Reader question: What do we do about the #tradwife trend?
The problem isn't homeschooling and gardening and blowjobs. It's telling women what they can and cannot do.
On my most recent AMA, a reader asked me, “How can we combat the disgusting ‘trad wife’ content that's been forcibly added to our social media feeds these past few years?”
Disgusting is right. I’m so tired of seeing women telling other women—many, if not most, of whom are doing the exact same things they are—that they’re inferior because they want more freedom and less abuse.
I’m forever uncomfortable with any notion that we need to do something about a certain kind of woman. There is room for all women in feminism, and we should be actively advocating for the end to all women’s oppression. This includes, for example, making the world safer for housewives by ensuring they are compensated for their labor and never penalized in divorce or retirement. This doesn’t mean that all choices are equally good, by any means—just that women should be permitted to make the choices that work for them.
In a patriarchal world, though, becoming a housewife is not a decision that is likely to work for a woman long-term in anything other than a perfect scenario. If her husband dies, leaves, becomes abusive, loses his job, starts cheating, or otherwise is no longer willing to financially support the family, she is fucked. This is why the decision to become a housewife is so very dangerous—and advocating for more women to do it is tantamount to telling more women to make themselves vulnerable to male abuse and oppression.
There’s nothing wrong with gardening, homeschooling, and canning. And most people in happy marriages give their partners blowjobs and cook or do other favors for them. This stuff is not exactly revolutionary. Feminism should not be in the business of constraining women’s choices, or of asserting that there’s only one way to be a feminist or one path to freedom. We all have different interests and talents, and some women (like some men) are going to be attracted to a more domestic existence.
The problem with tradwives isn’t what they do; it’s that they pretend they’re the only ones doing it, and build entire careers on shaming other mothers (all while pretending they don’t work). I’ve seen tons of tradwife influencers post content about how they don’t care about their following or their fans or their photos; they care only about their husbands. All while posting multiple highly staged images a day and clearly working a full-time job as an influencer. It’s just silly.
Moreover, almost all women in heterosexual marriages are involuntary tradwives. They do almost all of the cooking, cleaning, and parenting, in a society (and with partners) who expect them to look like they’ve never had children, never missed a night of sleep, and never eaten a brownie. Society imposes no expectations at all on their husbands.
So to act like “traditional” femininity is dead and feminism killed it is laughable. The only difference between tradwives and most of my readers, is that tradwives are happy in a prison, and the rest of you want out.
They’re naive. Tradwives love the idea that their husband are loyal because of their traditional femininity. They’re the sort of women Andrew Tate and his ilk believe all women should be. The problem is that no woman can remain young and beautiful forever, and very few will live an entire lifetime without ever needing household support (such as help with cooking after surgery). What happens when the woman is no longer able to live up to her end of the impossible bargain? And what happens if, like so many men, he becomes abusive? Being a “traditional” man is itself a risk factor for becoming violent.
They’ve elevated mom-shaming to an art form. Do whatever you want. But don’t tell other women what they should do. Mommy warring between women is anathema to feminism. Telling other women they shouldn’t work, shouldn’t have ambitions, or should submit to their husbands is inherently anti-feminist.
They want to control women. Women who are financially dependent on their husbands have less power in marriage and less power in society. The fact that conservatives so aggressively advocate for this financial outcome is no accident. The #tradwife movement is about the deliberate removal of power from women, even if individual tradwives don’t support this.
They are harming themselves without even realizing it. Not one moment of cooking, cleaning, and childrearing will matter if these women ever need to re-enter the workforce. Should their husbands become abusive, their time as tradwives will count for precisely nothing when it’s time to seek custody of their kids or alimony.
They talk about ‘submission.’ If you want to play submission games with your husband, more power to you. But you don’t get to tell other women that they should submit to men. And let’s be honest, too: if men are so incompetent that they cannot care for children unattended, clean the home, and otherwise tend to the basic responsibilities of being a grown ass human, then why the fuck are we telling women to submit to these buffoons?
But returning to the original question:
You respond to this content by never, ever engaging with it. Every time you pick a fight with someone online, you make their content more visible. That will cause it to continue to show up in your feed. Go hang out on my Facebook page instead.
I’m a recovering codependent and trad wife. I birthed and raised 6 children, but when the exhole decided there was little left of me to exploit and plenty of cost, he filed for divorce.
After twenty years of marriage (gave up my career as a cpa after baby #4) six kids and two miscarriages, I am literally paying for the abuse I endured at his hands for 20 years. He filed for 100%- our settlement kinda resembled 50/50- he literally was starving me and the kids out. Once he ascertained I no longer could afford legal counsel he filed three contempt motions (concerning my address, family photos, and some other bullshit) and an emergency motion for 100% custody supervised visitation and a mental evaluation.
I “passed” all of the standardized psych tests but my savvy manipulative abusive exhole was able to charm all the professionals on our case (patriarchy runs deep here in the swamp of Flori-DUH) and get the evaluator to diagnose me with BORDERLINE solely on his “witness account”.
What adds insult to injury is we’re Italian Americans who are Catholic - he actually is the finance officer and works for our bishop- cultures who elevated and revere motherhood yet I was an unpaid breeder.
I have all of his abuse documented and five years later my academically gifted kids become high school dropouts.
I’ve been hoping the schools would mandatory report (one high school dropout is bad enough- but three is definitely suss), but as I’m documenting my ex’s neglect with the school attendance records, it has become very clear that the schools have altered their records significantly.
In 2016-2017 my oldest was in 9th grade and was not attending school. I frequently raised the issues of his absenteeism with our court appointed parenting coordinator so I have screen shots from 2016-2017 showing my eldest had 53 ABSENCES and 24 TARDIES (funny he had sole custody but the fact our kids weren’t going to school in his neglect was OF NO CONCERN). The transcript that I was able to obtain from the high school in June (was literally pulling teeth to get them to acknowledge my status as a parent and my legal right to the documents- the guidance counselor blew me off and stopped responding) shows 8 absences and 1 tardy. Hmmm. Also shows him advancing to grade 10 in 2017 in spite of not having passed ANY CLASSES.
Not sure what to do with this- state doe doesn’t give a shit (flori-DUH), my bishop ignored my 30 page account of domestic and child abuse in 2020. But I have three more kids in 7th,8th and 5th and I CANNOT SIT BY AND WATCH THEIR LIVES GET RUINED. My ex is an entitled coercive controlling abusive man. Yet I’ve been consistently discredited meanwhile he is ABUSING THEM IN PLAIN SIGHT.
Regardless of politics or ideology, most mothers end up searching for content about cooking, cleaning, organizing, parenting, pregnancy and childbirth, etc. I would love to see more progressive, feminist content creators use some of the same strategies that patriarchal content creators use to get people on the tradwife pipeline. Surely we could make soothing, aesthetic videos about bread rising or decluttering or whatever other topics, but with a feminist bent?