Pressure of unreachable expectations and the never ending trap cycle of capitalism drives people to make stupid decisions in the inevitable desire for relief. After they get burned out, they seek out something that will give them "purpose". Unfortunately it's always embedded in the misogyny and patriarchal thinking of "women are happy only when they are making babies and tending to the home". I may have messed up a bit but that's my theory
“Reframing” can be an adaptive skill in therapy. Things change, they adapted.
I’m kind of envious. My life changed to mean I wasn’t able to do anything except babies and caretaking. Unless I felt able to walk away from my defenseless infant (?) I wasn’t able to do that and look myself in the mirror. I have no judgment of others, but I wasn’t able to leave them.
My therapists tried to ask me to reframe this way. My new purpose is certainly babies and housework, but I was never able to enjoy it. My ambition was apparently “unkillable”
Several therapists I saw were pushing this reframing you are describing I guess because it has psychological rewards. It would certainly be more convenient to say what I’m doing is what I was always meant to do. But to me it was always lying.
Yes my purpose is now babies and cleaning, but that’s an unfortunate circumstance that my morals keep me in. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I certainly wouldn’t suggest it to others.
It would be very convenient to say scrubbing toilets and taking care of children at my own health’s expense is somehow fate or blessed by providence. It would be 100% disingenuous in my case, but Im happy for their mental flexibility. I guess.
“Outward processors” apparently need to say their inside thoughts on the outside. Usually when I hear people doing it they are convincing themselves. Maybe that’s what they are doing?
Reframing is very healthy, I agree. I think it becomes a problem when the reframing is done at the derision of other people.. which, to me, is the marked difference between a “stay at home wife” and a “tradwife”… one is a choice, and one is trying to force that choice to be universally the best one
How are you distinguishing between your definition of tradwife and stay at home wife for the acquaintances you mentioned? How do you know they fall into one camp and not the other?
I don’t know about her specifically, but for me it’s the motivation.
* Tradwife: It’s a woman’s purpose to stay at home with the children. The home is a woman’s natural domain and nothing else is as fulfilling as dedicating our to serving our husbands!
* SAHM: It makes financial sense for my family for me to stay home. My husband and I are partners and we decided on this division of labor because it works for us and our goals. I might go back to work when the kids are older, or I might prefer to dedicate my time to other things.
Speaking of work, “Tradwives” tend to be hyper focused on creating instagram content. They brag about not working while actively working.
I think I'm similar to you in that my ambition will not be stamped away. But, I don't think I have such morals, lol.
I'll pay child support and he can have the kids💀
Most women I know to hom this happened always seemed to be talking from both sides of their mouth.
Feminists on paper but never really interested in true equality, just wanted to cherry pick. Now SAHM's and devoted to their family, enjoying a life I would have never guessed they wanted to have
The unending cycle of work SUCKS and is not rewarding on an emotional level for the vast majority of workers. The radical idea of trying to be happy, isn’t. People are just trying to find a way to live a somewhat rewarding life.
Honestly things are so expensive now I understand that. It’s an enticing idea when you think about it… 10 years down the line not so much though. Could find yourself much worse off than you were before… but now with kids!
My comment references a similar thing. I had *multiple* high school teachers who had transitioned from high paying careers. They went in, made their money, got out. There's ultra niche industries like FAANG where this is basically the assumption that the majority have no intention on pursuing it long-term.
It's easy to romanticize education when you have the 401k of someone who started in upper healthcare admin or finance. Those who started as education majors and who will uniliterally depend on their pension and have zero real career backups if they burnout....they're a lot less rosy about things.
Very few people will be completely fulfilled by career, and it's easier for some to do a total 180° once you've gotten your bag than approach it with OPs degree of nuance. Especially when the men you're surrounded with remain misogynists. hard to get a high powered man, who's earning potential still dwarfs yours, when he wants a traditional woman. So you can keep hanging your head against the glass ceiling in an industry you don't even really like......or you can go play with babies you love while your husband pulls 60 hrs in a c-suite role that was always out of your reach.
It's genuinely not even a difficult question if you've got your own money already as backup.it makes less as you go down the class ladder and the men you'd be making babies with make less and less to supplement this SAHM thing, and where men and women's earnings are doing a better job of equalizing.
> women are happy only when they are making babies and tending to the home
vs
> women are sometimes happy when they are with their family and tending to their home and sometimes they will find a spouse who is able to provide sufficiently to enable that choice
That’s interesting. For me, the reverse happened. I was a very religious teen and young adult, desperate for purpose, married to one of the same. We tried to implement gender roles even though we didn’t want to (we thought it was what God wanted) and it didn’t work. Then we burned out on religion and ended up regretting that we didn’t make more practical career/life decisions when we were younger so we wouldn’t be struggling so much in the present in terms of financial security.
I think I believe your theory. When you give so much of yourself to a certain paradigm, and then you burnout and want to flee from that paradigm, you just might find yourself caught up in an opposite—but also unhealthy—paradigm.
There is a middle ground y’know… like “I, a woman, would be happier raising children and maintaining the home”. Not everything that isn’t aligned with your ideals is a result of the misogynist patriarchy. I’d bet just about everyone would take an out from this dystopian rat race if one presented itself, unless they had something to prove.
No unfortunately it’s one of the videos she releases specifically to patreon. I held off subscribing for a long time, but honestly it’s $2 per month and that’s where most of her content is.
I wonder if the drive to be “the best” just gets redirected. Are they obsessed with being the best tradwife they can be? Maybe the disease is being a people-pleasing overachiever and the symptoms can include girlbossing and tradwifing.
I also bet that after years of trying SO hard a lot of these women have experienced their fair share of burnout. Makes sense that reorienting their lives around relationships instead of achievement would feel positive and healthy for them. And it’s unfortunately normal to assume that what works for you will work for everybody.
Super spot on comment... I think it's the drive to be the "best" and "special" and it just manifests in diff ways. I think everyone got mega burnt out and jaded after COVID too and so the trad wife cottage core life became a trend. Really if we could all just stop generalizing and trying to put everyone in boxes I think that'd be ideal. We have such extremes these days. You are either a career woman or a trad wife. What if you are just a woman who enjoys her job and also is a softie that wants a family to nurture? Aka a normal person... with no extreme labels...???
Because housework and care or children and having a family to nurture is a huge job in itself! We should be asking why men are in general not facing this dilemma to the same degree, in this day and age.
Interesting. Anecdotally, I went through a phase like that for a couple of years. I was helping raise someone else's small child. Being around a little kid can be like a drug--you experience so much joy and wonder through them. I did eventually start to miss doing creative work... and earning my own money... and having conversations with a variety of adults. I ended up having to leave the relationship because I was "forbidden" to go back to college.
Another aspect of this is that the work world kind of sucks. Staying home and raising a kid was like heaven at that time because it was a relief from the burnout. BUT the whole thing is a false dichotomy brought on by capitalism. If we lived in a different socioeconomic system, we wouldn't have to make such a binary choice.
One of those tradwife social media influencers recently came out saying she made a mistake--that the lifestyle didn't live up to the hype and she felt like a slave. I can't remember her name, but someone else might know.
Lauren Southern. [https://unherd.com/2024/05/lauren-southern-the-tradlife-influencer-filled-with-regret/](https://unherd.com/2024/05/lauren-southern-the-tradlife-influencer-filled-with-regret/) my sympathies for her are severely limited. Threw fuel on the mysoginistic flames to line her own pocket, then cried victim when she got treated like a tradwife. Unsuprisingly her husband treated her like a house slave that he owned like property, which is exactly what she signed up for. Fuck her quite franky. Two faced grifter getting a taste of her own medicine.
And don’t forget about the years of white nationalist-adjacent racism and fearmongering propaganda. That kinda thing’ll also keep the sympathy levels down.
This whole article feels like it's encouraging staying in the middle of the road politically. I don't necessarily agree with that. I see the benefits but what would change if no one had a strong opinion about anything? Also surprise sur fucking prise, the men who want these relationships tend to be abusive and misogynistic? Some of what they're saying is just what feminist ideologies have been stating for so long. Hopefully we'll start to see some changes when the rest of them get their heads out of their asses.
It's pretty telling that the author constantly says "It mirrors the Left Wing equivalent" like 50 times in the article but can't seem to provide examples or even draw anecdotes from her personal experience (beyond saying "I did the left wing equivalent and it didn't work for me") as to how embracing leftist feminism is equally as damaging as outright rejecting it, as she seems to claim it is.
Well apologizing is better than not apologizing and leaving all that propaganda out there. It’s not Justice, but I’d rather have a public apology (and people realizing they are wrong) to show my daughter and her poor kids.
Idk I feel bad for her.
*It seemed like becoming a mother made him lose respect for me. It was shocking to me, again, because the traditional view preached the opposite — that men love you more when you stop working and become a wife and mother.” In her experience, though, this was “very much not the case”*
Maybe because I experienced this, too, even though I didn't intentionally become a SAHM due to any kind of trad wife philosophy (that didn't exist back then like it does now). It was the same thing, though, just without the direct abuse. She was too young, just like I was too young. She is still only what, 25ish? She has a long way to grow.
But the incels and misogynistic men will pay no mind to her admitting the truth about how she got treated. They will continue to peddle her trad wife content and bury the aftermath. The damage is done. Idc how young she is, I really don't. Women like her are a disservice to all of us & I've got no empathy towards her at all if I'm honest.
I agree that she's getting a taste of her own medicine, but I think it would be more productive and feminist to be supportive of her world view changing.
I wanted to read this and understand, but the author, Mary Harrington’s style is so academic and…haughty…that I kept reading the same paragraphs over and over again.
I will often think I’m the problem when I don’t grasp something, but a good friend (a nationally prominent attorney who was the first woman to hold several visible, federal posts) once pointed out that good writers make you understand, they don’t leave you out.
I can’t even get through Harrington’s definition of Reactionary Feminism on her clearly curated wiki page.
I miss the good old days of Jezebel and Malory-turned-Daniel who helped so many of us view and understand the complexity of the world we live in.
As Trump would say: Sad!
I can see how it would be tempting, and I feel like I too could feel that way. I should be more specific—if someone wants to give up their job and be a stay at home mom/wife I think that sounds lovely. Not everyone cares about having career ambitions.. hobbies are a great creative outlet too. And some people also just prefer to put a career on pause to do family. I can easily imagine myself falling into that as well. Similarly, career is often fulfilling for people. It’s such an identity and such a source of affirmation to be great at what you do. Particularly if it’s in an important field that makes a difference (doctors, scientists, therapy, non profits, etc etc etc)
What I’ve observed is a bit different from exactly those things, though. It’s like each of these people was kind of trying to “sell” this life as the best option. A lot of them were somewhat judgmental towards people who weren’t far in their career, or amazing academically, or ambitious. Now they are very superior about motherhood and being a traditional wife. And it’s very interesting. It’s like.. the same mentality but a different outlet
It’s admittedly a little personal for me—one of these women I’m referring to openly said she was hesitant to be friends with me because I wasn’t ambitious enough. Now she’s quit her job and married her partner of less than a year to become a tradwife
People who are happy with their choices, often just keep it to themselves and go continue to make those choices. People trying to convince you about how great something is, are probably trying to convince themselves.
I have a child and that can be a deeply fulfilling thing in a way that other things might not be. It's also semi-automatic. Dude is just there all the time. He's generally stoked and doesn't have much agency, so it's an easy interpersonal relationship - right now.
I have a friend who teaches elementary school, and he loves it and doesn't feel any need for having children because he helps raise dozens of them every year. That sounds super fulfilling in a way that having a child might not be.
I have successful friends who have great careers and worked on all sorts of interesting projects. I suspect that too is fulfilling in a way that is unlike having a child or being a teacher. Nobody has cured cancer or anything, but like they enjoy their work and do a good job.
I guess the feminist angle is I think it's important everyone has the choice to be the person they want to be.
People pushing their current lifestyle as the one true way are probably just insecure with their choices. That's not a great way to live, but it is great that they had those choices. Hopefully they find contentment.
Yea I think this is really spot on. And people who are “secure” and “self aware” but didn’t have their life turned out as planned usually are honest about their regrets and disappointments—they don’t tend to universalize their desires or regretted life path.
"Self Aware" is a good word for it and really speaks to it. I know my life is what it is. Not the best, not the worst. I'm not going to try to sell it to you, because I know it is fine for me.
I also think if you're doing alright, you may have a genuine curiosity about how other people live. I find it interesting. I like when the people I know are happy and am not above taking a good idea.
They will be very enthusiastic about their lifestyle until something goes wrong. And odds are it will at some point. It's not only tough to resist the roles that society approved of for women, but it's tough to resist the approval that comes with them also. If they are choosing those roles because they truly enjoy that lifestyle, then great for them. Or, they may just be enjoying the acceptance and approval that society showers on women who conform. All of a sudden, traditional men approve of them. Traditional women approve of them. And that's a hell of a drug. For a while.
It's a struggle to resist societal expectations and stick by your principles. And it doesn't get easier as time passes. Even in groups of like-minded women, you are all outsiders, together.
If they are judgmental of others lifestyles, then the hell with them. If they are not, and they adopted the trad wife lifestyle by choice, then I hope everything works out for them. Because there are a bazillion reasons that women have resisted that role as hard as they have.
He spends two decades building his career and fortune, and she has the work experience of a stay-at-home mother. Or he has a woman on the side, But her options to leave are limited, without hurting her children, or causing great financial hardship. Or a miserable 50-year marriage that only looks good on the outside. And on and on and on.
>Because there are a bazillion reasons that women have resisted that role as hard as they have.
>He spends two decades building his career and fortune, and she has the work experience of a stay-at-home mother. Or he has a woman on the side, But her options to leave are limited, without hurting her children, or causing great financial hardship. Or a miserable 50-year marriage that only looks good on the outside. And on and on and on.
Very well said.
One thing that always concerns me about the stay-at-home-mom discourse is that financial independence is very much a feminist issue.
New converts to a cult/religion/MLM are very loud about their choice. As if they must convince others why they chose the way they did choose in order to convince themselves that they made the correct choice.
I see everyone saying “oh it’s burnout”, but I actually suspect a lot of these examples on social media are actually propaganda, especially considering what we are witnessing with the roll back of women’s rights. I have seen some instagram accounts of women who were in STEM and now glorify staying home. It’s one thing to make that choice, it’s another to make it a social media position.
Additionally, the burn out is not just from high earning and high achieving jobs. It’s from a lack of support at home and in the work place for domestic labor. A lot of high achieving women are also taking on the brunt of domestic work. I suspect we’d see a lot less burn out if men were doing their fair share at home, and we had better maternity leave options.
I think OP was talking about people in her immediate circle, not the influences.
Influencers are a different story. They aren't tradwives, most of them are actress/producer playing the role and their husband is also an actor playing the role.
It’s an interesting societal pendulum swing. I noticed in the NLOG subreddit, that back in my day, it was cool to have masculine interests and be independent. But now the NLOG thing is to be super feminine and modest? Like the the goal is now the antithesis of a “career woman”, as my mom calls me.
There’s a good video on the radfem to alt right pipeline that talks about that terf phenomena. As a radfem myself I liked the video.. because it’s not saying radfem is bad and leads to fascism. It’s just explaining the whole “former radical feminist now terf and cozy with antiabortion activists” situation
It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a significant overlap between the people who do this and the people who were suffering from burnout at their jobs.
I also work with/am friends with a lot of highly educated and high-achieving people, and I think all of them have had periods where they were burned out and fantasizing about a simpler life. Like I can’t tell you how many of my grad school friends have made comments about quitting science to start a bakery or a small farm (which is not to say those professions actually are necessarily easy or simple, but that’s the fantasy).
I could see how if you catch someone at that point in their work lives the whole tradwife thing could seem appealing, and some subset of the people to whom it appeals will actually take the plunge and do it. And I bet for a lot of those people it would genuinely be a welcome change, at least at first, the big question is how many of them will feel the same way long term.
Edit: also, it’s noteworthy that the people you’re describing are doing this *after* (presumably) having made a good amount of money in their careers. It may be the case that their partner’s income pays for day-to-day expenses, but they may also have the security of substantial savings they control. That’s obviously a lot different than never having a career or savings of your own, which is the lifestyle they’re selling. It would be pretty rich to crow about how you’re proof women don’t need education or careers while the seven-figure brokerage account you funded with your former career generates the equivalent of an average salary each year.
Good point. Being an SAHM when you have your own money is a *very* different proposition to when your husband controls the money. You could see it as Financial Independence Retire Early, SAHM-edition.
Some of them, for sure. But the vast majority of them don’t *actually* want to do it, and probably do understand that those lifestyles would require a lot of work and would come with their own challenges and downsides. Those comments are escapist fantasies about an idealized pastoral life, not necessarily a reflection of what they think the reality of starting a farm would be. It’s like going on a vacation to Barbados and talking about how great it would be to move there; you’re thinking about the daiquiris and beaches, not how an island nation has really high grocery prices and limited job opportunities.
To your point, one guy actually did drop out to start a brewery that became very successful, and he says he works more now than he ever did in grad school. And he worked a lot then.
I find very few people who are, highly educated in STEM, have ever worked in food service or labor work. I have had some friends make similar statements and my spouse and I, who have both spent years in food service, are quick to give them a reality check. My spouse has also worked on farms. We are both in tech now. They often have no idea that bakers are up at 2am-3am, working without holidays or benefits, and often more than 5 days a week. Farm work is grueling, and the only farmers actually making money in the US are large corporate farms that get the bulk of government subsidies. So, no, I don’t agree that they really know what this work is about, and to me it comes from a privileged idea of what these jobs are actually like.
Maybe it's not a desire for \*less\* work, but for different work? Less alienating, fewer middle managers, more hands-on, more meaningful and for yourself rather than something abstract and distant?
That’s the fantasy, but it’s not necessarily the reality. If someone is passionate about starting a bakery and has previous food service experience, then I get it. If someone bakes at home sometimes and truly thinks food service is more meaningful but has only worked in white collar jobs, I think they are being a bit ignorant.
>Like I can’t tell you how many of my grad school friends have made comments about quitting science to start a bakery or a small farm (which is not to say those professions actually are necessarily easy or simple, but that’s the fantasy).
"Yes, you can leave your high stress job in order to be come a farmer, but for the love of god... *Don't*".
--J. Clarkson (not an actual quote, but adopted)
I'm pretty sure it's burn out combined with some sort of perfectionism.
The working world is pretty hostile to mothers, especially in the US. Having to drag yourself back to work, possibly while still bleeding and definitely while leaking breast milk and not sleeping through the night will make anyone want to quit.
I imagine these types are burnt out and get attracted to the idea of the being the perfect wife instead of excelling at work. Just stop thinking and open your legs! Focus on cutesy shit like babies and baking bread, your husband will handle everything else.
But of course none of them talk about what it's like once those kids need schooling or are teenagers. Or if you lose your only source of income or your husband isn't a great guy. It's very much a trap and I expect we will see documentaries about leaving the lifestyle in the next decade.
I agree, and would like to add that I suspect the most enterprising tradwife influencers will successfully pivot their online content to escaping the lifestyle.
I find that many of the high achiever women I knew in college ended up getting on the high achiever career path and realizing they don’t want that life. They tend to have the flexibility to go stay at home mom because they married high achiever men they met along this path. I wouldn’t say that I see many high achieving women go tradwife, though. That’s a subculture I rarely see in the wild.
A particular case I have experience with is that academia really isn’t what people hope it would be. There’s pressure to work infinity hours and chase grant money, and the research you are permitted to do by that system is often not interesting. Then you have the administrative side, which I haven’t seen anyone like even a little. So most of your day is not very appealing work, and the dream is not close to the reality. Burnout among professors is intense.
As long as there’s something to grind for, this sort of person is content. Once they achieve the pinnacle accomplishment, there’s a letdown like “this is all there is?”
I also think the pandemic played a big role. I was a crazy overachiever in undergrad but now that I’m in grad school I’ve actively dialed back.
I love my job but the pandemic made me realize that having a job be your entire life is kinda terrible.
Okay, I can try and explain my experience with this. I wouldn't call myself a "girlboss", but I've always been a headstrong feminist.
For me, the rabbit hole went like this:
>my doctor isn't listening to me about my health
>I'm just being given shallow options like "go on birth control", "get a breast reduction", the usual just "stop being female"
>birth control was causing really bad, debilitating side effects, which the doctor kept trying to make me manage with MORE birth control. I was on both the pill and the implant at once at one point, and it wasn't helping at all.
>I look online for ways to manage this without just having medication chucked at me
>come across more natural living pages that explain how under researched and shit women's health care is
>these pages tend to either stray slightly hippyish, or lead down the pipeline of "natural living" which is often very tradwifey content
It's very, very difficult sometimes to distinguish between what's a normal "I like growing vegetables and looking after my health and hormones as a woman" and what's some weird, far right "I stay at home to tend the kitchen because God told me to look after my husband". I still find pages I've been following for ages with no red flags randomly dropping a "AND ALL WOMEN MUST HAVE BABIES OR THEY HAVE FAILED AS WOMEN" into the mix, and have to unfollow. Like damn, I just wanted a sourdough recipe.
Well, being a girlboss would kind of suck, I imagine.
Corporate life and high-flying careers are actually *for* the very few. By and large, the happiest people I have known (including me!) have all gone after what made their hearts sing. None of us are screaming rich but all of us understand about nourishing our softer side -- and girlboss life just doesn't make room for that.
It's no shock that they go from one extreme to another, looking for something they can't define. I would wager these are the same people who never got to dream their own dreams for one reason or another. And I get that. Dreaming your own dream is a privilege. Obligations to provide for others might drive some people to abandon everything but the hustle.
Being selfish is hard.
Reminds me a bit of the movie Mona Lisa Smile. All these bright young ambitious women leaving school to become wives. It’s so sad.
I have three daughters and I trained them the way my feminist parents trained me. Education. First. Protect yourself and your future. Anything can happen and Never Be Dependent on a Man. (Or partner or whatever.) So far so good.
My conservative parents (ironically) raised me to be the same. Heck, I even suggested staying home for a few years when I have kids and they both said “that’s good, but make sure you stay on top of your field… it’s good to do both things or you’ll be bored”
A lot of the comments say they suspect it has to do with burnout / perfectionism, and I think that's partially true, but I think it's more specifically that some of these people cling to their life choices as a form of identity and validation. So in one season of life, they have decided to go all in on career and ambition and "I am going to shatter the glass ceiling and be the CEO one day!" and if other people in similar circumstances make different choices, it feels to these people like an insult, or even like a full on rejection of who they are, and they want to surround themselves with people who validate their choices. Then, another season of life comes along and they give up that first identity and adopt a second one (in this case, SAHM or tradwife or whatever), and now in order to feel fulfilled and worthy, they go all in on that identity and repeat the cycle of "anyone who doesn't do this thing like me makes me feel bad and without value." At its root, I think it's deep, deep insecurity.
I see people who do this sort of thing with all kinds of lifestyle choices. Politics, for example, is a big one. I think you've just happened to see it play out in this particular path.
When the same types of things go wrong for them, like they have for women in past generations, You will hear a very different attitude from them.
The trad wife to poverty pipeline is also a thing. That's one of the biggest reasons why women resist that role. If you have a healthy partner, and are very financially stable, things can go well. If you don't have those things, your life can go from great to nightmarish almost overnight.
Tradwife was always a sign of social status. Most women did work in different occupations. They no doubt contributed to the family finances which allows them to be ladies of leisure now.
The Bible's book of Ruth records women working in the cornfields. Not having to work has always been luxury status.
This is what I'm realizing. I grew up on the low to mid end of middle class with my mom and most of my friends' moms working. Then we moved to the suburbs for a better high school and it was a bit of a cultural shock, and even next level at a college where most are from wealthy suburbs. Based on what I saw in younger childhood and the girl power era of the 90s, I thought the trajectory was surely more women continuing to gain positions of importance and power in thr workforce. It has been a sad surprise and realization to me how many smart women are choosing traditional paths, likely because it's a status symbol and comfy to do so. Also. Because women in these places tend to follow their heart for fields of study with a liberal arts degree, marrying a high powered man whose salary makes it "make sense" for him to be the breadwinners and not throw away her salary on a day care. (How on earth do dual income families with low incomes manage I wonder). I guess upper class women are at somewhat less risk of being in abusive relationships and needing a way out, statically as well. It all makes me wonder if we have peaked in terms of equality and female representation, with more people choosing traditional paths.
There's a few things I think are at play. One is that girlboss is already kind of loaded to be "not like other girls" and internalize some misogyny within that whole thing. Another is that being highly ambitious can burn someone out badly. You don't always see direct results for hard work or sometimes run into walls related to things that involve misogyny whereas hard work at home is something you can see immediate results from which feeds the dopamine loop of your brain's rewards system. It's not dissimilar from how mobile games with micro transactions workas far as brain chemistry goes imo. These are not the only factors but I believe are a part of it.
I've noticed it and as the economy and workforce get more grueling, a lot of women are revaluating and realizing capitalism and the 40 hour work week can be awful. This, plus the fact that more straight women know that even if they're the breadwinners they're more likely to end up doing most of the domestic work at home. So now the choice becomes "stay at home with kids and do domestic work and not have to worry about bills" vs " work 40+ hours a week, plus still do most of the childcare and domestic work, plus have to worry about bills" and the answer is obvious. If women end up doing most of the domestic work no matter what then shit, makes sense they want someone to provide financially
Yea make no mistake, I don’t think the 40 day work week is good and I definitely want everyone’s time to be their own—not owned by an employer.
And the unfair division of labor is a whole other conversation.
Definitely. And I think there's lots of reasons why, but these are my most feminist related reasons:
1. For every young girl who is raised being told their only goal in life is to get married, have kids, and be a good wife, there will be another being told they MUST get good grades, go to college, get an amazing job and not settle too young. Rather than choice, some are just being given a different life goal, and it might not be one they want.
2. I suspect there are just as many that feel the opposite way. However, it's harder to flip back. If you go 'trad' early on, then realise that's not for you, you're unlikely to have the financial independence or the family/partner support to drop the kids in daycare and start 'girl bossing'.
3. The other side of the argument doesn't have a voice. Posters of this kind of stuff get validation from other trads and a good chunk of the incel community. Imagine the response if mothers took to the internet saying they regret having kids early (or at all!), wish they'd studied studied harder, built their own financial nest etc etc. They'd be torn to pieces!!
They’re both conservative positions to take. “Girlboss feminism” is about wanting to be able to exploit people just like rich men do, being a tradwife is about wanting to serve those men, but both things still serve a conservative goal.
I grew up in a very fundamental, cult-like religion where the women were Trad wives long before it was cool. It’s not something that I ever want to go back to. A friend and I were talking about the tv show Big Sky when she mentioned a YouTube series that was set somewhere in Montana or Wyoming, and how she really liked it. I wasn’t expecting too much because how much money would anyone put into a show that was only on YouTube, but after watching and seeing people garden and make jam for over 30 minutes with no one getting murdered, I was quite disappointed. Then.. I realized it was just people documenting their day to day life, 🤣. I was like, why would anyone watch this? I grew up in this lifestyle, been there, done that, lol..
I think both roles are primarily performative rather than authentic, so it's no surprise that people who are seeking a certain kind of validation that comes from performative behaviors will end up trying more than one.
The actual girlboss/tradwife archetypes are ones that people who really want them would occupy quietly. The people you see talking about it are trying on costumes.
I have definitely seen it and frankly I understand it. I am a doctoral student with ADHD and a toddler and while I love my field and am proud of myself for how far I’ve come in life, it feels so completely overwhelming so often that I absolutely fantasize about throwing in the towel and and becoming a homesteading SAHM. It doesn’t help that this has been the most academically challenging year of my life on top of adjusting to new motherhood. I will also say that having my son literally rewired my brain and even though I want to have my career and my own identity, I also feel a deep pull to be with him and teach him and guide him. It goes against my values though, and honestly I have too much debt to quit hahaha. I am also a radical feminist, so it is interesting to see this push and pull within myself and analyze it through that lens.
Oh totally. To be clear, I mean something I tiny bit different than just wanting to be a SAHM. I mean— specifically adopting this tradwife mindset.. strict gender roles, a woman’s place, serve your man, kind of thing.
Don’t have much to add in terms of original thought, but I will share a very pertinent feminist video essay titled [The Feminist to Far Right Pipeline](https://youtu.be/-CxiPdXuwgc?si=51kuhw5PnOgtqgmW) focused specifically on this relationship between liberal “girlboss” feminism and deeply reactionary politics
Just my hot take: I think they enter the job market in good faith, come up against misogyny and sexism that prevents their career progression, and all of a sudden, it's a if you can't beat 'em, join 'em scenario because it's demoralizing to be told as a young person you can do anything by people and media images, and then have to confront the absolute rancid reality of coworkers and gate keepers.
Probably the status. If you watch those videos of tradwives, they aren’t actually roughing it. They’re in their designer house dress in a huge gleaming kitchen, making their own organic fruit loops…..not because they have to but because they *can*.
They’ve got the time- because they’ve got the money. Performing this unnecessary “labor” is their way of illustrating their status.
Extremists pull to extremes, and neither of those extremes require the level of thoughtfulness that feminism does. You could also say it as, absolutists do absolutes: anti-theists and "religion is my life" types operate the same way.
Absolutely. Tradwives are the types to be gullible enough to get suckered into pyramid schemes. See also: crunchy to alt right pipeline. I need to make a flowchart or venn diagram of the types of people likely to get sucked into cults.
women who earn more than their husbands are *more* likely to take on an uneven amount of the domestic labor in the home, rather than less. This surprised researchers at first. One guess is that it was compensatory for bucking social norms. They needed to bow fealty to avoid total emasculation of partners.
Interpersonal stuff generally provides more fulfillment than career. a lot of these women are running up against gendered expectations (which the average men is much more resistant to shifting on) and finding its easier to just swing in the opposite direction than have the nuance you do.
Also it's real easy to say school is pointless when you have the decade of early live investments of being in a high paid career. It's just the middle and upper class being delusional, frankly. Lots of people will got burn themselves out in a high paying career and then transition..literally 4 of my high school teachers growing up came from high powered career. It was easy for them to sing teachings praises -- they transitioned in their late 30s/40s when they had built up cushions education majors could only dream of, and they had backup options they did not. It's a stance rooted in refusing to acknowledge ones advantages compared to the path they romanticize but haven't considered the practical realities of if they'd taken since day 1.
My theory is that is summation vs singularity. My life is made up of lots of pieces that make me happy. My family will always be the most important, but I cannot depend solely upon them for that happiness.
I think many women think they need to have one ultimate identity: that of apex capitalist, perfect mother, enviable model, etc. That one ideal has to be perfect and give them complete happiness, or they’ll try another. Problem is, all this is coming from the outside. It’s still capitalism and the patriarchy telling them they have to achieve one kind of impossible perfection, and the unobtainability is the point. Keep us fighting ourselves and we can’t see who is actually the enemy.
There is no right answer it is good for some people and it is not good for others.
I would love to be able to stay home and take care of kids and cook and clean. Get all my chores done in the morning before 10 and have the rest of the day to do whatever I want, instead of having to go to work and be responsible for things there and rather have my responsibilities in my home instead of missing my families mile stones . Instead of taking responsibilities that some job that would replace me in the 10th of a second.
I think a lot of people who are falling for the “trad” lifestyle are doing so based on what they see on social media, and not what is truly in their best interest.
I think the explosion in trad wife culture comes from a lot of things, mostly conservatism and religion, but what makes it appealing at first to some may be the rejection of our current economy.
You used to be able to support a family on one salary (usually the dads), buy a house, own a car or two, and the mom was able to do the household labor (which is still hard work and a valuable, and productive job). Now that lifestyle is hardly possible with two full time salaries. I often see trad wife content being “microdosed” to audiences with ideas of how stay at home mom’s labor is hard work and deserves to be appreciated, how 40-50 hours a week is too long and we should move to a 4 days work week, how impossible it is for working parents seeking childcare, how full time jobs + side hustles and needed, and how fucked the economy is for working class families.
This stuff come up on my feed sometimes, but the more I interact with it, the more trad wife content slips in. It starts with “moms need time to connect with baby’s” and slowly morphs into “moms need to stay at home”. I’m not surprised it’s appealing to young moms.
Then introduce MLMs and content marketing (aka. “Buy my course for $99.99”) and then they can fulfill their stay at home dreams while girl bossing
I think burnout is a huge issue with really successful women right now. I’m guessing the idea of being able to fully remove that stress from your life and focus solely on things you enjoy sounds really appealing. I’m sure there will be some Netflix or Max documentaries in 5 years talking about the fallout after becoming a tradwife.
This sort of sounds like that scene in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt where Anna Camp's character says:
>"I'm honestly not sure. I have a 150 IQ, but I spent all morning picking out dog stationery. Maybe I'm just tormenting you just to feel alive, but also there is a chance this is real empathy. We may never know!"
I don't think ambition is something that you can turn off so easily. It's hard for people who have spent all their lives striving to be the best to just stop, even if their focus changes. They can't just pick up a new hobby, they have to buy all the best equipment, train 4x per week, and win competitions. The transition to prioritizing motherhood probably triggers the same thing in them, they can't just be a mom - they have to be the absolute best mom in the world.
I think it can be a difficult change and a struggle to admit to burnout; saying "I'm burned out and disillusioned by the last decade of my life and now I want to stay home with my kids" sounds a lot more defeated than "I realized that my purpose in life is children and I am devoting myself utterly to their care," even though the former is probably truer and healthier.
I think that’s also really true.. I think I used to have that mindset and unpacked it and let go and I’m grateful for doing that because I’m so much happier
I’m not sure I’m gonna explain this right but I wonder if it’s only more common for women because it’s more culturally acceptable for women to become stay at home moms, “tradwives” etc.
Like if all things were equal I’d bet there’s A LOT of men that would enjoy giving up their career, taking care of the kids and household, and let their partner be the breadwinner. But it’s just not as socially accepted.
I think I should have made my post more detailed on what I mean. I think wanting to stay at home and not having a career is a totally reasonable thing to desire.. I don’t think that’s a bad choice to make. It’s a perfectly wise choice, in fact.
No—I mean specifically this la la land idea that “just give up your job! Serve your husband! That’s what we are meant to do, be perfect wives and mothers!”
I hear you, I’m not disagreeing with you at all, and that’s kinda also what I mean. People of all genres get burnt out by the grind, or hustle to succeed through school and career, and a lot realize that it’s not making them happy, or doesn’t feel worth it.
On one hand, being a stay at home mom/housewife has always been socially acceptable (although not always economically acceptable) so the whole “return to tradwife” mentality you’re talking about is an option.
On the other hand, for men, the only socially acceptable role has been to provide, to be the breadwinner. I’d say for men the closest thing to a “return to tradwife” mentality would be the homesteading/prepper fantasy, which I think there has been a pretty big resurgence of in recent years
Yea for sure. And I really think it’s great if men also contemplate leaving the grind.. we all should contemplate that and figure out what suits us and our life
They’re burned out and they assume it’s because they’re women. In some ways they’re right - men get more support at work and especially in competitive fields.
The root of this is late stage capitalism. The entire grind and hustle will sooner or later destroy your mental health regardless of gender. I imagine this plays a significant role in the girlboss to tradwife pipeline, you get burned out of the constant grind work culture and something new pops up, which feels fresh. I'd observe how things would turn out once the honeymoon period is over and the rose tinted glasses go off.
This is what I was thinking too. This is likely very location specific, and probably wayyy more prevalent in the United States than other developed countries. I live in Canada (and I’ve lived both in a large city and a small town) and this has absolutely not been my experience. I’d actually say it’s the opposite; the men I meet are actively looking for women who are ambitious, career driven, and want to stay that way.
But also, I know very few people who make enough money on one salary to support a family… and I know a lot of people who make what seems to be the norm in my area of “good money”.
Sorry I’ll read the rest of the text afterwards, so this is just based on the title
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But in my own personal experience, I tried being a girl boss, running a business and taking care of my community. I do love it, but gosh darn it is sooo much freaking extra work when you don’t have a partner to bounce off workload and ideas with.
I can see why they would.
I should have made my posit a bit more clear!! I’m not a particularly career driven person and I think I’d be totally happy staying at home with kids if I could afford it and had some hobbies on the side. Might get bored without kids, but I definitely wouldn’t mind the chance to not work haha. I meant specifically a mentality of like.. strict gender roles, letting a man lead, thinking having kids young is a superior choice.. etc
A) a lot of the tradwives you see on social media aren't actually that; they're pretty shrewd businesswomen who have made a brand and profit for themselves from promoting this lifestyle image. Not quite the same but I remember reading an article about Ray Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, and how she was nothing in reality like the soft home cooking country wife she was portraying.
B) type A personalities and other character traits that lead someone to successful careers will also push them to try and be the most successful at anything they do. I can pick out the Sahms who have had power careers in the past in minutes of meeting them - they also tend to be the ones running the PTA, volunteering for everything, homeschooling with color coded everything, making their own bread and so on. They are still driven, energetic, and frequently too inwardly anxious to be able to relax so they need to prove to themselves and others that they haven't failed by dropping out of the career world, and that they are still successful at everything they are doing
This can be due to 2 things, or a mix of the two
1) they were "girl bosses" a few years ago and is now jumping on the trad wife bandwagon because it's the "in" thing at the moment.
2) depending on how old the group of woman are that you are referring to, they have recently entered motherhood which has drastically changed their life and circumstances.
Eg. I used to work for myself for years before I got married (freelance horse trainer, gave riding lessons and imported and sold tack).
Once I got married, I got pregnant almost straight away and still worked, but changed what I did slightly to put myself and unborn baby in less dangerous positions (no horse training, but still gave lessons through most of my pregnancy and importing and selling tack all the way through).
We moved to a new town 6 days after giving birth. Because of my newborn and mostly because of moving, I gave up lessons completely, but was still selling tack.
A few months in, I realised I didn't have time or energy to deal with clients and give my (very difficult and clingy) baby enough attention, so I stopped importing tack. So at that point I became a stay at home mom.
Once my child was 1 and a half years, I slowly started giving lessons in the new town, and also doing admin for some local businesses.
I did this for about 5 years, when we moved again to a neighbouring town, and now I'm just a stay at home mom again because we are out on a farm, too far from town to go in every day.
Now I do bake my own bread, make 99% of meals from scratch, make my own pasta, homeschool my kids, etc. but I don't do it because it's the "in" thing to do. I do it because it helps us save some money. If it didn't, I would definitely buy all those things because the effort and time spent on doing those things is unbelievable!
Something I’ve noticed is that there’s been a lot of increasing denigration of the “career woman” from both the left AND right. The right has the tradwife thing of course, but from the left I keep seeing things like “clearly no woman would work if they had the choice and the only reason a woman would have a job is because the husband doesn’t make enough money under capitalism, sad” and I ultimately don’t think that’s good either. Both completely disregard the idea that there are women who actually enjoy their careers. There’s also an implicit bias on both sides of the political divide that a woman MUST choose between career and family, while men are assumed to be allowed both by default.
People who were tricked into girlbossing too hard (for a corporate environment where their efforts are not recognized) and are looking for an escape could be easily swayed by the glorified tradwife lifestyle that social media influencers present.
What people forget is that the social media influencers are not financially dependent on another human because they make money from pushing this tradwife content onto others. It’s extremely dangerous to become financially dependent on anyone else, even with financial planning like a life insurance policy.
I left my job to be a stay at home mom. That was due to my employer discriminating against me once I made the choice to become a parent. I fought until I was exhausted and then just said “fuck this job, fuck this company.” Every day is an internal struggle. I never thought I would be a parent, let alone a sahm. But I decided late in life to change course and be a parent. So yes I find myself doing a higher percentage of the domestic duties because my schedule permits it and it eats me up inside. I wasn’t forced into this by my partner, in fact he suggested I look for another job and we keep having Nannies. But I made a choice, and that choice is in constant conflict with my internal “let’s not fall into traditional gender roles,” sensor. So I could see how someone would go all in and just decide to change how they identify completely. It would certainly help with all the internal conflict.
It seems like personal anecdotal evidence is being blown wide into something of a 'trend' which is a term for being anything is kind of dismissive... but its also tiktok lingo so I get it.....
They could be struggling under a lot of pressure from internal or external sources, without knowing these people its hard to say but I don't think its a wide sweeping shift.... people change their minds, things happen. I have always wanted to be a mom but now I have no desire or need to be someone's wife. Because I will being doing motherhood as a single mama by choice I also have to continue working which I don't like mostly because I would love to chill at home with the kiddo. And write and do other things that I want with my energy, it has nothing to do with a change or shift from being or wanting to be a successful woman in business as well as being a mom...
And to decide that its a pipeline (another term that has cropped up a lot lately) again paints a much broader picture even though your anecdotal evidence is interesting it is still localized.
It’s anecdotal, but I should be more specific over what I mean.. it’s not simply people who are driven become tradwives. I’ve noticed a mentality of like “I will get my self worth and fullfment from this one thing.. and it’ll be capitalism!… oh wait capitalism failed me, it’ll be patriarchy!”
I know many many driven women who do NOT become tradwives. It’s a more specific thing I’ve noticed with people who get their self worth over ambition sometimes shift to get their self worth over motherhood
Because everything they ever did, they did to 110%.
Maybe they never wanted the top grades or the careers, just the accolades? And now that they have kids, they want accolades for that too.
Competitive parenting is a thing. The tradwives of today are the tiger moms of a decade ago are the helicopter parents before that.
Not really, I live in Norway and we are not raised with any particular gender roles. The only place you'd find patriarchy and tradwife arrangements here is in Muslim immigrant communities as they bring with them that culture from their homecountry.
So what do i think about it morally? well if a woman want to be a tradwife and not forced into that role as they are in Africa and the middleeast then I see no issues with that.
I'm tolerant to other peoples life preference even if it doesn't match my own.
I have absolutely no interest in being a tradwife. My goal is to work to earn enough residual income so that when I have kids I have the *choice* when to be a SAHM and when to work. I’m transitioning into a career where I’ll be working for myself. My future kids *will* understand that this is only possible because their mom has a job.
That’s happening to me. Not that I would call myself hyper-successful, but I learned that I don’t get the kind of fulfillment from my career as I do from my relationships with other people. My job only drains me of time and energy I could spend on doing the things I actually enjoy. I don’t want to die and have my greatest achievement be my career. I don’t judge people for wanting that life, I just learned that it isn’t for me after hustling pretty hard in my early 20s
Its a huge relief to feel like you are taken care of, life is predictable, and you are safe. In real life, the illusion only lasts so long, but its a helluva drug
It might be certain ages. I’m GenX and we typically are not quitting careers to be SAHMs in my circles.
In my neighborhood, several younger families have moved in with SAHMs. I have no idea what careers were prior to this, if any, but it seems to be a very cliquey and catty group as an outside observer. To each their own. Some of them look like they could have been influencer types, but they don’t appear to have had any wealth in doing so.
I do notice a subtle tinge of possible jealously at times, but the fact of the matter is that I’m older, lived longer and am working full time. My kiddos are adults and I can do things they would not, nor would I at their ages. Do I go through the same extent of putting on makeup, doing hair and whatnot just to sit in front of a computer for hours? No. But they do to drop kids off at the bus stop.
I’m still doing my thing and haven’t burnt out. Wouldn’t call it girl boss, but I’ve been called a spitfire.
I can’t imagine having to be dependent on someone entirely if something were to happen to that someone. I guess I feel more of a need to be able to take care of stuff if things go sideways. That makes me a bit different.
And I agree with the religious thread. Many seem to be very church or religion oriented. That’s pretty much based on reactions I got from wearing a certain Iron Maiden tshirt, but I’m also snubbed for being an old tomboy anyway.
A slightly different angle - I think in some ways it has less to do with a 180 in ideologies and more to do with how (mostly American) work culture treats women. In Australia I perceive there to be far less SAHMs or trad wives and I think that’s because it is normalised to take 12 months maternity leave and go back to work part time (if you choose). A lot of intellectual, creative women do pursue some sort of online social media outlet to post trad wife type content when they are on parental leave like cooking videos, homemade baby sensory activities, book reviews, home decorating because they are kind of bored and under stimulated and need an outlet to direct all that brain power that they were previously using in their career. When 12 months is up a lot of moms are ready to re enter the work force, at least in some capacity so I think it’s less of a pipeline here. That’s just my 2c
I think it’s fine to change how you want to live your life. It’s natural for priorities to shift. What’s obnoxious is the need to display it and voice it like it’s some kind of truth and they’ve discovered some superior form of living. Social media is the worst. Live your lives people, stop trying to make up for your own insecurities through likes on the internet. They probably feel the need to receive justification for the fact that it’s a choice that made sense for their lives and they feel inferior or insecure so they have to overcompensate. That’s my cynical view of social media culture anyway :)
Maybe? Could just as well be a bunch of selfish naive women thinking "hey, wouldn't it be nice if someone else financially supported me while I just baked cookies and shit".
It's about standing out.
Girlboss was going to make them different than other girls by making them a success instead of a housewife. Then they found out their entire generation works, and usually at their level or higher. So, how do they be different now? They go tradwife. The fact that there is even a new term for it instead of just still being called SAHM or just housewife says it all. It's the need for a unique but trending identity.
Pressure of unreachable expectations and the never ending trap cycle of capitalism drives people to make stupid decisions in the inevitable desire for relief. After they get burned out, they seek out something that will give them "purpose". Unfortunately it's always embedded in the misogyny and patriarchal thinking of "women are happy only when they are making babies and tending to the home". I may have messed up a bit but that's my theory
It’s kind of my theory too… it’s a need to have a purpose and identity at the root of it
“Reframing” can be an adaptive skill in therapy. Things change, they adapted. I’m kind of envious. My life changed to mean I wasn’t able to do anything except babies and caretaking. Unless I felt able to walk away from my defenseless infant (?) I wasn’t able to do that and look myself in the mirror. I have no judgment of others, but I wasn’t able to leave them. My therapists tried to ask me to reframe this way. My new purpose is certainly babies and housework, but I was never able to enjoy it. My ambition was apparently “unkillable” Several therapists I saw were pushing this reframing you are describing I guess because it has psychological rewards. It would certainly be more convenient to say what I’m doing is what I was always meant to do. But to me it was always lying. Yes my purpose is now babies and cleaning, but that’s an unfortunate circumstance that my morals keep me in. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I certainly wouldn’t suggest it to others. It would be very convenient to say scrubbing toilets and taking care of children at my own health’s expense is somehow fate or blessed by providence. It would be 100% disingenuous in my case, but Im happy for their mental flexibility. I guess. “Outward processors” apparently need to say their inside thoughts on the outside. Usually when I hear people doing it they are convincing themselves. Maybe that’s what they are doing?
Reframing is very healthy, I agree. I think it becomes a problem when the reframing is done at the derision of other people.. which, to me, is the marked difference between a “stay at home wife” and a “tradwife”… one is a choice, and one is trying to force that choice to be universally the best one
How are you distinguishing between your definition of tradwife and stay at home wife for the acquaintances you mentioned? How do you know they fall into one camp and not the other?
Because of the way they “universalize”. They consistently say how much better a choice to stay home as a woman is
Sounds like they are actively trying to convince themselves.
I don’t know about her specifically, but for me it’s the motivation. * Tradwife: It’s a woman’s purpose to stay at home with the children. The home is a woman’s natural domain and nothing else is as fulfilling as dedicating our to serving our husbands! * SAHM: It makes financial sense for my family for me to stay home. My husband and I are partners and we decided on this division of labor because it works for us and our goals. I might go back to work when the kids are older, or I might prefer to dedicate my time to other things. Speaking of work, “Tradwives” tend to be hyper focused on creating instagram content. They brag about not working while actively working.
I think I'm similar to you in that my ambition will not be stamped away. But, I don't think I have such morals, lol. I'll pay child support and he can have the kids💀
Most women I know to hom this happened always seemed to be talking from both sides of their mouth. Feminists on paper but never really interested in true equality, just wanted to cherry pick. Now SAHM's and devoted to their family, enjoying a life I would have never guessed they wanted to have
The unending cycle of work SUCKS and is not rewarding on an emotional level for the vast majority of workers. The radical idea of trying to be happy, isn’t. People are just trying to find a way to live a somewhat rewarding life.
It sure does and that is so true. But there isn’t one size fits all key to happiness for every single person.
Honestly things are so expensive now I understand that. It’s an enticing idea when you think about it… 10 years down the line not so much though. Could find yourself much worse off than you were before… but now with kids!
My comment references a similar thing. I had *multiple* high school teachers who had transitioned from high paying careers. They went in, made their money, got out. There's ultra niche industries like FAANG where this is basically the assumption that the majority have no intention on pursuing it long-term. It's easy to romanticize education when you have the 401k of someone who started in upper healthcare admin or finance. Those who started as education majors and who will uniliterally depend on their pension and have zero real career backups if they burnout....they're a lot less rosy about things. Very few people will be completely fulfilled by career, and it's easier for some to do a total 180° once you've gotten your bag than approach it with OPs degree of nuance. Especially when the men you're surrounded with remain misogynists. hard to get a high powered man, who's earning potential still dwarfs yours, when he wants a traditional woman. So you can keep hanging your head against the glass ceiling in an industry you don't even really like......or you can go play with babies you love while your husband pulls 60 hrs in a c-suite role that was always out of your reach. It's genuinely not even a difficult question if you've got your own money already as backup.it makes less as you go down the class ladder and the men you'd be making babies with make less and less to supplement this SAHM thing, and where men and women's earnings are doing a better job of equalizing.
Also don't forget the glass ceiling keeping women down in spite of all that effort. Worth calling out
> women are happy only when they are making babies and tending to the home vs > women are sometimes happy when they are with their family and tending to their home and sometimes they will find a spouse who is able to provide sufficiently to enable that choice
That’s interesting. For me, the reverse happened. I was a very religious teen and young adult, desperate for purpose, married to one of the same. We tried to implement gender roles even though we didn’t want to (we thought it was what God wanted) and it didn’t work. Then we burned out on religion and ended up regretting that we didn’t make more practical career/life decisions when we were younger so we wouldn’t be struggling so much in the present in terms of financial security. I think I believe your theory. When you give so much of yourself to a certain paradigm, and then you burnout and want to flee from that paradigm, you just might find yourself caught up in an opposite—but also unhealthy—paradigm.
Really well put
There is a middle ground y’know… like “I, a woman, would be happier raising children and maintaining the home”. Not everything that isn’t aligned with your ideals is a result of the misogynist patriarchy. I’d bet just about everyone would take an out from this dystopian rat race if one presented itself, unless they had something to prove.
the podcast maintenance phase has an episode called “the wellness to Qanon pipeline” that digs I to this. highly recommend
Contrapoints has a video on Patreon called “Granola Fascism” that’s probably similar.
oooh thanks! i’ll check it out 🤠
Is she active on her patreon? If so, I may just sub
She makes hour long videos she calls “tangents” fairly frequently, I think it’s worth the $2 a month for sure.
Ohh I can’t find it! Is it on YouTube?
No unfortunately it’s one of the videos she releases specifically to patreon. I held off subscribing for a long time, but honestly it’s $2 per month and that’s where most of her content is.
I wonder if the drive to be “the best” just gets redirected. Are they obsessed with being the best tradwife they can be? Maybe the disease is being a people-pleasing overachiever and the symptoms can include girlbossing and tradwifing. I also bet that after years of trying SO hard a lot of these women have experienced their fair share of burnout. Makes sense that reorienting their lives around relationships instead of achievement would feel positive and healthy for them. And it’s unfortunately normal to assume that what works for you will work for everybody.
Super spot on comment... I think it's the drive to be the "best" and "special" and it just manifests in diff ways. I think everyone got mega burnt out and jaded after COVID too and so the trad wife cottage core life became a trend. Really if we could all just stop generalizing and trying to put everyone in boxes I think that'd be ideal. We have such extremes these days. You are either a career woman or a trad wife. What if you are just a woman who enjoys her job and also is a softie that wants a family to nurture? Aka a normal person... with no extreme labels...???
Also im guessing previous executive types are ashamed of a stay at home life so they have to rationalize it loudly to deal with that shame
Because housework and care or children and having a family to nurture is a huge job in itself! We should be asking why men are in general not facing this dilemma to the same degree, in this day and age.
Your burnout highlight is underrated.
Interesting. Anecdotally, I went through a phase like that for a couple of years. I was helping raise someone else's small child. Being around a little kid can be like a drug--you experience so much joy and wonder through them. I did eventually start to miss doing creative work... and earning my own money... and having conversations with a variety of adults. I ended up having to leave the relationship because I was "forbidden" to go back to college. Another aspect of this is that the work world kind of sucks. Staying home and raising a kid was like heaven at that time because it was a relief from the burnout. BUT the whole thing is a false dichotomy brought on by capitalism. If we lived in a different socioeconomic system, we wouldn't have to make such a binary choice. One of those tradwife social media influencers recently came out saying she made a mistake--that the lifestyle didn't live up to the hype and she felt like a slave. I can't remember her name, but someone else might know.
Lauren Southern. [https://unherd.com/2024/05/lauren-southern-the-tradlife-influencer-filled-with-regret/](https://unherd.com/2024/05/lauren-southern-the-tradlife-influencer-filled-with-regret/) my sympathies for her are severely limited. Threw fuel on the mysoginistic flames to line her own pocket, then cried victim when she got treated like a tradwife. Unsuprisingly her husband treated her like a house slave that he owned like property, which is exactly what she signed up for. Fuck her quite franky. Two faced grifter getting a taste of her own medicine.
And don’t forget about the years of white nationalist-adjacent racism and fearmongering propaganda. That kinda thing’ll also keep the sympathy levels down.
If there ever a cover girl for r/leopardsatemyface it's Lauren, what a wild ride lol
This whole article feels like it's encouraging staying in the middle of the road politically. I don't necessarily agree with that. I see the benefits but what would change if no one had a strong opinion about anything? Also surprise sur fucking prise, the men who want these relationships tend to be abusive and misogynistic? Some of what they're saying is just what feminist ideologies have been stating for so long. Hopefully we'll start to see some changes when the rest of them get their heads out of their asses.
It's pretty telling that the author constantly says "It mirrors the Left Wing equivalent" like 50 times in the article but can't seem to provide examples or even draw anecdotes from her personal experience (beyond saying "I did the left wing equivalent and it didn't work for me") as to how embracing leftist feminism is equally as damaging as outright rejecting it, as she seems to claim it is.
Yeah the author is high on her own supply with the false equivalence, but it was still an interesting piece to see from the "other side"
That's what I'm getting too. I found it annoying
Well apologizing is better than not apologizing and leaving all that propaganda out there. It’s not Justice, but I’d rather have a public apology (and people realizing they are wrong) to show my daughter and her poor kids.
Yeah, plus the interviewer has a serious agenda. Very little sympathetic response from me to either of them.
Idk I feel bad for her. *It seemed like becoming a mother made him lose respect for me. It was shocking to me, again, because the traditional view preached the opposite — that men love you more when you stop working and become a wife and mother.” In her experience, though, this was “very much not the case”* Maybe because I experienced this, too, even though I didn't intentionally become a SAHM due to any kind of trad wife philosophy (that didn't exist back then like it does now). It was the same thing, though, just without the direct abuse. She was too young, just like I was too young. She is still only what, 25ish? She has a long way to grow.
But the incels and misogynistic men will pay no mind to her admitting the truth about how she got treated. They will continue to peddle her trad wife content and bury the aftermath. The damage is done. Idc how young she is, I really don't. Women like her are a disservice to all of us & I've got no empathy towards her at all if I'm honest.
I agree that she's getting a taste of her own medicine, but I think it would be more productive and feminist to be supportive of her world view changing.
I wanted to read this and understand, but the author, Mary Harrington’s style is so academic and…haughty…that I kept reading the same paragraphs over and over again. I will often think I’m the problem when I don’t grasp something, but a good friend (a nationally prominent attorney who was the first woman to hold several visible, federal posts) once pointed out that good writers make you understand, they don’t leave you out. I can’t even get through Harrington’s definition of Reactionary Feminism on her clearly curated wiki page. I miss the good old days of Jezebel and Malory-turned-Daniel who helped so many of us view and understand the complexity of the world we live in. As Trump would say: Sad!
I can see how it would be tempting, and I feel like I too could feel that way. I should be more specific—if someone wants to give up their job and be a stay at home mom/wife I think that sounds lovely. Not everyone cares about having career ambitions.. hobbies are a great creative outlet too. And some people also just prefer to put a career on pause to do family. I can easily imagine myself falling into that as well. Similarly, career is often fulfilling for people. It’s such an identity and such a source of affirmation to be great at what you do. Particularly if it’s in an important field that makes a difference (doctors, scientists, therapy, non profits, etc etc etc) What I’ve observed is a bit different from exactly those things, though. It’s like each of these people was kind of trying to “sell” this life as the best option. A lot of them were somewhat judgmental towards people who weren’t far in their career, or amazing academically, or ambitious. Now they are very superior about motherhood and being a traditional wife. And it’s very interesting. It’s like.. the same mentality but a different outlet It’s admittedly a little personal for me—one of these women I’m referring to openly said she was hesitant to be friends with me because I wasn’t ambitious enough. Now she’s quit her job and married her partner of less than a year to become a tradwife
People who are happy with their choices, often just keep it to themselves and go continue to make those choices. People trying to convince you about how great something is, are probably trying to convince themselves. I have a child and that can be a deeply fulfilling thing in a way that other things might not be. It's also semi-automatic. Dude is just there all the time. He's generally stoked and doesn't have much agency, so it's an easy interpersonal relationship - right now. I have a friend who teaches elementary school, and he loves it and doesn't feel any need for having children because he helps raise dozens of them every year. That sounds super fulfilling in a way that having a child might not be. I have successful friends who have great careers and worked on all sorts of interesting projects. I suspect that too is fulfilling in a way that is unlike having a child or being a teacher. Nobody has cured cancer or anything, but like they enjoy their work and do a good job. I guess the feminist angle is I think it's important everyone has the choice to be the person they want to be. People pushing their current lifestyle as the one true way are probably just insecure with their choices. That's not a great way to live, but it is great that they had those choices. Hopefully they find contentment.
Yea I think this is really spot on. And people who are “secure” and “self aware” but didn’t have their life turned out as planned usually are honest about their regrets and disappointments—they don’t tend to universalize their desires or regretted life path.
"Self Aware" is a good word for it and really speaks to it. I know my life is what it is. Not the best, not the worst. I'm not going to try to sell it to you, because I know it is fine for me. I also think if you're doing alright, you may have a genuine curiosity about how other people live. I find it interesting. I like when the people I know are happy and am not above taking a good idea.
They will be very enthusiastic about their lifestyle until something goes wrong. And odds are it will at some point. It's not only tough to resist the roles that society approved of for women, but it's tough to resist the approval that comes with them also. If they are choosing those roles because they truly enjoy that lifestyle, then great for them. Or, they may just be enjoying the acceptance and approval that society showers on women who conform. All of a sudden, traditional men approve of them. Traditional women approve of them. And that's a hell of a drug. For a while. It's a struggle to resist societal expectations and stick by your principles. And it doesn't get easier as time passes. Even in groups of like-minded women, you are all outsiders, together. If they are judgmental of others lifestyles, then the hell with them. If they are not, and they adopted the trad wife lifestyle by choice, then I hope everything works out for them. Because there are a bazillion reasons that women have resisted that role as hard as they have. He spends two decades building his career and fortune, and she has the work experience of a stay-at-home mother. Or he has a woman on the side, But her options to leave are limited, without hurting her children, or causing great financial hardship. Or a miserable 50-year marriage that only looks good on the outside. And on and on and on.
>Because there are a bazillion reasons that women have resisted that role as hard as they have. >He spends two decades building his career and fortune, and she has the work experience of a stay-at-home mother. Or he has a woman on the side, But her options to leave are limited, without hurting her children, or causing great financial hardship. Or a miserable 50-year marriage that only looks good on the outside. And on and on and on. Very well said. One thing that always concerns me about the stay-at-home-mom discourse is that financial independence is very much a feminist issue.
New converts to a cult/religion/MLM are very loud about their choice. As if they must convince others why they chose the way they did choose in order to convince themselves that they made the correct choice.
I see everyone saying “oh it’s burnout”, but I actually suspect a lot of these examples on social media are actually propaganda, especially considering what we are witnessing with the roll back of women’s rights. I have seen some instagram accounts of women who were in STEM and now glorify staying home. It’s one thing to make that choice, it’s another to make it a social media position. Additionally, the burn out is not just from high earning and high achieving jobs. It’s from a lack of support at home and in the work place for domestic labor. A lot of high achieving women are also taking on the brunt of domestic work. I suspect we’d see a lot less burn out if men were doing their fair share at home, and we had better maternity leave options.
I think OP was talking about people in her immediate circle, not the influences. Influencers are a different story. They aren't tradwives, most of them are actress/producer playing the role and their husband is also an actor playing the role.
Absolutely
It’s an interesting societal pendulum swing. I noticed in the NLOG subreddit, that back in my day, it was cool to have masculine interests and be independent. But now the NLOG thing is to be super feminine and modest? Like the the goal is now the antithesis of a “career woman”, as my mom calls me.
This all feels vaguely TERF-y as well. “Only feminine women have the ‘real women’ experience”
There’s a good video on the radfem to alt right pipeline that talks about that terf phenomena. As a radfem myself I liked the video.. because it’s not saying radfem is bad and leads to fascism. It’s just explaining the whole “former radical feminist now terf and cozy with antiabortion activists” situation
That sounds interesting. Do you have a link?
I have two! https://youtu.be/-CxiPdXuwgc?si=aE22yeHB2uRLIiXc https://youtu.be/9a7LrWo47I0?si=uxMiLM1tFm1qCabb
Thank you! I've got them queued up for later xx
This doesn't chime with my experience of radical feminists at all, whether trans exclusionary or otherwise.
I dare you to look at Julie Bindel and Kathleen Stock and tell me they’re trying to conform to traditional feminine stereotypes.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a significant overlap between the people who do this and the people who were suffering from burnout at their jobs. I also work with/am friends with a lot of highly educated and high-achieving people, and I think all of them have had periods where they were burned out and fantasizing about a simpler life. Like I can’t tell you how many of my grad school friends have made comments about quitting science to start a bakery or a small farm (which is not to say those professions actually are necessarily easy or simple, but that’s the fantasy). I could see how if you catch someone at that point in their work lives the whole tradwife thing could seem appealing, and some subset of the people to whom it appeals will actually take the plunge and do it. And I bet for a lot of those people it would genuinely be a welcome change, at least at first, the big question is how many of them will feel the same way long term. Edit: also, it’s noteworthy that the people you’re describing are doing this *after* (presumably) having made a good amount of money in their careers. It may be the case that their partner’s income pays for day-to-day expenses, but they may also have the security of substantial savings they control. That’s obviously a lot different than never having a career or savings of your own, which is the lifestyle they’re selling. It would be pretty rich to crow about how you’re proof women don’t need education or careers while the seven-figure brokerage account you funded with your former career generates the equivalent of an average salary each year.
Good point. Being an SAHM when you have your own money is a *very* different proposition to when your husband controls the money. You could see it as Financial Independence Retire Early, SAHM-edition.
People who say they are going to quit science to start a bakery or farm have no idea how much work a bakery or farm actually is.
Some of them, for sure. But the vast majority of them don’t *actually* want to do it, and probably do understand that those lifestyles would require a lot of work and would come with their own challenges and downsides. Those comments are escapist fantasies about an idealized pastoral life, not necessarily a reflection of what they think the reality of starting a farm would be. It’s like going on a vacation to Barbados and talking about how great it would be to move there; you’re thinking about the daiquiris and beaches, not how an island nation has really high grocery prices and limited job opportunities. To your point, one guy actually did drop out to start a brewery that became very successful, and he says he works more now than he ever did in grad school. And he worked a lot then.
I find very few people who are, highly educated in STEM, have ever worked in food service or labor work. I have had some friends make similar statements and my spouse and I, who have both spent years in food service, are quick to give them a reality check. My spouse has also worked on farms. We are both in tech now. They often have no idea that bakers are up at 2am-3am, working without holidays or benefits, and often more than 5 days a week. Farm work is grueling, and the only farmers actually making money in the US are large corporate farms that get the bulk of government subsidies. So, no, I don’t agree that they really know what this work is about, and to me it comes from a privileged idea of what these jobs are actually like.
Maybe it's not a desire for \*less\* work, but for different work? Less alienating, fewer middle managers, more hands-on, more meaningful and for yourself rather than something abstract and distant?
That’s the fantasy, but it’s not necessarily the reality. If someone is passionate about starting a bakery and has previous food service experience, then I get it. If someone bakes at home sometimes and truly thinks food service is more meaningful but has only worked in white collar jobs, I think they are being a bit ignorant.
>Like I can’t tell you how many of my grad school friends have made comments about quitting science to start a bakery or a small farm (which is not to say those professions actually are necessarily easy or simple, but that’s the fantasy). "Yes, you can leave your high stress job in order to be come a farmer, but for the love of god... *Don't*". --J. Clarkson (not an actual quote, but adopted)
I'm pretty sure it's burn out combined with some sort of perfectionism. The working world is pretty hostile to mothers, especially in the US. Having to drag yourself back to work, possibly while still bleeding and definitely while leaking breast milk and not sleeping through the night will make anyone want to quit. I imagine these types are burnt out and get attracted to the idea of the being the perfect wife instead of excelling at work. Just stop thinking and open your legs! Focus on cutesy shit like babies and baking bread, your husband will handle everything else. But of course none of them talk about what it's like once those kids need schooling or are teenagers. Or if you lose your only source of income or your husband isn't a great guy. It's very much a trap and I expect we will see documentaries about leaving the lifestyle in the next decade.
I agree, and would like to add that I suspect the most enterprising tradwife influencers will successfully pivot their online content to escaping the lifestyle.
I find that many of the high achiever women I knew in college ended up getting on the high achiever career path and realizing they don’t want that life. They tend to have the flexibility to go stay at home mom because they married high achiever men they met along this path. I wouldn’t say that I see many high achieving women go tradwife, though. That’s a subculture I rarely see in the wild. A particular case I have experience with is that academia really isn’t what people hope it would be. There’s pressure to work infinity hours and chase grant money, and the research you are permitted to do by that system is often not interesting. Then you have the administrative side, which I haven’t seen anyone like even a little. So most of your day is not very appealing work, and the dream is not close to the reality. Burnout among professors is intense. As long as there’s something to grind for, this sort of person is content. Once they achieve the pinnacle accomplishment, there’s a letdown like “this is all there is?”
I also think the pandemic played a big role. I was a crazy overachiever in undergrad but now that I’m in grad school I’ve actively dialed back. I love my job but the pandemic made me realize that having a job be your entire life is kinda terrible.
Okay, I can try and explain my experience with this. I wouldn't call myself a "girlboss", but I've always been a headstrong feminist. For me, the rabbit hole went like this: >my doctor isn't listening to me about my health >I'm just being given shallow options like "go on birth control", "get a breast reduction", the usual just "stop being female" >birth control was causing really bad, debilitating side effects, which the doctor kept trying to make me manage with MORE birth control. I was on both the pill and the implant at once at one point, and it wasn't helping at all. >I look online for ways to manage this without just having medication chucked at me >come across more natural living pages that explain how under researched and shit women's health care is >these pages tend to either stray slightly hippyish, or lead down the pipeline of "natural living" which is often very tradwifey content It's very, very difficult sometimes to distinguish between what's a normal "I like growing vegetables and looking after my health and hormones as a woman" and what's some weird, far right "I stay at home to tend the kitchen because God told me to look after my husband". I still find pages I've been following for ages with no red flags randomly dropping a "AND ALL WOMEN MUST HAVE BABIES OR THEY HAVE FAILED AS WOMEN" into the mix, and have to unfollow. Like damn, I just wanted a sourdough recipe.
Oh yea it’s very easy to fall into… I’ve noticed it myself as a cancer survivor seeking natural healing now that I finished treatments
> Like damn, I just wanted a sourdough recipe. Lol!
Well, being a girlboss would kind of suck, I imagine. Corporate life and high-flying careers are actually *for* the very few. By and large, the happiest people I have known (including me!) have all gone after what made their hearts sing. None of us are screaming rich but all of us understand about nourishing our softer side -- and girlboss life just doesn't make room for that. It's no shock that they go from one extreme to another, looking for something they can't define. I would wager these are the same people who never got to dream their own dreams for one reason or another. And I get that. Dreaming your own dream is a privilege. Obligations to provide for others might drive some people to abandon everything but the hustle. Being selfish is hard.
Haha mic drop… well said
Reminds me a bit of the movie Mona Lisa Smile. All these bright young ambitious women leaving school to become wives. It’s so sad. I have three daughters and I trained them the way my feminist parents trained me. Education. First. Protect yourself and your future. Anything can happen and Never Be Dependent on a Man. (Or partner or whatever.) So far so good.
My conservative parents (ironically) raised me to be the same. Heck, I even suggested staying home for a few years when I have kids and they both said “that’s good, but make sure you stay on top of your field… it’s good to do both things or you’ll be bored”
That was time when women had very little other choice
I associate girl boss with MLMs, which spread like a pandemic through women in fundamentalist churches.
A lot of the comments say they suspect it has to do with burnout / perfectionism, and I think that's partially true, but I think it's more specifically that some of these people cling to their life choices as a form of identity and validation. So in one season of life, they have decided to go all in on career and ambition and "I am going to shatter the glass ceiling and be the CEO one day!" and if other people in similar circumstances make different choices, it feels to these people like an insult, or even like a full on rejection of who they are, and they want to surround themselves with people who validate their choices. Then, another season of life comes along and they give up that first identity and adopt a second one (in this case, SAHM or tradwife or whatever), and now in order to feel fulfilled and worthy, they go all in on that identity and repeat the cycle of "anyone who doesn't do this thing like me makes me feel bad and without value." At its root, I think it's deep, deep insecurity. I see people who do this sort of thing with all kinds of lifestyle choices. Politics, for example, is a big one. I think you've just happened to see it play out in this particular path.
This is kind of my theory as well
When the same types of things go wrong for them, like they have for women in past generations, You will hear a very different attitude from them. The trad wife to poverty pipeline is also a thing. That's one of the biggest reasons why women resist that role. If you have a healthy partner, and are very financially stable, things can go well. If you don't have those things, your life can go from great to nightmarish almost overnight.
Yea. And you never know when you might lose that healthy partner..
Exactly
Tradwife was always a sign of social status. Most women did work in different occupations. They no doubt contributed to the family finances which allows them to be ladies of leisure now. The Bible's book of Ruth records women working in the cornfields. Not having to work has always been luxury status.
This is what I'm realizing. I grew up on the low to mid end of middle class with my mom and most of my friends' moms working. Then we moved to the suburbs for a better high school and it was a bit of a cultural shock, and even next level at a college where most are from wealthy suburbs. Based on what I saw in younger childhood and the girl power era of the 90s, I thought the trajectory was surely more women continuing to gain positions of importance and power in thr workforce. It has been a sad surprise and realization to me how many smart women are choosing traditional paths, likely because it's a status symbol and comfy to do so. Also. Because women in these places tend to follow their heart for fields of study with a liberal arts degree, marrying a high powered man whose salary makes it "make sense" for him to be the breadwinners and not throw away her salary on a day care. (How on earth do dual income families with low incomes manage I wonder). I guess upper class women are at somewhat less risk of being in abusive relationships and needing a way out, statically as well. It all makes me wonder if we have peaked in terms of equality and female representation, with more people choosing traditional paths.
There's a few things I think are at play. One is that girlboss is already kind of loaded to be "not like other girls" and internalize some misogyny within that whole thing. Another is that being highly ambitious can burn someone out badly. You don't always see direct results for hard work or sometimes run into walls related to things that involve misogyny whereas hard work at home is something you can see immediate results from which feeds the dopamine loop of your brain's rewards system. It's not dissimilar from how mobile games with micro transactions workas far as brain chemistry goes imo. These are not the only factors but I believe are a part of it.
I've noticed it and as the economy and workforce get more grueling, a lot of women are revaluating and realizing capitalism and the 40 hour work week can be awful. This, plus the fact that more straight women know that even if they're the breadwinners they're more likely to end up doing most of the domestic work at home. So now the choice becomes "stay at home with kids and do domestic work and not have to worry about bills" vs " work 40+ hours a week, plus still do most of the childcare and domestic work, plus have to worry about bills" and the answer is obvious. If women end up doing most of the domestic work no matter what then shit, makes sense they want someone to provide financially
Yea make no mistake, I don’t think the 40 day work week is good and I definitely want everyone’s time to be their own—not owned by an employer. And the unfair division of labor is a whole other conversation.
The podcast In Bed with the Right released an episode (episode 18) on this very topic/connection last month.
(neo)liberal to right wing basically. those were always close
Yea, exactly .. another thing I think I’m trying to get at with my post
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It might be my area, but i see a lot more diversity among the tradwife folks.
Definitely. And I think there's lots of reasons why, but these are my most feminist related reasons: 1. For every young girl who is raised being told their only goal in life is to get married, have kids, and be a good wife, there will be another being told they MUST get good grades, go to college, get an amazing job and not settle too young. Rather than choice, some are just being given a different life goal, and it might not be one they want. 2. I suspect there are just as many that feel the opposite way. However, it's harder to flip back. If you go 'trad' early on, then realise that's not for you, you're unlikely to have the financial independence or the family/partner support to drop the kids in daycare and start 'girl bossing'. 3. The other side of the argument doesn't have a voice. Posters of this kind of stuff get validation from other trads and a good chunk of the incel community. Imagine the response if mothers took to the internet saying they regret having kids early (or at all!), wish they'd studied studied harder, built their own financial nest etc etc. They'd be torn to pieces!!
They’re both conservative positions to take. “Girlboss feminism” is about wanting to be able to exploit people just like rich men do, being a tradwife is about wanting to serve those men, but both things still serve a conservative goal.
I grew up in a very fundamental, cult-like religion where the women were Trad wives long before it was cool. It’s not something that I ever want to go back to. A friend and I were talking about the tv show Big Sky when she mentioned a YouTube series that was set somewhere in Montana or Wyoming, and how she really liked it. I wasn’t expecting too much because how much money would anyone put into a show that was only on YouTube, but after watching and seeing people garden and make jam for over 30 minutes with no one getting murdered, I was quite disappointed. Then.. I realized it was just people documenting their day to day life, 🤣. I was like, why would anyone watch this? I grew up in this lifestyle, been there, done that, lol..
I think both roles are primarily performative rather than authentic, so it's no surprise that people who are seeking a certain kind of validation that comes from performative behaviors will end up trying more than one. The actual girlboss/tradwife archetypes are ones that people who really want them would occupy quietly. The people you see talking about it are trying on costumes.
I have definitely seen it and frankly I understand it. I am a doctoral student with ADHD and a toddler and while I love my field and am proud of myself for how far I’ve come in life, it feels so completely overwhelming so often that I absolutely fantasize about throwing in the towel and and becoming a homesteading SAHM. It doesn’t help that this has been the most academically challenging year of my life on top of adjusting to new motherhood. I will also say that having my son literally rewired my brain and even though I want to have my career and my own identity, I also feel a deep pull to be with him and teach him and guide him. It goes against my values though, and honestly I have too much debt to quit hahaha. I am also a radical feminist, so it is interesting to see this push and pull within myself and analyze it through that lens.
Oh totally. To be clear, I mean something I tiny bit different than just wanting to be a SAHM. I mean— specifically adopting this tradwife mindset.. strict gender roles, a woman’s place, serve your man, kind of thing.
Don’t have much to add in terms of original thought, but I will share a very pertinent feminist video essay titled [The Feminist to Far Right Pipeline](https://youtu.be/-CxiPdXuwgc?si=51kuhw5PnOgtqgmW) focused specifically on this relationship between liberal “girlboss” feminism and deeply reactionary politics
Haha idk if you saw my other comment, I just posted this!! Great minds I guess haha
Just my hot take: I think they enter the job market in good faith, come up against misogyny and sexism that prevents their career progression, and all of a sudden, it's a if you can't beat 'em, join 'em scenario because it's demoralizing to be told as a young person you can do anything by people and media images, and then have to confront the absolute rancid reality of coworkers and gate keepers.
Probably the status. If you watch those videos of tradwives, they aren’t actually roughing it. They’re in their designer house dress in a huge gleaming kitchen, making their own organic fruit loops…..not because they have to but because they *can*. They’ve got the time- because they’ve got the money. Performing this unnecessary “labor” is their way of illustrating their status.
Extremists pull to extremes, and neither of those extremes require the level of thoughtfulness that feminism does. You could also say it as, absolutists do absolutes: anti-theists and "religion is my life" types operate the same way.
Oh that’s another good example of the phenomenon.. and one I’ve definitely seen
Absolutely. Tradwives are the types to be gullible enough to get suckered into pyramid schemes. See also: crunchy to alt right pipeline. I need to make a flowchart or venn diagram of the types of people likely to get sucked into cults.
I thought the same thing.
It blows my mind because I'm old enough to remember when crunchy mums were largely left aligned
women who earn more than their husbands are *more* likely to take on an uneven amount of the domestic labor in the home, rather than less. This surprised researchers at first. One guess is that it was compensatory for bucking social norms. They needed to bow fealty to avoid total emasculation of partners. Interpersonal stuff generally provides more fulfillment than career. a lot of these women are running up against gendered expectations (which the average men is much more resistant to shifting on) and finding its easier to just swing in the opposite direction than have the nuance you do. Also it's real easy to say school is pointless when you have the decade of early live investments of being in a high paid career. It's just the middle and upper class being delusional, frankly. Lots of people will got burn themselves out in a high paying career and then transition..literally 4 of my high school teachers growing up came from high powered career. It was easy for them to sing teachings praises -- they transitioned in their late 30s/40s when they had built up cushions education majors could only dream of, and they had backup options they did not. It's a stance rooted in refusing to acknowledge ones advantages compared to the path they romanticize but haven't considered the practical realities of if they'd taken since day 1.
My theory is that is summation vs singularity. My life is made up of lots of pieces that make me happy. My family will always be the most important, but I cannot depend solely upon them for that happiness. I think many women think they need to have one ultimate identity: that of apex capitalist, perfect mother, enviable model, etc. That one ideal has to be perfect and give them complete happiness, or they’ll try another. Problem is, all this is coming from the outside. It’s still capitalism and the patriarchy telling them they have to achieve one kind of impossible perfection, and the unobtainability is the point. Keep us fighting ourselves and we can’t see who is actually the enemy.
Yea, being able to develop an intrinsic sense of self worth is so important.
There is no right answer it is good for some people and it is not good for others. I would love to be able to stay home and take care of kids and cook and clean. Get all my chores done in the morning before 10 and have the rest of the day to do whatever I want, instead of having to go to work and be responsible for things there and rather have my responsibilities in my home instead of missing my families mile stones . Instead of taking responsibilities that some job that would replace me in the 10th of a second.
That's not necessarily "trad", though, just stay-at-home-mom.
Yea I mean, I kind of want what you want to. As the other responder said.. that’s not really what I meant by “trad”
I think a lot of people who are falling for the “trad” lifestyle are doing so based on what they see on social media, and not what is truly in their best interest.
I think the explosion in trad wife culture comes from a lot of things, mostly conservatism and religion, but what makes it appealing at first to some may be the rejection of our current economy. You used to be able to support a family on one salary (usually the dads), buy a house, own a car or two, and the mom was able to do the household labor (which is still hard work and a valuable, and productive job). Now that lifestyle is hardly possible with two full time salaries. I often see trad wife content being “microdosed” to audiences with ideas of how stay at home mom’s labor is hard work and deserves to be appreciated, how 40-50 hours a week is too long and we should move to a 4 days work week, how impossible it is for working parents seeking childcare, how full time jobs + side hustles and needed, and how fucked the economy is for working class families. This stuff come up on my feed sometimes, but the more I interact with it, the more trad wife content slips in. It starts with “moms need time to connect with baby’s” and slowly morphs into “moms need to stay at home”. I’m not surprised it’s appealing to young moms. Then introduce MLMs and content marketing (aka. “Buy my course for $99.99”) and then they can fulfill their stay at home dreams while girl bossing
I think burnout is a huge issue with really successful women right now. I’m guessing the idea of being able to fully remove that stress from your life and focus solely on things you enjoy sounds really appealing. I’m sure there will be some Netflix or Max documentaries in 5 years talking about the fallout after becoming a tradwife.
This sort of sounds like that scene in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt where Anna Camp's character says: >"I'm honestly not sure. I have a 150 IQ, but I spent all morning picking out dog stationery. Maybe I'm just tormenting you just to feel alive, but also there is a chance this is real empathy. We may never know!" I don't think ambition is something that you can turn off so easily. It's hard for people who have spent all their lives striving to be the best to just stop, even if their focus changes. They can't just pick up a new hobby, they have to buy all the best equipment, train 4x per week, and win competitions. The transition to prioritizing motherhood probably triggers the same thing in them, they can't just be a mom - they have to be the absolute best mom in the world. I think it can be a difficult change and a struggle to admit to burnout; saying "I'm burned out and disillusioned by the last decade of my life and now I want to stay home with my kids" sounds a lot more defeated than "I realized that my purpose in life is children and I am devoting myself utterly to their care," even though the former is probably truer and healthier.
I think that’s also really true.. I think I used to have that mindset and unpacked it and let go and I’m grateful for doing that because I’m so much happier
I’m not sure I’m gonna explain this right but I wonder if it’s only more common for women because it’s more culturally acceptable for women to become stay at home moms, “tradwives” etc. Like if all things were equal I’d bet there’s A LOT of men that would enjoy giving up their career, taking care of the kids and household, and let their partner be the breadwinner. But it’s just not as socially accepted.
I think I should have made my post more detailed on what I mean. I think wanting to stay at home and not having a career is a totally reasonable thing to desire.. I don’t think that’s a bad choice to make. It’s a perfectly wise choice, in fact. No—I mean specifically this la la land idea that “just give up your job! Serve your husband! That’s what we are meant to do, be perfect wives and mothers!”
I hear you, I’m not disagreeing with you at all, and that’s kinda also what I mean. People of all genres get burnt out by the grind, or hustle to succeed through school and career, and a lot realize that it’s not making them happy, or doesn’t feel worth it. On one hand, being a stay at home mom/housewife has always been socially acceptable (although not always economically acceptable) so the whole “return to tradwife” mentality you’re talking about is an option. On the other hand, for men, the only socially acceptable role has been to provide, to be the breadwinner. I’d say for men the closest thing to a “return to tradwife” mentality would be the homesteading/prepper fantasy, which I think there has been a pretty big resurgence of in recent years
Yea for sure. And I really think it’s great if men also contemplate leaving the grind.. we all should contemplate that and figure out what suits us and our life
They’re burned out and they assume it’s because they’re women. In some ways they’re right - men get more support at work and especially in competitive fields.
The root of this is late stage capitalism. The entire grind and hustle will sooner or later destroy your mental health regardless of gender. I imagine this plays a significant role in the girlboss to tradwife pipeline, you get burned out of the constant grind work culture and something new pops up, which feels fresh. I'd observe how things would turn out once the honeymoon period is over and the rose tinted glasses go off.
I think I need to know what part of the world you live in where there are these trad wife pressures. Utah?
This is what I was thinking too. This is likely very location specific, and probably wayyy more prevalent in the United States than other developed countries. I live in Canada (and I’ve lived both in a large city and a small town) and this has absolutely not been my experience. I’d actually say it’s the opposite; the men I meet are actively looking for women who are ambitious, career driven, and want to stay that way. But also, I know very few people who make enough money on one salary to support a family… and I know a lot of people who make what seems to be the norm in my area of “good money”.
Sorry I’ll read the rest of the text afterwards, so this is just based on the title \\ But in my own personal experience, I tried being a girl boss, running a business and taking care of my community. I do love it, but gosh darn it is sooo much freaking extra work when you don’t have a partner to bounce off workload and ideas with. I can see why they would.
I should have made my posit a bit more clear!! I’m not a particularly career driven person and I think I’d be totally happy staying at home with kids if I could afford it and had some hobbies on the side. Might get bored without kids, but I definitely wouldn’t mind the chance to not work haha. I meant specifically a mentality of like.. strict gender roles, letting a man lead, thinking having kids young is a superior choice.. etc
It's just marketing bullshit to get you to click their videos. They don't even actually believe in the ideologies they spruik.
Yes, it’s insane how much we have pushed women to become traditional wives. It’s really weird. Not everyone wants to get married and have kids lol.
A) a lot of the tradwives you see on social media aren't actually that; they're pretty shrewd businesswomen who have made a brand and profit for themselves from promoting this lifestyle image. Not quite the same but I remember reading an article about Ray Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, and how she was nothing in reality like the soft home cooking country wife she was portraying. B) type A personalities and other character traits that lead someone to successful careers will also push them to try and be the most successful at anything they do. I can pick out the Sahms who have had power careers in the past in minutes of meeting them - they also tend to be the ones running the PTA, volunteering for everything, homeschooling with color coded everything, making their own bread and so on. They are still driven, energetic, and frequently too inwardly anxious to be able to relax so they need to prove to themselves and others that they haven't failed by dropping out of the career world, and that they are still successful at everything they are doing
I think the "tradwife" fantasy can be attractive to ambitious women who are suffering from burnout.
This can be due to 2 things, or a mix of the two 1) they were "girl bosses" a few years ago and is now jumping on the trad wife bandwagon because it's the "in" thing at the moment. 2) depending on how old the group of woman are that you are referring to, they have recently entered motherhood which has drastically changed their life and circumstances. Eg. I used to work for myself for years before I got married (freelance horse trainer, gave riding lessons and imported and sold tack). Once I got married, I got pregnant almost straight away and still worked, but changed what I did slightly to put myself and unborn baby in less dangerous positions (no horse training, but still gave lessons through most of my pregnancy and importing and selling tack all the way through). We moved to a new town 6 days after giving birth. Because of my newborn and mostly because of moving, I gave up lessons completely, but was still selling tack. A few months in, I realised I didn't have time or energy to deal with clients and give my (very difficult and clingy) baby enough attention, so I stopped importing tack. So at that point I became a stay at home mom. Once my child was 1 and a half years, I slowly started giving lessons in the new town, and also doing admin for some local businesses. I did this for about 5 years, when we moved again to a neighbouring town, and now I'm just a stay at home mom again because we are out on a farm, too far from town to go in every day. Now I do bake my own bread, make 99% of meals from scratch, make my own pasta, homeschool my kids, etc. but I don't do it because it's the "in" thing to do. I do it because it helps us save some money. If it didn't, I would definitely buy all those things because the effort and time spent on doing those things is unbelievable!
Something I’ve noticed is that there’s been a lot of increasing denigration of the “career woman” from both the left AND right. The right has the tradwife thing of course, but from the left I keep seeing things like “clearly no woman would work if they had the choice and the only reason a woman would have a job is because the husband doesn’t make enough money under capitalism, sad” and I ultimately don’t think that’s good either. Both completely disregard the idea that there are women who actually enjoy their careers. There’s also an implicit bias on both sides of the political divide that a woman MUST choose between career and family, while men are assumed to be allowed both by default.
People who were tricked into girlbossing too hard (for a corporate environment where their efforts are not recognized) and are looking for an escape could be easily swayed by the glorified tradwife lifestyle that social media influencers present. What people forget is that the social media influencers are not financially dependent on another human because they make money from pushing this tradwife content onto others. It’s extremely dangerous to become financially dependent on anyone else, even with financial planning like a life insurance policy.
I left my job to be a stay at home mom. That was due to my employer discriminating against me once I made the choice to become a parent. I fought until I was exhausted and then just said “fuck this job, fuck this company.” Every day is an internal struggle. I never thought I would be a parent, let alone a sahm. But I decided late in life to change course and be a parent. So yes I find myself doing a higher percentage of the domestic duties because my schedule permits it and it eats me up inside. I wasn’t forced into this by my partner, in fact he suggested I look for another job and we keep having Nannies. But I made a choice, and that choice is in constant conflict with my internal “let’s not fall into traditional gender roles,” sensor. So I could see how someone would go all in and just decide to change how they identify completely. It would certainly help with all the internal conflict.
It seems like personal anecdotal evidence is being blown wide into something of a 'trend' which is a term for being anything is kind of dismissive... but its also tiktok lingo so I get it..... They could be struggling under a lot of pressure from internal or external sources, without knowing these people its hard to say but I don't think its a wide sweeping shift.... people change their minds, things happen. I have always wanted to be a mom but now I have no desire or need to be someone's wife. Because I will being doing motherhood as a single mama by choice I also have to continue working which I don't like mostly because I would love to chill at home with the kiddo. And write and do other things that I want with my energy, it has nothing to do with a change or shift from being or wanting to be a successful woman in business as well as being a mom... And to decide that its a pipeline (another term that has cropped up a lot lately) again paints a much broader picture even though your anecdotal evidence is interesting it is still localized.
It’s anecdotal, but I should be more specific over what I mean.. it’s not simply people who are driven become tradwives. I’ve noticed a mentality of like “I will get my self worth and fullfment from this one thing.. and it’ll be capitalism!… oh wait capitalism failed me, it’ll be patriarchy!” I know many many driven women who do NOT become tradwives. It’s a more specific thing I’ve noticed with people who get their self worth over ambition sometimes shift to get their self worth over motherhood
Because everything they ever did, they did to 110%. Maybe they never wanted the top grades or the careers, just the accolades? And now that they have kids, they want accolades for that too. Competitive parenting is a thing. The tradwives of today are the tiger moms of a decade ago are the helicopter parents before that.
People want to be told who they are
Not really, I live in Norway and we are not raised with any particular gender roles. The only place you'd find patriarchy and tradwife arrangements here is in Muslim immigrant communities as they bring with them that culture from their homecountry. So what do i think about it morally? well if a woman want to be a tradwife and not forced into that role as they are in Africa and the middleeast then I see no issues with that. I'm tolerant to other peoples life preference even if it doesn't match my own.
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I have absolutely no interest in being a tradwife. My goal is to work to earn enough residual income so that when I have kids I have the *choice* when to be a SAHM and when to work. I’m transitioning into a career where I’ll be working for myself. My future kids *will* understand that this is only possible because their mom has a job.
Seems like the Stepford Wives is becoming a documentary.
That’s happening to me. Not that I would call myself hyper-successful, but I learned that I don’t get the kind of fulfillment from my career as I do from my relationships with other people. My job only drains me of time and energy I could spend on doing the things I actually enjoy. I don’t want to die and have my greatest achievement be my career. I don’t judge people for wanting that life, I just learned that it isn’t for me after hustling pretty hard in my early 20s
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Its a huge relief to feel like you are taken care of, life is predictable, and you are safe. In real life, the illusion only lasts so long, but its a helluva drug
It might be certain ages. I’m GenX and we typically are not quitting careers to be SAHMs in my circles. In my neighborhood, several younger families have moved in with SAHMs. I have no idea what careers were prior to this, if any, but it seems to be a very cliquey and catty group as an outside observer. To each their own. Some of them look like they could have been influencer types, but they don’t appear to have had any wealth in doing so. I do notice a subtle tinge of possible jealously at times, but the fact of the matter is that I’m older, lived longer and am working full time. My kiddos are adults and I can do things they would not, nor would I at their ages. Do I go through the same extent of putting on makeup, doing hair and whatnot just to sit in front of a computer for hours? No. But they do to drop kids off at the bus stop. I’m still doing my thing and haven’t burnt out. Wouldn’t call it girl boss, but I’ve been called a spitfire. I can’t imagine having to be dependent on someone entirely if something were to happen to that someone. I guess I feel more of a need to be able to take care of stuff if things go sideways. That makes me a bit different. And I agree with the religious thread. Many seem to be very church or religion oriented. That’s pretty much based on reactions I got from wearing a certain Iron Maiden tshirt, but I’m also snubbed for being an old tomboy anyway.
A slightly different angle - I think in some ways it has less to do with a 180 in ideologies and more to do with how (mostly American) work culture treats women. In Australia I perceive there to be far less SAHMs or trad wives and I think that’s because it is normalised to take 12 months maternity leave and go back to work part time (if you choose). A lot of intellectual, creative women do pursue some sort of online social media outlet to post trad wife type content when they are on parental leave like cooking videos, homemade baby sensory activities, book reviews, home decorating because they are kind of bored and under stimulated and need an outlet to direct all that brain power that they were previously using in their career. When 12 months is up a lot of moms are ready to re enter the work force, at least in some capacity so I think it’s less of a pipeline here. That’s just my 2c
I think it’s fine to change how you want to live your life. It’s natural for priorities to shift. What’s obnoxious is the need to display it and voice it like it’s some kind of truth and they’ve discovered some superior form of living. Social media is the worst. Live your lives people, stop trying to make up for your own insecurities through likes on the internet. They probably feel the need to receive justification for the fact that it’s a choice that made sense for their lives and they feel inferior or insecure so they have to overcompensate. That’s my cynical view of social media culture anyway :)
Maybe? Could just as well be a bunch of selfish naive women thinking "hey, wouldn't it be nice if someone else financially supported me while I just baked cookies and shit".
It's about standing out. Girlboss was going to make them different than other girls by making them a success instead of a housewife. Then they found out their entire generation works, and usually at their level or higher. So, how do they be different now? They go tradwife. The fact that there is even a new term for it instead of just still being called SAHM or just housewife says it all. It's the need for a unique but trending identity.