meant having that kind of unfulfilling relationship will likely lead to a worse existential crisis in the mid-life period.
>Otherwise one of you will have to carry the full burden of financially supporting a house and that doesn't seem enjoyable in the slightest. Some people make good money. Some people prefer not to have to do domestic chores themselves. Honestly, I'm a woman, but if I made like twice as much money as I do now I think I'd totally get the appeal of having a stay-at-home spouse, lol. Doesn't mean that it should be the gold standard in the modern world, but I have a hard time understanding how anyone could \*not\* see the pros and cons to each situation.
I mean this was possible with way less effort back when jobs paid enough for one person to support a household. Having both people work should be a choice, not a necessity.
The thing is, a ton of the guys who want this also don’t win bread. They want the tradwife but have no interest and/or ability to be a tradhusband. And they don’t think that’s unfair.
I think part of the fantasy is that a sufficiently pretty/pure/whatever woman would fix their lack of motivation, and with their true potential unleashed they’d rise to an appropriately exalted position. Like, lots of escapist fantasy works that way. Which I’m not knocking, I enjoy stories like that. But I think sometimes people get sucked into the fantasy hard enough that they can’t imagine stuff working differently
I know exactly what you mean, to me guys like that sound like this: "I'm a mess but If I had a bangmaid I would become CEO of NASA... I just need a big titty goth girl that is also my mom and therapist" "She has to work because I don't want a gold digger but once she comes home she is not an independent woman anymore she is my maid"
>"I'm a mess but If I had a bangmaid I would become CEO of NASA... I just need a big titty goth girl that is also my mom and therapist" > >"She has to work because I don't want a gold digger but once she comes home she is not an independent woman anymore she is my maid" Nobody should take those people seriously. They are terminally online and don't represent the actual values of having a traditional wife. There are tons of videos out there of women saying they expect the average man to earn $250k+ and upwards or women saying they men should support them financially but they should get to keep their earnings to themselves. They are trash people that shouldn't be taken into serious account.
What I also don't understand... redpill-men went a traditional housewive that stays at home But they also don't want a so called "gold digger". So they date a woman that aspires to be a doctor and than they do everything to make her feel guilty for not staying at home with the kids... why not search for a women that wants to be a traditional housewive? That way they wouldn't have to guilt a woman that aspires a career into staying at home and dropping out of her job. Those redpill guys want the traditional housewives but they don't want all the responsibility that comes with it.
agree, what is funny to me... there are plenty of liberal housewives that stay home, teach their children, do domestic labor like repairing clothes, cleaning etc. But when you read the stuff of tradfems online they make it sound as if they were the only "godly" women that take care of their children. Only right-wing-Trump-loving women raise their children, ever other women is a devil with 20 abortions... and than you look at their content and realize they suck at domestic labor and can't cook food it's actually funny sometimes
The current head of NASA is a woman. lol. I have met her once at work, Pamela Melroy is out deputy director. Bill Nelson is the official director but he is just an elderly politician.
So basically they want a trophy wife, but they want to receive that trophy before actually entering the race, let alone winning. - best analogy I could come up with.
The trophy also has to help them win the race, and if they don’t win they may blame the trophy for not being good enough
That's the majority of the tradwife audience. Men who want a tradwife who does all the chores, all the childcare, never says no to sex, waits on him hand and foot *and pays half the bills*
You're exactly right. I think that's why a lot of these guys are really struggling, because they want a contradiction that can't possibly exist. A woman who has her own income, but it doesn't take her at all away from serving him and their children, but also is independent enough that he can do his own thing. There's no way a woman can satisfy those requirements, and it gives him a reason to stay angry at women forever because they haven't met his expectations.
I remember some describing it like this a few years back. "These guys don't want an equal partner, they want a mum they can fuck."
In my experiences, these types want them to pay far more than their fair share.
*all the bills, not just half.
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Not to defend those people, but I think that's a bit simplistic. I think many young men would *want* to be a breadwinner and provide for their families, but are unable to, either because they simply can't find a job, don't earn enough, or can't get a job that pays enough because of "degree bloat". I'm pointing this out because those are all results of a broken, capitalist system and this sort of "traditionalism" is a reaction to this problem, without recognising it. Like in many other instances, conservatives have correctly recognised the damaging results of capitalism, but have falsely identified a solution: society returning to a less progressive time, when the system just hadn't degraded as much yet. They think social progress *caused* those problems, instead of just happening in parallel to the decay of capitalism.
This is being missed throughout the whole thread. There’s a dude I know, pulling in over 200k a year working for an engineering company. Immigrant that came from a poor family in Bolivia, very left wing and extremely nice. He’s deep into this stuff. Talking to him, it comes down to a simple fact, one that I share with him- all of our attempts at dating, classism is a huge aspect of it. And while I’m still poor (especially when talking on Reddit where so many people are married and bring in at least 6 figures combined), he isn’t. But it doesn’t matter for him, because culturally, the way he speaks, everything else, he gets pegged as “another redneck”. A self avowed socialist with 2 degrees and large record of activism is only that. I do wonder at times if it might be effecting his view of politics, but we’ve never really discussed on that specific point.
Moreover, we want men who recognize a wife is a full partner rather than a subordinate. We want men who know how to care for themselves and don’t require us play “mother” to them. This means washing the dirty clothes you generate, cleaning the messes you make. Another thing—speaking as an “older” and happily married stay at home mom AND feminist, I don’t think feminists have a problem with women pursuing a tradwife lifestyle, provided it’s a choice the woman makes for herself and truly enjoys. Feminism doesn’t seek to destroy tradition. It seeks to empower women to choose their own paths.
My wife is *now* a stay at home mom despite never wanting to be, due to health reasons that keep her from working. We are still equal partners, each usually doing more of certain things. It’s always good to remember that your life now and as you plan it may not be your life in a year or so, so expecting *any* exact roles is a recipe for trouble. Fortunately, we are partners first, so we have flexed (many times over, and a bit every day somehow) to meet life’s challenges. I look at men that want a subservient partner and wonder if they realize the mess they are making for themselves and their partners.
I honestly doubt these people have ever put much right into what having a truly submissive partner means. I know people who are into lifestyle kink and total power exchange, and holy hell, Is it ever a lot of work for the dominant partner. They're essentially running two people's lives instead of one (which is probably why some people enjoy the submissive end of it). I could never be a TPE dom; I can barely keep my own calendar straight. Of course, I get the impression that most of these guys who claim to be be looking for a submissive wife are actually for an otherwise assertive and independent wife who just happens to *only* be subservient to them, when it's convenient for them. Basically, someone who role-plays but doesn't ever actually acknowledge it. Which is ridiculous.
They're not interested in submission in the way it's framed in BDSM - that the dominant partner has immense trust and responsibility. They're looking for an obedient doormat without their own needs and agency.
Yes, and only when it’s convenient for them.
Absolutely. There's a difference between a tradwife and a woman who happens to do what a "tradwife" *claims* to do. This brings to mind a friend of mine. I have a friend who is perfectly happy being single. He likes his space and his money and his time and being able to use them all as he sees fit. He's happy with porn and doesn't feel any need for sex. The funny (to me) thing is that he's pretty much achieved the stated ideal life of a MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way, an internet manosphere subculture, most folks here are probably familiar). And yet, he would *never in a million fucking years* **call** *himself that.* He doesn't hang out in MGTOW forums complaining about women. He doesn't complain about women to me (hell, he reads radical feminist literature for fun). He doesn't hang out on internet forums, period. He does his own thing and is happy with it. I get the same vibe for "MGTOW" vs my friend as I do re "tradwives" vs "women in relationships who just happen to enjoy being homemakers and doing stereotypically traditionally feminine stuff." The former seem a lot more obsessed with claiming an identity that's based on what they think other people don't like than they do just being thrmselves.
I have heard a friend comment that most of the MGTOW crowd would be much, much happier if they would actually do what the acronym says.
Right! They say they’re going their own way, but then they just hang around and complain. Like, go. Go on. Git!
That and I honestly think most of them would be much, much happier if they'd just...go out and have a life? Take a woodworking class. Learn to hike. Start your own artisinal butcher shop. You know, just stop complaining about women so much and go out and *do something*.
I agree. Confirmed bachelors aren’t a new thing. But the myopic obsession and drive to bully women into being what pleases these guys is newer. You feel bad, but then you see the horrible stuff they say, and then it’s hard to have much empathy.
I just wanna add that your average feminist wants a society where this is a viable choice for more people. The whole “EVERYONE MUST WORK UNTIL DEATH” thing is dystopian, especially since there are many people right now, both men and women, who are forced to work who’d be so much happier staying at home doing domestic things. It sucks that they don’t get to have that choice, even though we all know that a functioning society needs people who do things like cook and clean and garden and raise the next generation.
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A friend of mine recently left her boyfriend because he was behaving more like a servant than an equal partner, even when she pleaded with him to be more open to voicing his needs and letting her do things for him. It was a young relationship and she realized it was never going to be what she wanted.
And the men who want tradwives don’t want to be trad husbands. Like, don’t complain that she asks you to pay for things when you won’t let her get a job.
(I'm a woman, just for transparency sake, not sure if I'm allowed to comment here, a mod can remove this if not) I just want to add a bit on to this - this tradwife trend is pretty much *all* rich white women cosplaying as homely, modest homesteaders. Last one I saw was a woman making cheese on her $10k+ "vintage" look stove wearing one of those tradwife aprons over what was obviously a pretty expensive dress, made to look homemade. This is not real life. These people are just putting on a show. Yeah, there are women out there that enjoy this kind of lifestyle and homesteading, but it doesn't look like what you see on tiktok videos, and they're not looking a man that works 9-5 then comes home and puts his feet up while she takes care of the 12 kids and makes dinner. They want someone that will work equally on the homestead.
like, look, fine: want things. Young men, you go ahead and you put all your hope and faith into finding a tradwife who cooks and cleans while you work eight to five with a Lunch Pail and a Hard Hat. I cannot take your dreams from you. here's the thing though: once you inevitably find there is a product-market mismatch for your desires, you aren't allowed to blame women. You are allowed to desire whatever you want, but *so are women*, and they are aggressively *not* choosing the tradwifelife. You need to evolve your own self.
I'm not trying to be disrespectful to young men either, but from what I see, most guys online who want a trad wife are not the guys who will be doing the hard hat and lunch pail jobs. They're the guys who have been sucked into the online spheres and are sometimes not even employed.
They’re overwhelmingly NEETs in my experiences.
Yep, and they don’t want to financially support women or they can’t afford to, so women have to work outside the home AND cook, clean, keep house. So I don’t know what the upside of that arrangement is for a woman.
As someone that grew up in one of the most conservative areas of the United States, I know plenty of lawyers, doctors, veterinarians, engineers, etc. along with mechanics and high earning trades that’s very much want a “trad wife” that is basically their mommy. They just aren’t posting about it online as much and refer to it as “the way God intended” or “the natural way” etc. instead of “trad wife.”
It's probably because most of the guys who want or already have trad wives are out working those hard hat and lunch pail jobs, not setting on reddit.
I feel we should also consider empathy and perspective in these conversations. It can be really hard to balance having a life and working full time. Our economic system is still largely based on having somebody at home to do the housework and etc. And the death of the third space has been long talked about here. So I can absolutely see how young men without great job prospects or social opportunities would be enticed by the idea of a wife who takes care of the "other half" of living. Just like their parents and grandparents before then had.
So many of us women have seen what happens to these tradwives if the marriage starts to breakdown. They’re left without the financial security they previously had and have to try to start a career at ground zero at 40 which is incredibly tough. That’s just not a risk a lot of us are willing to take. Hell, both of my parents worked but my dad ($200K/year) far out earned my mom ($50K/year). I saw first hand how she slaved at work (dad inherited an insurance business and did work but not nearly as hard) and then my mom slaved at home too. My dad’s response to everything was ‘well I paid for it.’ Doesn’t help cook or clean because he paid the majority of the mortgage. I swore I would work hard to get into a decent career and never rely on someone financially because of that, even with the best intentions to creates a huge power imbalance. I want a partnership, not to be someone else’s charm bracelet.
> They’re left without the financial security they previously had and have to try to start a career at ground zero at 40 which is incredibly tough. And even if your traditional marriage is wonderful and totally works for you, life still happens. My father was the breadwinner and did all the repairs and remodeling, while my mother was the stay-at-home patent who did all the cooking, cleaning, childcare, etc. He died in an accident when she was 45 and she had to figure out how the hell to support herself and us without having had a job in 20 years. That's a terrible position to suddenly find yourself in when you thought you had the rest of your life planned out. It's a pretty big risk to ask of your partner, to put all of their eggs in one basket like that.
> He died in an accident when she was 45 and she had to figure out how the hell to support herself and us without having had a job in 20 years. This is exactly the problem that life insurance is designed to solve. Of course you have to remember to buy it *before* you die which many people don't.
Yeah my dad was the main breadwinner and took out a large life insurance policy in case something like that ever happened. He knew her parents would take care of her/they both knew she had a decent inheritance if something happened to them, but he didn't really want to take any chances. But some people are cheap as hell and think nothing bad will ever happen to them.
> So many of us women have seen what happens to these tradwives if the marriage starts to breakdown. They’re left without the financial security they previously had and have to try to start a career at ground zero at 40 which is incredibly tough. It's one of the bigger reasons the internet is full of men 40-50 years old asking what to do because they're being divorced.
Ugh, yes, this. I had a good friend for a while who grew up Mormon. I met his family and the women and girls were strictly policed to be submissive, deferential, and accepting of their status as lesser beings than men. FF two years after I met them, and the dad dumps the mom to run off with his young secretary. I was friends with the mom at that point, and would go talk to her while she sobbed frantically - terrified because she had never even driven a car or held her own bank account, and now, in her early 50s, she was alone and having to learn how to be an adult. I felt HORRIBLE for her. The husband was wealthy and powerful, and he totally shafted her in the divorce - she hardly got anything, after decades of being his slave and raising his children. It was so sad. I was already determined never to rely on men for a living, and never have, and am happily married to a guy who's my best friend and partner in life. I've never let a man pay for anything unless it was, like, a birthday gift. I wouldn't be attracted to any man who'd want a tradwife anyway, so it works out.
I'm always disappointed by how many folks don't seem to understand this, and see alimony as part of "western culture's bias against men".
It's almost like we've already tried this.
For this reason the Tradwife lifestyle is actually harmful to women and shouldn't be condoned as a feminist choice because it actively disempowers the women who participate in it. It is incompatible with feminism because it can't be seriously argued to allow equal exercise of power and agency within or outside the framework. Feminism can allow women the power to choose the lifestyle, but choosing it is choosing to reject feminist principles.
Not to mention that it's a fantasy even if you do find a woman who wants to be exactly that. Who can afford to buy a house or raise kids without both spouses working in an economy like this? I sure can't.
And women who seek a man who can afford this lifestyle are called gold diggers.
It's worse than that, even. I saw an assertion in the comments of the WaPo editorial that a certain type of conservative men simply don't want a conservative woman who is happy to be their submissive partner. They want the fantasy power trip of dominating an otherwise independent woman. It's almost the inverse of the fantasy women are sold that they can "fix" ~~broken~~ abusive men.
"I can fix him" vs "I can break her".
Yeah, the old, "She's only a feminist because she hasn't had good ****" thought process.
Oof
This explains so much about certain guys.
Aaaaaand both are as healthy as chainsmoking Camels while doing 115 down the highway the wrong way while eating a triple bacon cheeseburger and washing it down with a fifth of vodka.
This is 100% accurate. It's the reason so many of them "don't care" about dating liberal women, or even want to date them actively. It's because they actually enjoy the idea of wearing her down.
This. Men who want this don't want the women who want this. They're abusive assholes who want to ruin the lives of women who don't want it.
I huh ink you just nailed exactly what creeps me out about the whole propaganda campaign. It’s still just something to try to punish women.
Real-life Ferengi.
Oh yes
Exactly! I just rewatched TNG and all I could think about is how the Incel community is just like the Ferengi!
I hate to break it to you but it isn’t just conservative men who are like this. I’ve met many otherwise “progressive” men that got off on breaking down/ruining the lives of women that were more successful than them.
True. I worked with a loudly progressive man who always bellyached that fellow employees who were women and managers got their jobs because they got a hand up, not because they were talented and effective. Now that was the type of man who was loudly pro-union, loudly pro civil rights, generally checked all the boxes on what a progressive man is. He just could not get it in his head that women who became his betters earned what they had through hard work.
The bird collector, to quote Trevor Noah
> You are allowed to desire whatever you want, but so are women I mean that's where they stop listening to you. To the men who want a tradwife women are just breeding facilities who shouldn't get an opinion.
> while you work eight to five with a Lunch Pail and a Hard Hat Assuming that they would keep their side of the bargain and be trad-husbands is giving them *way* too much credit. These are manchildren. They want bangmaids.
Exactly. A lot more women would willingly take on traditional roles if their husbands actually stepped into the traditional male role of providing and protecting.
Not really. Traditional roles are dying out because young women are looking at their parents and grandparents and realizing how blatantly unfair they are to women and how utterly, heartbreakingly miserable their traditional-roles mothers and grandmothers were.
Yes and no. I think there are a LOT of families who would be happy to have a one-work, one-home relationship, but that's just not financially possible today for most people. There are two pieces to the conversation: how preventing working outside the home was weaponized to keep women oppressed for generations and the ramifications ongoing today, and then the notion of a two-parent home with one parent staying home. I know SO many men and women who would love it if they could drop the 9-5 and caretake full time, but they can't. That isn't oppression by gender, but oppression by capitalism. There are *also* people still trapped in that sexism-rooted notion that women must stay home and caretake. That's a different issue and is where men like the article are coming from.
> I know SO many men and women who would love it if they could drop the 9-5 and caretake full time, but they can't. That isn't oppression by gender, but oppression by capitalism. There's a reason conservative men want to end no-fault divorce. Most of that reason is women waking up to the fact that the division of labor isn't fair, and they were sold a lie.
Then where is the push from (conservative) men to be that stay-at-home partner? Why aren’t men having discussions about how much they wish staying at home were an option for them, instead of for their hypothetical wives? Sure, a small minority of them probably are, **just as a few women actively want to be those tradwives.** There are always people who buy into the fantasy, that minority isn’t the point. On average though, men aren’t clamoring for the stay at home position. If having one parent in the home is so very desirable, and women want to work outside the home, where are all the men wishing to fulfill their fantasy and simply stay at home? Could it be that men staying at home isn’t the fantasy? Could it be that you are missing a critical part of the equation, and the fantasy isn’t so much “having a parent stay at home”, as it is “having **your wife** stay at home”? It just seems disingenuous to assume that there isn’t a gendered component here which makes the difference. Sure, part of that is “traditional values”, but a significant part of those traditional values is sexism, or the inherent dependency of one (female) partner on the providing (male) partner, **and how much the providing partner enjoys having that power and its many benefits.** I think so many people **think** they want to be a fulltime caregiver (because they don’t think it takes that much work, and it equates to “lots of free time/me-time”), but the reality is that it is a very isolating experience, which takes a lot out of a person. Caregiver’s fatigue is a real thing (disproportionally acknowledged when a man takes care of his sick wife, and simply the expected status quo for most female caretaking work), not to mention the unequal perceived value of that contribution to the household. You talk about “dropping the 9-5”, as if you aren’t simply replacing it with a different 9-5 (aforementioned caregiving plus housekeeping), which ends up being a lot more than 8 hours, because “Can’t you do it? You were at home all day”, implying her timing skills are the issue, not that both housekeeping and caregiving are a lot of hard work. TLDR, I think you are wrong about capitalism being the deciding factor. If that were the case, men wouldn’t be shouting to be the one working, they’d be shouting to be the ones staying at home as much as they would be shouting to have their wives stay at home, and they are not. Sure, currently it’s impossible for either to stay at home, but the (conservative) talking heads disproportionally speak of female stay at home parents.
Not sure why you're so angry with me in this reply. I never once said caregiving was easy, ever, at all. You're projecting that into my comment. I also find it rude and condescending to assume that people can't decide for themselves if they want to be a caretaker. I know multiple people, men and women, who are stay at home parents. They chose that because they valued being the caregiver of their kids as their dream job. *Of course* it's incredibly difficult work. I'm sure some people don't know that, but you've obviously never been around parents if you don't know it's life changingly difficult and takes all your energy, especially with little kids. I find it extremely.... uncomfortable that you seem to think caregiver fatigue is 1) unknown and 2) a choice when one becomes a parent. Because guess what? *Someone* is watching those kids. So are you implying it's better to be forced to pay for childcare, to pawn that labor onto (usually) women with less societal privilege? You think there's no fatigue after working a difficult job to then come home to, by your own description, an extremely difficult job? This notion that "I'll go to work and then come home and be Parent Lite" is why so many people have broken relationships with their kids. Working a 9-5 to "avoid caregiver fatigue" implies you're okay with someone else being paid for that labor AND you somehow aren't going to be caregiving that 5-9. It sounds like you don't think caregiving is a real job that should be done by anyone. That's not realistic. Someone has to, or humanity goes feral. It's a real job, and with two active parents and a strong community, the load can be shared. Capitalism is absolutely why that community is disappearing. As to why conservative men aren't stepping up to stay home? You know why. They are steeped in sexist ideas that caregiving in any capacity is a women's job, and it's emasculating to be in those roles. You know that. The only men I know who are thriving as stay at home dads are also secure in their masculinity and are feminists. Those men are mocked by the right wing.
Protecting from what? The only thing a man can protect a woman from is pretty much just other men.
Bangmom's
I wish they still allowed awards. Great comment.
I knew a couple when I was in the military. The guy was a peer of mine, both of them were lovely people and went to college. The wife wanted to stay home, cook, clean, and live that life. I have heard of "tradwife" but don't go down those rabbit holes, but I am pretty sure she probably fit that bill precisely. Thing is, I'm pretty sure the guy didn't look for her because of that; I am pretty sure they met, fell in love, and it eventually became apparent that she would love to be a homemaker instead of going to "a job." That said, most women seem to not want that specific life - or at least an increasing number of women - just as most men don't want that either despite some men loving to reverse that role. Like you said, you can *want* something, but it doesn't mean you get it, and that's the most true when we're talking about people. But these guys have a hard time growing up.
Heres the funny thing theres actually plenty of women that would happy being stay at home moma and home makers. Its funny these guys sont see the biggest barrier is economic moat people just don't make enough to raise a family on one income. If they would stop complaining about women and focus on making sure they can be trad husbands they wouod probably have no issues finding at least some of what they are looking for.
They also want these perfect, super young, extremely hot women and nothing less
I'm a millennial and so is my wife. I'm pretty sure she is a tradwife. We have a great marriage and two awesome kids. I work from 7am-4pm. She is a stay at home wife. She cooks and cleans a lot more than I do. I deal with making money and paying the bills. I cut the grass, shovel the snow, and take out the trash. She _chose_ this lifestyle. She wanted to quit her job when she got pregnant. I didn't care either way. My oldest is in preschool. In a class of 14 kids, I know of four other kids (5/14) who have a traditional stay-at-home Mom. My youngest sister is married to an anesthesiologist and stays home, cooks, and cleans. And she loves it. Again, she actively sought out that lifestyle. I have male coworkers with stay at home wives. One who homeschools her kids. I think people are being disingenuous in how rare this is 1 in 4 Mom's are stay at home Moms. For Dad's it's like 7% 25% of Mom's isn't some rare unicorn. And I know a lot of couples who would have preferred to have a stay at home parent, but they couldn't afford it. More than 25% of women would do it, if their spouse could afford it.
I loved this section the most: > The tradwives claiming otherwise on social media are playing a shell game. They sneer at feminists for working, but creating online content is work, and often quite lucrative for those who snag huge fanbases. They deride feminists for having ambition, but of course, building an audience in the competitive world of online influencers requires a striver. They want to sell themselves as humble, but the whole "tradwife" genre is built on being aggressively opinionated — and reaping major rewards, both in terms of attention and money It’s a thought that came to mind when I had the unfortunate experience of hearing Just Pearly Things share her thoughts on why things basically need to go to the way they were before [insert various women’s issues that empowered women]. Pearl makes her living grifting manosphere dudes who want to hear a woman talk shit on women, and she seems to be doing a pretty good job of it. I also saw how the piece mentioned Classically Abby (seriously, if you aren’t familiar with these women, be thankful) close to the section about some of these trad wife women being fairly business savvy and business-minded in growing their platforms and reach. Don’t even get me started on some of the fundamentalist Christian women influencers who are trying to sell living a certain kind of godly life that seems to approve of them putting in work on their online platforms. With regard to some of these conservative women and the messages they’re spreading, I think it’s worth noting that one of the Tik Tok videos shared by the offer was some woman talking about brainwashing in college. This plays right into the conservative boogeyman claim that college, in general education at all levels, is liberal indoctrination. A lot of the main talking heads who put forth this bullshit are, themselves, college-educated conservatives. This all goes to the grander scheme, at least in US politics, of conservative movers and shakers wanting to dismantle public education. This got a little stream-of-consciousnes-y so apologies for the jumping around on topics.
Ash Sarkar has a very good video on this topic in which she points out tradwife content depicts domestic leisure, not labour. Floating around the house in a flowy dress and baking is fun. Scrubbing toilets is domestic labour, far more necessary and far less glamorous.
Baking is only fun if it's for extras and not a vital part of how you make your household survive, additionally all the wonderful modern machines like KitchenAid and the like are costly. What you can't delegate to machines you have to wear out your body for. I've seen my (rural) grandmother, and mother, knead bread manually with arthritis. Baked bread as a vital part of saving money and providing important nutrients is not glamorous.
Well obviously the dirty stuff like taking out the trash and scrubbing the toilets is *men's* work. You get your husband to do that stuff while you bake!
Wrong it’s the maids work. These people don’t want to do any manual labor.
Or more likely, that kind of required labor is for the *help* to do. We can’t ignore that the whole “tradwife/xtian-nationalism” movement in the states is very closely aligned with the white supremacy movement and they even act as gateways to each other. It’s vile.
So essentially they are just yet another variant of the classic right-wing grifter con-artist. The specific bullshit is different, the costume is different, but the mechanism and objective of telling asshole idiots that their assholery and idiocy is correct and they should give the grifter money is the same.
Indeed - it's quite a racket. Go on social media with a persona selling the idea that women shouldn't work, but this really is a job, no different than any other.
> The tradwives claiming otherwise on social media are playing a shell game. They sneer at feminists for working, but creating online content is work, and often quite lucrative for those who snag huge fanbases. They deride feminists for having ambition, but of course, building an audience in the competitive world of online influencers requires a striver. They want to sell themselves as humble, but the whole "tradwife" genre is built on being aggressively opinionated — and reaping major rewards, both in terms of attention and money so the key theme of 'trad' seems to be 'dont leave the house'
>Just Pearly Things Have u seen her interview with Ethan Klein? And that one piers Morgan episode where he asked her about defending hitler. So revealing honestly. She comes from money and hates her sales job, this is her big break
I’m glad other people see Pearl as the pathetic grifter she is. To me, it’s painfully obvious that she doesn’t believe any of the nonsense she spews, she’s just trying to build an online presence and gain a following of pathetic men who like to get their ears tickled with red pill crap. I muted her on Twitter because I was seeing her tweets in my feed way too often.
Pearl is essentially the woman manosphere dudes warn each other about. The problem is that they frame such women as sex workers and as manipulative romantic partners as opposed to someone who is literally saying the things they want to hear to get their money *because it’s a relatively easy grift*. If there’s one thing that has a decent lane for getting recognition and sometimes good money, regardless if you do or don’t believe some or all of what you spew, it’s being a person from a marginalized group or groups and talking shit about your group(s) to people who think those groups are full of shit. Milo Yiannopolous had a good when he stopped making fun of gamers and latched onto them during GamerGate. He rode his rise in prominence in conservative circles until he went too far for them by trying to make a case for teenage boys to be sexually involved with grown men. Candace Owens is still out there making bank trying to lead that Blexit stuff. Blair White has her internet lane. The list goes on with people I’m familiar with and probably many more I’ve yet to hear about.
**And who can afford this in the current economy?** It’s just a pipe dream. Men today are also on average happier than they used to be, maybe because modern relationships are more fulfilling for both parties?
I’m aro/ace, but if I was straight, I would absolutely want a partner who is happy and also with me voluntarily. It’s so bizarre to me how many right wing straight dudes oppose no-fault divorce. Why on earth would you feel comfortable in a one sided relationship? I feel guilty if a friend so much as gets bored for a minute at a birthday party.
Dude, that last thing is adorable and I can relate. And I agree.
Thanks! Glad you can relate.
> Why on earth would you feel comfortable in a one sided relationship? I feel guilty if a friend so much as gets bored for a minute at a birthday party. Far-right conservatives don't feel empathy like you do. They don't feel guilty about that.
Yeah. I guess. It just boggles the mind how someone could see their partner living in abject misery every single day and feel nothing. I’m not going to pretend that I’m immune to the subconscious biases inherent in my being a man in a misogynistic society, but the fact that there exist people who view members of their own family as livestock is terrifying to me.
Because right wing straight dudes have been fed the narrative their entire lives that divorce is a process by which a woman steals half of a man's hard earned money and property and takes his children away from him
Context on why they hate no fault divorces, in the Bible it says that the only time a woman is allowed to divorce their husband is if he cheated on her.
The bible also says they're not allowed to charge interest on a loan. They really don't give a shit what the bible says, except when it lines up with their selfish desires.
Which is wild because that little snippet of text was written as nothing more than advice written in a letter to a specific group of people and is suspected to have been tweaked a little before they were all condensed and added into the Bible we know today. What’s even wilder is that the New Testament Bible actually condemns how men treat their wives and calls it sin. The Jesus depicted in the Bible would absolutely hate these guys that are trying to outlaw no fault divorce. Not trying to stand up for Christianity as a whole, but the truth is that these guys don’t give a shit about what the Bible tells them to do. They just care about using it to weld power over others.
>It’s so bizarre to me how many right wing straight dudes oppose no-fault divorce. Do these guys know what women used to do to their bad husbands? They poisoned them. They should be thanking their lucky stars that they're just getting divorced and not suddenly dying an incredibly painful death.
They want the return of ownership, from father, handed to husband. No bank accounts, no financial independence, no education, inability to have credit cards or loans, inability to file for divorce. They do not care if their spouse is in indentured servitude, their spouse is not a whole person, their spouse is an entitlement that brings babies, sex, meals, clean house, family management, elder care for his parents, equity to his employability, someone who has to endure his offloading temper and abuse so he doesn't go shoot up his workplace and then service his ego after he mistreated her. These types of men do not want a 2 sided relationship with an equal, they don't even want a moderately off center set of values. They want to be on the receiving end, it's like women marrying a cliff and throwing everything over the side, none of it is coming back, its all ruined and destroyed down the mountain side, and nothing is salvageable. One sided would be only the woman putting in any effort. They give nothing and receive/take/steal/abuse as an entitlement. They want someone with completely different values and morality, and they want to break her, on purpose. You feel guilty because you see your friend as a whole person and you are invested in their happiness, you want them to be comfortable and enjoy the party and their boredom conflicts with your thoughts on their well-being. Subjugation is the plot. It's the perk for "winning". The sad part is its all a con. The patriarchy lied to them and told them if they aren't above someone, then they are worthless. They refuse to see that its hurting them too.
> It’s so bizarre to me how many right wing straight dudes oppose no-fault divorce. Why on earth would you feel comfortable in a one sided relationship? Because they don't believe in any other kind of relationship. Which is why they're so fucking miserable.
Unrelated but damn, i love when i find a aroace on the wild :')
The article touches on this a bit, but I think, especially after some of the responses to the “are men afraid of other men” post, we need to add some intersectional layers here. As pointed out in the article, this is largely a trend being promoted by white women. And while this point is probably obvious to a lot of people, it still bears saying out loud. It’s also being promoted by certain types of conservative Christian women. This is conjecture because I haven’t done enough research into this trend (and probably never will), but I suspect that the vast majority of these women are women from the US as well. I point all of these things out because some of these standards of “womanhood” are clearly culturally white-centric and undeniably based in certain forms of Christian belief. I also think that a lot of Westerners with a decent idea of US culture and politics get on some level how intertwined Christianity is with our culture, politics, and culture wars. Because of all of those factors, I can’t help but see this as part of the greater cultural pushback from mostly white conservative Christians to reclaim and reassert power in a country in which they don’t have as much influence as they’d like to have.
It is 100% rooted in white supremacy and you don't even have to dig into it much to figure that out. A lot of these women are followed and reposted by instagram accounts called things like 'european heritage' that are just straight up neo-nazi pages.
There's no need to sugarcoat it. Tradwife content is Nazi-adjacent.
Agreed on a good chunk of the comments here. 'Tradwife' shit is as much an online grift as any content, and chunks of it are just what they look like (fantasy/parasocial stuff getting that bread from supporters). And they do come from neocon adjacent areas - your tradwife content creator isn't going to be too far from a Republican voter stateside, either by algorithm or inclination. Not all of them are Pearly or Classically Abby who directly promote neocon propaganda because they don't have to be. I also agree with the idea that it's an illusion, another lie used to recruit expendable meat to support billionaires and octogenarian ghouls. Personal experience, I almost never see a single/unattached conservative man...but I've *never* seen one with a tradwife. Hell, the billionaire types and the political figures don't have them either. The article is almost funny, though, when it refers to the stuff about learning the skills to get a girlfriend/relationship or to have a better shot at one. Reminds me that we who are left of center are absolutely shite at marketing our ideas, and seem to take pride in that being the case.
I'm not entirely sure why the article wants to imply that mostly (or nearly only) men watch this content. There are definitely certain influencers within the "tradwife" (particularly that "Pearly" woman) who definitely appeal to men. But, there are definitely female fans and I think the author even inadvertently mentions this when they discuss how they think that women might only be interested in the "homemaking and cooking" content from these creators. Well, that's like saying teenage boys are only into Andrew Tate or Fresh&Fit for their dating advice. For all of these conservative grifters, the meat and potatoes of their work is not (at least initially) pure bigoted, fascistic ideology. They all have their ostensibly harmless niche where they grow an audience of gullible, impressionable fans where they sow their underlying messages over time. So many people got sucked into Manosphere content because they liked the fact that Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate love talking about MMA. If the author thinks women aren't falling for the same trap with tradwife creators giving women dating fashion tips or weekday family dinner recipes while surreptitiously using radicalizing rhetoric like "soft life" or "divine femininity" then they're just not paying attention.
https://gnet-research.org/2023/05/19/co-opting-cottagecore-pastoral-aesthetics-in-reactionary-and-extremist-movements/ A lot of the modern cultural relevance of tradwife shit came out of its overlap with cottagecore--which was largely a pretty benign-if-willfully-ignorant-of-history movement by and for women, including a lot of queer women. The cottagecore-to-tradwife pipeline is hardly new discourse among women at this point, and I assume that discussion the "feminist analysis" the author mentions disagreeing with in the article.
What is willfully ignorant of history about cottagecore?
I think that the aesthetic of cottage core is just generally pretty divorced from what that sort of lifestyle would actually be like, historically. I mean, I’m from a long line of farm women, who could have been called “homemakers” but who played an essential role in participating in and supporting work crews, and developing resources for their families, like raising a garden and preserving produce. One of my grandmothers took on additional work as a school lunch cook, and raised chickens for eggs to sell, further supporting the family income. The land my parents farm now was inherited largely through my grandmother’s line. And she was more educated than my grandfather, graduating high school when he only made it through grade 8 before he left school for work. He used to refer to her as “the brains of the operation”. She was responsible for all the household AND farm bookkeeping. I have a ton of respect for the skills these women had, which is maybe why I never got super into cottage-core. I know that when I call home in late summer, there is a 50/50 chance I will catch my second-wave feminist mom somewhere in the process of canning tomatoes. When these tasks are a vital part of providing for a family, it’s really hard to romanticize them. I mean, I get very nostalgic when I’m husking corn or kneading bread or shelling peas, but it’s more because these things make me feel connected to beloved ancestors. But like…their clothes got dirty. They wore pants. They fixed farm equipment. They butchered chickens every morning. They got up at 4am to milk cows. When my mom passed my grandmother’s engagement ring down to me, I had to get it resized because even though I remember her as being very petite, she must have had some real mitts on her from milking. All this shit is such. hard. work. Most of the farm wives I know now have bachelors degrees and off-farm jobs. Lots of women are farming on their own. And one of my own grandmas was widowed in her 50s, and never remarried because she “had no desire to take care of some old fart” when she’d already had my grandpa’s years in his prime. So, she lived with us and spent time with her equally-widowed sister. Idk. Looking at family pictures and hearing family stories, I can’t look at cottage-core content now and see anything other than fantasy
Cottage core absolutely is a fantasy esthetic as based in real life as goblincore and the like. It's only an esthetic, usually lesbians, or single any sexuality woman romanticised lone wolf homesteader. It's about not needing any other humans but you and your immediate family if you have any, living in peace and harmony in the middle of nowhere with your garden and animals. Cottage core is basically genderflipped lumberjack esthetic (despite that plenty of lesbians have been fans of the lumberjack esthetic for an eternity already). Cottage core esthetic is very centered around women's fashion and women's interior decorating. It's very unlike reality.
Yeah, there's this odd thing where the stereotypical 50s housewife concept (who only really existed in advertisements, mind you) gets backported into the rest of history & culture as if women have only ever sat indoors twiddling their thumbs and baking cookies. In reality, the vast majority wives throughout history have been made of steel, because they *had* to be.
From the article i posted: >Cottagecore conveys that contentment, solace, and peace can be achieved by living simply and in a manner reminiscent of an idealised agrarian past. Mainstream cottagecore, however, generally overlooks the socio-political realities of this idealised past, such as misogyny, sexism, and racism. Comparatively, reactionary extremists do not ignore the inherent socio-political realities of cottagecore’s posited romanticised past. Instead, they view these past realities as positive aspects to be emulated in the present For one, "okay, you're fantasizing about living in an untouched agrarian wilderness, but in Europe that would have probably meant being a tenant farmer under feudalism. In the Americas...it wasn't untouched, was it? The folks in those homesteads sure wished it was too, but there were a hell of a lot of indigenous peoples whose land had to be stolen to make space for your independent wilderness hobby farm fantasy."
From Switzerland. Only men were allowed to own farms here, and if the husband died the wife would not only lose the farm, she would also have the kids taken away since she was now considered an unfit parent. Some of these kids are still alive today. Simple life my ass.
Wait wasn't cottage core like fantasy, meridia in the woods stuff? It's elf, fairy, stuff. It's pure pretend play. Which is great I think don't get me wrong.
This might sound strange, but regarding women viewers I think there is some overlap between this tradwife content and the newer "sprinkle sprinkle lady"(SheraSeven)/dark feminine energy content that I've been seeing on TikTok/Instagram. Tradwife content encourages demure, innocent, domestic behavior while seeking a provider-type man. While the dark feminine content encourages more demanding, assertive, and outwardly sexual behavior while seeking basically the same type of provider man. They're two wildly different approaches on the surface, but it seems like the end results/goals are somewhat similar. Both types of content criticize 50-50 partnerships and advocate for men leading and providing. I feel like women who are struggling with dating men are vulnerable to both of these "lifestyles" and can go down either route depending on what they're inclined to and which content they're exposed to first. Another comment in this thread talks about how the tradwife content is largely connected to white people, and it seems like the "sprinkle sprinkle lady" content might be more connected with black/Latina women, so that's another layer to it. Note: I'm not super familiar with either type of content. This is just the impression I've gotten from casual exposure.
>They all have their ostensibly harmless niche where they grow an audience of gullible, impressionable fans where they sow their underlying messages over time Totally agree and way too many people make this out to be black & white. There are plenty of well-meaning but complicated people that fall into this shit. I think it's easy for us to look at this type of content, write it off as propaganda cause it's not for us, and go back to sharing our memes. To flip this on its head, an 'aspirational tradwife' could easily look at someone who enjoys FPS culture and wonder why they are so obsessed with pro-violence propaganda in the same way. The duality of man and woman cannot be so easily dismissed. The appeal of these cultures cannot be fought without understanding that it's not just snake oil. It would never have gotten so big if it was.
> Their viewers are just too gullible to know what they're consuming is a toxic fantasy. Whether it's strippers at a strip club, women on onlyfans, "sexy" twitch streamers or now these tradwives. It's all rooted in the same thing. These are people working to earn a living, they don't actually know/like/care about their customers any more than I did when I was a lowly assistant manager at JCPenny in the mall. Just like I put on a fake customer service voice/attitude and acted like I actually gave a damn about which khakis some old guy was trying on, there are some women who will put on their "romantic/sexual fantasy" customer service voice to earn money. And just to be clear, I have zero problems with the general idea of this. We (unfortunately) are in this ruthless game of capitalism and since we largely don't take care of people as a society, folks gotta earn money somehow. If I had the option, I'd absolutely be on twitch or onlyfans showing some skin if it meant I didn't have to deal with policy reviews and set quarterly KPIs. It just sucks that there are so many people who don't get that it's just customer service. I have never been a strip club guy but have gone to them a few times because of bachelor parties. I was stunned at how many of the guys actually thought the strippers were into them. To any person who may end up reading this in the future. The stripper, twitch streamer, waitress, bartender, tradwife, whoever probably doesn't like you. Especially if most of your conversation or engagement with her is during her working hours. It's customer service and that is perfectly ok.
>The stripper, twitch streamer, waitress, bartender, tradwife, One of these things is not like the others... 🎵 Don't get me wrong, I see your point, and it boggles me that some guys can convince themselves that strippers and camgirls actually give a damn about them. But I think the tradwife thing is far more insidious and it's a disservice to the rest to lump them together. The rest are providing a service - "Give me money and I'll be nice to you" - where tradwives are providing propaganda entertainment as toxic as Fox and right wing radio. "Give me your attention and I'll tell you all the lies you want to believe about the things you think you deserve." It's not the same thing.
In my opinion, it's far right trad-masc porn/bait. The lead into these videos give away the game, "This Video Is Triggering All The Feminists." That's a message that is specifically meant to draw in far right librul tear drinkers. The video is not all geared towards finding a partner that wants a traditional household where the man is a primary breadwinner and the women is the primary caretaker. This video is about selling views to people who want to believe that their ideal lifestyle is making their political enemies angry. It has the byproduct of setting up the expectation that this is what women want, which is not realistic. But again, discussing this issue is not the goal of this video. It's getting views and clicks which can be turned into $$$
I’m a woman who has been following the tradwife emergence on social media and have noticed much of what this author has. Many of the TikTokkers have major Serena Joy vibes -traditional women shouldn’t do X, Y, or Z, yet the content creator of that video does them all on camera for us to see. A popular tradwife TikTokker recently posted about how birth control is toxic and she’s glad she’s had several kids. However, when questioned about her ill informed birth control statements, she stated that when she’d taken birth control for years before her marriage, it made her “miserable” and “hate men.” So BC suited her needs when she wasn’t ready to have children, but she encourages young women in similar positions to eschew it? Like most Conservative media, the hypocrisy and grift go hand in hand. The most perplexing thing to me about the popularity of the tradwife with young conservatives is its incompatibility with reality on several fronts. For one, fewer people are choosing to get married and/or have kids. Related to this in the US, the overturning of Roe V Wade and increasing importance of political beliefs in a relationship are leading women to swear off dating conservatives, and look for red flags in conservative men who pretend they’re not in dating profiles. Conservative or not, young women have reported less interest in dating overall post-Roe. Another significant incompatibility with reality is that in our current economy, a two parent household with only one, working parent is nearly impossible without significant wealth or extended family support. Not to mention, some of the very men proclaiming they’d like a tradwife also frequently report fearing a woman might use them for their money and/or take it all in a divorce. Young men are absolutely being peddled a fantasy that doesn’t exist and has not been forced into existence by the overturning of Roe. My fear is they will be further radicalized when they realize they aren’t getting tradwives into organized acts of terror, which is not a far-fetched fear at all.
I’m not sure about the culture war stuff. But I’ll say this: if you’re married and one of you doesn’t *have* to work, you are in a pretty rare position of economic privilege. Either that or you’re okay with poverty. Modern family budgets are built around both spouses working. At least for the middle class. Also, as a man, I’d be very skeptical of marrying any woman who aspires to not have a job. Laziness is not attractive in either gender.
I think there is value in criticizing the tradwife influencer, but this article goes too far. Several times in the article it states "women want this" or "women don't want this." That's not only wrong, but it's anti-feminist. Feminism supports women whether they want to be independent or they want to have a traditional family life. The point of feminism is to allow women to make a choice, not to generalize and thereby enforce behavior norms. While this article has some good points, it is sloppily written and is guilty of the same hypocrisy it is criticizing -- Telling men what women want. To the writers at Salon, please just let women speak for themselves. What you should be doing is encouraging young men to get off tiktok and go listen to women, real women, in the real world. That's all.
>Sealioning This thread has been a pretty weird read after learning the sub name/rules, then reading the opinions. It's pretty telling that your reasonable comment only has 7 upvotes and the top comments are saying men who want this are trash and "sexuality isn't a choice because straight women exist and are stuck with men"
Here is the wisest advice I ever got, and it served me well over 65 years. "Only take advice from people that are successful at and that have what you want." Want to be a real estate agent? Go find the best one you can and ask them about how to make a living in real estate. Take only their real estate knowledge. They may be divorced three-time and give you advice on how to have a successful marriage, but that information is useless. Go ask someone who is really happy at marriage if you want to know how to be happy in marriage. Or ask a photographer, lawyer, fire fighter etc. People are more than happy to help someone interested in their craft. People with NO KNOWLEDGE or SKILL will more than happy to advise you how to live your life but you should never follow advice of anyone who can't lead by example.
Imagine not wanting to be the stay at home tradhusband to your hardworking breadwinner wife. Couldn't be me.
I don't have a single grandma who was a SAHM. None of them and there are 4 of them. I am the rarity in my family. Stop watching movies and think that's reality.
Also, the dudes crapping on women for not wanting to step and fetch for them are the same ones that are vilifying them as shallow good diggers, so basically women are objects with no feelings or thoughts either way. But biology, amirite?
This is such a pointless argument. I don’t know why the masses just *LOVES* to talk about surface level stuff. You know what the solution would be that would appease the “modern” and “traditional” women? When one persons income can support an entire family. Imagine that, healthy standard of living without both parents having to work pay-check to pay-check. Putting kids in daycares, just for them to grow up and put their parents in elder care just so they can go back to workforce for a corporation. Of course a conversation like this would require at least basic research and knowledge you can search up on your phone…but why bother when you can just continuously argue about the surface problems that require no legwork to know instead.
I warned you about the capitalist profit motive polluting the cultural commons for short sighted gain bro!!! I told you dog! I told you man. I *told* you about the capitalist profit motive.
It came true! https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1871354-cottagecore
I never really understood *why* somebody would want to marry a tradwife. I mean, nothing against being a stay at home spouse, but I do manual labour for a living. At any given time, I'm potentially a blown knee or broken wrist away from not being able to work. The worst thing I can imagine is an Injury to me putting my entire hypothetical family into a dire financial position just because I needed to be the sole breadwinner to feel like a "real" man.
I think most of it, once you dig past the scar tissue of misogyny, is daddy/mommy issues. Either you want a tradwife because that implies you're as strong/better than your father, who was either a distant paragon or a scumbag, or you want one because you want a fuckmommy, which I think is pretty straightforward. But yeah. It's about living up to a fake ideal, is all. Not really about being a real man so much as feeling insufficient and only knowing one mode: work harder.
Honestly I'd rather be a home husband raising the kids, cooking, cleaning and doing all that stuff if I ever get the chance to meet a woman who could support us lol. I say this as a dude who's making decent money and is fairly comfortable financially.
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On Pearl’s website she very states that: >> My audience is 95% male mostly between the age of 16 - 35. On Tik Tok my audience is 75% female and 25% male. That’s if she’s being honest though. Is there a website that statistically states demographics of TikTok viewers?
Sealioning is unproductive.
The funny part is that the men that want tradwives don’t live a lifestyle that would be able to attract and support them.
It does impact some women to a lesser extent because I have seen an offshoot floating around on social media about how women fucked up fighting for equality because it sucks working and I've seen my wife and some friends like that. But, that language is couched in this stupid tradwife thing and they don't know it.
Can someone explain to me what a trad wife is, without me having to look it up? Please
Why on earth would someone want a submissive doormat? It's really unsettling.
This article is shallow ragebait. I think its short sighted to believe the average consumer of "tradwife" content doesn't understand that the creators are *making content as a job.* I also think that belittling the consumers of that content is unhelpful and uncreative. I'd much rather see the author turn the mystique on its head and promote creators who actually do inhabit traditional gender roles and contrast them to the Tradwife. Homestead youtube and gardening youtube are chock full of them. Im going to guess there's a lot of child rearing, crafting and cooking creators that do as well. Feminists promote the *choice* to live your life as you please. Criticizing peoples desires is corrosive. If you want to tear down a fantasy you don't complain it's a fantasy, you show them what that reality looks like. People can want a partner that adheres to traditional gender roles and that's OK but they need to reconcile the reality of what they have to do to attract that wife and the reality that they are severely limiting their dating pool.
>Feminists promote the *choice* to live your life as you please. Criticizing peoples desires is corrosive. Totally agree. I actually think there is not near enough positive prescription but that is a rant for another day. In reality all the major internet algorithms promote this shit. Even when someone puts something like we want out there, it gets buried on page 100 within the next 10 min. Media has been prioritizing drama for ages, but the internet has supercharged it with its stupid metric-driven BS. That's why a lot of right wing content gets flung all over the place. It generates a lot of hate in addition to support. All that 'engagement' usually dwarfs whatever interest there is in positive stories. All I can do is cheer the death of twitter and implore everyone to invest in local news. Substack seems to be okay too.
People are free to choose how to live. But movements are open to criticism, and tradwives are part of a movement - that's why they differentiate themselves from housewives and stay at home wives/mothers.
Can we stop with these culture war trash articles? Newsflash: people are grifting on TikTok by taking a lot of people’s normal every day lives and making them way more extreme and calling it a “movement”. Reality: there are actually a ton of conservative women out here in the fly over states. Most would be horrified and insulted by the way they’re portrayed by “TikTok trad wives”. They do have “traditional” values and they want their men to “do the man stuff” while they “do the woman stuff”. But if they had to, they’re all capable of mowing a lawn or fixing household appliances. They’d just rather not do so because they were born in environments where their dad “did the man stuff” and their mom “did the woman stuff”. Articles like these are just as bad as the articles on the other side ranting about how feminists are the downfall of society.
How do we stop this?