I’m a former Mormon trad wife. My 24 year marriage destroyed my life and almost lead to my death, literally. I now work hard to teach other women around the globe to avoid the trad wife trap.
@@lifetaketwo7662 ditto🥳 only I lead a spiritual community to guide people to their authentic and true selves, and relationships with others. Those Mormon leadership and organizational skills I gave for free to the church for 20 years come in handy at least 😂
And I am not sure if enough people thank you for the work you do. Thank You The reason 'trad wife' is popular is because it makes someone money. Most certainly, self professedly and demonstratably NOT the wife. While many are worried about religion taking over the goverment, not as many have the eleoquence to point out that it is any religion that is a threat to a free society when it seeks and acheives the power it craves.
So I found this very interesting and concise. I was a stay at home mom who raised two sons who are now in their 30s, but was NOT a trad wife. I worked 11 years before marriage and having children and found raising children at home by far the most fulfilling thing I have ever done. As I am a contemplative person, two children were enough for me. I had absolutely no problem with women who chose careers along with raising children. Rarely did I hear put downs or criticism for my choice. Once when taking a class my male professor implied I was “forced” into my role by my patriarchal society. What I resented about his comment was the implication my choice was not my own. It was very much my own. I think the problem lies in letting society dictate how we should live. My husband at the time was not the head of the household, we shared decisions. I’m a person of faith and attend a church where women can be priests. This view of patriarchy that some hope to bring back was as bad for men as for women. Many men who try and wedge themselves into traditional roles find themselves depressed and unfulfilled. I think more than anything else, it’s time to get to know ourselves and what is truly right for us. If someone doesn’t like how we live it’s their problem. What others think of me is none of my business!😊
My grandmother would be rolling in her grave to see this nonsense taking off again. She was born in 1928, so yes she WAS a 1950s housewife. She still worked inside and outside the home while raising 7 kids over the years. She is the reason I vakue my education and independence. SHE is the one who told me a man is not a plan. Ladies get your own!
Same!!!! My grandmother has done exactly the same, but she never had the chance to work outside the house. When she was still alive she would tell me and my cousins "the first husband is your job and the second is the one you take to bed".
@@judithcoichythis applies for lesbians too, a Wife is not guaranteed for Life. Idgaf who you are, but especially ladies, *have your own $ always* anyone who cares about you will be *relieved and grateful* you look out for your financial well-being!
@@femi1504same with other areas of life. Like how vaccines are being rejected & drs are worried about diseases coming back. Science is being mocked its like we're literally going back in time
Preach! But on the other hand, when you are being indoctrinated your entire life, with no educating yourself properly on the matter, it's objectively hard to fully grasp what's going on and resist.
I could not have said it better. My mother worked in and outside of the home, but when my father became ill, she also became ill, she was so unhappy because she felt that she could no longer work anymore. She lost interest in everything, and it was so sad to see her just slip away and die.
Trad wife lol...my mom was a machine. She had us 4 and worked in food sevice ever since I could remember. I skipped all that and became a stay at home highly educated cat mom. Nobody ever talks about poor women.
My MIL loved being a trad wife, until my FIL left her for a woman half his age. She was left with no money, no marketable skills, no self esteem, nothing. I actually like and admire home making skills. However making that your identity in this environment is downright dangerous.
@@XxXx-Evolive off his money. I'm a feminist but for for some couples (v few I think) the trad wife way of life might work. The issue with it is you can never know if you're one of them until the end. Life can throw curve balls at you even if he's a good man and then you're fending for yourself without half the knowledge required to take care of yourself.
My father was against women being forced into traditional wife roles. He would pity these women. I pity them, because their husbands often leave them in poverty or screw around…or worse.
We can pass on poverty and betrayal, but we cannot pass on that women are suppressed and prevented from developing, advancing and flourishing in their talents and capabilities, whether in science, arts, sports or politics. Housework and cooking are trivial, stupid and simple life skills that do not require any intelligence or experience. Anyone in the world can do them. Most importantly, woman, they do not increase you scientificlly and does not increase your mney. But enslave you and exclude you from social and political life. It makes him like a slave who has no status in this life, just like a slave who only submits and works without any scientific advance or financial reward, so he remains a slave. Housework is a life skill that every adult should do. Men should not avoid it or evade it and women should not do it. The wife and women in the family are not domestic workers. If a woman is going to do the housework and cleaning for someone else and give him permission, then she becomes a cleaner and cook for whom she should be paid for. A woman is a human being with a mind, intelligence, passion, talents and great potential. Her nature, right, duty and natural need is to develop and grow her, not to suppress, undermine or eliminate her. You find her learning and nourishing her mind constantly, learning languages and learning all kinds of sciences, inventing and discovering, becoming an artist, painter, musician, athlete, business pioneer, veterinarian, educational guide, pediatrician or chef... and teaching her children respect, science and art. But what happens is that the woman’s natural and basic right as human being with a mind, intelligence, passion, talents and great potential, is her right, duty and natural need to develop and advance it, not to abolish and undermine it, is not respected. She is suppressed, silenced and deprived of expressing hem and showing her intelligence and deprived of creativity, progress and prosperity by depriving her of scientific progress, while the man’s right as a human being to scientific progress and prosperity through his talents is respected. To be isolated from social and political life and confined within the walls of the house to clean the house and cook every day, morning, evening, night and day without scientific progress or financial reward, but to live naturally as a human being with a mind, intelligence, passion, talents and great potential, to be a famous international chef, winner of international awards and owner of a chain of restaurants and hotels that advance and flourish with her talent and potential, no. The issue is that a human being is born, one party is allowed to live as a human being while the other party is stripped of his humanity, denied, marginalized, isolated from the world, marginalized, and imprisoned in a box to be transformed into a second-class being to serve and please the first party. This is misogyny, contempt, injustice, and transgression against women, and it is not natural at all. It seems that living with men on one planet in peace with our full rights is impossible. Therefore, rebellion is a must.
I agree. if that’s your calling just make sure you’ve got a back up plan but definitely nobody should be forced into that. My grandparents tried to force my mom into that and it was a nightmare because the marriage was terrible and when Next excluded, she didn’t have a way to raise us and she was always tied to him for child support so even if you’re traditional wife needs a Plan B.
Im from the Netherlands, and the official policy is that everybody must be able to take care of itself financially. Now the country has one of the highest rate of parttime jobs. And it are men and women working parttime, both taking care of the children. So children have a pappadag (daddy day) and a mammadag (mommy day)
My father was like that but a few years ago he was introduced to alpha male content by my brother and the two of them have gone down that rabbit hole and never looked back, they're completely unrecognisable now and it's almost impossible to live with them now, idk how my mom manages, me and my sister usually retreat to our rooms when they're home from work
I’ve been a feminist since about 5 when my father pissed me off by telling me that I couldn’t have a model train set I’d been drooling over in a catalog. His only reason for telling me I couldn’t have it was because I was a girl.
I was so shock that I was speechless at first . But he’d say ,” girls can’t do that to me so much it basically became my name [Name] girls can’t do that . I spent my childhood with a strong sense of injustice especially since as a Black man in the USA , he’d would never accept that as a reason why he couldn't do something that white people did. Then turn around and pull that same exact stupid crap on his daughters.
I guess I’ve been a socialist since that same age. Couldn’t figure out why the Our Gang kids lived at the dump all awhile their good friend Darla lived in a marble columned mansion with lots and lots to eat. My mother called me a socialist. I find to this day Bernie makes perfect sense. Sometimes a five year old see the truth.
I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot, and I realized something watching this video. A lot of trad wife creators do/create some genuinely cool stuff. They farm, they bake cool stuff, they make things. Why is it that the only way they feel they can present these cool skills and creations to the world is through the lens of “this is how I perform dutiful wife and motherhood”, as opposed to “here’s some amazing skills I have and cool stuff I created, and I’d love to teach you to do it too!” *. This has been driving me nuts as I am a woman who loooves gardening, small scale farming, baking, preserving food, sewing, knitting, embroidery, motherhood. Trad wife content is soooooo not my bag, but you can’t look at any of these topics on social media without being fed trad wife content relentlessly by social media algorithms. I just want to see women doing all the cool stuff they do without the lens of submission and obedience to their husbands! *The answer, of course, is patriarchy.
I sometimes find the idea that a traditional wife "is giving up her dreams for the sake of husband and kids" a prejudice. It may be the case of many, but there also are many traditional wives who can also pursue their dreams, they organize their life by giving the right time period to each thing of her life scenario and have their husbands' support on this. They can be teachers, they can be writers, they can just rule a little family farm or garden, or they can even volunteer at the kids hospital... I think such cases should also be considered when we talk about "trad wives".
This is such a clever insight. I also loved to work in my vegetable and fruit garden. I was famous for my strawberry elderflower marmalade, and st. Nicolas marmalade (apples and cinnamon). But I also teached statistics and econometrics to economic and business students at the university.
@@keltineverett2492 I used to be a perfectionist cook, crafter, and homemaker! Bc it was the only area I could excel. Last years was the first Christmas where life was somewhat “normal” post divorce & leaving high demand religion. Kids and I ordered take-out for Christmas Eve dinner (bc I was tried and wanted to actually ENJOY the evening). My old self would have died 😆
It is very possible to enjoy skills like gardening and cooking and crafting, and make that your life. Because it's something you enjoy and you love getting better at it. As long as you don't do it to sacrifice yourself. That is not ok.
Ahhh, the tradwife. The stay at home wife, who, traditionally, was SO neglected and exhausted and depressed, that many of them were drugged, institutionalized, or lobotomized, in a desperate attempt to KEEP them chained to the kitchen and the laundry room without ever having to address why that's a problem. So weird. So gross.
After working 35 years, raising kids, I am now happy to be a stay at home grandma helping my family and being a homemaker. I left work a few years before pension age after a run in with cancer. If I could do it again I would have been a stay at home mum. I have a wonderful husband who supports everything I decide to do as I support him in everything he wants to do. I felt stressed and burned out for years struggling to raise kids in a time when childcare didn’t really exist. It has left me exhausted. Live and let live. It’s not our place to shame others into how we think it should be done.
Beauvoir changed my life. In her book she wrote that women didn’t naturally love babies. She had several examples from history where woman didn’t love their babies at all. At that moment I realized that I didn’t like babies that much. Later I had foster children, so I could start with my favorite age, teenagers! 😀
Well, a lot of that is hormonal. You can't really know how you would feel towards a hypothetical baby, unless you were actually pregnant with one and had given birth and nursed. I mean, not that all birth mothers are appropriately swept away by utter love for their newborns - like everything in nature it's not a fail proof system. But if it doesn't happen, it's usually the result of extreme stress or trauma/depression or such. Generally speaking, we don't have much choice in the matter. Our bodies literally drug us into loving our babies. If we didn't, our species would have never survived, as it takes so much effort and dedication to keep a baby alive through the first couple perilous years. I get what you mean, though. I didn't even want to be in a room with babies or small children throughout my twenties. Then something suddenly clicked and now I will happily babysit for free for friends and family, because I enjoy taking care of them so much. For a couple hours, mind you. Never wanted my own 😆 Our strong instincts towards babies are also the reason why we adore baby animals so much. Most of us will happily pet and feed and 'rescue' (in any way necessary) babies of various species. Yet at the same time, we will eat the adults of the same species or discard grown pets at the side of the road or in shelters (if they're lucky). As soon as they don't trigger our 'parenting instincts' anymore, we often start feeling utterly indifferent to animals, whereas most people could never behave the same towards a 'baby animal'.
@ I’m 71. But I got this drive too. That’s when I got foster children. That was good enough for me. Edit: although I had kittens, never had puppies. I took rescue doggies that were older than 2. For the last one I searched for an old dog*, because I’m old. I live in the Netherlands, and there’s a website where all the animals in the country that live shelters are listed. It has several search options.
Just like we can't say all women long to be mothers, De Beauvoir can't say we secretly don't want babies. I don't lie other people's children. But my two are my life, and my pregnancies and homebirths were uber empowering after years of infertility. Now I home educate and I'm in my element! This is the sphere I'm most comfortable and confident in. I let my husband do a lot of the cooking though bc he's better at it. I take offence at supposed feminists who look down on my life choices. I'm happier now than I was pursuing a doctorate degree or serving in the military. I did this things bc I wasn't tuned into myself and my individual desires. I don't scoff at child free women, or mothers employed outside the home while their children are at school. If it works for you, then that's all that matters. But this works for me. Women ought to support each other, not try to micromanage each other according to some ideology.
@ Beauvoir didn’t say women secretly didn’t want babies. She said they don’t instinctively love them. You love your children, but that doesn’t mean you love children.
@@jannetteberends8730 We have extremely strong mothering instincts. Like all mammals. That doesn't mean there isn't the odd woman out, who doesn't, but to generalize these rare exceptions to be the rule is just plain ridiculous. We love babies so much, we even fall all over ourselves, to mother the babies of other species. Puppies or kittens aren't somehow inherently cute. There's no rational reason, why we should pay them any special attention. They're only cute to us, because they trigger our mothering instincts. That's why people frequently adopt young animals, just to dispose of them again when they're grown and don't resemble babies in looks (big, round head and eyes) and behavior (curious, playful yet clumsy) again. People will love and take care of babies, that aren't biologically theirs. There's no good reason to raise a child that isn't related to you.... except that we can't help it, because our instinct to want to care for babies is *that* strong. Loving babies is the default, being indifferent to them is the exception. Our brains literally evolved to love babies.
As someone who experienced DV for years, lemme tell you my answer on it. It's SAFE. You risk nothing. You ARE nothing. I went from trad to the uber-trad "Plain" (long solid color dresses, aprons, bonnets/head covers) the more my trauma continued. It erases your personhood and makes you a function, not a human. Your worth is valued only in the amount of autonomy that you're willing to give away. It's a living death.
Grey rocking on an extreme level. Making yourself as bland and uninteresting as possible in the hopes that will make you invisible to your abusers. The fact that this has become a /movement/ says... alarming things.
@@quiestinliteris It's because this world doesn't work. Capitalism is a hell scape nightmare and it's all about to collapse. People want a way out and women who are recieving conflicting messages and are just tired see it as a way to opt out of the rat race. We need another way.
Well said. It is also a betrayal of humanity. Just imagine half of the population giving up everything they could give to everyone just to be accepted by a small group of people.
I was born in 1954. I watched grown ups drinking every evening. I watched people driving around drunk while my dad laughed watching a drunk driver weave his car back and forth through lanes. Drunk driving wasn't illegal then and car accidents were very common. I watched men beat up their wives and children and no police arrested them. I saw a classmate lift his shirt to show us the welts from a belt beating he got from his drunk dad the night before. No children's services then to protect us. We had teachers who beat us too. Some people my age remember those days fondly, but either they had an exceptionally good childhood or they blacked it out. Men loved the lack of responsibility and unearned praise they got, but we women had to work for it and men never appreciated our efforts. That's why women finally got fed up and joined the Women's Liberation Movement. It all looks nice on TV, but the reality sucked for women and children. By the way, it was just recently that 'the boy in the box' who was beaten to death and discarded in a box in the middle of nowhere by his family was identified. He was my age. He would have been 70 years old today had he not been beaten to death and I don't think he enjoyed those years either.
I was born in 1980 and although the things you speak of were illegal I also saw them. I was driven drunk with over and over as a child and watched my stepfather beat my mom.
Not only that, but there was a 1950s equivalent to the trad-wife content creator, which was a certain brand of writer in the 1950s who would publish essays about being a wife and mother. Writers such as Phyllis McGinley and Jean Kerr. The mere fact that these women were in fact _published authors_ meant that they were not conforming to the images they conveyed. In the case of Jean Kerr, she had a graduate degree in English Lit. and was a Tony-winning playwright In the case of the trad-wife creators, producing content _is their job._ So once again, the image in question is inherently false.
They obviously have someone minding the kids while they are setting up for filming, rehearsing, actually filming, never mind doing hair, makeup, clothes etc.
@@inaRIMPAU The oldest daughter most likely. But that child would be doing most of the child minding in a “normal” traditional family too, because mum is too busy popping out babies.
@@kellydalstok8900 In a "normal" family, the older children would be at school. But these kids are "homeschooled," so the girls never ever get a break. Americans don't realize how bizarre this looks to most of the developed world.
Phyllis Schafly made a political career of saying women should be submissive wives. The idea women should stay at home and be silent sells. Even if you are making a living talking and using your education and professional skills to sell it 🤦♀️
Women with some privilege telling sisters “do as I say not as I do.” Aligning with power and oppressing others in order to retain the little bit of power patriarchy allowed. Uh huh…
This may be something that came up in your earlier video on the Victorian Cult of Domesticity, but I'd like to note that this cult is also deeply classist. Living the perfectly domestic life required assistance; before household appliances, that meant SERVANTS, generally female, generally drawn from the poorer classes. Poor women have ALWAYS worked. Being able to make it so the wife can be a housewife only is a mark of the husband's wealth, no different from the dresses of the 15th century.
Even in the first half of the 20th century a lot of people had servants. My aunt was a maid in a teacher’s household. It paid very poorly, because his income wasn’t all that high, but she learned a lot about how to behave in polite society. She made sure that her parents and siblings learned to eat with knife and fork, for instance, and also cooking and dress making.
I'd argue the reason for THAT is that the Cult of Domesticity demands perfection of women . . . and while you can paint a "perfect" woman, photographs are always going to show some imperfections.
Yes & these creepy fake-like trade wife videos it's all marketing & our youth seems to be insidiously programmed by socail media. Traditional 50s life is being sold to them as glamorous
I always laugh when people say things like the “breaking down of the nuclear family.” And I’m like: “What? You mean the Industrial Revolution?” The dumbfounded looks people give me are priceless.
@@julecaesara482 well it’s meant to be tongue in cheek, but what I meant is when the Industrial Revolution turned us from a primarily agrarian society, in which men and women both worked at home and household duties were shared; into a more industrial one, men (and a lot of women) were now working outside the home, that is basically where the “break up of the nuclear family” happened. But it’s tongue in cheek because this was, as you said, well before the concept of the nuclear family was created AND because the nuclear family is more of a myth perpetuated by Hollywood and advertising and very few people actually fit into it.
Yeah, and how about the commonality of death by childbirth among all classes but especially the lower, all while taking their children before their age reaches double digits to work the same as an adult in dangerous factory work? You think that might break up the family a little bit? Because if Trumplicans have their way, that’s coming back
Watched it happen to my grandma and my mom. My grandfather truly respected my grandmother, and her sacrifices, making her a part of business decisions too, but my dad is an insecure, misogynistic pos. I’ll be the first woman in my family to get a real choice. Neither one of them even had hobbies. My mom doesn’t even know her favorite color.
You will find out too late that he considers the money he brings in, enabled by your support and sacrifice, to be HIS money when he decides to divorce you because he met someone younger. He has no respect for what you do. None.
I am a 65-year-old wife and mother. I raised 2 daughters to be able to do things they needed and not rely on a man. If you choose to share your life with a man, it should be as equal partners and not anything lesser. I do enjoy cooking. I actually enjoy looking after my home. These things may be traditional on the surface, but I can assure you I am anything but traditional. Doing traditional things should be your choice if you enjoy them, not because it's your place. When men want a "traditional wife", all I see is fear. These are small, weak men who need to subjugate someone. Parents need to raise their children without the boundaries of gender and societal roles. Wouldn't be wonderful to value someone for who they are and not what the rules tells them to be.
35 years of an equal partnership with my husband, I could not agree more. Sometimes, I earned more, and sometimes he did. I took time off work for the first year of our first child's life, and my husband took a year off work for the first year of our second child's. I'm more academically educated ( with a Masters) with business skills. He left school at 15 and can turn his hand to any trade skill. He likes cooking. I like mowing the lawn. We've never, ever, ever, ever defined roles in our marriage as gendered. We are equals but with different strengths and preferences. We both hate cleaning the toilet. 😂
@@triarb5790 Ultimately, I think the issue is the title. If a woman wants to be a traditional wife, Leave it to Beaver-style, who am I to belittle or condemn her? It has no effect on me, it does not change who I am. We need to stop putting people in pigeonholes and thinking we know everything about them. Pretty much everybody hate cleaning the toilet, regardless of sex, colour, orientation. Although, I understand that in Japan cleaning a toilet keeps you humble. Come to think of it, a clean toilet is really quite lovely.
Yayyy, moms... We love you for raising us how you did. And we are absolutely grateful. I am not letting myself be subjugated for some man or family to feel good about it. You people have worked so hard to give us the education and the confidence. We are fighting this forever.
Since I've left Christianity, I also see this sneaking into spirituality by focusing on "masculine and feminine energy," but defining it by the activities (working a regular job vs keeping a home) one performs - instead of - an essence of Being (doing vs receiving for example which we all do both!). It’s sneaky! And often just another way men and women feel like they're doing it "wrong" if their biological sex doesn't match their "primary energy."
I couldn't agree more! There is so much of this crap both in "New Age spirituality" and neoPaganism. I'm proud to be a neoPagan, but there is a side of it that is really icky and does the opposite of empower women, in my opinion. A tendency to see women a basically a walking uterus whose "power" is derived mainly from her ability to "create life".
I know a guy, he's my good friend, who's slowly falling away from that thinking. He's better than he was when I met him 3 years ago. But just last year, he got on me about whistling. I'm a woman, I like to whistle because it helps my anxiety. He asked me how I was doing that. And I was confused, because he can whistle too. I said, "I learned when I was a kid." He said "Well, it's not very feminine." I shrugged and agreed to a degree, a lot of women don't whistle, but I do. He went on to say he hates seeing masculine traits in women. He says that quite a lot, actually. He used to get on me about all of my more masculine habits. One year, when I was very, very depressed, as i often am, he told me, as if he were a licensed doctor, to have a baby because that'll make me happy, and saying "Women love that shit." I said, "Well, I don't."lol
"Marketed to women " is spot on. I found handouts and booklets given to my mother in the economics class of 1955. It was all about getting them to buy the right stuff so they were ready to be the perfect wif and look perfect for thier husband and also be sure children looked perfect.
It still is marketed to women. Because women have the buying power. Nara, Ballerina Farmer...etc...it's all propaganda designed to market to women. Don't believe me? Go look at the tools they are using (if not directly selling), affiliate links, sponsorships....all designed to make a buck. As for the content itself, 30 sec TikTok making homemade cheese and bread for a grilled cheese by LUNCHTIME? WHAT? Or, "oh I am just going to make homemade yogurt for lunch today while I make sure all the farm animals are fed, clean out stalls, restack hay, fix that barn door lock, milk the cows and goats and oh yea, reshingle the roof, but I'll have yogurt to look forward to in an hour".....are you freaking kidding me? #1 it's impossible to do all of that yourself and your selling your Tiktok as being only you and #2 you have a freaking STAFF of people to do all the things for you because your job isn't doing all the things, it's setting up the camera SHOWING you doing all the things and coming up with new things to keep your audience engaged. Let's be honest, these 'trad wives' are CEO's running a business, selling an image and marketing the heck out of it all. And probably work 150 hrs a week to get just THAT done all to sell to women. So KUDOS to those that make it successful. Wish I had because after 17 years of real trad wife with a controlling spouse...I was left penniless and in the fight of my life for my children.
@@leanordials8008 are you suggesting it's anti feminist to aim marketing at women? Even though they spend more money than men, even back when they were earning less.. ? ?
My husband and I have been together since we were 15. We have three beautiful children. When the kids were little I worked at night so I could be home with them during the day and also went to school! I used to do all the things in the home and with one of my children having special needs we cooked everything from scratch since he had a very strict diet. My husband worked hard but would also help do the dishes or help around the house and always helped with his children. Now 24 years later I am in my dream career and getting my masters. Yes we can play into our gender roles but we also need to remember that person is my partner and we need to support one another. My husband does laundry and makes dinner and I have mowed the lawn now these are not our normal working roles but when they need to get done and my partner or I need help with these items we jump and and help each other. This is what makes it all work being there for one another and not being so ridiculous about roles that they must follow!!
This is great content. Especially with this right wing manosphere that seems to despise women and honestly seems to see women as less than human. These folks are truly troubled and need to search their hearts. They need better role models and to abandon this alpha mess. Good men are out there. I’m married to one. If you’re a good man be a mentor and model decent behavior. Some people can’t be helped because they don’t want to, but I believe many can. Just listen. Some may just need a level headed person to talk to. Mothers need to make sure their children respect them but not fear them. Women are not just supposed to be servants of our children and spouses. We are humans, not automatons or Stepford wives. We need to change this extreme narrative. Again, thanks for your channel.
I got married, aged 18, in 1973. I thought I was in love, that he loved me. All rosy. I also thought I was entering a partnership. Unfortunately, he thought he was being adopted. It took me 3 years to give up on him and go my own way, do my own thing, make my own life. When I was 43, I met my current man. I have a horrible feeling that this time, I was adopted. A balanced partnership seems to be incredibly difficult to form and maintain.
I have no patience for people who come here to comment on 'toxic feminism', when Patriarchy is fatal to women. My sister was a trad wife. She was married for 18 years with this man, had three kids, took care of them alone, did all the work in the house, cooked, washed clothes and pressed his uniform for him every single day, as his worked required it to be pressed. He morally abused her, hit her. At some point, in the beginning of the marriage, she had a job working for a TV station where she was the number one seller of advertisement slots. When he saw she was making more money then him, he forbade that. And since they were church goers, the pressure for her to obey him was great, she left her job. One beautiful day, he decided he was in love with another woman, he left. He took everything, and I mean everything, the car, and even an expensive stove I had bought for her. Left her with nothing. No, not with nothing. He left her with thousands of dollars in debt. She has two daughters who are now young women and will NEVER be a trad wife. They saw for themselves the danger of being submissive while totally disenfranchised.
Omg I'm so sorry.This is exactly what I try to tell my kids when they think this lifestyle sounds nice. You have no power when you have no money. What if the husband dies or leaves the wife for another woman? These women seem so miserable in this trapped type of life too. There are so many good men & it would be amazing to find the love of your life, but not to be a servant
There is legit no such thing as "toxic feminism" and anyone who argues there is isn't being genuine, they're just trying to piss you off and waste your time/energy so you can't use it to better the world and make it less exploitable by shitty people like them. 💅 Keep that brain fabulous ❤
People who comment on toxic femininity here can definitely look inward. But your story, while deeply tragic, appeals to emotions only. It’s just one data point.
A lot of the women around me have been diagnosed with autoimmune disorders after having been in longterm romantic relationships. It's like their bodies are forcing them to stop. At least one's seen sudden and persistent remission of symptoms after divorce. Finding fulfillment in a wider variety of meaningful ways, by creative exploration, can only help women. There's no reason why there should be only one or two ways to build a life.
This is so true. When your conscious decisions do not match what you really think it eventually manifests as some sort of disease. Usually mental and ametional at first. Then if not corrected it manifests physically. These concepts of what a women is supposed to be is literally causing suffering and death of women. I'm saw it give my mother alzheimers/dementia. When you look at the photos of her throughout her marriage you can see the stress her trad wife life put on her. But she wouldn't break with it. Even when it seriously harmed her children.
I have late diagnosed ASD and ADHD, I grew up in a household where it was just kind of expected that I’d have a kid by the time I was 20, so as a person that doesn’t understand, or even enjoy the social side of life, not going down that route (whilst I’m happy I didn’t), made me feel like I’d basically failed at life. I’ve had many years of dealing with depression and anxiety partially as a result of that. Now that I finally know, I’ve come to the realisation that I don’t need to meet anyone else’s expectations, nor their standards. And I’ve been able to start building my life in a way that is fulfilling for me. I don’t hate the Trad wives, but I worry for them, because it seems like they are giving up who they are, as well as future security, for something that developed at a time when women literally belonged to the men in her life, history has already proven how bad that was for them. It seems like a very strange thing to romanticise.
I'll just say, as a Lesbian, I respect Simmone De Beauvoir and Betty Friedan. They were pro-women and laid the groundwork. Nearly *everyone* who is a historical figure is a "product of their time" and I think we need to remember not to judge people who lived & died before our time by modern standards.
I don’t have any problems with Trad wives choosing this life. However, do not normalize this. These women do not realize how women gained their financial independence. Women were trapped and could not leave their marriages. If a husband died or left them, they had no means to support themselves.
I have struggled with feeling more like a robot than a person in my roles at home. It's not for a lack of my family helping out around the house or whatever, but having felt this pressure for my entire life to be the perfect wife and mother and find the greatest joy in that--- that nothing could or should ever compete. My husband has encouraged me to do other things outside the home, but I feel so unqualified and inexperienced, even as a college graduate because I haven't worked more than a very part-time job for the past 16 years. I really don't want to be a broken empty nester when my kids are gone in 10ish years and my husband is still working. It's just hard to find the confidence to put myself out there as anything more than a wife and mom when I've set everything else about myself aside for this.
I stepped out after over 25 years in the home. It was a little scary at first (and my now-ex didn’t like how I grew, though he did like the money I earned), but I am THRIVING. Seriously, hold your nose and jump. You will swim, and you will be so glad. ❤️❤️
Look into things you enjoy doing as a hobby , or volunteer to help a charity or something, sure there are plenty of places that would love an extra pair of hands , If you make a " retirement bplan" , before it happens , you will not be bored and doing things outside the house , your husband and family will be proud of you for doing it and it will give you something to talk about.
PLEASE start by volunteering and gaining skills. Many community organizations are desperate for help. I never had kids - my mom definitely showed me that a man is not a plan - but my professional success largely came out of volunteering!
Also you probably built more skills than you realize. Studies show moms are more efficient and more empathetic. I bet you’ve juggled schedules and multitasked and handled demanding clients ;) Finding some place to get your awesomeness down on your resume will help but I’m sure you’ve already got a lot of strength and badassery in you to find and enjoy new things that bring you joy.
My sister in law lost her husband to cancer. The last year of his life she spent so many hours in hospitals with him while her parents were looking after the kids. My nieces lost their father at age 12 and 9 and because before he got sick he had stopped paying for his insurance at a certain point, his family got nothing after he died, except a small pension from the state. Luckily my sister in law is a biologist and had been working already for nearly 20 years and her colleagues had helped her a lot in those times. Due to her job the family only lost their father and not also their house and neighbourhood, aka social network.
What I can't understand is how people still think there is this possibility of happiness if you live by some prescribed doctrine. "If I just do this, then I'll actually be happy and that sinking feeling in my stomach, the constant self doubt, and my agitation with my daily existence will disappear." People are designed in our very marrow to be discontented, to be constantly striving. I can't even with all the patriarchy. Makes me sick how we can't ever seem to escape it.
Such a great video, Amy. I remember learning about the concept of invisible labor, and being surprised at how much societal pressure is placed on women to bear an outsized (if not total) share of it.
Yes the thing that gets me is expecting women to do everything that is expected of women + work full time OR do everything expected of women & you have no actual monetary value for all you do thus you have no power. It should just be Flint blank equal all around. Be with the love of your life & be full partners
I've been thinking a lot lately about the current wave of feminism and how a woman should be free to make any choice she wants, and I wholeheartedly agree! But tradwife trend stuff made me feel uncomfortable, and I didn't know why. What you said about indoctrination and that when you don't think there's anything else available to you other than that role, is that really a choice... That's a great point! Thank you, it gave me lots of food for thought
The most ironic thing to me about the whole tradwife influencer, is that if they really believed the things they say they wouldn't be on Tiktok showing cleavage just to make some money
As a divorced woman who was a single mom, I was the glue that held the family together until I couldn't any longer. I am a small f feminist and proud of my son and my 32 year career in health care. Women come in many forms but we're all women. We can stop judging each other and start helping each other.
A clean house is a sign of a mis-spent life. (Gloria Steinem). We did this work in the 60 and 70. Didn't anyone pass this information on to you? Never thought I would have to hear this shit again.
@@DAnne-hd4ccthe general point of the quote seems, to me, like it takes issue more with women obsessing over domestic perfection as opposed to finding fulfillment. It wasn't about hating on being organized or tidy, just making the point that there are much bigger and better things women can and should do with their lives. Hope that cleared this up for you.
IMO, the trad wife route has a 15-25 year life span. Husbands may stray, children will grow. It's crucial to have self supporting skills and a vocation that interests you, because you will need them.
There is nothing traditional aboutball of these people that pose as tradwives... I know my grandmother was a traditional housewife, that went to church on every sunday and lived on a farm, and indeed she made everything in the kitchen from scratch. The thing is that it was just not so glamorous, my grandfather was not a good husband and people seem to forget that these animals are all cute and bearable to hang around with, until you are asked to also turn them into sausages. My grandmother did not cook food from scratch because of some cooking principles, but because those were the ingredients she had available to her, and when she was not looking after her 3 children, she was busy doing farmwork just like my grandfather. Apparently my cousin obsered my grandfather ranting in the kitchen one day, when my grandmother had passed, angry about not knowing how to cook a bowl of pasta "I'm glad this woman is finally dead!" This is who she has dedicated her life to, a man that had to learn at age 60 how to cook and was happy for her death. I share this with people because frankly, I hope it wakes someone up from this scam.
@@corneliahanimann2173 The SAHM lifestyle specifically largely relied on the labor of Black women. Otherwise women by and large had to work beside their husband (for lower wages of course while also performing hidden labor).
@@corneliahanimann2173 There were also disabled SAHMs like my great grandmother (Native American/Spaniard) who were dirt poor and relied on family for support.
my mom was a homemaker. but she was also a gym rat who loved to work out, had been to both Greace and Italy, was the first person on the dance floor at any party, and was passionate about Italian cuisine. Looking back I will always admire my mom for being a housewife because she wanted to be and refusing to make that the only thing about her.
My client is 78 and has her Masters in education, but often tells me her life story of dealing with the toxic husband traits that appeared the second they got married. Being a slave to a home is no life. I'm pretty independent and revolutionary myself, but do feel called to homemaking - however it's not the entirety of my desires and I believe in a man sharing those chores with me. I watched my mother both work full time and be a homemaker while my father never lifted a finger. Trad husbands can easily lean into thinking their job is to be served instead of actually being true leaders.
Great breakdown of Second Sex and Feminine Mystique. Would love to see you similarly breakdown Germaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch” and the role of marriage within patriarchy. 😊
Trad wife is nice as long as your partner has a good to very good income, is life long faithful, does not turn out to be violent or develops other nasty habits like alcohol, gambling etc and does not ruin his business on the way, gets seriously sick etc. And you both get along long term. But at the start of the relationship you have no way of knowing if this will be the case until your death. So, you may very well live out your trad wife dream for a couple of years only to see your cushy stay at home wife/mom lifestyle shatter by any of the above mentioned factors. And then what.
When I chose to stay home when my children were young, it was not at all for the sake of my husband but for the sake of my children. I guess this “trad wife” thing is women w/o children staying home which does seem silly, but when you bring children into the mix, it’s a totally different story.
I wrote my history PhD thesis about Betty Freidan . Well done! My conclusion was that feminism didn’t turn out quite like Friedan had planned and society is worse off because her vision was hijacked. At any rate, you did a superb job of summarizing Beauvoir and Friedan!
Is your thesis available to read online? While I think de Beauvoir and Friedan meant very well, my personal take is that they sold out women in many ways. I'd be interested to read your take on them though. I actually think that Elizabeth Warren's book The Two Income Trap is most instructive of what was unintentionally unleashed by the feminist movement.
what great content you produce, just love it. Finally a channel truly worth sharing. This brings healing and truth, instead of anger and division. Thank you.
I’m not a woman, but I thought this was a fantastic explanation. I look forward to watching more of your content. We really need this right now. Especially right now.
Thank you! I’m a female attorney, “well educated” and I had only heard bits and pieces of this. Very helpful and gave me a reading list. PS I went to a Baptist university before law school. 🤦♀️🤔
I never really saw m grandmother happy, other than when playing with a baby - until my grandfather passed on. Then it became hard to keep up with her. She was bright, too, but was stuck raising 7 children and tending to household chores for many years and later working for meager wages. I believe Maslow calls the top need “self actualization” - which men were told means reaching the highest possible level in work and always being the head of the family, while women have been told it means having and raising children and tending to the home in order to help THE MAN REACH THE PINNACLE OF HIS CAREER AND HAVE A FAMILY AND ROOST TO RULE. Women have been viewed as variations on men - not ever to come first.
I'm a loving wife with 4 grown children. BUT I'm equal to my husband with the same rights in our partnership! We both decide everything together. My grandmother and my mother were fighting for womens rights. We should be proud of them and go on on the way of equality. For men and women.
You may have covered this in other videos, but the part of patriarchy that these two venerable ancestor women did not talk about is violence. Aside from all these ideological and performative constraints that keep women in their place, there is the constant and unending threat of violence at the hands of men. Statistics tell us that 1 in 4 women will be the victim of some kind of male violence in her life. And that is a very low stat because it takes into account only one such instance per woman. But I, like many women, have been the victim of multiple acts of violence by multiple men. (Robbed at knife point twice. Hit by a partner. Knocked down by an assailant. Sexually harassed with violence at work.) And that doesn't even touch on the more subtle forms of psychological violence. Being patronized by men. Having our opinions and thoughts ignored or discounted by men. Being passed over for promotion in favor of a man. And on. And on. And on. And my story is not at all unique. So another reason women embrace this "trad role" is that they know in their deepest heart of hearts that they are not safe and they want the protection that goes with the performance of this role. Good luck with that, ladies as I had a male partner when most of those incidents happened, but guess what. HE WAS NOT THERE AT THE TIME! Nor would he have had the capability to "protect me." So our choice is to stay safe IN OUR HOMES, keeping away from all the male violence that is "out there."
So many stories tell us that the "virtuous" woman is protected while other types of women deserve what they get. I think in modern society, we don't realize how much of our thinking is still magical thinking. Why can't women just live and be allowed to live as we wish?
As I recall clearly….far too many women in the 60’s and 79’s were beyond drugged by physicians… Valium, Librium, Seconal, all benzos, and speed for those with weight issues… Mixed with an old fashion after 4pm… It was hidden, yet acceptable madness…
Due to chronic medical issues, I accidentally ended up in a traditional female role. I need to cook from scratch, and because I was unable to hold paid employment, I took over most of the housework. Should I be able to take a job again, my husband and I will share the housework again. I’m grateful for the recovery time, but staying at home with no income but your husband’s is a precarious financial position to be in. I don’t like it. And spending most of your life in the location where you are providing labor makes it harder to get rest. And it’s also isolating.
When I was little in the 60’s I understood I had a choice to be Liberated… that is how I’ve lived and yes being a stay at home mom was depressing. If we lived communally I believe the boredoms would be relieved as the burdens would be shared. It’s too much to be all that every day for a nuclear family. If I could have cleaned two houses and feed my family with food from another cook well then I would have been much happier.
My ex told me that I had to accept a woman’s lot in life and be happy with it. I went back to school and earned my Master’s Degree and made more money than he did. It was very hard to extricate myself from his mindset bc the kids agreed with him. All men in the house. I was treated as a “pack animal”.
You said something that made me think just now, about unlocking historical work already done Re the Patriarchy. Everything was unlocked by the boomer generation, ( those of us who didn’t betray ourselves in the end by greed). Great academic treatises were written on feminism, civil rights were championed in the streets, many breakthroughs in nutrition and the curse of processed food were unfolding, prophecies were made( Bob Dylan) Alternative living and homes were explored. Then THE MAN as we used to call it, got nervous about losing control, and here we are.
@@dfree1here the 60s and also feminism have both been promoted by powers beyond your understanding for reasons you cannot comprehend (in part very mundane self serving reasons)
My mother was abused by her alcoholic father and her mother was constantly working both in and out of the home. She saw marriage and being a housewife as an opportunity to give her children a different life. I think that the basics laid out in this video are correct, but that there is more nuance to history than we always see in the bigger picture.
As a zillenial woman, I think the appeal of the trad wife content has a lot to do with backlash against the toxic feminism that was shoved down our throats growing up. Just like “the problem that has no name” of the fifties and sixties, I experienced my own “problem that had no name” as a high achieving woman. I joined the boys wrestling team, I became a personal trainer, I learned to code, I earned a degree in STEM, and got a great job that challenged my intellect after college. But I was depressed. Miserable even. I wanted a family. I wanted the time to create a peaceful home. I think all human beings, regardless of sex, need holistic lives. We can’t be regulated to “homemaker” or “boss babe”. We can’t be told to exhibit only feminine traits or be told only masculine ones are good, we need balance. I think the trad wife movement is a reaction to the boss babe era and the lack of choices women face today in this economy. Many women WANT to spend time at home caring for their families, but they can’t because the new expectation is that they work outside the home. In many circles, housework and childcare is deemed less valuable (another symptom of sexism that is often tolerated by modern feminists). This rejection of traditional femininity has turned off many women, including myself. Despite all the male spaces I entered, the time in my life where I experienced the most sexism was when I chose to become a mother. Our society does not value the work of mothers. Mothers today are grossly overworked and expected to hold a full time job on top of it. Feminists will claim that men are to blame because they aren’t sharing household responsibilities, but when it comes to the childcare of small children, there are just some things that need “mommy”. Whether it’s breastfeeding or snuggles or midnight bad dreams, my kids will downright reject dad no matter how hard he tries. Not only that, but I WANT to stay home with my kids at this stage in life. I crave it. That doesn’t mean I’ll never work again, or that I don’t have any hobbies, but I have a desire to be a mother and I’m tired of being told that that desire is misplaced and is feeding into the patriarchy. That’s bullshit. Just as telling me I can’t wrestle or code is bullshit. The expectations that I had to continue pursuing my career six weeks after birthing the most important humans in my life nearly killed me. I was losing my mind trying to “have it all” and no women should ever be put under that kind of pressure. No one made that reality clear to me growing up; that working while having babies was literally working two full time jobs plus overtime. Working moms were glamorized, they were “empowered”. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. So of course, the rosy videos of women leisurely wearing aprons baking bread with a home full of happy stress-free children looks idyllic. My family, like most Americans, cannot afford to live on one income. I had to save a mini “baby retirement” fund from my income to be able to stay at home with my kids. Many women don’t have that luxury. Until the feminist movement supports women who want to be mothers and stay at home parents, this type of content will continue to be appealing and will continue to push the pendulum into unhealthy extremes.
Beautifully put. It's insane that we don't have a mindset of "you know, it's okay to have 5 years of your life where you either don't work or work less." I know many moms who'd like to have a job of, like, 20 hours a week, just to be part of the workforce, earn money, have the intellectual stimulus, but also have the time to keep shit together at home and actually be with their kids. As you say, balance. To me, it would make sense that it was more wide-spread to do part-time while having small kids.
Do you have paid maternity leave in the US? Also unpaid maternity leave where your job is held open for you (often for about a year) and filled by a temp until you return. We have this in Australia and it means a woman can take her time retuning to work after giving birth. Going part time is also common and some jobs have a right to request. I think only giving yourself 6 weeks after childbirth is crazy. I can see why there might be the appeal for the trad wife movement in the absence of strong maternity leave provisions. But I think the trad wife movement is a trap and puts women in a vulnerable position where the hope is that the man will always be there to provide and there will be no unexpected adverse events. I often think about an elderly extended family member , who lost her much loved first husband at an early age due to a sudden health event, was left with 2 boys, and was economically forced to remarry to a man who made her rehome her teenaged boys, as he didn’t want them around. He didn’t tell her until the day before the wedding. She had no choice, as women did not work outside the home back then in large numbers and she had no skills. So the boys had to leave and live with aunties. Fortunately, the boys forgave her and the second husband didn’t live very long anyway.
You make very valid points and articulate them very well! Society must definitely support motherhood. Eg. paid maternal leave, subsidized childcare, subsidized maternal and infant healthcare, tax rebates to companies with child-friendly policies like flexitime/ part-time/ hybrid/ WFH work options for parents or creche facilities, social safety net for non-working parents etc. I also strongly believe many of these laws/ policies should be gender-neutral or at the least inclusive of fathers too. Eg. Paternal leave too is important, though it could be less than maternal leave because obviously she's the one who's going through pregnancy, nursing etc. Also flexible work options could be gender neutral so that the parents could decide which one should stay home and when (it obviously also depends on the nature of work).
On the other hand, the criticism you bring forth about housework and childcare not being valued is more so a criticism of capitalism and patriarchy, not feminism. By value, i assume what you mean is economic value? Because mothers are respected, sure, but that respect does not ultimately translate into any economic value. Which renders it essentially "meaningless" in the sense that it does not offer the woman control or power in terms of opportunities, decision-making or access to resources. This is a fundamental issue of capitalism, if we remove the gender lens we can see the same issue where a stay at home man wouldn't have any economic value or power either (see what happens to our dads if they retire without a prudent retirement plan - they may have once been a CEO, scientist or brain surgeon but regardless very quickly become obsolete and disposable). How patriarchy ties into it is because the socioeconomic structures themselves were/ are designed to provide economic value to traditionally "masculine" roles rather than "feminine" ones. This was the mechanism used over centuries to keep women sytemically marginalized and subjugated - through reinforcing economic dependence on men.
My parents were born in the late 1920s. My mother didn't work outside of the home until I went to school in 1971. I remember my dad being so proud of my mother having her own job, making her own money, and having her own bank account. It was a point of pride for him that she was independent. I guess because that meant she was with him, for himself, and not exclusively for what he could provide for her.
My horrible MIL came to visit my husband in our little apartment with limited space. I asked my husband to hand me a plate and she YELLED, “ He never had to help at home”! She was just awful.
Excellent summary of those concepts. There is another issue that often these categorisations and their social norms means that the rationalisations talk past each other. This means the vocabulary of trad and liberated [women/men (*)] have a 4-way conflict that greatly resembles similar arguments in approaches to Management (I wonder why). In particular, the Competing Values Framework (CVF) of Quinn and Rohrbaugh is a useful way of extending the usual us/them [unresolvable] conflict approach into a wider model that helps one appreciate where help can be found and the important comparisons and vocabulary for each of the different groups.
My mother would get upset if I mentioned that I was a science teacher, because science was a MAN'S JOB. It was OK to say I was a teacher, because that is an acceptable job for a woman. Needless to say, my mother and I did not agree with many things I did.
I married at 19 in 1962. I finished college in large part because my husband wanted his wife to have a degree. Our son was born between my last finial and graduation. I was happy being a wife, mother, and community contributor. My skills brought more to the family than a job would have. I don’t regret my choice, but I do see how much my life then and as a child was controlled by patriarchy.
This made me think of two of the books that broke the 1950s, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit & Peyton Place. Both books, and then movies, break the glossy image so often presented of that time. If you’re watching the movies another Lana Turner film, she’s in Peyton Place, from 1959 that I find emotionally exhausting is Imitation of Life. A James Dean trio of Rebel Without a Cause, Giant, and East of Eden will make you question those happy days. Thank you for this presentation.
My trad grandma wasn't happy or appreciated fully throughout her six decades of marriage. I'd heard horrible stories, and I am really terrified with how women were exploited and underappreciated over a few millenia with not even being fully able to understand they're being used in every way. All of this is further spiced up with traditional religious texts, which the indoctrinated women irrationally wish to follow, hoping that the carefully crafted formula of obsolete rules will bring them happiness.
Divide and conquer. Judgement and shame. All a manipulation. Be who you want to be. Live life as you will. Act with integrity. EVERY THING ELSE is designed to destroy peaceful existence.
Very interesting and enlightening content. Thank you. It makes me wonder, is the issue curiously that women like to focus on others rather than themselves? Like ants, which one could equate us to on a certain level, there are some meant to or choose to simply do, follow the rules, don't question. And there are some destinated for more. In other words, we leave those women who wish to be Trad Women to carry on. And those of us who wish to be other, or more, do so. Why do we care so much about those that are not searching for ... more? Too much time is maybe spent on trying to change others rather than shouting from the roof tops and showcasing those of us who have 'more'.
It’s seems like the trad wife appeal is due to (as the youth say) exhaustion from late stage capitalism. Women are unhappy with America’s nonstop work culture & trad wifery seems an appealing alternative. It’s hard for them to imagine how difficult that lifestyle is too b/c maybe they’ve never actually seen how it tends to play out.
When I was in late elementary school and early middle school there was a commercial with a woman singing ‘I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you’re a man’. I remember as a kid thinking ‘why do I have to do it all just because I’m female? Now I’m a married adult. My husband works from home while I go out and teach axe throwing. He is at home and we share the work.
My husband and I share the workload at home. We don’t have kids but we are a team. Because we share the work we both have time to pursue our own interests.
Most Black homes in my world growing up had both parents working they didn't have the option of having the Mom stay home especially if they were "Strivers".
After 7 yrs. of marriage, my ex-husband developed into an abusive alcoholic. God knows I fought for him but there was nothing I could do to stop his trajectory. When it got dangerous & we had to leave, I was thankful to have a 'career' to fall back on. Trad moms are betting life will be fair.
Empowerment is about being able to choose what the couple want. If you want to be a homemaker and parent, and the family can afford to live on one wage (which is usually the real issue), then go for it. That applies to men too. If their wife has the income, then he should be able to stay at home and cook lasagne from scratch. I am totally a product of feminism. I wasn’t even going to get married when I was a teenager. I have read a lot of feminist literature and am totally on board with what you are saying. The key is equality and not one partner being submissive to the other. If a woman or man stay at home to care for a family, then that is a choice we should respect. Sometimes it is a real choice and not about indoctrination. I am saying this as someone who has worked all their life. I feel disappointment from my job and not feeling achievement from my work.
My aunt spoke to me about “magazine women” and how much my grandmother went from successful business woman to what Jung call “playing the anima” and it was in my grandmother that this Intergenerational “role” came into our family line. I’m a feminist and believe in equal rights and I think people should do whatever feels right.
The irony is that Simone de Beauvoir was cheated on relentlessly by Sartre, who refused to ever make any commitment to her. So yeah, she pointed out some problems, but weirdly put up with the same, if not more, crap, than most. And Friedan basically called housewives useless and parasites. While both of these women started conversations, I don't personally think they did much to make women more respected. They didnt respect other women. So yeah, trad wives are "stupid," but the constant demonization of "wifery" just needs to stop for true feminism to move forward. Is there a middle path?
Simone de Beauvoir was a privileged woman and a PDF sympathizer, she didn't marry or have children. I can't fathom why her opinions are relevant to the majority of women.
I do not have any problem with a women choosing to be a trad wife, if she is loving this model. But I do not understand the toxic trait, that everything has to be like in a Disney movie and perfect with to much sugar coat. So I prefer homestading, sustainibility, love, respect and a helping hand from everyone and the sense that nothing in this world is perfect for everyone. Do what your inner wisdom leads you. And not what a role Model tells you to do. And above all dont forget love and the main rule that nature is above everything. So do not destroy ecosystems for luxury or a stupid image you want to build just for fame or your ego.
My mom was technically a stay-at-home mom, but she had numerous hobbies and did a lot of community volunteer work, she was in no way a bored or depressed "housewife". She was not married to her house, she was married to Daddy. She had a motto," My house is clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy."
We burned bras, et al, so women could have options. One option is stay at home mom. Another is career., We did that so women could do what we wanted in that direction.
Sadly, it hasn't worked. For most women there is only one choice, if they want to have children. And that is taking care of the children and having a job. Once you have children it becomes increasingly impossible to also have a career.
@@OctoberOctopusM Only a man would say that. You needn't say anything further. I know who you voted for. Had you been in person, you'd be wiping my spit off your face. Go away,.
@@awilson8521 No fault divorces are far less expensive than the alternative. Of course, it would be to the advantage of the legal profession to have them done away with. A good share of politicians are attorneys and the Bar Association is one of the biggest lobbies in Washington.
I’m a former Mormon trad wife. My 24 year marriage destroyed my life and almost lead to my death, literally. I now work hard to teach other women around the globe to avoid the trad wife trap.
Yes, I have seen your videos. They are great.
@@lifetaketwo7662 ditto🥳 only I lead a spiritual community to guide people to their authentic and true selves, and relationships with others. Those Mormon leadership and organizational skills I gave for free to the church for 20 years come in handy at least 😂
I saw your story on TikTok and have been pointing people into trad wife videos in your direction. You're doing very important work. Thank you.
And I am not sure if enough people thank you for the work you do.
Thank You
The reason 'trad wife' is popular is because it makes someone money. Most certainly, self professedly and demonstratably NOT the wife.
While many are worried about religion taking over the goverment, not as many have the eleoquence to point out that it is any religion that is a threat to a free society when it seeks and acheives the power it craves.
So I found this very interesting and concise. I was a stay at home mom who raised two sons who are now in their 30s, but was NOT a trad wife. I worked 11 years before marriage and having children and found raising children at home by far the most fulfilling thing I have ever done. As I am a contemplative person, two children were enough for me. I had absolutely no problem with women who chose careers along with raising children. Rarely did I hear put downs or criticism for my choice. Once when taking a class my male professor implied I was “forced” into my role by my patriarchal society. What I resented about his comment was the implication my choice was not my own. It was very much my own. I think the problem lies in letting society dictate how we should live. My husband at the time was not the head of the household, we shared decisions. I’m a person of faith and attend a church where women can be priests. This view of patriarchy that some hope to bring back was as bad for men as for women. Many men who try and wedge themselves into traditional roles find themselves depressed and unfulfilled. I think more than anything else, it’s time to get to know ourselves and what is truly right for us. If someone doesn’t like how we live it’s their problem. What others think of me is none of my business!😊
My grandmother would be rolling in her grave to see this nonsense taking off again. She was born in 1928, so yes she WAS a 1950s housewife. She still worked inside and outside the home while raising 7 kids over the years. She is the reason I vakue my education and independence. SHE is the one who told me a man is not a plan.
Ladies get your own!
If she worked outside of the home she was not a housewife
A man is not a plan…young ladies 100% TRUTH!!!
Same!!!! My grandmother has done exactly the same, but she never had the chance to work outside the house. When she was still alive she would tell me and my cousins "the first husband is your job and the second is the one you take to bed".
@@judithcoichythis applies for lesbians too, a Wife is not guaranteed for Life.
Idgaf who you are, but especially ladies, *have your own $ always* anyone who cares about you will be *relieved and grateful* you look out for your financial well-being!
@@lelaperkune1613you realize people live for years right? And that they can go through different careers? You know how time works yeah?
The saddest part for me, quite honestly, is how many young women benefited from our grandmothers battles and learned nothing:(
A very good point! So many years and still nothing.
@@femi1504same with other areas of life. Like how vaccines are being rejected & drs are worried about diseases coming back. Science is being mocked its like we're literally going back in time
Preach! But on the other hand, when you are being indoctrinated your entire life, with no educating yourself properly on the matter, it's objectively hard to fully grasp what's going on and resist.
We weren’t there 🤷🏾♀️
I could not have said it better. My mother worked in and outside of the home, but when my father became ill, she also became ill, she was so unhappy because she felt that she could no longer work anymore. She lost interest in everything, and it was so sad to see her just slip away and die.
I can’t believe we still need to have this conversation.
Trad wife lol...my mom was a machine. She had us 4 and worked in food sevice ever since I could remember. I skipped all that and became a stay at home highly educated cat mom. Nobody ever talks about poor women.
@@marciamartins1992 Wow, you sound so selfish.
@@marciamartins1992 So you only care about yourself. I guess that's good, not for society but for the cats.
@@marciamartins1992 Shameful.
@@marciamartins1992 All the hugs! From one educated cat lady to another ❤
My MIL loved being a trad wife, until my FIL left her for a woman half his age. She was left with no money, no marketable skills, no self esteem, nothing. I actually like and admire home making skills. However making that your identity in this environment is downright dangerous.
Happened to my grandmother numerous times. And she was lucky they abandoned her because they were abusive as well.
@@d3pr0fundis she liked abusive men? Shame
And even if you have a 'good' husband. What are you going to do if he dies or gets a chronic illness and he cannot make money anymore?
@@XxXx-Evolive off his money. I'm a feminist but for for some couples (v few I think) the trad wife way of life might work. The issue with it is you can never know if you're one of them until the end. Life can throw curve balls at you even if he's a good man and then you're fending for yourself without half the knowledge required to take care of yourself.
@@XxXx-Evoexactly even if he is loyal husband it’s still a very bad idea!
My father was against women being forced into traditional wife roles. He would pity these women. I pity them, because their husbands often leave them in poverty or screw around…or worse.
We can pass on poverty and betrayal, but we cannot pass on that women are suppressed and prevented from developing, advancing and flourishing in their talents and capabilities, whether in science, arts, sports or politics.
Housework and cooking are trivial, stupid and simple life skills that do not require any intelligence or experience. Anyone in the world can do them. Most importantly, woman, they do not increase you scientificlly and does not increase your mney. But enslave you and exclude you from social and political life. It makes him like a slave who has no status in this life, just like a slave who only submits and works without any scientific advance or financial reward, so he remains a slave.
Housework is a life skill that every adult should do. Men should not avoid it or evade it and women should not do it. The wife and women in the family are not domestic workers.
If a woman is going to do the housework and cleaning for someone else and give him permission, then she becomes a cleaner and cook for whom she should be paid for.
A woman is a human being with a mind, intelligence, passion, talents and great potential. Her nature, right, duty and natural need is to develop and grow her, not to suppress, undermine or eliminate her. You find her learning and nourishing her mind constantly, learning languages and learning all kinds of sciences, inventing and discovering, becoming an artist, painter, musician, athlete, business pioneer, veterinarian, educational guide, pediatrician or chef... and teaching her children respect, science and art.
But what happens is that the woman’s natural and basic right as human being with a mind, intelligence, passion, talents and great potential, is her right, duty and natural need to develop and advance it, not to abolish and undermine it, is not respected. She is suppressed, silenced and deprived of expressing hem and showing her intelligence and deprived of creativity, progress and prosperity by depriving her of scientific progress, while the man’s right as a human being to scientific progress and prosperity through his talents is respected.
To be isolated from social and political life and confined within the walls of the house to clean the house and cook every day, morning, evening, night and day without scientific progress or financial reward, but to live naturally as a human being with a mind, intelligence, passion, talents and great potential, to be a famous international chef, winner of international awards and owner of a chain of restaurants and hotels that advance and flourish with her talent and potential, no.
The issue is that a human being is born, one party is allowed to live as a human being while the other party is stripped of his humanity, denied, marginalized, isolated from the world, marginalized, and imprisoned in a box to be transformed into a second-class being to serve and please the first party. This is misogyny, contempt, injustice, and transgression against women, and it is not natural at all. It seems that living with men on one planet in peace with our full rights is impossible. Therefore, rebellion is a must.
I agree. if that’s your calling just make sure you’ve got a back up plan but definitely nobody should be forced into that. My grandparents tried to force my mom into that and it was a nightmare because the marriage was terrible and when Next excluded, she didn’t have a way to raise us and she was always tied to him for child support so even if you’re traditional wife needs a Plan B.
Im from the Netherlands, and the official policy is that everybody must be able to take care of itself financially. Now the country has one of the highest rate of parttime jobs. And it are men and women working parttime, both taking care of the children. So children have a pappadag (daddy day) and a mammadag (mommy day)
@@IwishiwasanoscarmeyerweinerWho gives a shit what you say.
Do you see how this is not a productive part of the conversation?
My father was like that but a few years ago he was introduced to alpha male content by my brother and the two of them have gone down that rabbit hole and never looked back, they're completely unrecognisable now and it's almost impossible to live with them now, idk how my mom manages, me and my sister usually retreat to our rooms when they're home from work
I’ve been a feminist since about 5 when my father pissed me off by telling me that I couldn’t have a model train set I’d been drooling over in a catalog. His only reason for telling me I couldn’t have it was because I was a girl.
I was so shock that I was speechless at first . But he’d say ,” girls can’t do that to me so much it basically became my name [Name] girls can’t do that . I spent my childhood with a strong sense of injustice especially since as a Black man in the USA , he’d would never accept that as a reason why he couldn't do something that white people did. Then turn around and pull that same exact stupid crap on his daughters.
Lol. My dad got me a train set. Of course it could’ve been because he also wanted to play with it.
@@bethanytheilman2091 That is also the reason why a lot of boys are given a train set.
@@bethanytheilman2091My father played with me, his daughter, with his model trains.
I guess I’ve been a socialist since that same age. Couldn’t figure out why the Our Gang kids lived at the dump all awhile their good friend Darla lived in a marble columned mansion with lots and lots to eat. My mother called me a socialist. I find to this day Bernie makes perfect sense. Sometimes a five year old see the truth.
I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot, and I realized something watching this video. A lot of trad wife creators do/create some genuinely cool stuff. They farm, they bake cool stuff, they make things. Why is it that the only way they feel they can present these cool skills and creations to the world is through the lens of “this is how I perform dutiful wife and motherhood”, as opposed to “here’s some amazing skills I have and cool stuff I created, and I’d love to teach you to do it too!” *. This has been driving me nuts as I am a woman who loooves gardening, small scale farming, baking, preserving food, sewing, knitting, embroidery, motherhood. Trad wife content is soooooo not my bag, but you can’t look at any of these topics on social media without being fed trad wife content relentlessly by social media algorithms. I just want to see women doing all the cool stuff they do without the lens of submission and obedience to their husbands!
*The answer, of course, is patriarchy.
I sometimes find the idea that a traditional wife "is giving up her dreams for the sake of husband and kids" a prejudice. It may be the case of many, but there also are many traditional wives who can also pursue their dreams, they organize their life by giving the right time period to each thing of her life scenario and have their husbands' support on this. They can be teachers, they can be writers, they can just rule a little family farm or garden, or they can even volunteer at the kids hospital... I think such cases should also be considered when we talk about "trad wives".
This is such a clever insight. I also loved to work in my vegetable and fruit garden. I was famous for my strawberry elderflower marmalade, and st. Nicolas marmalade (apples and cinnamon). But I also teached statistics and econometrics to economic and business students at the university.
Relatable.
It's so performative instead of a sole drive from within without al the stories we tell each other. But stories sell and enhance the ego.
@@keltineverett2492 I used to be a perfectionist cook, crafter, and homemaker! Bc it was the only area I could excel. Last years was the first Christmas where life was somewhat “normal” post divorce & leaving high demand religion. Kids and I ordered take-out for Christmas Eve dinner (bc I was tried and wanted to actually ENJOY the evening). My old self would have died 😆
It is very possible to enjoy skills like gardening and cooking and crafting, and make that your life. Because it's something you enjoy and you love getting better at it. As long as you don't do it to sacrifice yourself. That is not ok.
Ahhh, the tradwife.
The stay at home wife, who, traditionally, was SO neglected and exhausted and depressed, that many of them were drugged, institutionalized, or lobotomized, in a desperate attempt to KEEP them chained to the kitchen and the laundry room without ever having to address why that's a problem.
So weird.
So gross.
Those women were popping the Valium and barbiturates back in the day. Benzos helped them get through the day, not the joys of doing laundry.
This was my mother. The long term impact of that was pernicious. How many others were there out there? Really we can’t go back.
@@d3pr0fundis Mommy's "little helper!"
The Rolling Stones wrote a song about them called Mother’s Little Helper.
After working 35 years, raising kids, I am now happy to be a stay at home grandma helping my family and being a homemaker. I left work a few years before pension age after a run in with cancer. If I could do it again I would have been a stay at home mum. I have a wonderful husband who supports everything I decide to do as I support him in everything he wants to do. I felt stressed and burned out for years struggling to raise kids in a time when childcare didn’t really exist. It has left me exhausted. Live and let live. It’s not our place to shame others into how we think it should be done.
Beauvoir changed my life. In her book she wrote that women didn’t naturally love babies. She had several examples from history where woman didn’t love their babies at all. At that moment I realized that I didn’t like babies that much. Later I had foster children, so I could start with my favorite age, teenagers! 😀
Well, a lot of that is hormonal. You can't really know how you would feel towards a hypothetical baby, unless you were actually pregnant with one and had given birth and nursed. I mean, not that all birth mothers are appropriately swept away by utter love for their newborns - like everything in nature it's not a fail proof system. But if it doesn't happen, it's usually the result of extreme stress or trauma/depression or such. Generally speaking, we don't have much choice in the matter. Our bodies literally drug us into loving our babies. If we didn't, our species would have never survived, as it takes so much effort and dedication to keep a baby alive through the first couple perilous years.
I get what you mean, though. I didn't even want to be in a room with babies or small children throughout my twenties. Then something suddenly clicked and now I will happily babysit for free for friends and family, because I enjoy taking care of them so much. For a couple hours, mind you. Never wanted my own 😆
Our strong instincts towards babies are also the reason why we adore baby animals so much. Most of us will happily pet and feed and 'rescue' (in any way necessary) babies of various species. Yet at the same time, we will eat the adults of the same species or discard grown pets at the side of the road or in shelters (if they're lucky). As soon as they don't trigger our 'parenting instincts' anymore, we often start feeling utterly indifferent to animals, whereas most people could never behave the same towards a 'baby animal'.
@ I’m 71. But I got this drive too. That’s when I got foster children. That was good enough for me. Edit: although I had kittens, never had puppies. I took rescue doggies that were older than 2. For the last one I searched for an old dog*, because I’m old.
I live in the Netherlands, and there’s a website where all the animals in the country that live shelters are listed. It has several search options.
Just like we can't say all women long to be mothers, De Beauvoir can't say we secretly don't want babies. I don't lie other people's children. But my two are my life, and my pregnancies and homebirths were uber empowering after years of infertility. Now I home educate and I'm in my element! This is the sphere I'm most comfortable and confident in. I let my husband do a lot of the cooking though bc he's better at it. I take offence at supposed feminists who look down on my life choices. I'm happier now than I was pursuing a doctorate degree or serving in the military. I did this things bc I wasn't tuned into myself and my individual desires. I don't scoff at child free women, or mothers employed outside the home while their children are at school. If it works for you, then that's all that matters. But this works for me. Women ought to support each other, not try to micromanage each other according to some ideology.
@ Beauvoir didn’t say women secretly didn’t want babies. She said they don’t instinctively love them. You love your children, but that doesn’t mean you love children.
@@jannetteberends8730
We have extremely strong mothering instincts. Like all mammals. That doesn't mean there isn't the odd woman out, who doesn't, but to generalize these rare exceptions to be the rule is just plain ridiculous. We love babies so much, we even fall all over ourselves, to mother the babies of other species. Puppies or kittens aren't somehow inherently cute. There's no rational reason, why we should pay them any special attention. They're only cute to us, because they trigger our mothering instincts. That's why people frequently adopt young animals, just to dispose of them again when they're grown and don't resemble babies in looks (big, round head and eyes) and behavior (curious, playful yet clumsy) again.
People will love and take care of babies, that aren't biologically theirs. There's no good reason to raise a child that isn't related to you.... except that we can't help it, because our instinct to want to care for babies is *that* strong.
Loving babies is the default, being indifferent to them is the exception. Our brains literally evolved to love babies.
As someone who experienced DV for years, lemme tell you my answer on it. It's SAFE. You risk nothing. You ARE nothing. I went from trad to the uber-trad "Plain" (long solid color dresses, aprons, bonnets/head covers) the more my trauma continued. It erases your personhood and makes you a function, not a human. Your worth is valued only in the amount of autonomy that you're willing to give away. It's a living death.
Grey rocking on an extreme level. Making yourself as bland and uninteresting as possible in the hopes that will make you invisible to your abusers.
The fact that this has become a /movement/ says... alarming things.
@@quiestinliteris It's because this world doesn't work. Capitalism is a hell scape nightmare and it's all about to collapse. People want a way out and women who are recieving conflicting messages and are just tired see it as a way to opt out of the rat race.
We need another way.
Not a movement more a resurgence. Usually reserved for those too old to care anymore
Well said. It is also a betrayal of humanity. Just imagine half of the population giving up everything they could give to everyone just to be accepted by a small group of people.
God bless you. I hear you & you're so right. Well stated.
I was born in 1954. I watched grown ups drinking every evening. I watched people driving around drunk while my dad laughed watching a drunk driver weave his car back and forth through lanes. Drunk driving wasn't illegal then and car accidents were very common. I watched men beat up their wives and children and no police arrested them. I saw a classmate lift his shirt to show us the welts from a belt beating he got from his drunk dad the night before. No children's services then to protect us. We had teachers who beat us too. Some people my age remember those days fondly, but either they had an exceptionally good childhood or they blacked it out. Men loved the lack of responsibility and unearned praise they got, but we women had to work for it and men never appreciated our efforts. That's why women finally got fed up and joined the Women's Liberation Movement. It all looks nice on TV, but the reality sucked for women and children. By the way, it was just recently that 'the boy in the box' who was beaten to death and discarded in a box in the middle of nowhere by his family was identified. He was my age. He would have been 70 years old today had he not been beaten to death and I don't think he enjoyed those years either.
I was born in 1980 and although the things you speak of were illegal I also saw them. I was driven drunk with over and over as a child and watched my stepfather beat my mom.
I grew up with all that too. Hated it. I am one of the most pleasant grouchy feminists I know, as well as an enthusiastic heterosexual.
Thanks for sharing.
Not only that, but there was a 1950s equivalent to the trad-wife content creator, which was a certain brand of writer in the 1950s who would publish essays about being a wife and mother. Writers such as Phyllis McGinley and Jean Kerr. The mere fact that these women were in fact _published authors_ meant that they were not conforming to the images they conveyed. In the case of Jean Kerr, she had a graduate degree in English Lit. and was a Tony-winning playwright
In the case of the trad-wife creators, producing content _is their job._ So once again, the image in question is inherently false.
They obviously have someone minding the kids while they are setting up for filming, rehearsing, actually filming, never mind doing hair, makeup, clothes etc.
@@inaRIMPAU The oldest daughter most likely. But that child would be doing most of the child minding in a “normal” traditional family too, because mum is too busy popping out babies.
@@kellydalstok8900 In a "normal" family, the older children would be at school. But these kids are "homeschooled," so the girls never ever get a break. Americans don't realize how bizarre this looks to most of the developed world.
Phyllis Schafly made a political career of saying women should be submissive wives. The idea women should stay at home and be silent sells. Even if you are making a living talking and using your education and professional skills to sell it 🤦♀️
Women with some privilege telling sisters “do as I say not as I do.” Aligning with power and oppressing others in order to retain the little bit of power patriarchy allowed. Uh huh…
This may be something that came up in your earlier video on the Victorian Cult of Domesticity, but I'd like to note that this cult is also deeply classist. Living the perfectly domestic life required assistance; before household appliances, that meant SERVANTS, generally female, generally drawn from the poorer classes.
Poor women have ALWAYS worked. Being able to make it so the wife can be a housewife only is a mark of the husband's wealth, no different from the dresses of the 15th century.
Even in the first half of the 20th century a lot of people had servants. My aunt was a maid in a teacher’s household. It paid very poorly, because his income wasn’t all that high, but she learned a lot about how to behave in polite society. She made sure that her parents and siblings learned to eat with knife and fork, for instance, and also cooking and dress making.
Ever notice how the cult of domesticity was marketed by commercial artists? Very rarely did it involve photographs of actual women and their families.
I'd argue the reason for THAT is that the Cult of Domesticity demands perfection of women . . . and while you can paint a "perfect" woman, photographs are always going to show some imperfections.
Yes, now AI controls the masses. We need to go back.
Yes & these creepy fake-like trade wife videos it's all marketing & our youth seems to be insidiously programmed by socail media. Traditional 50s life is being sold to them as glamorous
Great observation.
Like that Obama poster?
I always laugh when people say things like the “breaking down of the nuclear family.”
And I’m like: “What? You mean the Industrial Revolution?” The dumbfounded looks people give me are priceless.
I am dumbfounded too by this reply, since the nuclear family is more of a 20th century thing. What do you mean by Industrial Revolution?
@@julecaesara482 well it’s meant to be tongue in cheek, but what I meant is when the Industrial Revolution turned us from a primarily agrarian society, in which men and women both worked at home and household duties were shared; into a more industrial one, men (and a lot of women) were now working outside the home, that is basically where the “break up of the nuclear family” happened. But it’s tongue in cheek because this was, as you said, well before the concept of the nuclear family was created AND because the nuclear family is more of a myth perpetuated by Hollywood and advertising and very few people actually fit into it.
Yeah, and how about the commonality of death by childbirth among all classes but especially the lower, all while taking their children before their age reaches double digits to work the same as an adult in dangerous factory work? You think that might break up the family a little bit? Because if Trumplicans have their way, that’s coming back
@@ProfessionalMonsterAmi ahh okay I didn't connect working outside the home with the breakup of the nuclear family.
@@ProfessionalMonsterAmithanks for that reply!
We stand on the shoulders of giants in continuing to fight for women's rights today
What rights do women want now?
Watched it happen to my grandma and my mom. My grandfather truly respected my grandmother, and her sacrifices, making her a part of business decisions too, but my dad is an insecure, misogynistic pos. I’ll be the first woman in my family to get a real choice. Neither one of them even had hobbies. My mom doesn’t even know her favorite color.
@@Noname-ok4tf 😥
💔
You will find out too late that he considers the money he brings in, enabled by your support and sacrifice, to be HIS money when he decides to divorce you because he met someone younger. He has no respect for what you do. None.
I am a 65-year-old wife and mother. I raised 2 daughters to be able to do things they needed and not rely on a man. If you choose to share your life with a man, it should be as equal partners and not anything lesser. I do enjoy cooking. I actually enjoy looking after my home. These things may be traditional on the surface, but I can assure you I am anything but traditional. Doing traditional things should be your choice if you enjoy them, not because it's your place. When men want a "traditional wife", all I see is fear. These are small, weak men who need to subjugate someone. Parents need to raise their children without the boundaries of gender and societal roles. Wouldn't be wonderful to value someone for who they are and not what the rules tells them to be.
35 years of an equal partnership with my husband, I could not agree more. Sometimes, I earned more, and sometimes he did. I took time off work for the first year of our first child's life, and my husband took a year off work for the first year of our second child's. I'm more academically educated ( with a Masters) with business skills. He left school at 15 and can turn his hand to any trade skill. He likes cooking. I like mowing the lawn. We've never, ever, ever, ever defined roles in our marriage as gendered. We are equals but with different strengths and preferences. We both hate cleaning the toilet. 😂
@@triarb5790 Ultimately, I think the issue is the title. If a woman wants to be a traditional wife, Leave it to Beaver-style, who am I to belittle or condemn her? It has no effect on me, it does not change who I am. We need to stop putting people in pigeonholes and thinking we know everything about them. Pretty much everybody hate cleaning the toilet, regardless of sex, colour, orientation. Although, I understand that in Japan cleaning a toilet keeps you humble. Come to think of it, a clean toilet is really quite lovely.
Yayyy, moms... We love you for raising us how you did. And we are absolutely grateful. I am not letting myself be subjugated for some man or family to feel good about it. You people have worked so hard to give us the education and the confidence. We are fighting this forever.
@@sengarics All children should be raised to be strong and independent and the same, regardless of sex or orientation.
Since I've left Christianity, I also see this sneaking into spirituality by focusing on "masculine and feminine energy," but defining it by the activities (working a regular job vs keeping a home) one performs - instead of - an essence of Being (doing vs receiving for example which we all do both!). It’s sneaky! And often just another way men and women feel like they're doing it "wrong" if their biological sex doesn't match their "primary energy."
Yes, one could consider it nearly the same in a different costume.
I couldn't agree more! There is so much of this crap both in "New Age spirituality" and neoPaganism. I'm proud to be a neoPagan, but there is a side of it that is really icky and does the opposite of empower women, in my opinion. A tendency to see women a basically a walking uterus whose "power" is derived mainly from her ability to "create life".
I know a guy, he's my good friend, who's slowly falling away from that thinking. He's better than he was when I met him 3 years ago. But just last year, he got on me about whistling. I'm a woman, I like to whistle because it helps my anxiety. He asked me how I was doing that. And I was confused, because he can whistle too. I said, "I learned when I was a kid."
He said "Well, it's not very feminine."
I shrugged and agreed to a degree, a lot of women don't whistle, but I do. He went on to say he hates seeing masculine traits in women. He says that quite a lot, actually.
He used to get on me about all of my more masculine habits.
One year, when I was very, very depressed, as i often am, he told me, as if he were a licensed doctor, to have a baby because that'll make me happy, and saying "Women love that shit."
I said, "Well, I don't."lol
@@lepapercastle Why is he "a good friend"?!?
@ yuck I’m sorry that behavior is ridiculous
"Marketed to women " is spot on. I found handouts and booklets given to my mother in the economics class of 1955. It was all about getting them to buy the right stuff so they were ready to be the perfect wif and look perfect for thier husband and also be sure children looked perfect.
It still is marketed to women. Because women have the buying power. Nara, Ballerina Farmer...etc...it's all propaganda designed to market to women. Don't believe me? Go look at the tools they are using (if not directly selling), affiliate links, sponsorships....all designed to make a buck. As for the content itself, 30 sec TikTok making homemade cheese and bread for a grilled cheese by LUNCHTIME? WHAT? Or, "oh I am just going to make homemade yogurt for lunch today while I make sure all the farm animals are fed, clean out stalls, restack hay, fix that barn door lock, milk the cows and goats and oh yea, reshingle the roof, but I'll have yogurt to look forward to in an hour".....are you freaking kidding me? #1 it's impossible to do all of that yourself and your selling your Tiktok as being only you and #2 you have a freaking STAFF of people to do all the things for you because your job isn't doing all the things, it's setting up the camera SHOWING you doing all the things and coming up with new things to keep your audience engaged. Let's be honest, these 'trad wives' are CEO's running a business, selling an image and marketing the heck out of it all. And probably work 150 hrs a week to get just THAT done all to sell to women. So KUDOS to those that make it successful. Wish I had because after 17 years of real trad wife with a controlling spouse...I was left penniless and in the fight of my life for my children.
It's called Instagram these days...
Be a good consumer drone.
@@leanordials8008 are you suggesting it's anti feminist to aim marketing at women? Even though they spend more money than men, even back when they were earning less..
? ?
My husband and I have been together since we were 15. We have three beautiful children. When the kids were little I worked at night so I could be home with them during the day and also went to school! I used to do all the things in the home and with one of my children having special needs we cooked everything from scratch since he had a very strict diet. My husband worked hard but would also help do the dishes or help around the house and always helped with his children. Now 24 years later I am in my dream career and getting my masters. Yes we can play into our gender roles but we also need to remember that person is my partner and we need to support one another. My husband does laundry and makes dinner and I have mowed the lawn now these are not our normal working roles but when they need to get done and my partner or I need help with these items we jump and and help each other. This is what makes it all work being there for one another and not being so ridiculous about roles that they must follow!!
This is a beautiful perspective that you have shared here. It sounds a bit like my mom and dad
This is great content. Especially with this right wing manosphere that seems to despise women and honestly seems to see women as less than human. These folks are truly troubled and need to search their hearts. They need better role models and to abandon this alpha mess. Good men are out there. I’m married to one. If you’re a good man be a mentor and model decent behavior. Some people can’t be helped because they don’t want to, but I believe many can. Just listen. Some may just need a level headed person to talk to. Mothers need to make sure their children respect them but not fear them. Women are not just supposed to be servants of our children and spouses. We are humans, not automatons or Stepford wives. We need to change this extreme narrative. Again, thanks for your channel.
"Capacities are needs, and they clamor to be used." That explains a lot.
YES!!!
Oh yeah
I got married, aged 18, in 1973. I thought I was in love, that he loved me. All rosy. I also thought I was entering a partnership. Unfortunately, he thought he was being adopted. It took me 3 years to give up on him and go my own way, do my own thing, make my own life. When I was 43, I met my current man. I have a horrible feeling that this time, I was adopted. A balanced partnership seems to be incredibly difficult to form and maintain.
I cant believe we’ve devolved so much we have to have this conversation again.
I still have to stand up for myself at 65 to be respected. And I still do
I’m 67 and still fighting the stereotypes.
I have no patience for people who come here to comment on 'toxic feminism', when Patriarchy is fatal to women. My sister was a trad wife. She was married for 18 years with this man, had three kids, took care of them alone, did all the work in the house, cooked, washed clothes and pressed his uniform for him every single day, as his worked required it to be pressed. He morally abused her, hit her. At some point, in the beginning of the marriage, she had a job working for a TV station where she was the number one seller of advertisement slots. When he saw she was making more money then him, he forbade that. And since they were church goers, the pressure for her to obey him was great, she left her job. One beautiful day, he decided he was in love with another woman, he left. He took everything, and I mean everything, the car, and even an expensive stove I had bought for her. Left her with nothing. No, not with nothing. He left her with thousands of dollars in debt. She has two daughters who are now young women and will NEVER be a trad wife. They saw for themselves the danger of being submissive while totally disenfranchised.
Omg I'm so sorry.This is exactly what I try to tell my kids when they think this lifestyle sounds nice. You have no power when you have no money. What if the husband dies or leaves the wife for another woman? These women seem so miserable in this trapped type of life too. There are so many good men & it would be amazing to find the love of your life, but not to be a servant
There is legit no such thing as "toxic feminism" and anyone who argues there is isn't being genuine, they're just trying to piss you off and waste your time/energy so you can't use it to better the world and make it less exploitable by shitty people like them. 💅 Keep that brain fabulous ❤
P.s. I'm terribly sorry to hear that happened to your sister and nieces. I hope she can get some sort of alimony or debt discharge.
Patriarchy is supported by religions of the world. I hope that your sister is doing well. It's good that your nieces learned from this experience.
People who comment on toxic femininity here can definitely look inward. But your story, while deeply tragic, appeals to emotions only. It’s just one data point.
A lot of the women around me have been diagnosed with autoimmune disorders after having been in longterm romantic relationships. It's like their bodies are forcing them to stop. At least one's seen sudden and persistent remission of symptoms after divorce.
Finding fulfillment in a wider variety of meaningful ways, by creative exploration, can only help women. There's no reason why there should be only one or two ways to build a life.
This is so true. When your conscious decisions do not match what you really think it eventually manifests as some sort of disease. Usually mental and ametional at first. Then if not corrected it manifests physically. These concepts of what a women is supposed to be is literally causing suffering and death of women. I'm saw it give my mother alzheimers/dementia. When you look at the photos of her throughout her marriage you can see the stress her trad wife life put on her. But she wouldn't break with it. Even when it seriously harmed her children.
I have late diagnosed ASD and ADHD, I grew up in a household where it was just kind of expected that I’d have a kid by the time I was 20, so as a person that doesn’t understand, or even enjoy the social side of life, not going down that route (whilst I’m happy I didn’t), made me feel like I’d basically failed at life. I’ve had many years of dealing with depression and anxiety partially as a result of that. Now that I finally know, I’ve come to the realisation that I don’t need to meet anyone else’s expectations, nor their standards. And I’ve been able to start building my life in a way that is fulfilling for me. I don’t hate the Trad wives, but I worry for them, because it seems like they are giving up who they are, as well as future security, for something that developed at a time when women literally belonged to the men in her life, history has already proven how bad that was for them. It seems like a very strange thing to romanticise.
You and me both buddy. It took me until recently to realize that I was a lesbian and that I could be happy without kids. So I know how you feel.
I'll just say, as a Lesbian, I respect Simmone De Beauvoir and Betty Friedan.
They were pro-women and laid the groundwork.
Nearly *everyone* who is a historical figure is a "product of their time" and I think we need to remember not to judge people who lived & died before our time by modern standards.
I don’t have any problems with Trad wives choosing this life. However, do not normalize this. These women do not realize how women gained their financial independence. Women were trapped and could not leave their marriages. If a husband died or left them, they had no means to support themselves.
Second that
I have struggled with feeling more like a robot than a person in my roles at home. It's not for a lack of my family helping out around the house or whatever, but having felt this pressure for my entire life to be the perfect wife and mother and find the greatest joy in that--- that nothing could or should ever compete. My husband has encouraged me to do other things outside the home, but I feel so unqualified and inexperienced, even as a college graduate because I haven't worked more than a very part-time job for the past 16 years. I really don't want to be a broken empty nester when my kids are gone in 10ish years and my husband is still working. It's just hard to find the confidence to put myself out there as anything more than a wife and mom when I've set everything else about myself aside for this.
I stepped out after over 25 years in the home. It was a little scary at first (and my now-ex didn’t like how I grew, though he did like the money I earned), but I am THRIVING. Seriously, hold your nose and jump. You will swim, and you will be so glad. ❤️❤️
Look into things you enjoy doing as a hobby , or volunteer to help a charity or something, sure there are plenty of places that would love an extra pair of hands , If you make a " retirement bplan" , before it happens , you will not be bored and doing things outside the house , your husband and family will be proud of you for doing it and it will give you something to talk about.
PLEASE start by volunteering and gaining skills. Many community organizations are desperate for help. I never had kids - my mom definitely showed me that a man is not a plan - but my professional success largely came out of volunteering!
Also you probably built more skills than you realize. Studies show moms are more efficient and more empathetic. I bet you’ve juggled schedules and multitasked and handled demanding clients ;) Finding some place to get your awesomeness down on your resume will help but I’m sure you’ve already got a lot of strength and badassery in you to find and enjoy new things that bring you joy.
Grrrl, it’s hard for those of us who have never lived the tradwife thing. So, breathe, and take those first steps, you got this!
My sister in law lost her husband to cancer. The last year of his life she spent so many hours in hospitals with him while her parents were looking after the kids. My nieces lost their father at age 12 and 9 and because before he got sick he had stopped paying for his insurance at a certain point, his family got nothing after he died, except a small pension from the state.
Luckily my sister in law is a biologist and had been working already for nearly 20 years and her colleagues had helped her a lot in those times. Due to her job the family only lost their father and not also their house and neighbourhood, aka social network.
What I can't understand is how people still think there is this possibility of happiness if you live by some prescribed doctrine. "If I just do this, then I'll actually be happy and that sinking feeling in my stomach, the constant self doubt, and my agitation with my daily existence will disappear." People are designed in our very marrow to be discontented, to be constantly striving. I can't even with all the patriarchy. Makes me sick how we can't ever seem to escape it.
Such a great video, Amy. I remember learning about the concept of invisible labor, and being surprised at how much societal pressure is placed on women to bear an outsized (if not total) share of it.
Yes the thing that gets me is expecting women to do everything that is expected of women + work full time OR do everything expected of women & you have no actual monetary value for all you do thus you have no power. It should just be Flint blank equal all around. Be with the love of your life & be full partners
I've been thinking a lot lately about the current wave of feminism and how a woman should be free to make any choice she wants, and I wholeheartedly agree! But tradwife trend stuff made me feel uncomfortable, and I didn't know why. What you said about indoctrination and that when you don't think there's anything else available to you other than that role, is that really a choice... That's a great point! Thank you, it gave me lots of food for thought
The most ironic thing to me about the whole tradwife influencer, is that if they really believed the things they say they wouldn't be on Tiktok showing cleavage just to make some money
@@Brian-bw3uu never criticise cleavage showing!
Also what are they supposed to do all day otherwise?
Or making food in dresses that would be ruined by a single food stain.
@sundayoliver3147 that's what aprons are for
Also your thinking of trad wife influencers rather than actual stay at home mums
As a divorced woman who was a single mom, I was the glue that held the family together until I couldn't any longer. I am a small f feminist and proud of my son and my 32 year career in health care. Women come in many forms but we're all women. We can stop judging each other and start helping each other.
"You are not crazy, and you are not alone." Oh, Amy! Your explanation of where we are today makes it all clear. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
A clean house is a sign of a mis-spent life. (Gloria Steinem). We did this work in the 60 and 70. Didn't anyone pass this information on to you? Never thought I would have to hear this shit again.
Your generation didn’t erase sexism and the patriarchy, because thousands of years of attitudes and laws can’t be changed in 1 generation.
I need a clean house. It helps my brain work better but to each his own.
Ooh I love that quote, thank you OP!
@@DAnne-hd4ccthe general point of the quote seems, to me, like it takes issue more with women obsessing over domestic perfection as opposed to finding fulfillment. It wasn't about hating on being organized or tidy, just making the point that there are much bigger and better things women can and should do with their lives.
Hope that cleared this up for you.
And I can't feel normal unless my house is a mess. Lol
IMO, the trad wife route has a 15-25 year life span. Husbands may stray, children will grow. It's crucial to have self supporting skills and a vocation that interests you, because you will need them.
I'm sick of people weirdly obsessed with trad wifes. Nara Smith is not a trad wife. She's a working model. Stop pinning trad label on her.
There is nothing traditional aboutball of these people that pose as tradwives...
I know my grandmother was a traditional housewife, that went to church on every sunday and lived on a farm, and indeed she made everything in the kitchen from scratch.
The thing is that it was just not so glamorous, my grandfather was not a good husband and people seem to forget that these animals are all cute and bearable to hang around with, until you are asked to also turn them into sausages. My grandmother did not cook food from scratch because of some cooking principles, but because those were the ingredients she had available to her, and when she was not looking after her 3 children, she was busy doing farmwork just like my grandfather.
Apparently my cousin obsered my grandfather ranting in the kitchen one day, when my grandmother had passed, angry about not knowing how to cook a bowl of pasta "I'm glad this woman is finally dead!"
This is who she has dedicated her life to, a man that had to learn at age 60 how to cook and was happy for her death.
I share this with people because frankly, I hope it wakes someone up from this scam.
@@corneliahanimann2173 The SAHM lifestyle specifically largely relied on the labor of Black women. Otherwise women by and large had to work beside their husband (for lower wages of course while also performing hidden labor).
@@corneliahanimann2173 There were also disabled SAHMs like my great grandmother (Native American/Spaniard) who were dirt poor and relied on family for support.
@@TheCakeIsALie-1 I'm sorry I'm Swiss, we didn't do that stufd during those times, but I believe that that has happened.
@corneliahanimann2173 They're cosplaying.
my mom was a homemaker. but she was also a gym rat who loved to work out, had been to both Greace and Italy, was the first person on the dance floor at any party, and was passionate about Italian cuisine. Looking back I will always admire my mom for being a housewife because she wanted to be and refusing to make that the only thing about her.
My client is 78 and has her Masters in education, but often tells me her life story of dealing with the toxic husband traits that appeared the second they got married. Being a slave to a home is no life. I'm pretty independent and revolutionary myself, but do feel called to homemaking - however it's not the entirety of my desires and I believe in a man sharing those chores with me. I watched my mother both work full time and be a homemaker while my father never lifted a finger. Trad husbands can easily lean into thinking their job is to be served instead of actually being true leaders.
Great breakdown of Second Sex and Feminine Mystique. Would love to see you similarly breakdown Germaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch” and the role of marriage within patriarchy. 😊
Trad wife is nice as long as your partner has a good to very good income, is life long faithful, does not turn out to be violent or develops other nasty habits like alcohol, gambling etc and does not ruin his business on the way, gets seriously sick etc. And you both get along long term. But at the start of the relationship you have no way of knowing if this will be the case until your death. So, you may very well live out your trad wife dream for a couple of years only to see your cushy stay at home wife/mom lifestyle shatter by any of the above mentioned factors. And then what.
When I chose to stay home when my children were young, it was not at all for the sake of my husband but for the sake of my children. I guess this “trad wife” thing is women w/o children staying home which does seem silly, but when you bring children into the mix, it’s a totally different story.
I wrote my history PhD thesis about Betty Freidan . Well done! My conclusion was that feminism didn’t turn out quite like Friedan had planned and society is worse off because her vision was hijacked. At any rate, you did a superb job of summarizing Beauvoir and Friedan!
Is your thesis available to read online? While I think de Beauvoir and Friedan meant very well, my personal take is that they sold out women in many ways. I'd be interested to read your take on them though. I actually think that Elizabeth Warren's book The Two Income Trap is most instructive of what was unintentionally unleashed by the feminist movement.
what great content you produce, just love it. Finally a channel truly worth sharing. This brings healing and truth, instead of anger and division. Thank you.
I’m not a woman, but I thought this was a fantastic explanation. I look forward to watching more of your content. We really need this right now. Especially right now.
Thank you! I’m a female attorney, “well educated” and I had only heard bits and pieces of this. Very helpful and gave me a reading list. PS I went to a Baptist university before law school. 🤦♀️🤔
I’m so glad I’m finally finding incredible women educational RUclipsrs 😭
I never really saw m grandmother happy, other than when playing with a baby - until my grandfather passed on. Then it became hard to keep up with her. She was bright, too, but was stuck raising 7 children and tending to household chores for many years and later working for meager wages. I believe Maslow calls the top need “self actualization” - which men were told means reaching the highest possible level in work and always being the head of the family, while women have been told it means having and raising children and tending to the home in order to help THE MAN REACH THE PINNACLE OF HIS CAREER AND HAVE A FAMILY AND ROOST TO RULE. Women have been viewed as variations on men - not ever to come first.
I work full time, speak 4 languages and cook clean and have a vegetable garden and I am a women. My husband doesn’t have a chance 😂
I'm a loving wife with 4 grown children. BUT I'm equal to my husband with the same rights in our partnership!
We both decide everything together.
My grandmother and my mother were fighting for womens rights. We should be proud of them and go on on the way of equality. For men and women.
You may have covered this in other videos, but the part of patriarchy that these two venerable ancestor women did not talk about is violence. Aside from all these ideological and performative constraints that keep women in their place, there is the constant and unending threat of violence at the hands of men. Statistics tell us that 1 in 4 women will be the victim of some kind of male violence in her life. And that is a very low stat because it takes into account only one such instance per woman. But I, like many women, have been the victim of multiple acts of violence by multiple men. (Robbed at knife point twice. Hit by a partner. Knocked down by an assailant. Sexually harassed with violence at work.) And that doesn't even touch on the more subtle forms of psychological violence. Being patronized by men. Having our opinions and thoughts ignored or discounted by men. Being passed over for promotion in favor of a man. And on. And on. And on. And my story is not at all unique. So another reason women embrace this "trad role" is that they know in their deepest heart of hearts that they are not safe and they want the protection that goes with the performance of this role. Good luck with that, ladies as I had a male partner when most of those incidents happened, but guess what. HE WAS NOT THERE AT THE TIME! Nor would he have had the capability to "protect me." So our choice is to stay safe IN OUR HOMES, keeping away from all the male violence that is "out there."
So many stories tell us that the "virtuous" woman is protected while other types of women deserve what they get. I think in modern society, we don't realize how much of our thinking is still magical thinking. Why can't women just live and be allowed to live as we wish?
Loved this video. Such a compassionate and well researched response.
Your work is changing culture! So grateful to have learned about you from a fellow learner.
A man is not a plan.
As I recall clearly….far too many women in the 60’s and 79’s were beyond drugged by physicians… Valium, Librium, Seconal, all benzos, and speed for those with weight issues… Mixed with an old fashion after 4pm… It was hidden, yet acceptable madness…
Mother’s little helper…
Hell yeah this was great. Definitely worth a share
Due to chronic medical issues, I accidentally ended up in a traditional female role. I need to cook from scratch, and because I was unable to hold paid employment, I took over most of the housework. Should I be able to take a job again, my husband and I will share the housework again.
I’m grateful for the recovery time, but staying at home with no income but your husband’s is a precarious financial position to be in. I don’t like it. And spending most of your life in the location where you are providing labor makes it harder to get rest. And it’s also isolating.
Thanks a lot for your content ❤️ We need it now more than ever.
Well… we thought we knew better. Then came the election…
When I was little in the 60’s I understood I had a choice to be Liberated… that is how I’ve lived and yes being a stay at home mom was depressing. If we lived communally I believe the boredoms would be relieved as the burdens would be shared. It’s too much to be all that every day for a nuclear family. If I could have cleaned two houses and feed my family with food from another cook well then I would have been much happier.
My ex told me that I had to accept a woman’s lot in life and be happy with it. I went back to school and earned my Master’s Degree and made more money than he did. It was very hard to extricate myself from his mindset bc the kids agreed with him. All men in the house. I was treated as a “pack animal”.
You said something that made me think just now, about unlocking historical work already done Re the Patriarchy. Everything was unlocked by the boomer generation, ( those of us who didn’t betray ourselves in the end by greed). Great academic treatises were written on feminism, civil rights were championed in the streets, many breakthroughs in nutrition and the curse of processed food were unfolding, prophecies were made( Bob Dylan)
Alternative living and homes were explored. Then THE MAN as we used to call it, got nervous about losing control, and here we are.
@@dfree1here the 60s and also feminism have both been promoted by powers beyond your understanding for reasons you cannot comprehend (in part very mundane self serving reasons)
My mother was abused by her alcoholic father and her mother was constantly working both in and out of the home. She saw marriage and being a housewife as an opportunity to give her children a different life. I think that the basics laid out in this video are correct, but that there is more nuance to history than we always see in the bigger picture.
As a zillenial woman, I think the appeal of the trad wife content has a lot to do with backlash against the toxic feminism that was shoved down our throats growing up.
Just like “the problem that has no name” of the fifties and sixties, I experienced my own “problem that had no name” as a high achieving woman. I joined the boys wrestling team, I became a personal trainer, I learned to code, I earned a degree in STEM, and got a great job that challenged my intellect after college. But I was depressed. Miserable even. I wanted a family. I wanted the time to create a peaceful home.
I think all human beings, regardless of sex, need holistic lives. We can’t be regulated to “homemaker” or “boss babe”. We can’t be told to exhibit only feminine traits or be told only masculine ones are good, we need balance. I think the trad wife movement is a reaction to the boss babe era and the lack of choices women face today in this economy. Many women WANT to spend time at home caring for their families, but they can’t because the new expectation is that they work outside the home. In many circles, housework and childcare is deemed less valuable (another symptom of sexism that is often tolerated by modern feminists). This rejection of traditional femininity has turned off many women, including myself.
Despite all the male spaces I entered, the time in my life where I experienced the most sexism was when I chose to become a mother. Our society does not value the work of mothers. Mothers today are grossly overworked and expected to hold a full time job on top of it. Feminists will claim that men are to blame because they aren’t sharing household responsibilities, but when it comes to the childcare of small children, there are just some things that need “mommy”. Whether it’s breastfeeding or snuggles or midnight bad dreams, my kids will downright reject dad no matter how hard he tries. Not only that, but I WANT to stay home with my kids at this stage in life. I crave it. That doesn’t mean I’ll never work again, or that I don’t have any hobbies, but I have a desire to be a mother and I’m tired of being told that that desire is misplaced and is feeding into the patriarchy. That’s bullshit. Just as telling me I can’t wrestle or code is bullshit.
The expectations that I had to continue pursuing my career six weeks after birthing the most important humans in my life nearly killed me. I was losing my mind trying to “have it all” and no women should ever be put under that kind of pressure. No one made that reality clear to me growing up; that working while having babies was literally working two full time jobs plus overtime. Working moms were glamorized, they were “empowered”. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. So of course, the rosy videos of women leisurely wearing aprons baking bread with a home full of happy stress-free children looks idyllic.
My family, like most Americans, cannot afford to live on one income. I had to save a mini “baby retirement” fund from my income to be able to stay at home with my kids. Many women don’t have that luxury.
Until the feminist movement supports women who want to be mothers and stay at home parents, this type of content will continue to be appealing and will continue to push the pendulum into unhealthy extremes.
This is really nuanced and well written, thanks. You put my frustration into words.
Beautifully put. It's insane that we don't have a mindset of "you know, it's okay to have 5 years of your life where you either don't work or work less." I know many moms who'd like to have a job of, like, 20 hours a week, just to be part of the workforce, earn money, have the intellectual stimulus, but also have the time to keep shit together at home and actually be with their kids. As you say, balance. To me, it would make sense that it was more wide-spread to do part-time while having small kids.
Do you have paid maternity leave in the US? Also unpaid maternity leave where your job is held open for you (often for about a year) and filled by a temp until you return. We have this in Australia and it means a woman can take her time retuning to work after giving birth. Going part time is also common and some jobs have a right to request. I think only giving yourself 6 weeks after childbirth is crazy. I can see why there might be the appeal for the trad wife movement in the absence of strong maternity leave provisions.
But I think the trad wife movement is a trap and puts women in a vulnerable position where the hope is that the man will always be there to provide and there will be no unexpected adverse events. I often think about an elderly extended family member , who lost her much loved first husband at an early age due to a sudden health event, was left with 2 boys, and was economically forced to remarry to a man who made her rehome her teenaged boys, as he didn’t want them around. He didn’t tell her until the day before the wedding. She had no choice, as women did not work outside the home back then in large numbers and she had no skills. So the boys had to leave and live with aunties. Fortunately, the boys forgave her and the second husband didn’t live very long anyway.
You make very valid points and articulate them very well! Society must definitely support motherhood. Eg. paid maternal leave, subsidized childcare, subsidized maternal and infant healthcare, tax rebates to companies with child-friendly policies like flexitime/ part-time/ hybrid/ WFH work options for parents or creche facilities, social safety net for non-working parents etc.
I also strongly believe many of these laws/ policies should be gender-neutral or at the least inclusive of fathers too. Eg. Paternal leave too is important, though it could be less than maternal leave because obviously she's the one who's going through pregnancy, nursing etc. Also flexible work options could be gender neutral so that the parents could decide which one should stay home and when (it obviously also depends on the nature of work).
On the other hand, the criticism you bring forth about housework and childcare not being valued is more so a criticism of capitalism and patriarchy, not feminism.
By value, i assume what you mean is economic value? Because mothers are respected, sure, but that respect does not ultimately translate into any economic value. Which renders it essentially "meaningless" in the sense that it does not offer the woman control or power in terms of opportunities, decision-making or access to resources. This is a fundamental issue of capitalism, if we remove the gender lens we can see the same issue where a stay at home man wouldn't have any economic value or power either (see what happens to our dads if they retire without a prudent retirement plan - they may have once been a CEO, scientist or brain surgeon but regardless very quickly become obsolete and disposable).
How patriarchy ties into it is because the socioeconomic structures themselves were/ are designed to provide economic value to traditionally "masculine" roles rather than "feminine" ones. This was the mechanism used over centuries to keep women sytemically marginalized and subjugated - through reinforcing economic dependence on men.
My parents were born in the late 1920s. My mother didn't work outside of the home until I went to school in 1971. I remember my dad being so proud of my mother having her own job, making her own money, and having her own bank account. It was a point of pride for him that she was independent. I guess because that meant she was with him, for himself, and not exclusively for what he could provide for her.
My horrible MIL came to visit my husband in our little apartment with limited space. I asked my husband to hand me a plate and she YELLED, “ He never had to help at home”! She was just awful.
Excellent summary of those concepts.
There is another issue that often these categorisations and their social norms means that the rationalisations talk past each other. This means the vocabulary of trad and liberated [women/men (*)] have a 4-way conflict that greatly resembles similar arguments in approaches to Management (I wonder why).
In particular, the Competing Values Framework (CVF) of Quinn and Rohrbaugh is a useful way of extending the usual us/them [unresolvable] conflict approach into a wider model that helps one appreciate where help can be found and the important comparisons and vocabulary for each of the different groups.
My mother would get upset if I mentioned that I was a science teacher, because science was a MAN'S JOB. It was OK to say I was a teacher, because that is an acceptable job for a woman. Needless to say, my mother and I did not agree with many things I did.
Always informative, Amy. Thank you!
I married at 19 in 1962. I finished college in large part because my husband wanted his wife to have a degree. Our son was born between my last finial and graduation. I was happy being a wife, mother, and community contributor. My skills brought more to the family than a job would have. I don’t regret my choice, but I do see how much my life then and as a child was controlled by patriarchy.
This made me think of two of the books that broke the 1950s, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit & Peyton Place. Both books, and then movies, break the glossy image so often presented of that time. If you’re watching the movies another Lana Turner film, she’s in Peyton Place, from 1959 that I find emotionally exhausting is Imitation of Life. A James Dean trio of Rebel Without a Cause, Giant, and East of Eden will make you question those happy days.
Thank you for this presentation.
Wow. This was absolutely phenomenal. Thank you!!!
My trad grandma wasn't happy or appreciated fully throughout her six decades of marriage. I'd heard horrible stories, and I am really terrified with how women were exploited and underappreciated over a few millenia with not even being fully able to understand they're being used in every way.
All of this is further spiced up with traditional religious texts, which the indoctrinated women irrationally wish to follow, hoping that the carefully crafted formula of obsolete rules will bring them happiness.
Divide and conquer.
Judgement and shame.
All a manipulation.
Be who you want to be.
Live life as you will.
Act with integrity.
EVERY THING ELSE is designed to destroy peaceful existence.
Very interesting and enlightening content. Thank you. It makes me wonder, is the issue curiously that women like to focus on others rather than themselves? Like ants, which one could equate us to on a certain level, there are some meant to or choose to simply do, follow the rules, don't question. And there are some destinated for more. In other words, we leave those women who wish to be Trad Women to carry on. And those of us who wish to be other, or more, do so. Why do we care so much about those that are not searching for ... more? Too much time is maybe spent on trying to change others rather than shouting from the roof tops and showcasing those of us who have 'more'.
I really love how you break down topics ❤
Oh, that capacities quote. It explains so much ❤
Thank you, the lesson was clear. I think partnerships are the best relationships.
It’s seems like the trad wife appeal is due to (as the youth say) exhaustion from late stage capitalism. Women are unhappy with America’s nonstop work culture & trad wifery seems an appealing alternative. It’s hard for them to imagine how difficult that lifestyle is too b/c maybe they’ve never actually seen how it tends to play out.
When I was in late elementary school and early middle school there was a commercial with a woman singing ‘I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you’re a man’. I remember as a kid thinking ‘why do I have to do it all just because I’m female? Now I’m a married adult. My husband works from home while I go out and teach axe throwing. He is at home and we share the work.
Excellent, well done, I learned a lot.
Excellent video as always!
My husband and I share the workload at home. We don’t have kids but we are a team. Because we share the work we both have time to pursue our own interests.
People overwhelmed by choice are prone to giving up their ability to choose. 😢 I feel it when I go shopping or try to choose what to eat.
Most Black homes in my world growing up had both parents working they didn't have the option of having the Mom stay home especially if they were "Strivers".
After 7 yrs. of marriage, my ex-husband developed into an abusive alcoholic. God knows I fought for him but there was nothing I could do to stop his trajectory. When it got dangerous & we had to leave, I was thankful to have a 'career' to fall back on. Trad moms are betting life will be fair.
Empowerment is about being able to choose what the couple want.
If you want to be a homemaker and parent, and the family can afford to live on one wage (which is usually the real issue), then go for it. That applies to men too. If their wife has the income, then he should be able to stay at home and cook lasagne from scratch.
I am totally a product of feminism. I wasn’t even going to get married when I was a teenager. I have read a lot of feminist literature and am totally on board with what you are saying.
The key is equality and not one partner being submissive to the other. If a woman or man stay at home to care for a family, then that is a choice we should respect. Sometimes it is a real choice and not about indoctrination.
I am saying this as someone who has worked all their life. I feel disappointment from my job and not feeling achievement from my work.
The beginning: The Chalice and the Blade A book by Riane Eisler Worth a read.
My aunt spoke to me about “magazine women” and how much my grandmother went from successful business woman to what Jung call “playing the anima” and it was in my grandmother that this Intergenerational “role” came into our family line. I’m a feminist and believe in equal rights and I think people should do whatever feels right.
The irony is that Simone de Beauvoir was cheated on relentlessly by Sartre, who refused to ever make any commitment to her. So yeah, she pointed out some problems, but weirdly put up with the same, if not more, crap, than most. And Friedan basically called housewives useless and parasites. While both of these women started conversations, I don't personally think they did much to make women more respected. They didnt respect other women. So yeah, trad wives are "stupid," but the constant demonization of "wifery" just needs to stop for true feminism to move forward. Is there a middle path?
Simone de Beauvoir was a privileged woman and a PDF sympathizer, she didn't marry or have children. I can't fathom why her opinions are relevant to the majority of women.
I do not have any problem with a women choosing to be a trad wife, if she is loving this model. But I do not understand the toxic trait, that everything has to be like in a Disney movie and perfect with to much sugar coat. So I prefer homestading, sustainibility, love, respect and a helping hand from everyone and the sense that nothing in this world is perfect for everyone. Do what your inner wisdom leads you. And not what a role Model tells you to do. And above all dont forget love and the main rule that nature is above everything. So do not destroy ecosystems for luxury or a stupid image you want to build just for fame or your ego.
My mom was technically a stay-at-home mom, but she had numerous hobbies and did a lot of community volunteer work, she was in no way a bored or depressed "housewife". She was not married to her house, she was married to Daddy. She had a motto," My house is clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy."
We burned bras, et al, so women could have options. One option is stay at home mom. Another is career., We did that so women could do what we wanted in that direction.
Sadly, it hasn't worked. For most women there is only one choice, if they want to have children. And that is taking care of the children and having a job. Once you have children it becomes increasingly impossible to also have a career.
@@OctoberOctopusM Because people think like YOU.
@@artfuldodger7838 No, more likely because burning a bra is a useless thing to do ....
@@OctoberOctopusM Only a man would say that. You needn't say anything further. I know who you voted for. Had you been in person, you'd be wiping my spit off your face. Go away,.
No fault divorce is about to be prohibited in favor of forcing women to remain in abusive marriages
An abusive partner would be an "at fault divorce". No fault divorces are amicable divorces that usually are because they "fell out of love."
@@awilson8521Where's the proof for your assertion? It's just your opinion.
@@rejectionisprotection4448 It's common sense. You don't need proof for EVERY word that you utter.
@@awilson8521 No fault divorces are far less expensive than the alternative. Of course, it would be to the advantage of the legal profession to have them done away with. A good share of politicians are attorneys and the Bar Association is one of the biggest lobbies in Washington.
@@awilson8521Which is a perfectly fine reason to divorce...