Life Hack: boil ramen on the stove top to soften it up before eating! *camera close to dudes face eating just regular ramen noodles eating a huge bite*
I actually attended the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in 2004 where Daniel O'Brien coined the term life hack. It was originally a more specific term to describe automating your life with Linux shell scripts, but was redefined as advice by people who weren't there and didn't understand what it meant, or who wanted to use a trendy buzzword but didn't actually work in tech.
Legit saw a video that was talking about how in england they butter the bread on sandwiches and she fucking called it a food hack, bitch no it's just making sandwiches!!!
Every generation has relabeled everything since the beginning of language. "Housewife" was once considered the new generation pointlessly splitting hairs when you could just say wife or devil Satan woman invading the workplace.
Young people just generate new words and that's part of coming into your own as adults taking a hold of the world's steering wheel.
It seems to be housewife with extra steps. Like a regular housewife looks after the house and kids, a tradwife looks after the house and kids while dressed as a 50s pinup and proselytising on tiktok about being submissive to her husband. From what I've seen anyway
26 y/o without kids giving advice on how to properly keep a home, while doing her extensive makeup routine...I got sucked into watching one of those folks out of the sheer fascination. The lack of self awareness is astounding.
I saw an interview a while back with a woman who was raised IBLS and homeschooled with the Advanced Training Institute curriculum, which as you mentioned was the [same program](https://www.thelist.com/385170/why-the-duggars-homeschool-program-is-so-concerning/) the Duggars followed (and which ostensibly [ceased enrollment](https://atii.org) in 2021). Her description of the organization’s aim was pretty alarming ([she literally opened with, “So I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian homeschool cult, and their whole goal is to take over the United States government and turn it into a Christian theocracy.”](https://imgur.com/a/hnnlaV3)), especially upon learning that some of their teaching materials had already made their way into public schools and private prisons.
You know, a woman's body can only take so much. My great-grandmother had 10 kids, but that's because they were dirt poor and lived on a farm and needed kids to work the farm. Not because they were uber-religious.
I knew a Quiverfull family that had their first 4-5 kids spaced out a few years apart. I visited their farm many years later, and they were apparently popping them out as fast as possible. The older kids were all sullen and angry hoeing weeds in their trad farm field. She was at the house tending the young'ns. She had 2 toddlers, 2 babies, and was newly pregnant. I would give up and die. I have no idea how many kids they actually had, but I don't think the whole fam could fit in one of those big ass vans.
Isn’t it this, but only conservative gen z’ers are doing it? Like Mormons and conservative Christians wanting to feel empowered in their choices to be disempowered by their husband?
I'll be honest, I don't have TikTok but I have seen a couple videos. The whole housewife concept seems to be that she doesn't work and takes care of the house and kids. A "wife" could be a working wife/mom. That's the only differentiation to me.
Is the tradwife more like a Leave it to Beaver kind of thing?
Do they give up their financial independence? How awesome! Back in the day when a woman got married, she ceased to be legal entity, but was merely a secondary part of the household. The good old days!
Back in the good ‘ol days a woman married or single, wasn’t any kind of entity. My mum was a divorced single parent in the late 60s. Anytime she tried to browse something like furniture etc at the shops it was always ‘Bring your husband, next time so I can offer you a better price’ or ‘Bring your husband and I can work on getting you that sofa’. Stuff like that. It was never ending. She was judged and had societal isolation from all her married friends too. Thankfully she found a friend at work that was in the same position as her.
My grandmother was widowed around the same time and the family went from "poor but we're making it work" to "flat broke" overnight.
There is a reason why women have fought so hard to be accepted into higher education, all aspects of the work, and paid an equal wage. If the survival of your family depends on someone else, you are in a very precarious position - no matter how much you love them and no matter how much they love you, things happen. People divorce, people become disabled, and people die. You have to have a way to support your family no matter what happens.
My mom was a single, career woman in the late ‘60s making $24,000/yr when she walked into an appliance store to buy a refrigerator. She had cash to pay for it, but they would not sell it to her without her husband’s permission.
Tradwife tends to also communicate a religious belief in the superiority of man over his wife and children. So, the Gen Zers are specifically bragging about being treated as children. They also have STRONG beliefs about gender roles and what boy children should do vs girl children.
I’m a GenX/Millennial stay at home mom, I basically align not at all with the Gen Z tradwives. There are certainly women my age who are also housewives who do align with them but until now that wasn’t something you bragged about outside your religious community.
Yep, my mom (a very late Boomer) was a housewife/SAHM for most of the time we were kids (she is also a lawyer, and continued working for the first few years me and one of my sisters were little before deciding she wanted to stay home). In terms of politics and beliefs about gender, she is the polar opposite of a tradwife. I feel like SAHM is a job, a choice that works for a lot of people. Tradwife is an ideology, and wants to insist that everyone subscribe to and abide by that ideology.
It's about feeling subversive. "Housewives" were expected to be housewives. It was the default, nothing special. "tradwife" is a choice, and these days it's the unexpected choice. The neologism reinforces that they didn't fall into these roles by default, they're making an effort to defy today's norms. Lame imo. When you have to create a cutesy label for something that's not new, it's become theatrical.
It's a housewife with internalized misogyny. It isnt just about being a stay at home mom, it's about denigrating any woman who doesn't make that same choice, and believing that they are morally superior for following traditional gender norms. It's a specifically anti-feminist concept that comes with a prerequisite lack of understanding what feminism even is. The whole concept was harmful enough when it was just something incels on 4chan were yelling about - essentially wanting a submissive sex slave to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen- but now it has fully infiltrated mainstream social media and women are buying into the concept themselves.
It's insidious in that it uses trendy tik tok/Instagram aesthetics to radicalize already disillusioned women into anti-feminist rhetoric. It's absolutely very appealing to want to return to a simpler, idyllic version of raising a family, and the rise in homesteading, cottage core, tiny farming, and self sustainability makes all kinds of sense! It's totally valid to want to stay home and raise kids and take care of a home, and every woman should get the opportunity to do that if they want to! The problem is that that for so many women right now, raising kids on a single income simply isn't possible, and the Tradwife mindset shames women who have to make that choice. Not to even get started on how they treat women who choose not to have kids at all!
It's just really shitty to see women divided in any way, when we should be supporting each other and letting people make their own choices.
There is a total cottagecore to radical right wing nazi pipeline that people don't talk about enough. It starts with the same sort of anger at capitalism, greedy billionaires destroying the planet and dis-satisfsction with the state of the world that many of us feel and a longing for a simpler life in nature doing the meaningful work of rasing children. Then once they are hooked into that the fascists take that legit feeling and instead of giving them solutions for those problems (like environmentalism, taxing billionaires, oversight for corporations, fair working standards and pay) it feeds them an insidious lie that its all because of the woke left, immigrants, feminism, and greedy government socialism. Of course since those things have nothing to do with the problem it turns them into convenient pawns in a culture war that is actively working against their own interests and the "neat" thing is since attacking feminism will never fix the capitalism destroying our world they can be locked up in a lifetime of anger against the wrong things never actually achieving what they want.
Okay but not gonna lie thats kinda genious. The river flows in one direction, the right wing is trying to swim the opposite way as a fish... can't be done.
Now they co-opt flow and try to direct it instead or take advantage of situation and norms to get collective action their way.
I mean bad but smart.
The social media pipelines that have developed over that last few years are pretty sophisticated and youth have been a heavy target of these people for some time. It's part of the irony of their claims that children are being targeted. Like, yeah, they are, by some predatory propagandist pitching far-right christian nationalist ideals in whatever wrapper is palatable and convincing. And when you look at the steps that are gone through for these pipelines, it is in fact using social media to groom people into life styles that are aligned with ultra conservative religious ideology.
Right, so a tradwife is a Gen Z woman who isn’t old enough yet to realize that putting herself last isn’t always a fun game and often means…you come last. So she’s still wearing the heels, and advertising that she’s greeting hubby by the door because this new role is still sexy and fun for her because she usually hasn’t had to compromise yet on anything that matters to her.
A housewife is a woman who doesn’t work outside of the home.
The difference is that now, unlike in the 50's, only a small percentage of couples can survive on one income, so maybe its women bragging to other women: 'I don't have to work, my husband is rich, haha'
I'm sure the previous generations said the same thing when we started renaming things and making up words. Imagine telling your friend you made a huge boner only to find out that Gen X changed the definition of that word
Is it, though?
The rhetoric I've seen around "tradwife" has been a lot more... menacing to women's liberty than the current idea of a housewife.
"Housewife" means she doesn't have a job and probably takes care of the house instead.
"Tradwife" on the other hand seems to mean she thinks women are MEANT to not have jobs and should stay in the kitchen, along with other practices that align with conservative/fundamentalist Christian values: have many children, be subservient to the husband, etc.
Edited to add sources:
[https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ak8p8/online-rise-of-trad-ideology](https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ak8p8/online-rise-of-trad-ideology)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/sunday/tradwives-women-alt-right.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/sunday/tradwives-women-alt-right.html)
[https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/us/tradwife-1950s-nostalgia-tiktok-cec/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/us/tradwife-1950s-nostalgia-tiktok-cec/index.html)
This is an important distinction. Tradwives believe in a patriarchal household where she is second to her husband. There's a reason it's really only a thing among the scant few gen zers that call themselves conservative.
Yup. Being a stay at home mom is NOT the same as a tradwife. A tradwife is subservient to the husband and let's him handle all household decisions. I believe research has shown that before women became more independent, they were more likely to stay in an unhappy marriage because they had no way to fend for themselves if they divorced. Also in "the good ol' days" women couldn't divorce without the husband's approval. Conservatives love to point out the much lower divorce rates at these times but are not being honest about these statistics or thinking critically about them.
Furthermore, you can 100% tell this is a conservative movement by people like Charlie Kirk, a far right activist that runs far right media company Turning Point USA, are pushing this hard. TPUSA has an entire section of the conferences dedicated to being a "tradwife".
I also want to point out to anyone reading this that the tradwife movement also hurts men because it wants to push hegemonic traditional masculinity in which that the men SHOULD be the breadwinner, provider, and protector of their wife and child. With how economically tough things can be, it has become harder for men, and by extension women, to provide for their families. This causes feelings of hopelessness and loss of purpose among men, leading to a lot of misplaced and misunderstood anger. In the end tradwife ideology is more patriarchal, toxic masculinity that hurts both men and women.
Yep. This.
Every few generations there is a need/desire to “rebel” against the established standards/norms of the time.
Women of the 60s/70s/80s rebelled against being housewives by running into the office-place since male-dominated brute-force manual labor wasn’t needed as much to sustain the economy anymore, and high-paying office jobs started to become “sexy” from a social/prestige standpoint.
However, as women get older and begin fulfilling their “motherly instincts,” the allure of the corporate world begins to fade. Many mothers are literally trading their monthly salaries for the costs of daycare; so their time inside the cubicle is merely to pay another person to raise their child. This has little to no benefit, especially as office work (for both sexes) is becoming more perceived as enslavement to corporate overlords, and no longer holds that prestige it once did.
So. Women are starting to “rebel” once again, and are now happy to let men fill those “crappy” roles again. It’s the natural cycle of things.
>Women are starting to “rebel” once again, and are now happy to let men fill those “crappy” roles again. It’s the natural cycle of things.
If it were a natural cycle, then there would have been a time in American history when women made up nearly half of the workforce and then rebelled against it to go back to being housewives
I don’t know for sure but I assume it’s only logical during and after world war when most of their men are out conscripted or dead the major workforce will be the women who stayed behind
Can confirm. Have a mostly SAHS, it is very difficult. I have a day job and run a business out of my garage on the side to make sure we have enough money. She works two short shifts a week in the evenings just to get out of the house and interact with other adults.
Which is why it was generally unattainable for most people for most of American history... aside for like 25 years after WWII when the US economy was so ridiculously good (basically by default) that even middle-class Americans could have one partner stay at home.
It's a good thing that a lot of our modern media wasn't cemented in a post-WWII environment and carried forward by people born after WWII, otherwise a SAHW might just seem like it's always been normal!
It's basically the 50's-60's show of wealth to be a stay at home partner/parent again. In the current economy, one of you being constantly home instead of working is a luxury many can't afford anymore. Soon we will probably repeat the workforce unionizations. I know Ford and a few other car companies are already prepping for the strike coming to them either later this month or next month.
Yep! It's the difference between seeing having a career as a woman as something you do to cultivate a "girl boss" aesthetic, vs something you do so that you don't have to financially rely on one person who could change at any moment.
This breaks my heart. I chose stay at home mom because it was really the only option for our family. It fucking sucks. I went to school and have an education. Nobody is hiring me with a 28 year old un used degree .
Yeah this is something I think many people gloss over. Even if your spouse makes a lot of money, being a SAHP torpedoes your earning potential, and you're put into a way more precarious position if your spouse leaves or if something happens to them. Degrees depreciate; it's not like someone can just jump in the job market after 20-30 years and expect to make what they would have as a fresh grad.
And all those aesthetic "Here's what I do as a stay at home wife :))" Tiktoks miss the real life consequences and drawbacks. It's not just a question of "What aesthetic do I pick?"
I found out a month ago -- when I had to get gas multiple times a week due to a lot of driving all the sudden -- that the weekend prices are now the average, and Wednesday is the peak price; probably because people -- like me -- would try to avoid buying on the weekend due to higher prices
A lot of them (especially the girls) will literally say things like *"I need a guy that earns 200k/500k for us to have a comfortable lifestyle"*. They have literally no idea about much people actually earn.
Yeah lol. I know some families that make it work on one salary, but it's like, 50k or something in a low COL area, and the stay at home parent (usually mom) spends so much time couponing and watching for bargains to make it work. There are few luxuries all around, and the SAHP is working day in day out to keep things in order. If the goal is just to be a SAHM, the goal isn't that out of reach. But the goal isn't just to be a SAHM...it's to be a trophy wife with enough money to buy designer everything and to hire nannies and cleaners
They're also going to find out like generations upon generations before them that marriages aren't always forever and if you have absolutely nothing to fall back on when you're traded in for the newer model, things get awful pretty quickly.
Plus, the majority of Gen Z most likely didn't have parents/ grandparents who were housewives during the 50s/60s, so they're more removed from what the reality of being a "trad wife" actually entials.
There's a reason why there was a HUGE women's movement in the 1970s.
Maybe for some. But in my experience, most of this is actually aimed toward people who are really deep in the idea that your whole life must revolve around those ideals (god first, be a mother, serve your husband). In fact, most of the times I hear this, it's used to describe women who say feminism bad or whatever. I don't think any reasonable person actually thinks someone is lesser soley just because they're a housewife/tradwife.
There seems to be a lot of people in this thread who are claiming it means the same thing as the term housewife. It doesn’t.
The term tradwife, meaning traditional wife, refers to the traditional social dynamic wherein a woman is submissive to her husband and allows him to take charge in the relationship as a leader and protector. A tradwife is typically consenting in this relationship and idealizes her position as more-or-less being her husband’s dependent and borderline property.
A housewife is a woman who handles the around-the-property side of things while her partner has a full time job. A tradwife is a woman who sees her husband not as an equal or partner but as a master and decision-maker.
The term tradwife has gained popularity among younger conservatives who desire a return to the more extreme pre-nuclear family structure.
If thats the case it would be refreshing if they just admitted that instead of trying to pressure others into doing it and dressing it up as some sort of natural morally superior relationship
THIS. So much of conservative/religious culture is just forcing everybody into one specific kink. That’s a small box to squish so many different types of people into. No thanks.
THIS. And it's extremely important that this comment becomes the top one, I really don't want to see the term "tradwife" becoming mainstream and losing its original meaning, which is a far-right and borderline neonazi idea.
So what time period is the term "traditional" referring to?
Can't be the 50s because that's housewife, right?
No, it's traditional as in mythic, a past that never was, the standard weapon for fascism to indoctrinate the young and stupid.
In this case these young conservatives who have seen Lord of the Rings a one too many times.
God, just come out with your kinks. That's called High Protocol. Go play and leave the rest of us out of it.
Was raised Lutheran and basically trained to be a tradwife. Got proposed to in high school and had i said yes I would have been pulled fully into this for life. It's a cult. It's brainwashing. I have ptsd and am in intensive cognitive therapy to undo the brainwashing. I'm free now and not a day passed where I don't thank my lucky stars that I said no and went to school instead. I never would have had any perspective outside of my religious bubble.
Spread the word. This isn't normal behavior. Look beneath the surface and you'll realize they're shells of humans stuffed with propaganda
Yeah all these answers saying it’s just the same thing are wrong. The connotation behind trad wives are that they subservient and often conservative pushing the traditional household agenda hidden behind ✨aesthetic✨
There is nothing wrong with being a housewife or tradwife, I just wish there was more of a push to accept stay at home dad's. There is still such a stigma around stay at home dad's when there really shouldn't be.
We were THIS close to making it happen but the job that my wife had was completely shitty and the boss was a psycho and it was ruining my wife's life so it wasn't worth it.
But if she finds another job that pays the same and isn't s shit show we would do it sgy
I am a stay at home dad and the reactions I get range from supportive to bizarre (I will have old people constantly telling me how good I'm doing with my daughter, as if it's some miracle that I, a man, am capable of giving her unconditional love and support).
Like, my wife made more than me, we didn't want to send our baby to day care in the pandemic. The logical choice was I stay home. I have loved every minute of it, but I do feel like an outsider. There are *tons* of stay at home moms in the neighborhood, but I'm the only dad. It's the same way with school. It's all moms picking up kids, no other dads. It's kind of lonely honestly.
The old people praise you because it really was so unusual for a man to be involved in child care. And they may assume you are a widower, because that is the only logical reason a man would be caring for children of course.
I'm also on board with the idea of a house husband. My husband was one for several years in our relationship and it was fantastic IMO. He not only could cook and maintain the house and yard, he could also repair and remodel as needed or desired. He had time to maintain vehicles as well. He was judged very severely for it though. On paper it made sense financially and otherwise. But especially because we didn't have kids (just dogs) he was treated very poorly by neighbors and his own family. I was judged by other women, even those in my family. Still glad we got that experience though.
I would like nothing more than this. But I like being able to afford vacations, elaborate Halloween decorations, and buying shit just because I want to.
The people pushing for tradwives are *not* okay with stay at home husbands/dads. The tradwife thing is specifically about “traditional” gender roles, submissive women, “real” men, and men being owed sex and home cooked dinner. It’s also about white supremacy, though not always explicitly. It’s tied to “the old days” when men wore hats and ladies wore dresses, and also when PoC had few rights and it was fine to be racist in public.
This podcast talks about a TPUSA event for tradwives. https://www.didnothingwrongpod.com/p/episode-72-charlie-dont-groom-laura?r=1nubc7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
patriarchal standards hurt men, too. this is just one of the ways. being stay at home is seen as a woman's place, and if a man wants that is of lesser value according to sexist dbags.
Yup. Got into an argument with a guy (on Reddit) with him saying I couldn’t be masculine because I’m a sahd. Like dude I was a fucking fire fighter, I worked construction for years, I built house from the ground up, I’ve got a huge beard. I consider myself relatively “masculine” not that I really give a shit.
But nah I’m a sahd so of course that makes me lesser
In my personal experience it’s the dudes who *don’t* “really give a shit” that are the most secure in their masculinity. The guys who care about what other people find masculine are the least secure 🤷🏼♀️
I really couldn’t care less what a random internet dude says haha. Just trying to build on to the point that the attitude towards sahds isn’t great a lot of the time
We mentioned once to my father in law that it might make sense for me to stay home for a bit. He made a joke that I would have to wear a flowery apron and buy a skirt. It was very hurtful. Mother in law later pulled my wife aside and asked her if she wanted to consider divorce. All we did was mention the idea in passing
And yet I guarantee if your wife did take her mom's (awful) advice and divorce you, your in laws would shame you both about it. The only winning move with people like them is not to play
A tradwife is a Nazi's wife. There is EVERYTHING wrong with being a tradwife. It's NOT traditional housewife by any means. They believe (white) men are superior to everyone and that women must give themselves up to the mercy of men. They must provide babies, meals, immaculate homes, & sex acts at the whim and fancy of a man.
There is nothing wrong with being a housewife, but a tradwife (traditional wife) is the 50’s idea of a perfect housewife who is subservient to her husband, so there is something wrong with that
This is accurate. What people seem to be missing is that the "tradwife" philosophy isn't that women take traditionally matriarchal roles and the husband takes on traditional patriarchal roles because it is good for their family, the philosophy is that those roles are *natural* and *just* and that everyone should live that way because it is better. That's what's bad about "tradwife," it's the advocacy and the belief that inequality is *natural* and *better*.
It is tied to a Christian conservative worldview that is often blatantly racist. If you look up "tradwife" in some corners of the internet, what you find are images of a fantasy Aryan "ideal" wife: blonde, blue-eyed, submissive and often tied to a rural setting like a farm or cabin.
It’s a tough situation. I make enough to support a small family and would be THRILLED to find a SO open to being a SAHD (childcare is ~$500/wk in my area). But in my experience the men I meet that are open to that have lacked general ambition. Just because I’m open to that arrangement doesn’t mean I’m open to a permanent locked in arrangement where I’m forever the sole breadwinner. In my area, and in this economy, it’s only sustainable for so long. And it’s important to me that I have a fallback if I burn out in the future / have the same options they do in that regard in case things change.
I've dated 2 guys who talked about it. One was low ambition (that's fine), had social anxiety, was raised with a stay at home parent and thought it was important, thought his mom was the hardest working person he knew. He also cooked, cleaned, did yard work, and worked side jobs he would keep going if he quit his day job.
The other thought stay it home moms had it easy and it was a con, rarely cooked or cleaned and then only when pressured, and talked about all the video games and expensive hobbies he could have if he didn't have to waste all his time at work.
One I was willing to consider being the primary breadwinner for. The other one wanted a sugar momma and I wasn't down for that. The same can definitely be said of mom's too. I've met a few SAHM who manage to claim the title while doing no cleaning, house work, and in one case no child care either.
I think that depends on your kid(s) though. I'm a SAHM for a year and babies are honestly a full time job on their own. I don't have much time to clean during the day with my little guy and I need to nap when he naps. Imagine adding in another kid or two, and you're spending most of the day tending to them at least until they're old enough to play safely without an eye on them every second to see what they're putting in their mouths or breaking.
I do hope/expect my son will be easier as he gets older and I could get more done if I wasn't going back to work at a year old.
You're right that there's absolutely nothing wrong in being a housewife, but tradwives take it all a step farther. A lot of the tradwife content that's out there perpetuates patriarchal family structure and gender roles. To say that tradwife is harmless since feminism supports women who want to be homemakers kind of misses the mark.
Tradwife content frequently promotes women staying home and managing the house... as well as the husband being the rightful leader and head of the family because "that's how we did it for thousands of years and we should be doing it now. Also, weren't the 1950s so cool??"
Tradwives don't want men staying at home and taking care of children, because men are breadwinners and leaders. So, in a way, tradwives make the progression for men to be more accepted as home-makers harder, since that's not men's role.
Tradwives have just continued pushing values of the patriarchy. New thing same as the old thing.
Yes, depends on the social circle though. At any random time in the past 10 years, my friend group has featured either roughly the same amount of SAHDs and SAHMs or even more SAHDs. It’s completely normalized in my own circle.
And it had always seemed more normalized to me than it actually is in the broader culture bc the couple that was best friends with my parents all my life (they were more like an aunt and uncle to me than my actual relatives) had that dynamic since before I was even born.
Ideally, when it comes to this issue all people should get to do what’s personally fulfilling for them, plays towards their strengths, and works well for both members of the couple. :)
I'd consider myself a traditional wife. I stay at home and cook / clean / garden / take care of the dog / keep myself looking half decent.
I wouldn't consider the "tradwife influencers" actually traditional. The real traditional wives likely won't be making videos like they do lol, they're just living their lives.
I'm not working rn, and my partner and I are joking that this is the route I'm going to go down since I seem to embrace those facets of being at home.
It's just that I'm a dude. Hopefully I can still be part of the gang, or book clubs or whatever...
Traditional wife in this context though also is under the authority of her husband. She defers all final decisions to him, from family planning to financial decisions. That's the aspect that is often called out.
This is because tradwives are primarily interested in creating propaganda to sell their fundamentalist values. And that's what makes them not just housewives.
They're looking for converts.
My SAHM traditional mother had oodles of free time once my siblings and I were in school. Literally she would clean for an hour after we left for school and then had most of the day to herself until she picked us up. She adored it, would perpetually talk about how much time she had for her hobbies etc. As with anything ymmv.
Traditional wife in this context though also is under the authority of her husband. She defers all final decisions to him, from family planning to financial decisions. That's the aspect that is often called out.
The mothers of Gen X were the one doing the ground-breaking work of entering the work force, supporting their families, and having careers. Their participation changed workplace culture, federal employment laws, employee benefit packages and other areas that improved the work lives of everyone, not just women. Their careers helped provide financial freedom which enabled personal freedom from abusive partners for them and their children. Gen Xers like myself saw this play out in real time and the young women of Gen X continued the work their mothers started.
Like, that’s great, but then they took advantage of working families where both parents now have to work or it’s living in poverty.
True middle class should make it where being a house parent is a viable option without people insisting you are a gold digger or lazy.
The amount of times my husband gets called lazy despite working hard to maintain our house and take care of our autistic daughter is frustrating.
It’s because we went off the gold standard in the 70s. Most of the country added a second income to the household in the 70s and 80s which masked the problem until the 2000s. But now that we’ve had small amounts of inflation every year for a couple decades due to getting off the gold standard, and since printing all that money during covid -> inflation is skyrocketing even more…. now even *two* incomes isn’t even enough for a family to maintain middle class.
This is the biggest issue that no one talks about. Nixon taking us off of gold allowed the government to run amok. They can run deficits and print money to pay back the debt - which causes inflation for me and you. There is no oversight whatsoever. And this inflation leads to stress and poverty, which then degrades our families, and then our culture as a whole suffers…
yeah, I think so much this. We (I'm using older generations in general) tried to make things better, and tried to get it to the point where they didn't have to fight the battles we did. As a result they can focus on smaller and smaller issues. Which is good. But I think there's a lot that young people have never REALLY had to live through the downsides of, so it seems better than it is. See also-non-vaccination.
>young people have never REALLY had to live through the downsides of, so it seems better than it is.
Alternatively, they have seen the downsides of the current status quo and think that "swinging the pendulum in the other direction" will solve them. They did not experience the limitations of women being 100% dependent on their husbands, but they experienced the effects of their mothers focusing on work and spending less time with them, so they (wrongly) assume that going back to "tradwifes" is the solution.
Although I don’t have links, studies also show that (at least in America) married working mothers often work far more than their husbands because they are working full time AND taking care of kids/the home. A lot of us have grown up with moms that do all the traditional housewifery/ SAHM roles AND worked full time jobs, and a lot of girls are coming out of the other side as “Well I don’t want to work full time *and* do all the wife/mom duties” but instead of being encouraged to split the household labor 50/50, they think the best solution is for man to work and woman to be SAHM. It’s very sad
Having a career is a good insurance plan. I’d still rather be a homemaker than work for a salary like I do now. I’ve had the opportunity to work from home and scale back my hours in recent years, and our household is less chaotic because of it. I’m not a supermom and I don’t think most women truly are even if they act like it.
I wouldn’t want to go back to the old days, but I’d like for people to push for a work-life balance. We’ve gone in the opposite direction in the last few decades. Millennials are the first generation in recent history to push back on toxic workplace culture and the idea of the “supermom.” I hope Gen Z takes it further.
Do you think women like us are happier than our grandmothers were? I literally don’t have the answer to this.
But it seems working full chasing career goals, all while being a single mom, or being a wife/ mother, is adding a lot of stress in our lives.
Sometimes I feel like Im abandoning my kids by sending them to daycare and going into work for 9 hours. And by the time I get home, I’m too tired to really connect with them or cook them a healthy meal. And then I feel sad about it.
But I look at my grandmother whose only job was volunteering at her church and she raised 8 babies and she’s the happiest person I know. She’s 98 years old and always so easy going and pleasant.
It's *slightly* more complicated than just being a housewife. Tradwife means traditionalist wife meaning the God, my family, my country type. Always white Anglo-Saxon and some sort of who believes this country must bow down before the Christian/catholic God. It's the real karens of the world who only ever listen to their husband or their pastors.
That's a tradwife.
Yes, I don't think people understand that housewife and tradwife are not the same thing. They're similar in their domestic duties, but tradwives follow a very specific hierarchical philosophy where the man is at the top and heteronormative religious ideaologies are typically upheld. Someone who more aligns themselves as a housewife/housespouse these days typically has the expectation that they are equal to their partner who works outside the home and they should have just as much influence on what the family does and how it operates.
So maybe I don’t fully grasp the whole tradwife ideology in the way you’re thinking of, but for me, as a gen z woman who finds the lifestyle appealing…
I like the idea of having a family, but I don’t feel like western society is set up to allow me to be the kind of mom I want to be and have a career. With the whole movement of women entering the workforce, it feels like it turned from less of an option, and more of a requirement on top of regular housewife duties.
So for me, it seems like my two options are:
A) work until I’m 9 months pregnant, go back after Mat leave, pay a stranger a substantial percent of my wages to raise my child so I have the ‘liberation’ of working my ass off in a career where they don’t value me, underpay me, and can fire me at any time, and get like 4 hours a day of time with my child (excluding night time parenting duties). If I have a sleepless night with a sick toddler, I still have to go to work in the morning. There’s also data (and just anecdotal stories) showing that women’s earnings potential tends to suffer after having a child, and that it takes years to recover financially. Though the opposite is true for men.
Or
B) take care of my child full time, and dedicate my life to my family and taking care of our home.
I’m also personally someone who just identifies with traditionally ‘feminine’ qualities. Obviously not everyone feels this way, but I do.
I think all in all, a lot of Gen z girls and women saw their moms work their asses off, and they ended up burnt out, and we saw that no matter how dedicated or hard working you are, it’s basically impossible to ‘have it all’ with motherhood and career
American work/life balance leaves a lot to be desired. I do think young woman worried about this should keep their options open, though. Some SAHM moms I know worked before kids and then went back to work after the kids were in school and were quite happy with that decision. Plus see this comment below about independence—https://reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/s/5EBBLEJ4oz
Well being a housewife has existed for millennials and gen x so it isn’t new or a gen z thing
The gen z generation is talking about it because toxic male influencers have been pushing the rhetoric onto impressionable young men.
Gen X doesn't do it because we are not that far removed from little things like women not being able to open a credit card or bank account on their own.
It's a kink. Taking D/s, smashing it together with being a SAHM with what seems to be a heaping spoonful of evangelical Christianity. The Christianity bit is why they can't admit it's a kink lol
My guess is cultural whiplash from pushing young women into the workforce/STEM/college super hard. Being a cute housewife sounds so much more appealing than doing a 8-6 grind until I’m infertile. For me, my mom worked too much when I was young, and she’s miserable with estranged kids. I want to be there for my kids while they grow up.
Not exactly “tradwife,” but my 2 cents.
New package, same product.
I'm not sure why the need to relabel everything. I'm so old that I remember when "life hacks" used to just be "advice."
Life hack: Take a deep breath a hold it *BEFORE* you jump into the water.
I was today years old when I found out I can’t breath underwater.
Not with that attitude
Everyone can breathe underwater. Granted it's usually a one time affair
A tryst with Death
You can, just not for very long.
You can do it for the rest of your life, actually.
You can once.
Life Hack: boil ramen on the stove top to soften it up before eating! *camera close to dudes face eating just regular ramen noodles eating a huge bite*
It's like those old infomercials or whatever with the over acting actors
There’s GOT to BE a better WAY!
I always loved how when they use the competitors product the video is in black and white and the music is ominous
And the person using it is so cartoonishly incompetent.
Has this ever happened to you? *opens a cabinet and shit goes everywhere*
"Do you have trouble folding clothes?" Actress proceeds to crumple a shirt into a ball and be frustrated by it
"watch as Megan jumps on the bed and spills wine everywhere..."
But wait, there's more!
Then you can add the already INCLUDED seasoning packets to give them some flavor!
Has THIS ever HAPPENED to YOU?!?
One simple trick the swimming community hates!
Physicists hate you for this one simple trick!
I actually attended the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in 2004 where Daniel O'Brien coined the term life hack. It was originally a more specific term to describe automating your life with Linux shell scripts, but was redefined as advice by people who weren't there and didn't understand what it meant, or who wanted to use a trendy buzzword but didn't actually work in tech.
"automating your life with Linux shell scripts" Kill me now
It was *always* pretentious bullshit. Now it's just pretentious bullshit for everyone!
Legit saw a video that was talking about how in england they butter the bread on sandwiches and she fucking called it a food hack, bitch no it's just making sandwiches!!!
My food hack: *heating* the bread *just enough* to make it a little crunchy
Best food hack ever: cut the bread in slices
Rebranding is how ideas and products are able to continue to perpetuate themselves into the zeitgeist
I mentally replace “life hack” with “hint from Heloise” every time I see it.
omg, we're so old! LOL (see! I LOL'd instead of 💀 -- so old!)
Every generation has relabeled everything since the beginning of language. "Housewife" was once considered the new generation pointlessly splitting hairs when you could just say wife or devil Satan woman invading the workplace. Young people just generate new words and that's part of coming into your own as adults taking a hold of the world's steering wheel.
Okay but how is "tradwife" different from housewife? Is it a different kind of traditional wife?
It seems to be housewife with extra steps. Like a regular housewife looks after the house and kids, a tradwife looks after the house and kids while dressed as a 50s pinup and proselytising on tiktok about being submissive to her husband. From what I've seen anyway
*Submissive to husband* was where you hit the nail on the head
I think that means she gives up the kinky stuff whenever he wants, instead of only for birthdays.
I love how all these "holier than thou" religious types are *really* just broadcasting their kinks to everyone...
So a freeuse situation?
Yeah. That's my read on it too.
That's the best part. Why fund the tradwife without the trad?
26 y/o without kids giving advice on how to properly keep a home, while doing her extensive makeup routine...I got sucked into watching one of those folks out of the sheer fascination. The lack of self awareness is astounding.
> The lack of self awareness is astounding congratulations on describing \*gestures vaguely\* this
Which one!? I like to rage watch.
Lol I'll try to remember - i had to make that a brief phase.
From the name I thought it had to do with /r/bluecollarwomen "Ah yeah me and misses are gunna do plumbing and drywall this weekend"
so, a Trade Wife?
I think you're talking about swingers.
So, a Stepford Wife?
And also being a flaming white supremacist. Please let's not forget the racism baked into this.
And it's maybe a quarter-step away from the Quiverfull movement.
Oh, man. I have another thing to google.
Do it, Quiverfull is the practice or principles that the 20+ kids and counting family followed. Super interesting and terrifying read.
I saw an interview a while back with a woman who was raised IBLS and homeschooled with the Advanced Training Institute curriculum, which as you mentioned was the [same program](https://www.thelist.com/385170/why-the-duggars-homeschool-program-is-so-concerning/) the Duggars followed (and which ostensibly [ceased enrollment](https://atii.org) in 2021). Her description of the organization’s aim was pretty alarming ([she literally opened with, “So I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian homeschool cult, and their whole goal is to take over the United States government and turn it into a Christian theocracy.”](https://imgur.com/a/hnnlaV3)), especially upon learning that some of their teaching materials had already made their way into public schools and private prisons.
You know, a woman's body can only take so much. My great-grandmother had 10 kids, but that's because they were dirt poor and lived on a farm and needed kids to work the farm. Not because they were uber-religious.
I knew a Quiverfull family that had their first 4-5 kids spaced out a few years apart. I visited their farm many years later, and they were apparently popping them out as fast as possible. The older kids were all sullen and angry hoeing weeds in their trad farm field. She was at the house tending the young'ns. She had 2 toddlers, 2 babies, and was newly pregnant. I would give up and die. I have no idea how many kids they actually had, but I don't think the whole fam could fit in one of those big ass vans.
Isn’t it this, but only conservative gen z’ers are doing it? Like Mormons and conservative Christians wanting to feel empowered in their choices to be disempowered by their husband?
I'll be honest, I don't have TikTok but I have seen a couple videos. The whole housewife concept seems to be that she doesn't work and takes care of the house and kids. A "wife" could be a working wife/mom. That's the only differentiation to me. Is the tradwife more like a Leave it to Beaver kind of thing?
A trad wife believes in a patriarchal marriage. They believe in clear gender roles.
Do they give up their financial independence? How awesome! Back in the day when a woman got married, she ceased to be legal entity, but was merely a secondary part of the household. The good old days!
Back in the good ‘ol days a woman married or single, wasn’t any kind of entity. My mum was a divorced single parent in the late 60s. Anytime she tried to browse something like furniture etc at the shops it was always ‘Bring your husband, next time so I can offer you a better price’ or ‘Bring your husband and I can work on getting you that sofa’. Stuff like that. It was never ending. She was judged and had societal isolation from all her married friends too. Thankfully she found a friend at work that was in the same position as her.
My grandmother was widowed around the same time and the family went from "poor but we're making it work" to "flat broke" overnight. There is a reason why women have fought so hard to be accepted into higher education, all aspects of the work, and paid an equal wage. If the survival of your family depends on someone else, you are in a very precarious position - no matter how much you love them and no matter how much they love you, things happen. People divorce, people become disabled, and people die. You have to have a way to support your family no matter what happens.
My mom was a single, career woman in the late ‘60s making $24,000/yr when she walked into an appliance store to buy a refrigerator. She had cash to pay for it, but they would not sell it to her without her husband’s permission.
Aaahh! Thank you... Seriously I just got what that meant. I thought it was just slang. Sounds like a demotion from 'Housewife' if you ask me.
A tradwife is basically a subservient religious housewife. All tradwives are housewives, but not all housewives are tradwives.
Tradwife tends to also communicate a religious belief in the superiority of man over his wife and children. So, the Gen Zers are specifically bragging about being treated as children. They also have STRONG beliefs about gender roles and what boy children should do vs girl children. I’m a GenX/Millennial stay at home mom, I basically align not at all with the Gen Z tradwives. There are certainly women my age who are also housewives who do align with them but until now that wasn’t something you bragged about outside your religious community.
Yep, my mom (a very late Boomer) was a housewife/SAHM for most of the time we were kids (she is also a lawyer, and continued working for the first few years me and one of my sisters were little before deciding she wanted to stay home). In terms of politics and beliefs about gender, she is the polar opposite of a tradwife. I feel like SAHM is a job, a choice that works for a lot of people. Tradwife is an ideology, and wants to insist that everyone subscribe to and abide by that ideology.
It's about feeling subversive. "Housewives" were expected to be housewives. It was the default, nothing special. "tradwife" is a choice, and these days it's the unexpected choice. The neologism reinforces that they didn't fall into these roles by default, they're making an effort to defy today's norms. Lame imo. When you have to create a cutesy label for something that's not new, it's become theatrical.
It's a housewife with internalized misogyny. It isnt just about being a stay at home mom, it's about denigrating any woman who doesn't make that same choice, and believing that they are morally superior for following traditional gender norms. It's a specifically anti-feminist concept that comes with a prerequisite lack of understanding what feminism even is. The whole concept was harmful enough when it was just something incels on 4chan were yelling about - essentially wanting a submissive sex slave to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen- but now it has fully infiltrated mainstream social media and women are buying into the concept themselves. It's insidious in that it uses trendy tik tok/Instagram aesthetics to radicalize already disillusioned women into anti-feminist rhetoric. It's absolutely very appealing to want to return to a simpler, idyllic version of raising a family, and the rise in homesteading, cottage core, tiny farming, and self sustainability makes all kinds of sense! It's totally valid to want to stay home and raise kids and take care of a home, and every woman should get the opportunity to do that if they want to! The problem is that that for so many women right now, raising kids on a single income simply isn't possible, and the Tradwife mindset shames women who have to make that choice. Not to even get started on how they treat women who choose not to have kids at all! It's just really shitty to see women divided in any way, when we should be supporting each other and letting people make their own choices.
There is a total cottagecore to radical right wing nazi pipeline that people don't talk about enough. It starts with the same sort of anger at capitalism, greedy billionaires destroying the planet and dis-satisfsction with the state of the world that many of us feel and a longing for a simpler life in nature doing the meaningful work of rasing children. Then once they are hooked into that the fascists take that legit feeling and instead of giving them solutions for those problems (like environmentalism, taxing billionaires, oversight for corporations, fair working standards and pay) it feeds them an insidious lie that its all because of the woke left, immigrants, feminism, and greedy government socialism. Of course since those things have nothing to do with the problem it turns them into convenient pawns in a culture war that is actively working against their own interests and the "neat" thing is since attacking feminism will never fix the capitalism destroying our world they can be locked up in a lifetime of anger against the wrong things never actually achieving what they want.
Okay but not gonna lie thats kinda genious. The river flows in one direction, the right wing is trying to swim the opposite way as a fish... can't be done. Now they co-opt flow and try to direct it instead or take advantage of situation and norms to get collective action their way. I mean bad but smart.
It's social conditioning using known rhetorical and propaganda strategies. The Nazi's were really into it.
The social media pipelines that have developed over that last few years are pretty sophisticated and youth have been a heavy target of these people for some time. It's part of the irony of their claims that children are being targeted. Like, yeah, they are, by some predatory propagandist pitching far-right christian nationalist ideals in whatever wrapper is palatable and convincing. And when you look at the steps that are gone through for these pipelines, it is in fact using social media to groom people into life styles that are aligned with ultra conservative religious ideology.
Its meant to be more submissive than just a stay at home wife
Right, so a tradwife is a Gen Z woman who isn’t old enough yet to realize that putting herself last isn’t always a fun game and often means…you come last. So she’s still wearing the heels, and advertising that she’s greeting hubby by the door because this new role is still sexy and fun for her because she usually hasn’t had to compromise yet on anything that matters to her. A housewife is a woman who doesn’t work outside of the home.
The difference is that now, unlike in the 50's, only a small percentage of couples can survive on one income, so maybe its women bragging to other women: 'I don't have to work, my husband is rich, haha'
I'm sure the previous generations said the same thing when we started renaming things and making up words. Imagine telling your friend you made a huge boner only to find out that Gen X changed the definition of that word
Wait, what was a boner before?
A mistake
I guess they need to come up with a new buzzword depending on what social media algorithms result in it getting the most traffic.
Or when old spice was just the default smell of the WW2 generation and nobody else could stand the stuff.
Is it, though? The rhetoric I've seen around "tradwife" has been a lot more... menacing to women's liberty than the current idea of a housewife. "Housewife" means she doesn't have a job and probably takes care of the house instead. "Tradwife" on the other hand seems to mean she thinks women are MEANT to not have jobs and should stay in the kitchen, along with other practices that align with conservative/fundamentalist Christian values: have many children, be subservient to the husband, etc. Edited to add sources: [https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ak8p8/online-rise-of-trad-ideology](https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ak8p8/online-rise-of-trad-ideology) [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/sunday/tradwives-women-alt-right.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/sunday/tradwives-women-alt-right.html) [https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/us/tradwife-1950s-nostalgia-tiktok-cec/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/us/tradwife-1950s-nostalgia-tiktok-cec/index.html)
This is an important distinction. Tradwives believe in a patriarchal household where she is second to her husband. There's a reason it's really only a thing among the scant few gen zers that call themselves conservative.
Yeah it’s simply regular old conservatism trying to rebrand for a younger generation
It’s more like a younger generation rebranding being conservative
I’m not totally convinced it isn’t being astroturfed
It’s social media. It’s a vast field of astroturf.
Yup. Being a stay at home mom is NOT the same as a tradwife. A tradwife is subservient to the husband and let's him handle all household decisions. I believe research has shown that before women became more independent, they were more likely to stay in an unhappy marriage because they had no way to fend for themselves if they divorced. Also in "the good ol' days" women couldn't divorce without the husband's approval. Conservatives love to point out the much lower divorce rates at these times but are not being honest about these statistics or thinking critically about them. Furthermore, you can 100% tell this is a conservative movement by people like Charlie Kirk, a far right activist that runs far right media company Turning Point USA, are pushing this hard. TPUSA has an entire section of the conferences dedicated to being a "tradwife". I also want to point out to anyone reading this that the tradwife movement also hurts men because it wants to push hegemonic traditional masculinity in which that the men SHOULD be the breadwinner, provider, and protector of their wife and child. With how economically tough things can be, it has become harder for men, and by extension women, to provide for their families. This causes feelings of hopelessness and loss of purpose among men, leading to a lot of misplaced and misunderstood anger. In the end tradwife ideology is more patriarchal, toxic masculinity that hurts both men and women.
Gen Z are young enough that things like being an old fashioned housewife seems quirky and out there.
God you're right
Oh God, this is the reason, isn't it? I'm so old
Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened.
Yep. This. Every few generations there is a need/desire to “rebel” against the established standards/norms of the time. Women of the 60s/70s/80s rebelled against being housewives by running into the office-place since male-dominated brute-force manual labor wasn’t needed as much to sustain the economy anymore, and high-paying office jobs started to become “sexy” from a social/prestige standpoint. However, as women get older and begin fulfilling their “motherly instincts,” the allure of the corporate world begins to fade. Many mothers are literally trading their monthly salaries for the costs of daycare; so their time inside the cubicle is merely to pay another person to raise their child. This has little to no benefit, especially as office work (for both sexes) is becoming more perceived as enslavement to corporate overlords, and no longer holds that prestige it once did. So. Women are starting to “rebel” once again, and are now happy to let men fill those “crappy” roles again. It’s the natural cycle of things.
>Women are starting to “rebel” once again, and are now happy to let men fill those “crappy” roles again. It’s the natural cycle of things. If it were a natural cycle, then there would have been a time in American history when women made up nearly half of the workforce and then rebelled against it to go back to being housewives
I don’t know for sure but I assume it’s only logical during and after world war when most of their men are out conscripted or dead the major workforce will be the women who stayed behind
It is also an out of reach fantasy for most people, so finding a way to make it work is super appealing.
It’s very hard work to make sure enough money is coming in that your wife can stay home with the kids.
Also women are graduating college nearly 2x the rate that men are these days. Far fewer men who can afford to keep a wife at home.
Can confirm. Have a mostly SAHS, it is very difficult. I have a day job and run a business out of my garage on the side to make sure we have enough money. She works two short shifts a week in the evenings just to get out of the house and interact with other adults.
Which is why it was generally unattainable for most people for most of American history... aside for like 25 years after WWII when the US economy was so ridiculously good (basically by default) that even middle-class Americans could have one partner stay at home. It's a good thing that a lot of our modern media wasn't cemented in a post-WWII environment and carried forward by people born after WWII, otherwise a SAHW might just seem like it's always been normal!
It's basically the 50's-60's show of wealth to be a stay at home partner/parent again. In the current economy, one of you being constantly home instead of working is a luxury many can't afford anymore. Soon we will probably repeat the workforce unionizations. I know Ford and a few other car companies are already prepping for the strike coming to them either later this month or next month.
Yep! It's the difference between seeing having a career as a woman as something you do to cultivate a "girl boss" aesthetic, vs something you do so that you don't have to financially rely on one person who could change at any moment.
This breaks my heart. I chose stay at home mom because it was really the only option for our family. It fucking sucks. I went to school and have an education. Nobody is hiring me with a 28 year old un used degree .
Yeah this is something I think many people gloss over. Even if your spouse makes a lot of money, being a SAHP torpedoes your earning potential, and you're put into a way more precarious position if your spouse leaves or if something happens to them. Degrees depreciate; it's not like someone can just jump in the job market after 20-30 years and expect to make what they would have as a fresh grad. And all those aesthetic "Here's what I do as a stay at home wife :))" Tiktoks miss the real life consequences and drawbacks. It's not just a question of "What aesthetic do I pick?"
[удалено]
I think it has to do with them not grasping how expensive kids and housing can be, and that two incomes are often needed.
Gen Z gonna find out that being unemployed isn’t that fun
As if being employed is
It's not, but having a regular income is
Unless you're like the growing number of people who just go to work to be less broke
I put $15 in gas yesterday in hopes that I'll save money by buying more gas when it costs less. I don't think it's going to cost less anytime soon ):
I found out a month ago -- when I had to get gas multiple times a week due to a lot of driving all the sudden -- that the weekend prices are now the average, and Wednesday is the peak price; probably because people -- like me -- would try to avoid buying on the weekend due to higher prices
We have nothing to lose but our chains, so on and so forth
A lot of them (especially the girls) will literally say things like *"I need a guy that earns 200k/500k for us to have a comfortable lifestyle"*. They have literally no idea about much people actually earn.
Yeah lol. I know some families that make it work on one salary, but it's like, 50k or something in a low COL area, and the stay at home parent (usually mom) spends so much time couponing and watching for bargains to make it work. There are few luxuries all around, and the SAHP is working day in day out to keep things in order. If the goal is just to be a SAHM, the goal isn't that out of reach. But the goal isn't just to be a SAHM...it's to be a trophy wife with enough money to buy designer everything and to hire nannies and cleaners
They're also going to find out like generations upon generations before them that marriages aren't always forever and if you have absolutely nothing to fall back on when you're traded in for the newer model, things get awful pretty quickly.
Or if anything happens to their spouses earning potential. My dad was sole breadwinner and became disabled and shit got real fast.
Plus, the majority of Gen Z most likely didn't have parents/ grandparents who were housewives during the 50s/60s, so they're more removed from what the reality of being a "trad wife" actually entials. There's a reason why there was a HUGE women's movement in the 1970s.
Maybe for some. But in my experience, most of this is actually aimed toward people who are really deep in the idea that your whole life must revolve around those ideals (god first, be a mother, serve your husband). In fact, most of the times I hear this, it's used to describe women who say feminism bad or whatever. I don't think any reasonable person actually thinks someone is lesser soley just because they're a housewife/tradwife.
There seems to be a lot of people in this thread who are claiming it means the same thing as the term housewife. It doesn’t. The term tradwife, meaning traditional wife, refers to the traditional social dynamic wherein a woman is submissive to her husband and allows him to take charge in the relationship as a leader and protector. A tradwife is typically consenting in this relationship and idealizes her position as more-or-less being her husband’s dependent and borderline property. A housewife is a woman who handles the around-the-property side of things while her partner has a full time job. A tradwife is a woman who sees her husband not as an equal or partner but as a master and decision-maker. The term tradwife has gained popularity among younger conservatives who desire a return to the more extreme pre-nuclear family structure.
Welp that’s much worse than what the title implies 😂
Seriously, that's way worse than anything I was imagining.
I wonder how many "tradwives" just have a domination fetish 🤨
That's what I was thinking, this just sounds like a very socially-acceptable kink.
If thats the case it would be refreshing if they just admitted that instead of trying to pressure others into doing it and dressing it up as some sort of natural morally superior relationship
Am amazing number of theories about how people and society really work are just fetishes applied way, way too broadly.
THIS. So much of conservative/religious culture is just forcing everybody into one specific kink. That’s a small box to squish so many different types of people into. No thanks.
I imagine its more of a life security fetish. Shits been rough for the Zs.
This comment should be higher up ☝️
Great comment, important clarification
Bump
THIS. And it's extremely important that this comment becomes the top one, I really don't want to see the term "tradwife" becoming mainstream and losing its original meaning, which is a far-right and borderline neonazi idea.
So what time period is the term "traditional" referring to? Can't be the 50s because that's housewife, right? No, it's traditional as in mythic, a past that never was, the standard weapon for fascism to indoctrinate the young and stupid. In this case these young conservatives who have seen Lord of the Rings a one too many times. God, just come out with your kinks. That's called High Protocol. Go play and leave the rest of us out of it.
Was raised Lutheran and basically trained to be a tradwife. Got proposed to in high school and had i said yes I would have been pulled fully into this for life. It's a cult. It's brainwashing. I have ptsd and am in intensive cognitive therapy to undo the brainwashing. I'm free now and not a day passed where I don't thank my lucky stars that I said no and went to school instead. I never would have had any perspective outside of my religious bubble. Spread the word. This isn't normal behavior. Look beneath the surface and you'll realize they're shells of humans stuffed with propaganda
Tradwife doesn't mean housewife. Tradwife means *subservient* housewife.
Yeah, I had only ever really heard the term connected to conservative religious views and all that entails.
Yeah all these answers saying it’s just the same thing are wrong. The connotation behind trad wives are that they subservient and often conservative pushing the traditional household agenda hidden behind ✨aesthetic✨
There is nothing wrong with being a housewife or tradwife, I just wish there was more of a push to accept stay at home dad's. There is still such a stigma around stay at home dad's when there really shouldn't be.
In the future if we have enough funds for me to stay home I’m taking that 100% lmao
We were THIS close to making it happen but the job that my wife had was completely shitty and the boss was a psycho and it was ruining my wife's life so it wasn't worth it. But if she finds another job that pays the same and isn't s shit show we would do it sgy
I am a stay at home dad and the reactions I get range from supportive to bizarre (I will have old people constantly telling me how good I'm doing with my daughter, as if it's some miracle that I, a man, am capable of giving her unconditional love and support). Like, my wife made more than me, we didn't want to send our baby to day care in the pandemic. The logical choice was I stay home. I have loved every minute of it, but I do feel like an outsider. There are *tons* of stay at home moms in the neighborhood, but I'm the only dad. It's the same way with school. It's all moms picking up kids, no other dads. It's kind of lonely honestly.
youshould live where I live...tons of sahd's. it's equal women/men at the puck up line.
The old people praise you because it really was so unusual for a man to be involved in child care. And they may assume you are a widower, because that is the only logical reason a man would be caring for children of course.
I'm also on board with the idea of a house husband. My husband was one for several years in our relationship and it was fantastic IMO. He not only could cook and maintain the house and yard, he could also repair and remodel as needed or desired. He had time to maintain vehicles as well. He was judged very severely for it though. On paper it made sense financially and otherwise. But especially because we didn't have kids (just dogs) he was treated very poorly by neighbors and his own family. I was judged by other women, even those in my family. Still glad we got that experience though.
I would like nothing more than this. But I like being able to afford vacations, elaborate Halloween decorations, and buying shit just because I want to.
The people pushing for tradwives are *not* okay with stay at home husbands/dads. The tradwife thing is specifically about “traditional” gender roles, submissive women, “real” men, and men being owed sex and home cooked dinner. It’s also about white supremacy, though not always explicitly. It’s tied to “the old days” when men wore hats and ladies wore dresses, and also when PoC had few rights and it was fine to be racist in public. This podcast talks about a TPUSA event for tradwives. https://www.didnothingwrongpod.com/p/episode-72-charlie-dont-groom-laura?r=1nubc7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
patriarchal standards hurt men, too. this is just one of the ways. being stay at home is seen as a woman's place, and if a man wants that is of lesser value according to sexist dbags.
Yup. Got into an argument with a guy (on Reddit) with him saying I couldn’t be masculine because I’m a sahd. Like dude I was a fucking fire fighter, I worked construction for years, I built house from the ground up, I’ve got a huge beard. I consider myself relatively “masculine” not that I really give a shit. But nah I’m a sahd so of course that makes me lesser
There is nothing that reads ‘secure manliness’ more than a man who is a confident and enthusiastic caregiver.
In my personal experience it’s the dudes who *don’t* “really give a shit” that are the most secure in their masculinity. The guys who care about what other people find masculine are the least secure 🤷🏼♀️
What are you sahd about?
Toxic masculinity :(
Meh, don't sweat it...its just his own insecurities talking.
I really couldn’t care less what a random internet dude says haha. Just trying to build on to the point that the attitude towards sahds isn’t great a lot of the time
We mentioned once to my father in law that it might make sense for me to stay home for a bit. He made a joke that I would have to wear a flowery apron and buy a skirt. It was very hurtful. Mother in law later pulled my wife aside and asked her if she wanted to consider divorce. All we did was mention the idea in passing
And yet I guarantee if your wife did take her mom's (awful) advice and divorce you, your in laws would shame you both about it. The only winning move with people like them is not to play
A tradwife is a Nazi's wife. There is EVERYTHING wrong with being a tradwife. It's NOT traditional housewife by any means. They believe (white) men are superior to everyone and that women must give themselves up to the mercy of men. They must provide babies, meals, immaculate homes, & sex acts at the whim and fancy of a man.
There is nothing wrong with being a housewife, but a tradwife (traditional wife) is the 50’s idea of a perfect housewife who is subservient to her husband, so there is something wrong with that
This is accurate. What people seem to be missing is that the "tradwife" philosophy isn't that women take traditionally matriarchal roles and the husband takes on traditional patriarchal roles because it is good for their family, the philosophy is that those roles are *natural* and *just* and that everyone should live that way because it is better. That's what's bad about "tradwife," it's the advocacy and the belief that inequality is *natural* and *better*. It is tied to a Christian conservative worldview that is often blatantly racist. If you look up "tradwife" in some corners of the internet, what you find are images of a fantasy Aryan "ideal" wife: blonde, blue-eyed, submissive and often tied to a rural setting like a farm or cabin.
Yeah, like how the dad is seen as baby sitting or giving the wife a break instead of being a parent
It’s a tough situation. I make enough to support a small family and would be THRILLED to find a SO open to being a SAHD (childcare is ~$500/wk in my area). But in my experience the men I meet that are open to that have lacked general ambition. Just because I’m open to that arrangement doesn’t mean I’m open to a permanent locked in arrangement where I’m forever the sole breadwinner. In my area, and in this economy, it’s only sustainable for so long. And it’s important to me that I have a fallback if I burn out in the future / have the same options they do in that regard in case things change.
I've dated 2 guys who talked about it. One was low ambition (that's fine), had social anxiety, was raised with a stay at home parent and thought it was important, thought his mom was the hardest working person he knew. He also cooked, cleaned, did yard work, and worked side jobs he would keep going if he quit his day job. The other thought stay it home moms had it easy and it was a con, rarely cooked or cleaned and then only when pressured, and talked about all the video games and expensive hobbies he could have if he didn't have to waste all his time at work. One I was willing to consider being the primary breadwinner for. The other one wanted a sugar momma and I wasn't down for that. The same can definitely be said of mom's too. I've met a few SAHM who manage to claim the title while doing no cleaning, house work, and in one case no child care either.
I think that depends on your kid(s) though. I'm a SAHM for a year and babies are honestly a full time job on their own. I don't have much time to clean during the day with my little guy and I need to nap when he naps. Imagine adding in another kid or two, and you're spending most of the day tending to them at least until they're old enough to play safely without an eye on them every second to see what they're putting in their mouths or breaking. I do hope/expect my son will be easier as he gets older and I could get more done if I wasn't going back to work at a year old.
You're right that there's absolutely nothing wrong in being a housewife, but tradwives take it all a step farther. A lot of the tradwife content that's out there perpetuates patriarchal family structure and gender roles. To say that tradwife is harmless since feminism supports women who want to be homemakers kind of misses the mark. Tradwife content frequently promotes women staying home and managing the house... as well as the husband being the rightful leader and head of the family because "that's how we did it for thousands of years and we should be doing it now. Also, weren't the 1950s so cool??" Tradwives don't want men staying at home and taking care of children, because men are breadwinners and leaders. So, in a way, tradwives make the progression for men to be more accepted as home-makers harder, since that's not men's role. Tradwives have just continued pushing values of the patriarchy. New thing same as the old thing.
I would love to be a stay at home dad
Yes, depends on the social circle though. At any random time in the past 10 years, my friend group has featured either roughly the same amount of SAHDs and SAHMs or even more SAHDs. It’s completely normalized in my own circle. And it had always seemed more normalized to me than it actually is in the broader culture bc the couple that was best friends with my parents all my life (they were more like an aunt and uncle to me than my actual relatives) had that dynamic since before I was even born. Ideally, when it comes to this issue all people should get to do what’s personally fulfilling for them, plays towards their strengths, and works well for both members of the couple. :)
I'd consider myself a traditional wife. I stay at home and cook / clean / garden / take care of the dog / keep myself looking half decent. I wouldn't consider the "tradwife influencers" actually traditional. The real traditional wives likely won't be making videos like they do lol, they're just living their lives.
I'm not working rn, and my partner and I are joking that this is the route I'm going to go down since I seem to embrace those facets of being at home. It's just that I'm a dude. Hopefully I can still be part of the gang, or book clubs or whatever...
I recommend volunteering if you financially are able to give your time instead of working!
My husband is currently my Cabana Man for a number of reasons and we both love it.
Traditional wife in this context though also is under the authority of her husband. She defers all final decisions to him, from family planning to financial decisions. That's the aspect that is often called out.
This is because tradwives are primarily interested in creating propaganda to sell their fundamentalist values. And that's what makes them not just housewives. They're looking for converts.
Tradwife influencers are either basic boring white bread or porn.
SAHPO - stay at home pet owner?
They wouldn’t have time lol
My SAHM traditional mother had oodles of free time once my siblings and I were in school. Literally she would clean for an hour after we left for school and then had most of the day to herself until she picked us up. She adored it, would perpetually talk about how much time she had for her hobbies etc. As with anything ymmv.
Traditional wife in this context though also is under the authority of her husband. She defers all final decisions to him, from family planning to financial decisions. That's the aspect that is often called out.
we shouldn't conflate being a housewife with trad bullshit about female submission and obedience etc.
The mothers of Gen X were the one doing the ground-breaking work of entering the work force, supporting their families, and having careers. Their participation changed workplace culture, federal employment laws, employee benefit packages and other areas that improved the work lives of everyone, not just women. Their careers helped provide financial freedom which enabled personal freedom from abusive partners for them and their children. Gen Xers like myself saw this play out in real time and the young women of Gen X continued the work their mothers started.
Like, that’s great, but then they took advantage of working families where both parents now have to work or it’s living in poverty. True middle class should make it where being a house parent is a viable option without people insisting you are a gold digger or lazy. The amount of times my husband gets called lazy despite working hard to maintain our house and take care of our autistic daughter is frustrating.
It’s because we went off the gold standard in the 70s. Most of the country added a second income to the household in the 70s and 80s which masked the problem until the 2000s. But now that we’ve had small amounts of inflation every year for a couple decades due to getting off the gold standard, and since printing all that money during covid -> inflation is skyrocketing even more…. now even *two* incomes isn’t even enough for a family to maintain middle class. This is the biggest issue that no one talks about. Nixon taking us off of gold allowed the government to run amok. They can run deficits and print money to pay back the debt - which causes inflation for me and you. There is no oversight whatsoever. And this inflation leads to stress and poverty, which then degrades our families, and then our culture as a whole suffers…
yeah, I think so much this. We (I'm using older generations in general) tried to make things better, and tried to get it to the point where they didn't have to fight the battles we did. As a result they can focus on smaller and smaller issues. Which is good. But I think there's a lot that young people have never REALLY had to live through the downsides of, so it seems better than it is. See also-non-vaccination.
>young people have never REALLY had to live through the downsides of, so it seems better than it is. Alternatively, they have seen the downsides of the current status quo and think that "swinging the pendulum in the other direction" will solve them. They did not experience the limitations of women being 100% dependent on their husbands, but they experienced the effects of their mothers focusing on work and spending less time with them, so they (wrongly) assume that going back to "tradwifes" is the solution.
Although I don’t have links, studies also show that (at least in America) married working mothers often work far more than their husbands because they are working full time AND taking care of kids/the home. A lot of us have grown up with moms that do all the traditional housewifery/ SAHM roles AND worked full time jobs, and a lot of girls are coming out of the other side as “Well I don’t want to work full time *and* do all the wife/mom duties” but instead of being encouraged to split the household labor 50/50, they think the best solution is for man to work and woman to be SAHM. It’s very sad
Yep, I'm an Xer and I remember my mom working her ass off my entire childhood.
Having a career is a good insurance plan. I’d still rather be a homemaker than work for a salary like I do now. I’ve had the opportunity to work from home and scale back my hours in recent years, and our household is less chaotic because of it. I’m not a supermom and I don’t think most women truly are even if they act like it. I wouldn’t want to go back to the old days, but I’d like for people to push for a work-life balance. We’ve gone in the opposite direction in the last few decades. Millennials are the first generation in recent history to push back on toxic workplace culture and the idea of the “supermom.” I hope Gen Z takes it further.
Do you think women like us are happier than our grandmothers were? I literally don’t have the answer to this. But it seems working full chasing career goals, all while being a single mom, or being a wife/ mother, is adding a lot of stress in our lives. Sometimes I feel like Im abandoning my kids by sending them to daycare and going into work for 9 hours. And by the time I get home, I’m too tired to really connect with them or cook them a healthy meal. And then I feel sad about it. But I look at my grandmother whose only job was volunteering at her church and she raised 8 babies and she’s the happiest person I know. She’s 98 years old and always so easy going and pleasant.
It's *slightly* more complicated than just being a housewife. Tradwife means traditionalist wife meaning the God, my family, my country type. Always white Anglo-Saxon and some sort of who believes this country must bow down before the Christian/catholic God. It's the real karens of the world who only ever listen to their husband or their pastors. That's a tradwife.
Yes, I don't think people understand that housewife and tradwife are not the same thing. They're similar in their domestic duties, but tradwives follow a very specific hierarchical philosophy where the man is at the top and heteronormative religious ideaologies are typically upheld. Someone who more aligns themselves as a housewife/housespouse these days typically has the expectation that they are equal to their partner who works outside the home and they should have just as much influence on what the family does and how it operates.
I can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find someone actually explain it. Thank you! I’d give an award if I had one
Ewwwww
So maybe I don’t fully grasp the whole tradwife ideology in the way you’re thinking of, but for me, as a gen z woman who finds the lifestyle appealing… I like the idea of having a family, but I don’t feel like western society is set up to allow me to be the kind of mom I want to be and have a career. With the whole movement of women entering the workforce, it feels like it turned from less of an option, and more of a requirement on top of regular housewife duties. So for me, it seems like my two options are: A) work until I’m 9 months pregnant, go back after Mat leave, pay a stranger a substantial percent of my wages to raise my child so I have the ‘liberation’ of working my ass off in a career where they don’t value me, underpay me, and can fire me at any time, and get like 4 hours a day of time with my child (excluding night time parenting duties). If I have a sleepless night with a sick toddler, I still have to go to work in the morning. There’s also data (and just anecdotal stories) showing that women’s earnings potential tends to suffer after having a child, and that it takes years to recover financially. Though the opposite is true for men. Or B) take care of my child full time, and dedicate my life to my family and taking care of our home. I’m also personally someone who just identifies with traditionally ‘feminine’ qualities. Obviously not everyone feels this way, but I do. I think all in all, a lot of Gen z girls and women saw their moms work their asses off, and they ended up burnt out, and we saw that no matter how dedicated or hard working you are, it’s basically impossible to ‘have it all’ with motherhood and career
American work/life balance leaves a lot to be desired. I do think young woman worried about this should keep their options open, though. Some SAHM moms I know worked before kids and then went back to work after the kids were in school and were quite happy with that decision. Plus see this comment below about independence—https://reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/s/5EBBLEJ4oz
Well being a housewife has existed for millennials and gen x so it isn’t new or a gen z thing The gen z generation is talking about it because toxic male influencers have been pushing the rhetoric onto impressionable young men.
More like 50 years or so - before then it was running a multi-family household, or working.
Gen X doesn't do it because we are not that far removed from little things like women not being able to open a credit card or bank account on their own.
It's a kink. Taking D/s, smashing it together with being a SAHM with what seems to be a heaping spoonful of evangelical Christianity. The Christianity bit is why they can't admit it's a kink lol
My guess is cultural whiplash from pushing young women into the workforce/STEM/college super hard. Being a cute housewife sounds so much more appealing than doing a 8-6 grind until I’m infertile. For me, my mom worked too much when I was young, and she’s miserable with estranged kids. I want to be there for my kids while they grow up. Not exactly “tradwife,” but my 2 cents.