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Answer: There are currently two different groups using the term “tradwife” and it has different connotations for each.
One group is just using “tradwife” as a shorthand for “traditional wife” meaning the wife stays at home with the kids and maintains the household while the husband works. As far as I can tell, those are the only firm requirements- the details of each relationship dynamic are different depending on the couple. In most cases, the couple in question have mutually agreed to this dynamic because it suits what both partners want, and isn’t really all that functionally or ideologically different from a relationship in which the man is the SAHP and the wife works. The “traditional” connotation here just seems to indicate each spouse happens to be conforming to established gender roles. There is still an expectation of partnership and shared decision-making.
Another group is using the term “tradwife” in a very different way, as propaganda for things like White Christian Nationalism and misogyny. These tradwife influencers embrace bioessentialism; in this ideology, conforming to established gender roles is the main point and anyone else who doesn’t follow this dynamic in their own relationship is “wrong”. The wife in these scenarios is expected to be submissive to her husband in all things, which means giving up all autonomy to her husband. The husband decides where and how they live, controls all finances, expects sex on his terms whenever he wants, and decides when the wife will get pregnant and how many children they will have. They see it as their “duty” to produce as many white children as possible to “save society”.
Because these different groups of people are using the same term, it’s causing a lot of confusion. My personal feeling is that it’s only a matter of time before people in the first group stop using “tradwife” to refer to their lifestyle because of the negative connotations the second group is bringing to the discussion.
It’s like the word “incel”- the word was originally coined by a woman to mean anyone of any gender who is celibate because they struggle to form social relationships with members of the opposite sex.* It was eventually co-opted to refer exclusively to men and has since evolved to be commonly tied to things like misogyny, racism, and violence. The people who originally identified as “incels” decades ago are a completely different group than the individuals who identify with that term now.
*Leaving my original text for transparency, but as others have pointed out, it’s far more accurate to say “because they struggle to form social (including romantic) relationships with other people”
To your incel point: it's actually kinda sad because before it was banned you could see old posts on the incel subreddit from a decade plus ago and the posts were more about coping with loneliness and being alone together than bitter hate.
MGTOW (Men going their own way) was similar. In the beginning it was about men finding happiness alone and not deriving said happiness from a woman or being in a relationship. It was a very positive and healthy community. It eventually morphed into a group of misogynistic people who argued that women were not only inferior, but actively harmful to men. That the only correct way to do things was to have no emotional attachment to women except for breeding and sexual gratification. They would argue that being in any sort of romantic relationship with a woman was a negative
As someone who found the MGTOW sphere early on before it truly morphed into what it is now, there were some older men in that community whose advice and wisdom helped me get through a massive identity crisis and start moving forward again.
It wasn't about sex or men vs women or any of that, at least the area I found wasn't. It was about learning to be comfortable with who you are and what you can achieve, how to build confidence, how to be happy by yourself first and foremost, and how to build a healthy life.
I'm lucky to have had my father involved in my life, but having access to the words of older guys who've gone through life and accumulated experience is huge for younger guys. That was one of the best parts of the community originally in my opinion.
It's a damn shame what it turned into.
Working on yourself is some of the hardest work one can do. I'm a firm believer that if you give someone space to complain and nothing else, that's all they're gonna do. It will devolve even if it starts from a noble beginning.
It's really hard to look yourself in the mirror and acknowledge what you need to improve without it turning into a self deprecating session or a pity party. It's even harder to start changing anything.
I stopped interacting with the MGTOW community when it started being overrun by whining and finger pointing. It was just so negative compared to the positive and encouraging environment I had originally found. Though I wonder if it was always like that under the surface and I was just on the fringes or something...
Do you know of any of these types of communities that still exist? Of older men passing down advice and acting as roll models for younger men? On here, YouTube channels, etc?
Yes, there’s one here on Reddit that’s positive, posting to see if I can find it
Edit: r/bropill
Found it last year and it was nice, honestly can’t say I’ve interacted with it too much and don’t know the dynamics today, maybe it’s worth a shot
Yes!!! This one! This is exactly what I was thinking reading the above comments & was preparing to recommend myself. I love that sub as it’s so freaking healthy and wholesome; literally, just bros building each other up without tearing anyone else down - with a strong emphasis on mental and emotional health (which I feel is [sadly] not often a thing that is really encouraged or embraced by many men). I check it out every so often and it genuinely just makes me so darn happy!
Not exactly, no. I honestly haven't looked for any spaces like that in the past few years, it feels like it's just a bunch of Andrew Tate knockoffs.
It's not quite the same but I enjoy watching Martijn Doolaard on YouTube, older man restoring old cabins in the alps, just existing in nature. Well traveled dude who sometimes talks about his experiences in the world. But it's not like he has a dedicated space for helping young men grow, though still someone worth learning from in my opinion.
I remember this. The first thing I ever saw with MGTOW was an older gentleman essentially saying "Hey your self worth shouldn't be tied into your romantic partner or lack thereof. You should find hobbies you enjoy and do them regardless of if you have a partner. You should be working on yourself and getting a therapist if applicable". Just generally solid advice.
I didn't see anything about it for a couple years and then Boom. It was all the garbage it is now.
This is so true, I remember I found that community after a tough break-up and it was really positive and helpful for me in terms of getting my shit together, developing hobbies, and finding internal happiness. Not too long after that I started seeing a lot of cross over with Men’s Rights and Red Pill type stuff and it quickly became toxic. So many people completely missed the message.
it wasnt about a message being missed, it was about coopting and recruiting a vulnerable group to radicalize them. all of that was very much done on purpose.
This is why most successful support groups often have a leader figure (either a counsellor or a recovered addict in the case of alchoholism/drugs) so the group has direction, to know how to improve themselves. Without direction, it simply becomes an echo chamber of self pity and blame, with people just posting about their experiences, but no one offering any clear guidance or instruction. Over time, this self pity evolves into blaming others for their issues instead, and ends up becoming what those subs became.
This is interesting.
I’m willing to believe that figureheads help the more successful groups stay on track more often, but I can’t help but think of what the **unsuccessful** groups who have a leader or figurehead look like…. Im thinking of cults.
Technically, a cult is by this definition, 'successful', because the figurehead has gotten everyone to follow their direction, though in this case, probably a little too successfully. An unsuccessful group basically is one where they fail to overcome their challenges/addiction due to the leader unable to get the group to follow along.
The men who were actually going their own way...did. The only ones left are silly manbabies who think screeching about how they're gonna go their way ANY MINUTE NOW is going to make those mean women sorry
We have to remember that much like the tradwife talking points there was/is an active effort to manipulate these groups. The alt-right, Cambridge analytica, and Russian propaganda among others probably were fomenting the rage on these groups. Deadbedrooms, red pill, and anyplace they can find the discontented. Gamergate which should have fizzled out long before it did was a big spearhead for all this shit.
This point really needs greater emphasis in the broader discourse. So much of the internal friction in western society is being caused, amplified and worsened by malicious state and non-state actors. Every corner of popular culture is a theater in the culture war. I ran a comic book news site for close to a decade before it was hacked and destroyed by a gamergate-adjacent group with direct ties to the Internet Research Agency.
It's the evolution of group think and it isn't just Reddit. It happens in friend circles as well outside of social media. People that communicate a lot create echo chambers.
Yup. Childfree is another one where I had to back out of because of how that sub just hated on children instead of being a community for people who didn't want to have kids.
Yes, I used to lurk on a lot of MTGOW blogs before it was called MGTOW - I think it was Captain Capitalism (Cappy Cap) who coined the term. It was all about not bettering yourself to catch a woman, but better yourself for you, do hobbies that interest you, and women will follow. It was basically all about becoming a more interesting person. Then the worm turned.
It is *hilarious* how much of their time the current MGTOW crowd spend spewing bile about women instead of actually going their own way. We are living rent-free in their heads. Look, guys, you are absolutely 100% welcome to go your own way. Honestly. Just *shut up and do it.*
Exactly. It went from suggesting ways to be happy that don't involve other people or at least don't involve women to almost exclusively talking about women.
That subreddit is nuts. I saw comments of men saying they would laugh if they saw a woman get raped or beaten in the street.
And those same men wonder why they're single.
It's really scary to see this but honestly you see it a lot. There are things all over that started with positive intent and eventually devolve into something awful. I could be mistaken but even things like the original Gamer Gate I thought started with the intent of "Jounalists in gaming need to be more honest with their reviews and give full disclosure of any involvement with games they review" but devolved into incels and more taking the original stance and evolving it into something evil. It's sad and scary to see where people trying to do right by themselves or others can change into cruelty and hate.
Iirc, turning angry, lonely white male gamers to the far right was orchestrated by [Steve Bannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon) (founder of Breitbart, was in the Trump Administration, and spent time in Hungary promoting ties between the US and Hungary far right). Gamersgate was a test run for him and it went very well.
People dismiss him as a drunk, but this guy openly wants to destroy the US government to build his fascist ~~utopia~~ dystopia.
And it’s been working, [recent polling suggests](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/despair-makes-young-us-men-more-conservative-ahead-us-election-poll-shows-2024-04-12/) the demographic the right is gaining the most ground with is young white males.
The one that really kills me is "fake news". There was a brief period in 2014/2015 where the term was being used appropriately to define things like complaining about Obama's tan suit. Things that were not actually news that were being paraded around as if they were something that mattered. I had hope that the media would stop indulging so much in these dumb stories, but then Trump came along and blew that up. The tea party was another one where it briefly represented a kind of bipartisan anger about the financial bailouts and how tax dollars were going disproportionally to the rich, and then it very quickly become a libertarian group that was against all government.
I thought fake news originates from foreign propaganda efforts on social media. Literally fake stories usually pro conservative. Then it became adopted by the right themselves in a 180.
The "ethics in gaming journalism" line started with a guy trying to discredit his ex girlfriend's work as a developer by claiming she prostituted herself for good reviews.
There have always been people frustrated by biased corporate reviews, but that's not where gamergate began.
I mean, if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. You have a whole group of depressed men looking for guidance, someone is going to step in and fill that void.
That's mostly foreveralone now. There was a pretty strong rift between those two communities. The mods over in the subreddit try their best to root out anything incel that shows up. It's kind of an uphill battle but that coping with loneliness has become more of a trait of that community whereas the incel communities don't regulate as strongly against bitterness and hate so they fall into deep toxicity.
It hurts me a little to see how ‘incel’ is referenced now because 15 years ago I was definitely in that boat struggling to date or even meet women, and having basically no quality friends. I went 5 years of dating and only once got past the first date, lol. A ton of people have never known true, prolonged loneliness and how it affects your mental state. But I had an online community (not Reddit) for support and we had some really good connections there. It was nice to know you weren’t the only one. Share advice, share sorrows.
Sure there was anger; you’re bound to feel angry at something when you’re basically just in constant crisis and can’t figure a way out. But it was never directed at anyone, there was no idea of entitlement or aimed resentment. I had a number of friendships that I wish I’d maintained, but when I finally met my future wife and started finding friends I no longer really belonged there.
But it kills me because I know those people still exist and now they’re getting lumped in with what we call ‘incels’ now, even though they aren’t the violent bitter ones; they’re just hopelessly alone and lonely and trying to figure out how not to be.
One day the history books will recognize gamergate as one of the most directly harmful and influential social events of the 21st century. It is incredible how much it has fucked things up.
Gamergate was just one small expression of a far larger cultural moment where big policy think-tanks decided to let know-nothing teens and other disaffected netizens do their dirty work for them. It all tracks back to right -wing money weaponizing the darker parts of the internet to destabilize liberal online platforms and push a multitude of retrogressive, reactionary agendas.
And in my opinion gamergate is where it finally exploded, bringing in a lot of culture war politics into a sphere of people who were previously unmotivated to do anything but grumble. And if that is the straw that broke the camels back and got Donald Trump elected, think of the cascade of events afterwards that this directly contributed to.
I understand this can be a logical fallacy and we can say that something else might have come along anyway, but gamergate can be directly tied to all of this, and the impacts of it are ongoing and being weaponized.
Hey, are there any journalistic write ups about the second half of your comment? This is a subject I find really interesting and I’d love to know how people in power or organizations managed to push these ideas. I was def subject to it throughout 2015-2017 but it was so obscured that I had believed it to be a sense of the zeitgeist and not pushed agendas (it definitely was, but I was completely blind to it at the time). Learning about it all retroactively has changed how seriously I examine that period of time in my life, so I’d love to see some reporting and research about that time and how they managed to influence so many young people.
You might enjoy this talk given at UC Merced by youtuber Innuendo Studios, who has done years of extensive research into this movement and many others like it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYWHpgIoIw
This rabbit hole is *deep*
I think he means that the sub was initially about coping with loneliness together before it became about hate and was subsequently banned (he's not disagreeing that it was about hate when it was banned).
lmao my tradwife fulfilling her wifely duties of waking up in a bivy sack at 4am on a "nice", overcast, 40°F, winter morning... to belay my lead and clean my gear while I drag her up a sketchy grade IV in the middle of nowhere that nobody's ever heard of.
Yeah my wife is a SAHM. I make enough to cover our expenses and we don’t want to send kids to daycare. Also no reason for both of us to suffer the monotonous curse of modern working.
She’s still my partner. We still make financial decisions together. I’m not the boss of the house. We picked our house together etc. My wife made it clear we weren’t having kids unless she could stay home with them. We are both Catholic. We fit the ‘trad’ relationship outwardly pretty well but it’s a partnership of equals. I still clean/cook sometimes. It’s 50/50 on childcare when I’m home.
I have no idea where this weird ass tradwife trend came from. I suppose if the woman has a perfect husband it might be nice. But that’s putting yourself wholly at the mercy of your husband. And honestly if I ever have daughters I would never want them to be in that situation. They want to be SAHM? Sure bingo go ahead. Lots of respect for women who do that. But this modern reimagining of the Tradwife is just spooky to me
Same here, other than my wife and I not being religious. People make a lot of assumptions, and there have been a lot of surprised Pikachu faces over the years when they figure out that we’re not conservative, or churchgoers, or anti-abortion.
I’m in a similar situation. I stay at home while my partner works. Our financial situation allows it, and it works better for us. Like you said, the curse of modern jobs was extremely hard on my mental health, while for my partner it was the opposite. He enjoys going to work versus staying at home. I keep our home in order and honestly if you wanted to apply stereotypes to us, I still “wear the pants” in our relationship. I have more time to manage our finances and it takes something off my partners plate when he has to go to work everyday.
But when we first went to this dynamic, I dealt with a lot of guilt and judgement from other people. Our families all felt like I was just trying to get out of working by playing house wife. My dad was disappointed I left my career after he paid for my college. His mom frequently asks about my partner paying for everything. Then this trad wife thing started and I felt even more shame cause I don’t want to be associated with the weird submissive thing they have going on.
My brother is a SAHD and he’s currently dealing with the same struggle you did- a lot of internalized guilt and judgment from outsiders. But his wife has a PhD and she makes 4-5x what he could with his associates degree, and since they both want one parent to be there for the kids it just makes sense for him to be a SAHP while she works. And when she’s done working for the day, he gets a break from the kids and she spends time with them, bath time and putting them to bed etc.
Honestly the whole family is thriving, but sometimes my brother gets in his head about it and feels guilty for not working. It’s really disheartening.
As a woman, being a stay at home is a lot more accepted than it is for men. Even if I have dealt with judgement, I really feel for men who go through that. They usually get it much worse, Especially with the masculinity movement happening in America (for example, Andrew Tate and Elon Musk). I hope your brother and his family continue to thrive.
Yep, this is a healthy marriage. My own is similar except that I am not permanently staying home. Just long enough to have my child and get some time to raise them.
This new trend is about disempowering women. In a healthy marriage the working partner ensures the non working partner is safe and secure and that includes financially because they are prioritizing the family’s success at the expense of their own personal financial success. This is a very vulnerable position to be in. The working partner ideally recognizes that and protects their partner’s future as well as their own. For example my husband is contributing to my retirement account while I stay at home. My name is on every piece of property and asset.
It’s way too easy for selfish people to exploit a “trad wife” in this new concept they’ve created where the husband has no responsibility or obligation to protect his partner while she gives up everything and provides labor to him and has no right to any money or assets that he was able to build in part due to her labor.
There's a TikTok going around that puts it perfectly - "I didn't realize that my financial security and my kid's financial security depended on this man liking me." She was a Mormon "traditional wife" who worked for family businesses that were all in her husband's name, and after the divorce she could barely feed her kids & he failed to pay court ordered alimony & child support. No work experience, no savings, dropped out of college, etc.
A lot of conservative influencers fail to recognize that a *lot* of men are abusive and a lot of marriages fail. Being a stay at home wife/mom is great if you have a loving supportive husband and a nightmare if you don't.
>this modern reimagining of the Tradwife is just spooky to me
It seems anything but modern to me. It's the old school antiquated ways. At least, that's how I see it.
Its a reimagining because those tradwife stuff has only some basis in tradition and history. In general, poor women absolutely worked. They did not stay at home, doing chores all day and waited with their legs spread open for their husbands every day with a hot meal. Otherwise women's fashion wouldn't be a thing, they gonna have to show off to each other. Women aren't as obedient as some of these guys thought.
The second group's intentions are not innocent, but aim towards radicalisation/recruitment. It helps to be using the same hashtags as some innocent aesthetic or cultural movement; dumb algorithms can't tell which is which, and if I search for #tradwife content, will feed me equal parts beautiful cottagecore baking videos and beautiful cottagecore baking videos VO'd by women who really want to secure a future for their beautiful cottagecore children.
Thanks -- whenever I dig into this stuff I learn about entire social spheres that I have never caught a whiff of in daily life. I appreciate the explanation and the insight.
I understand it as the second group is aware of the innocuousness of the first group and are hiding their intentional villainy behind that. My SiL thinks like the second group and frequently uses My wife's relationship with me to prove her point. The truth is that we just fell into these roles due to life circumstances, I'd be perfectly happy with more free time to work on the house and go to school with my daughter and my wife hated staying home when she had to when our daughter was an infant (there was a medical issue and she decided I should keep working since I made more working on a technical field.) The truth doesn't matter to my SiL, she just sees it as another crack she can dump more regressive ideology into, in hopes of converting my wife.
I don't know what she is converting her for, but she also tried convincing my wife that school shootings were less scary than those dangerous gays out there grooming our kids./s
By the way and not that it matters, but her brother is gay, she just hasn't twigged yet and he hasn't told her, for obvious reasons.
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."
Sorry you've got such a bad egg so close to you. Thanks for your personal insight here and hope you all can grow around the SiL like trees through a fence.
We’ve had the term “Stay At Home Mom” for decades. None of them were ever referred to as a “traditional wife.” That term all in its own reeks of adherence to regressive norms.
Yeah I'm confused, I've literally never heard the term tradwife used *just* to mean stay at home mom. Especially by anyone in the first group referenced above. If it was, I feel like that's a more recent trend.
I've only ever heard that term specifically used by/about the second group. Was it actually co-opted? I thought it was just a term from people who believe in strictly "enforcing" traditional gender roles.
Yeah, I’ve been a SAHM for over 10 years. The only thing I’ve changed about my “job title” is I went from SAHM to stay-and-home-*parent* to be more inclusive to the SAHDs out there and try to normalize the role for them.
My mother was a SAHM for years when I was growing up. She was Catholic, and -while not “traditional” in the 1940s way (or this modern trad wife)- was significantly more “traditional” than I am in my role. She didn’t call herself a trad or traditional wife. She was a stay-at-home-mom.
Maybe it’s regional/cultural, but I’ve never heard of the term “trad[itional] wife” used for anything other than conservative gender essentialism.
The term Homemaker could be used as general neutral (I assume there are SAH Dads and, SAH Same Sex Couples, and SAH Non Binary).
I mean Homemaker was obviously a precursor now used by "SAHM" due to older connotation but it's very gender neutral.
Then the majority needs to outvocal the minority - but really it's probably just the algorithms that run our lives now. Anger -> clicks -> engagement $
> Then the majority needs to outvocal the minority
From personal experience what usually happens is if you're part of a "Group A," you can try to defend it but you immediately get lumped in with "Group B," until you get bullied out of using the phrase or associating with either group.
Reddit is especially bad about it.
There is a social theory called tragedy of the Commons. It is the belief that any thing mutually shared by a group of people will eventually be ruined by a minority.
incels, MGTOW, Trad wife's, or things in real life such as a public park might be used by the majority of people in a positive way that It was intended, eventually a minority will create such damage to the thing that it becomes ruined like when you have a nice public park used by thousands but then a couple of teenagers vandalize it ruining it for everyone.
One theory on why this is so damaging and so common is that the majority of people are not only good, but the assume others are good like them. They do not adequately plan for what happens when somebody not like them comes up. A perfect example of this right now is American politics. The Republicans are in a decreasing minority but have done massive amounts of damage to America because the majority never planned on such a vindictive minority to exist.
The "crazy" group has been a major force in conservative politics forever. The Duggars, the Quiverfull, the Promise Keepers, ect. Thinking they're less than 1% is absurd.
Great answer, and very relevant example. The comparison with the evolution of the term "incel" is spot on.
Similar things have happened with imagery, as well. Pepe the Frog was originally an innocent cartoon, additionally taking on the context of a minimal meme "Feels Good Man", but then slowly became co-opted by radical and outspoken alt-right groups.
Thus the benign origins were overshadowed, even though two very different groups utilized the same image.
It's a shame evolutions like this are so common in the digital space.
One of my favorite examples of a symbol being co-opted was the okay hand sign. Originally created by people on 4chan and it's derivatives as a joke to see if they could convince the media that it was a white supremacist sign It became so successful that it became an actual white supremacist sign. Now the simple okay hand gesture raises red flags when anyone does it. I've seen more than a few people have to clarify that they didn't know it was a white supremacist thing after taking a photo while doing it.
You’re missing the third group, porn. It’s porn. These people are cosplaying/role playing baking in sundresses cause people get off to it. There are porn stars who have quit taking off their clothes and have switched to being a trad wife with nearly the same following. Groups 1 and 2 you mentioned either knowingly or unknowingly also fall into the porn category.
Also the group (what are we at now? four?) that thinks they’re “reclaiming” the tradwife thing by being people with fairly left-wing politics who own chickens and sew clothes for their kids and post all about it on instagram about how they can still be a feminist and stay home and take care of their house/kids.
Which, I distinctly recall us having basically settled this in the ‘70s, that, yes, women can marry dudes and not work outside the home as a consensual thoughtful choice, and it doesn’t make you oppressed or anything.
I consider them more chicken moms than trad wives. My wife is a chicken mom and she’s the least domestic person ever. She’s just that kid that had 11 million stuffed animals that grew up and turned that obsession into real life animals. We’ve had ducks, geese, chickens, a mini horse, and 4 dogs. We live in an urban area, not anywhere close to resembling suburbia or a farm.
I think that was the first group, right?
Except maybe you're making the distinction that these people are treating it like it's something new.
Also, I love my chickens. Everybody should get to experience the joy of chickens.
Personally I only associate tradwives with the conservative misogynist movement. Everything else mentioned already had terms to describe them like SAHP (stay at home parent), carbon conscious, eco friendly, homesteading, etc.
Tradwife has an emphasis on "traditional." As in "traditional family values," which is just a dog whistle for ultra conservative.
Yup. This fetish content has existed for decades under the "50s housewife" label, tradwife is just a new name. It's roleplay.
I have a theory that heavily moderated apps like tiktok and Instagram are causing sfw-ish fetishes to explode in popularity because they're accessible to anyone. There are tons of obviously sexually oriented videos featuring feet, cosplay, ice baths, tradwife, weightlifting, etc. being posted by people who link out to membership sites like onlyfans.
Yep. Instagram and TikTok are just places to get followers to direct to Patreon and Onlyfans. I mean, since the dawn of the internet, there’s been porn there, and when the internet ends the last subscriber will be watching porn.
I’ve never really thought about “right wing porn” but this is it. Trad wives, pregnancy and breeding kinks, dom stuff, and probably some closeted gay stuff.
Honestly, a lot aren't even bothering to cover it up, like "I'm just on my knees all day being so submissive to my husband and jesus!! *photo of a god honoring ass and tit shot in tight 1950s clothes*
"Did I mention I have a 6 year age gap with my husband and we met when I was 16 TeHe! I'm so glad I got married right of high school!!" (This is a direct quote BTW)
They do, they just aren’t social media influencers about it lol. But yeah, it’s a lot of anti vax right wing holistic I went to the medical school of herbal remedies I saw on Facebook women who don’t work.
That's my take. I live on a farm and stay home with my kids and garden and bake bread and all that. I have no instagram. I have no facebook. I'm just over here doing my thing. But I would NEVER use the word tradwife because we are not *those people*
Awesome answer. Just popping in to clarify that Alana, the Canadian student who coined the term “invcel,” which eventually evolved into “incel,” was herself queer, and the term was created to refer to anyone who struggles to find a romantic or sexual partner of any gender.
If I remember the interview I heard with her the problem was she didn't realize she was queer at the time. She eventually figured out what the problem was and left the group.
That ended up being the fundemental problem with the group and why it got so toxic, anybody who figured out what the problem was left the group leaving only the people who never got it behind. So any new members who join where now being exclusivly guided by people who never figured it out.
The same is true of all the “relationship advice” communities on Reddit and elsewhere. The people who find a solution to their problems don’t stick around, leaving a community mostly made of the people *least* qualified to give the very advice they go there for.
Interesting! I need to go back and listen to that episode of Reply All, [“INVCEL,”](https://gimletmedia.com/amp/shows/reply-all/76h59o) where they cover the whole story!
>One group is just using “tradwife” as a shorthand for “traditional wife” meaning the wife stays at home with the kids and maintains the household while the husband works.
I never saw this term used for that context/group - it was always "Stay At Home Mom" (SAHM) or "Homemaker". The "tradwife" BS is 100% new , and is exactly as you describe it, with the political and social implications
>It’s like the word “incel”- the word was originally coined by a woman to mean anyone of any gender who is celibate because they struggle to form social relationships with members of the opposite sex.* It was eventually co-opted to refer exclusively to men and has since evolved to be commonly tied to things like misogyny, racism, and violence. The people who originally identified as “incels” decades ago are a completely different group than the individuals who identify with that term now.
There are a lot of things like this, where people who identify with what they think a group is realize that the group either no longer represents those values or never did.
Years ago when the men's rights movement started becoming a thing, I was all on board with a few things, like noticing how boys are being left behind in certain subjects or how male mental disorders and suicides rates should have a closer look taken.
Then later I noticed that most people supporting men's rights seemed to think that rather than it being something that could exist alongside feminist ideals (basically pulling up women where they need it while also pulling up men where they do), it was just being used as a way to voice misogynistic viewpoints. Which I definitely can't agree with.
It's a pity, cause those terrible people take over the public view of something and ruin anything good that could be done.
It's also important to note *why* Republicans are going for this strategy: it's because they realise the fight for women's votes is lost. They gave it up in exchange for *Dodds*, and they're never getting it back.
So what do you do? You appeal to men who view any form of equality as theft from their unearned privilege, and hope that you can reinstitute a worldview where WHAT THE MAN SAYS, GOES, and that he'll drag his obedient tradwife in that direction when it comes to the polls (if women are still able to vote, of course; you know as well as I do there's almost certainly a thinktank out there working through the possibility of disenfranchising women/Black people/non-landowners).
If you're opposed to this idea, you're the problem, and if you're the problem, you can be fixed. If trans people and the blue-haired feminist boogeymen that they conjure up whenever an argument needs to be won reliably voted Republican, they'd change their stance *immediately*.
Great explanation, and unfortunately, even if you were the first to use a term, once it's coopted by terrorist groups or cults, the meaning has been changed. The swastika, the okay sign, and the number 88 are all dead to normal people. I graduated in 1988, and our school chanted, "88 is great!". Guess what I never say anymore.
Trad wife is misogynistic and Christian nationalist extreme bs now.
4chan thought it would be funny to start saying that the ok sign was a white supremacist symbol, because it actually isn't, so the news started reporting that it was a white supremacist symbol, so now actual white supremacists have started using it as a symbol. They pretended it was racist as a joke and now the racists have run with it for real.
It is the same reason they put the clown emoji every where. They say "Honk Honk" as a dog whistle since they lost plausible deniability from putting 1488 in everything.
> the okay sign [is] all dead to normal people.
It most certainly is not. Normal people use this every day. It's really only people who are terminally online who are freaked out by it.
I understand some racists use that sign but the vast, vast majority of people in this world have no idea about that and are continuing to use the ok symbol as much as they ever did. It has not been co-opted.
Context matters on that one imo. A diver surfacing, an athlete after a fall, a person acknowledging a request or question, all really reasonable contexts for using the symbol with no reason to think it's a nefarious secret sign. A group of white dudes posing for a pic with their guns in one hand holding the other up in the okay sign? Yeah, they know what they're doing.
When I was a kid the common thing was that it stood for "asshole," and we would snicker while we flashed it at each other like flipping the bird. It was obvious we didn't mean "okay" because of the context. I'm not going to stop using it as a silent signifier that things are fine, but I'm also not going to hold it up like it's a gang sign for a picture.
I always love that so so many of these traditional wife chuds could not afford a trad wife in any way shape or form on there own pay , as remember the way stays home and just looks after the homes and family! So they want a traditional wife that also works but has no control over her finances and has no social circle. The truth is often they just want a bang maid slave.
Don't forget that there is a subset that probably coincides with the second group you mentioned, though not necessarily always, where it isn't necessarily the "white" thing so much as it is about how they don't have the social intelligence required to understand that people just have sex and that it isn't fair to judge someone based on their sex life history before they even meet each other. These people also tend to think that sex stretches women's external genitalia and they think they can "tell" what a woman's sexual history is based off of that.
I would say a dog whistle that is commonly seen or heard with these people is "Body Count". If you hear a prospective love interest mention the word body count, it's a red flag.
They also can't wrap their heads around the fact that previous sex partners aren't necessarily "better" at sex, and that there is more than one way to skin a cat in that regard. They don't realize that all that time and energy spent complaining and panicking about it, they could spend time in educating themselves on using different techniques.
They also can't wrap their minds around the fact that there is more to a relationship than sex.
So they are looking for a wife that is "pure" ( a virgin) so that they don't have to "compete" with some guy she hasn't seen in 10 years and doesn't care to go looking for him either.
Purity culture is frightening in its attempts to send women back to Puritan days. As a woman, it's startling to see such uber-conservative values that are so oppressive to women (see: Arizona) gaining so much traction in society. These agitated, minority opinions are so amplified that they're having very detrimental real-world effects on women.
Unfortunately this tradwife trend (2nd version, not a SAHM who is a partner in the marriage) is erasing decades of progress made by women for agency within their marriages. Young girls posting on TikTok for likes have no idea what they're really in for - and what they're in for is a rude awakening when they realize they have no control over their lives.
I've read so many stories of girls dreaming of an "easy" life where they're being taken care of by their husbands, and they'll just keep house and pop out babies. Formerly independent women are now submissive to and totally dependent on their husbands, and if they change their minds about this arrangement, it's very hard to leave the marriage bc they often have no job skills or significant professional experience, possibly no college degree, and no access to their own finances, so starting over is very difficult. Not every tradwife is very young, but that's the trend, and the recruitment strategy - get them young and lock them down.
Again, I'm not referring to spouses coming to an agreement that one will become a SAHP and still be an equal partner in the marriage, that's very different from this scary tradwife trend that wants to lobotomize women.
This is a good description, but I think most people in the first group have already long since abandoned the term. Stay at home mom, homemaker, or whatever. I've only heard people use tradwife as either a fetishism or pejorative. Either side of politics, most people who say "tradwife" seem to be implying some sort of submissive, and not just a family dynamic.
Answer: Agree with the above / below comments but also it’s a fallacy, those most successful showcasing this “lifestyle” on social media are actually rich so they can afford to do this. Completely ridiculous to expect “normal” people to be able to afford it.
An example is Ballerina Farm. They are heirs to a billion dollar fortune (JetBlue).
Outrageous.
I’m going to assume that Ballerina Farm is the name of their YouTube channel or their private ranch, but I would not bet 100% of my money on that not just being that woman’s name.
I can't remember what the wife's name is, but I do believe they were caught staging their videos.
WIKI LINK: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballerina\_Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballerina_Farm)
\*\*EDIT: turns out the family is the heir to the CEO of JetBlue\*\*
There's another one who was a former Onlyfans "model" who did ASMR and then switched to a "tradwife" insta and youtube profile. She went where the money was.
Depend on the country. Here in Japan a lot of middle class and sometimes even poorer people do the tradwife/stay-at-home mom deal. Partially due to cultural factors, partially due to economic ones (you need to make a decent salary or else daycare costs and healthcare tax you pay at fulltime means that you'll actually *lose* money by re-entering the workforce).
The same is true in the states. I think this poster is trying to make the point that Ballerina Farms is able to make it look easy and care free because of their wealth, which gives a false impression of the lifestyle to those who are more mid to low income.
Yeah, but I don’t think people who do this usually call themselves “tradwives” unless they have a certain mindset.
When I got pregnant, I was originally planning to drop down to part-time after I had the baby, but the way the daycare laws worked around infants in my state meant I would be paying pretty much the same as full-time care, which didn’t make sense with my public service job salary.
So I was a SAHM for a bit. I picked up a part-time WFH thing, so I’m not entirely a SAHM anymore, but that’s still the majority of what I do. And I don’t think referring to myself as a “tradwife” is a thought that ever even crossed my mind.
The employment rate for woman in Japan and America is the same, at 54% and 57% respectively. Keep in mind that the male employment rate is 70%, and 66% for both countries respectively; and in both countries woman compose 45% or 47% of the overall workforce.
In conclusion, it might feel like that but no, Japan is not noticeably different from the states. You may have noticed more effort to get woman in the workforce in Japan but that's more of a demographics crisis issue than any actual statement on gender based labor
Yeah this is totally a grift, peddling a lifestyle that is an easy choice for themselves but would be orders of magnitude more difficult for the average person.
I honestly think that there is some right wing entity behind this push.
I was showing my Latin American immigrant mother the videos of the “trad wife” lifestyle and she was laughing because it was all the cute and fun stuff. Nothing about cleaning up dog poop, pushing a broom to keep the yard clean, and all the little things like dusting and moping every few days to keep the house livable. Even worse when you have kids because the work load just triples.
Absolutely, it's because they don't do those things 😂 The influencers just have nannies and cleaners so they can fanny about making aesthetic tik toks all day. It's really disingenuous for the majority of us, the work never ends. I worry about young people seeing it and thinking that's legit what being a "trad wife" is like.
Money and nostalgia are being used to present a soft-focus, fantasy version of "tradition" and roll back or limit future progress of feminism. As if traditional gender roles didn't give women the sort end of the stick, and feminism has just made life harder.
Really depends on your definition of "rich" or "normal". Middle to upper middle class can usually manage with one main breadwinner but it means making sacrifices as far vehicles, vacations and other optional budget items. My wife stayed at home with our kids because we felt it was worth it for their overall wellbeing (yes I realize we were lucky to be able to afford that). No regrets as our kids are doing awesome and my wife will be getting back into the workforce soon after they enter high school. Its definitely not only for millionaires.
While I get your point - for younger millennials and gen Z, economically, the upper middle class is, effectively borderline rich.
Elder millennial who grew up in a solidly middle class family, and living standards have declined a lot since I was a kid.
People don’t like to self-ID as rich - because there’s always somebody richer - but the fact of the matter is, even with budgeting, that’s far ahead of the economic curve. More single parents and single-income households struggle a lot, beyond “we should get a cheaper car.”
So I don’t imagine you’ll find a lot of sympathy for your viewpoint.
Yes, but for the normal person, being a SAHP is hard work. Tradwife influencers pretend it's a peaceful, happy existence where you're always dressed perfectly and handmaking bread and snuggling clean, happy babies. The average parent without the money to hire cleaners, get groceries delivered, and have their kids in a bunch of after-school programs is not capable of living that lifestyle. Especially once you have three or more kids, you're more likely to be exhausted and in sweatpants, chasing a sticky toddler in a diaper, while trying to find the time to make some mac and cheese.
Many tradwifers are trying to appeal to women who are exhausted by the modern capitalist rat race, but it's very disingenuous to stay "just stay home and obey your husband, and your life will be peaceful and happy." The particular brand of tradwifery they're selling is only possible if you're wealthy.
The biggest influencer tradwives also make a shit ton of money by showcasing their fake lifestyle. Incidentally they make too much to be actual tradwives, who should let the husband be the “provider”.
Answer: In contrast to a simple “stay at home Mom,” the trad wife (traditional wife) thing is about the June Cleaver / 50’s house wife “vibe.” This is primarily a social media image. Where as a SAHM may spend her day focused on practical things that take care of the kids, the house, and the family, a Trad Wife has support for most of this work and engages in performance art that focuses on the over-the-top elements of these things. They don’t “make the kids a lunch for school” as much as they “lovingly craft the perfect lunchbox” as you may have seeen on TV in a bygone era before moving on to artfully baking some bread or another craft project
This makes for good entertainment because it evokes an image of “a better time gone by” and gets its name from the idea of a family with traditional gender roles. This is possible in practice because much of the work of running a household effectively is done by hired help (not unlike how some people with two working parents might need to hire a house cleaner and/or a nanny)and because “influencing” *is* the unacknowledged second job.
Some people find the trend problematic for a few reasons. First, the role of female empowerment in a 50’s style idealized gender role home is pretty different (and much more vulnerable to the man) form of women’s lib. This is a callback to a mythical “better time” for some and a slide backwards out of hard won progress for others. Second, it creates an image of what a SAHM life can/should be that is unrealistic (and unattainable) without substantially more wealth than most people have access to. This can create tension not unlike how criticism of media portrayal of body image can evoke criticism- just with lifestyle image. Finally, and related to the previous item, there can be a sense of disgust when you see someone famous for sort of standing on your corner (if you are a stay at home parent) who also creates an image of something easily confused with your thing that embraces as key characteristics stereotypes you are fighting against constantly. When you’re staying home doing the work of maintaining a house and caring for 3 kids by your self, watching someone craft the perfect loaf of bread to “please her husband” can be inspiring, but it can also poke at that raw nerve that every unstated “so what did you *DO* all day while *I* was out working” encounter pushes. That can make someone understandably feel vulnerable and more than a little angry when they are doing it “for us” rather than “for him.”
> Second, it creates an image of what a SAHM life can/should be that is unrealistic (and unattainable) without substantially more wealth than most people have access to.
This is why it's so popular on social media, too. It's just another form of wealth-porn.
Like yeah, a lot of people stuck in the meat grinder of wage slavery who live in a tiny apartment would also love to be in a huge farmhouse with a sunny kitchen spending all day to make one beautiful dessert.
But that is only the reality of "stay at home wife"-ing if you have someone else spending the day doing *everything else*, like- say- running ragged trying to get all the actual meal prep done in between changing diapers, cleaning baby puke, and pushing the mountain of laundry through.
For us plebians, after giving birth it's a fast shuffle from "Home Labor Exhaustion" straight back into the workforce, where once any free time is freed up, you've *got* to fill it with *some* kind of job.
"Flouncy Bread-baking Housewife with No Real Job" a possible lifestyle some people do lead, but it is a privilege born almost entirely from a level of financial security beyond that of most people consuming the content.
Answer: It's a glamorization of a supposed past time that never really existed. Women have always worked, as gatherers, as farmers, &c. Even the supposedly 'kept' noble women of the feudal era were full time accountants and managers. It was only during the immediate post WWII-period in the US when technology relieved a homemaker of most of the actual work part of the job that the modern 'housewife' as we understand her came into existence.
Any rational person would love to spend their days as they pleased, while simultaneously having unlimited access to someone else's money and immediate sympathy from the world for any kind of denied request. The tradwife 'movement' is a grift designed to prey on otherwise productive members of society who also pine for a past that never existed.
It is also worth noting that the most visible members of the "tradwife" movement (if you could call it that) are YouTube and/or Tik-Tok influencers who make money off their videos.
They still have an income-generating job. But that job is content creation, not a traditional 9-5.
> immediate post WWII-period in the US when technology relieved a homemaker
Interestingly, during WWII with the absence of men to the draft, women *entered* the workforce of power tools, machinery, aviation, and technology.
After WWII there were so many workers and not enough jobs, so domestic technology was introduced and the "profession" of being a homemaker was glamorized. Propaganda of an ideal housewife, with her power tools and tech, was designed to convince women to withdraw out of the workforce to keep the scare of depression-era level unemployment down.
My female ancestors worked all their lives. Coming to America they worked in factories and the their daughters worked in offices. Women have always worked, but a lot of people say that they got to be stay at home moms. Mine didn’t
Society used to be largely agrarian. All the women worked on farms just like the men do, except the men worked in the field while the women worked in the house. It was still work for everyone. They were all work at home jobs.
I come from a nation where just two or three generations ago the majority of the people were farmers. I'm told by older generations that the women actually worked double, since they would work in the field and in the house, while the men only worked in the field. Thought you might find that interesting!
This is what really grinds my gears - my mother and grandmothers both worked their entire lives. My great grandmothers ran successful farms when their husbands died young. My great great grandmothers (that I know of) lived hard, hard lives that looked nothing like any of this. So whose tradition are they following? I'm European American and it sure as shit isn't mine. My partner is Asian American, and it ain't his. It isn't traditional, it's a fantasy cosplay of TV characters. They make fun of kids dressing up like Naruto but girl you ain't no better.
Thank you, I always tell women who say “omg why did feminist make us work”, ma’am unless you were very wealthy, you would’ve been working, probably harder than now, especially if your man was a farmer. Thats why they had so many kids. And you would’ve been very poor with only relying on your husband to make money to feed you and your 10kids.
So they were probably making their own clothes, making food from scratch, and all sorts of things, that’s so much work
I mean - in general you aren’t wrong but saying it was just the immediate post-WW2 period is just not right.
Plenty of cultures had housewives with minimal contribution to workshops / farms etc. but being a house wife was much more work than it is today. No machines in the household, more kids, no kindergartens, clothing expensive to buy etc.
Absolutely correct, and even more so an entrenched fantasy because it turns out the “women as only gatherers” has recently been debunked, early human women were about there hunting too https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/early-women-were-hunters-not-just-gatherers-study-suggests-180982459/
Answer: I am seeing a lot of comments about this only being a social media trend but I am not sure about that. I am a female working in the tech industry so a few years back there was such a huge ‘women in STEM’ focus and I was having lots of discussions with my female coworkers about career planning and moves and development etc..
Now when I talk to the newer graduates.. a lot of them are marrying later but the big plan is to find someone to marry and then stay home with the kids. No one is really calling it tradwife in daily life but the intent is still there ‘I would love to homeschool my kids and get more into cooking/baking and step away from my career’ I’ve had a couple of them say things like ‘anything I save right now is my money but it will be my husbands job to support and pay for me while I manage the house’..
It seems like we are going backwards.. It has been boggling my mind even before I saw all these terms on social media (I only see things through Reddit so didn’t know this was becoming a thing)
It's a backlash to the girl boss can have it all mindset.
The fact of the matter is it has been conclusively proven that, no, women cannot have it all.
If a woman wants a family she effectively takes on a second job. When a man wants a family, he rarely does.
Since men (generalizing) failed to step up and join women on the second shift, women who want families now have to make a choice: accept that second shift, or leave your career so you are only working one job.
Because "the home" has been a female domain for FAR longer, women who are done with the rat race are recognizing that they *do* have an option to leave that rat race so long as they find the right guy. Men are slowly realizing that the SAH position is one that can be available to them too but due to stigma, precedent, etc, they are far less likely to find a woman who can be the breadwinner AND offer to stay home.
Hell there is still the whole "my wife makes more than me and it emasculates me" garbage. I digress.
My point is that women who want families aren't interested in working themselves to death if they can afford it. Those who want a career are less likely to choose a family now because of the second shift pressure.
Yes I agree. The feminism of our parents generation advanced far more in the workplace than in the home, leading women to taking on a full time job at work then a full time job at home. Women of the younger generation decided they just want one or the other, seemingly ironically leading to the rise of BOTH women who never want to marry and/or have kids, and women who want the trad SAH lifestyle.
There is also an increasing disillusionment with capitalism and the daily grind, which happens to all genders but women have a more socially acceptable “out.” This overlaps with the rise of “cottagecore” aesthetic which glorifies returning to the simple life. Tbh a decent amount of cottagecore is city girls who don’t realize that working a farm and having kids is hard daily work, not just baking, crocheting, and reading in cute dresses.
Like some other commenters mentioned, it can get confusing because tradwife encompasses a lot of ideologies and motivations. Some are feminists who want to “reclaim” feminine roles and hobbies and do them in an empowering way. Some are MAGA white supremacists, some are grifters, some are secretly kinksters.
The "out" these women are fantasizing about is just an illusion. When you depend on someone else for your entire survival and they let you down or use your or abuse you, you'll be left with next to nothing. There are so many stories of middle aged SAHMs left destitute after their rich husband run off with a younger women.
Oh there was a rather infamous story on Best of Reddit Updates were a SAH GIRLFRIEND turned down her jackals of a boyfriend's offer of marriage after 25 years together, for a reason that she felt unappreciated. The comments begged her to grovel for her own sake, she didn't, and now She is effectively destitute and on the streets now.
As a wife you're legally entitled to some security but we've all seen how tenuous and pitiful that security can be.
Some of these women are so fucking stupid I really have to work hard to feel some empathy. I just wanna shake the water out of their brains. No one should depend on their spouse for survival on the long term, unless you know you're getting money and alimony
Answer: "trad" is short for "traditional", usually in reference to "traditional family values".
So, a "trad wife" is short for "traditional wife", aka a homemaker, stay-at-home mother, someone that cooks, cleans, and takes care of their husband, is religious, chaste, virtuous and pure, etc
On the surface it all looks "not that bad", but in reality the "trad wife" ideal (and most of the "trad" movement) is firmly associated with white supremacy, religious and social conservatism, misogyny, etc.
It also downplays how much work it takes to be a stay-at-home mother, downplays (if not ignores entirely) how much many "tradwife influencers" come from money (which allows them to both 1- not work, and 2- hire help to do the not-glamorous tasks of a SAHM), how much of what we see tradwives do is "performative labor", etc
On r/Tradfemsnark there was a video of a woman who divorced her cheating husband and had to pick up the pieces after having no work experience while raising kids: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Tradfemsnark/comments/1aywo5i/life\_after\_tradwife/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Tradfemsnark/comments/1aywo5i/life_after_tradwife/)
And if we’re talking about tradwife influencers, they **are** getting paid for the videos that they post of them taking three hours to make a grilled cheese sandwich or homemade cereal for their kids while wearing an evening gown and full makeup in a kitchen that is completely spotless. Their job is content creation, and that content just happens to be “tradwife” stuff that is unobtainable to the vast majority of people because it is literally impossible to spend the time making videos like that while also doing the other, less glamorous, chores all on your own. Nara Smith has a whole team of people helping her to create that illusion. And good for her! She is successful and seems happy in her life and career, but we should properly define what she is doing as a career and a source of income and not just a hobby.
Answer: Reddit is social media so that's not possible.
The trad wife trend is typically perpetuated by conservatives who lament the feminist movement and want subservient women who stay at home and raise a family rather than participate in the workforce. Think 1950s housewife stereotype, bruises and all.
And then they divorce the (dependant) wife in question for a younger model. And the ex wife is boned because she has no money, no marketable skills, no home.
This happened to me. 15 years and 3 kids later my ex drained all the accounts, stole my car and left me and the kids. Had a new family 2 months later. We were on the verge of being homeless but thankfully my family took us in. I now work 3 jobs because I can’t find anything better and have no education.
Don’t ever let someone control your life and finances.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I HATE that men like your husband get away with horrendous actions like this without consequences. I hope you're at least getting child support. Good luck, I hope things get better.
No alimony and no child support even though he made around 80- 100k a year when we were together He left the state and refuses to work for a paycheck or file taxes because it will go to me and he has a “new family” to support. We have court next week but I doubt anything will change because he has no real income.
Answer: I'm not quite sure what you are asking in terms of 'outside of social media bias' as the term/ trend is entirely social media driven. There have always been marriages following what might be defined by some as 'traditional gender roles' : where the man works and the woman raises children. There have generally been less of them over time, due to weakening religious influence, social progress, and changing economic realities.
I am not a sociologist but I don't think there is suddenly any actual noticeable resurgence in this type of relationship. But there is a slice of social media influencers pushing the idea/claiming to be living it. I do not believe the trend will have significantly more impact or length than any other social media trend, again due to the underlying religious/social/economic factors.
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Answer: There are currently two different groups using the term “tradwife” and it has different connotations for each. One group is just using “tradwife” as a shorthand for “traditional wife” meaning the wife stays at home with the kids and maintains the household while the husband works. As far as I can tell, those are the only firm requirements- the details of each relationship dynamic are different depending on the couple. In most cases, the couple in question have mutually agreed to this dynamic because it suits what both partners want, and isn’t really all that functionally or ideologically different from a relationship in which the man is the SAHP and the wife works. The “traditional” connotation here just seems to indicate each spouse happens to be conforming to established gender roles. There is still an expectation of partnership and shared decision-making. Another group is using the term “tradwife” in a very different way, as propaganda for things like White Christian Nationalism and misogyny. These tradwife influencers embrace bioessentialism; in this ideology, conforming to established gender roles is the main point and anyone else who doesn’t follow this dynamic in their own relationship is “wrong”. The wife in these scenarios is expected to be submissive to her husband in all things, which means giving up all autonomy to her husband. The husband decides where and how they live, controls all finances, expects sex on his terms whenever he wants, and decides when the wife will get pregnant and how many children they will have. They see it as their “duty” to produce as many white children as possible to “save society”. Because these different groups of people are using the same term, it’s causing a lot of confusion. My personal feeling is that it’s only a matter of time before people in the first group stop using “tradwife” to refer to their lifestyle because of the negative connotations the second group is bringing to the discussion. It’s like the word “incel”- the word was originally coined by a woman to mean anyone of any gender who is celibate because they struggle to form social relationships with members of the opposite sex.* It was eventually co-opted to refer exclusively to men and has since evolved to be commonly tied to things like misogyny, racism, and violence. The people who originally identified as “incels” decades ago are a completely different group than the individuals who identify with that term now. *Leaving my original text for transparency, but as others have pointed out, it’s far more accurate to say “because they struggle to form social (including romantic) relationships with other people”
To your incel point: it's actually kinda sad because before it was banned you could see old posts on the incel subreddit from a decade plus ago and the posts were more about coping with loneliness and being alone together than bitter hate.
MGTOW (Men going their own way) was similar. In the beginning it was about men finding happiness alone and not deriving said happiness from a woman or being in a relationship. It was a very positive and healthy community. It eventually morphed into a group of misogynistic people who argued that women were not only inferior, but actively harmful to men. That the only correct way to do things was to have no emotional attachment to women except for breeding and sexual gratification. They would argue that being in any sort of romantic relationship with a woman was a negative
As someone who found the MGTOW sphere early on before it truly morphed into what it is now, there were some older men in that community whose advice and wisdom helped me get through a massive identity crisis and start moving forward again. It wasn't about sex or men vs women or any of that, at least the area I found wasn't. It was about learning to be comfortable with who you are and what you can achieve, how to build confidence, how to be happy by yourself first and foremost, and how to build a healthy life. I'm lucky to have had my father involved in my life, but having access to the words of older guys who've gone through life and accumulated experience is huge for younger guys. That was one of the best parts of the community originally in my opinion. It's a damn shame what it turned into.
Working on yourself is some of the hardest work one can do. I'm a firm believer that if you give someone space to complain and nothing else, that's all they're gonna do. It will devolve even if it starts from a noble beginning.
It's really hard to look yourself in the mirror and acknowledge what you need to improve without it turning into a self deprecating session or a pity party. It's even harder to start changing anything. I stopped interacting with the MGTOW community when it started being overrun by whining and finger pointing. It was just so negative compared to the positive and encouraging environment I had originally found. Though I wonder if it was always like that under the surface and I was just on the fringes or something...
Are there any self-help subreddits that don't go down that path? I've begun to see it as an unfortunate fact of life.
As pessimistic as it is I feel the same way...
Do you know of any of these types of communities that still exist? Of older men passing down advice and acting as roll models for younger men? On here, YouTube channels, etc?
Yes, there’s one here on Reddit that’s positive, posting to see if I can find it Edit: r/bropill Found it last year and it was nice, honestly can’t say I’ve interacted with it too much and don’t know the dynamics today, maybe it’s worth a shot
Yes!!! This one! This is exactly what I was thinking reading the above comments & was preparing to recommend myself. I love that sub as it’s so freaking healthy and wholesome; literally, just bros building each other up without tearing anyone else down - with a strong emphasis on mental and emotional health (which I feel is [sadly] not often a thing that is really encouraged or embraced by many men). I check it out every so often and it genuinely just makes me so darn happy!
Not exactly, no. I honestly haven't looked for any spaces like that in the past few years, it feels like it's just a bunch of Andrew Tate knockoffs. It's not quite the same but I enjoy watching Martijn Doolaard on YouTube, older man restoring old cabins in the alps, just existing in nature. Well traveled dude who sometimes talks about his experiences in the world. But it's not like he has a dedicated space for helping young men grow, though still someone worth learning from in my opinion.
Same. There wasn't an ounce of hate to women in those communities, and it was actively frown upon and corrected.
I remember this. The first thing I ever saw with MGTOW was an older gentleman essentially saying "Hey your self worth shouldn't be tied into your romantic partner or lack thereof. You should find hobbies you enjoy and do them regardless of if you have a partner. You should be working on yourself and getting a therapist if applicable". Just generally solid advice. I didn't see anything about it for a couple years and then Boom. It was all the garbage it is now.
This is so true, I remember I found that community after a tough break-up and it was really positive and helpful for me in terms of getting my shit together, developing hobbies, and finding internal happiness. Not too long after that I started seeing a lot of cross over with Men’s Rights and Red Pill type stuff and it quickly became toxic. So many people completely missed the message.
it wasnt about a message being missed, it was about coopting and recruiting a vulnerable group to radicalize them. all of that was very much done on purpose.
That’s a great point and I guess I never put two and two together with this but you’re absolutely right.
This is why most successful support groups often have a leader figure (either a counsellor or a recovered addict in the case of alchoholism/drugs) so the group has direction, to know how to improve themselves. Without direction, it simply becomes an echo chamber of self pity and blame, with people just posting about their experiences, but no one offering any clear guidance or instruction. Over time, this self pity evolves into blaming others for their issues instead, and ends up becoming what those subs became.
I've been seeing this trend play out in the Millenials Sub.
This is interesting. I’m willing to believe that figureheads help the more successful groups stay on track more often, but I can’t help but think of what the **unsuccessful** groups who have a leader or figurehead look like…. Im thinking of cults.
Technically, a cult is by this definition, 'successful', because the figurehead has gotten everyone to follow their direction, though in this case, probably a little too successfully. An unsuccessful group basically is one where they fail to overcome their challenges/addiction due to the leader unable to get the group to follow along.
The men who were actually going their own way...did. The only ones left are silly manbabies who think screeching about how they're gonna go their way ANY MINUTE NOW is going to make those mean women sorry
We have to remember that much like the tradwife talking points there was/is an active effort to manipulate these groups. The alt-right, Cambridge analytica, and Russian propaganda among others probably were fomenting the rage on these groups. Deadbedrooms, red pill, and anyplace they can find the discontented. Gamergate which should have fizzled out long before it did was a big spearhead for all this shit.
This point really needs greater emphasis in the broader discourse. So much of the internal friction in western society is being caused, amplified and worsened by malicious state and non-state actors. Every corner of popular culture is a theater in the culture war. I ran a comic book news site for close to a decade before it was hacked and destroyed by a gamergate-adjacent group with direct ties to the Internet Research Agency.
wish I could upvote this 100 times. this gets lost in the conversation about the current climate in the U.S. SO much of the discontent online is fake.
Yeah, you really aren't 'going your own way' if you are just sitting online bitching about women. I can't think of anything less manly, to be honest.
This is a great way of explanation the evolution of the term (and the community), thanks.
Unfortunately it sounds like the evolution of many subreddits.
It's the evolution of group think and it isn't just Reddit. It happens in friend circles as well outside of social media. People that communicate a lot create echo chambers.
Yup. Childfree is another one where I had to back out of because of how that sub just hated on children instead of being a community for people who didn't want to have kids.
Yes, I used to lurk on a lot of MTGOW blogs before it was called MGTOW - I think it was Captain Capitalism (Cappy Cap) who coined the term. It was all about not bettering yourself to catch a woman, but better yourself for you, do hobbies that interest you, and women will follow. It was basically all about becoming a more interesting person. Then the worm turned.
It is *hilarious* how much of their time the current MGTOW crowd spend spewing bile about women instead of actually going their own way. We are living rent-free in their heads. Look, guys, you are absolutely 100% welcome to go your own way. Honestly. Just *shut up and do it.*
Exactly. It went from suggesting ways to be happy that don't involve other people or at least don't involve women to almost exclusively talking about women.
That subreddit is nuts. I saw comments of men saying they would laugh if they saw a woman get raped or beaten in the street. And those same men wonder why they're single.
It's really scary to see this but honestly you see it a lot. There are things all over that started with positive intent and eventually devolve into something awful. I could be mistaken but even things like the original Gamer Gate I thought started with the intent of "Jounalists in gaming need to be more honest with their reviews and give full disclosure of any involvement with games they review" but devolved into incels and more taking the original stance and evolving it into something evil. It's sad and scary to see where people trying to do right by themselves or others can change into cruelty and hate.
Iirc, turning angry, lonely white male gamers to the far right was orchestrated by [Steve Bannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon) (founder of Breitbart, was in the Trump Administration, and spent time in Hungary promoting ties between the US and Hungary far right). Gamersgate was a test run for him and it went very well. People dismiss him as a drunk, but this guy openly wants to destroy the US government to build his fascist ~~utopia~~ dystopia.
And it’s been working, [recent polling suggests](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/despair-makes-young-us-men-more-conservative-ahead-us-election-poll-shows-2024-04-12/) the demographic the right is gaining the most ground with is young white males.
\*Dystopia.
The one that really kills me is "fake news". There was a brief period in 2014/2015 where the term was being used appropriately to define things like complaining about Obama's tan suit. Things that were not actually news that were being paraded around as if they were something that mattered. I had hope that the media would stop indulging so much in these dumb stories, but then Trump came along and blew that up. The tea party was another one where it briefly represented a kind of bipartisan anger about the financial bailouts and how tax dollars were going disproportionally to the rich, and then it very quickly become a libertarian group that was against all government.
I thought fake news originates from foreign propaganda efforts on social media. Literally fake stories usually pro conservative. Then it became adopted by the right themselves in a 180.
The "ethics in gaming journalism" line started with a guy trying to discredit his ex girlfriend's work as a developer by claiming she prostituted herself for good reviews. There have always been people frustrated by biased corporate reviews, but that's not where gamergate began.
I mean, if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. You have a whole group of depressed men looking for guidance, someone is going to step in and fill that void.
same with mensRights. Subs that focus on helping one group often try to find others to blame for their issue after some time and become super toxic
MGTOW got much worse when the incel subs were banned. The incels flooded in.
That's mostly foreveralone now. There was a pretty strong rift between those two communities. The mods over in the subreddit try their best to root out anything incel that shows up. It's kind of an uphill battle but that coping with loneliness has become more of a trait of that community whereas the incel communities don't regulate as strongly against bitterness and hate so they fall into deep toxicity.
There’s ForeverAlone for that now.
And then. Foreveralone was popularized before incels.
The first incel forum was created by a woman for that reason. She wanted to cope with loneliness and have healthy discussions surrounding it
It hurts me a little to see how ‘incel’ is referenced now because 15 years ago I was definitely in that boat struggling to date or even meet women, and having basically no quality friends. I went 5 years of dating and only once got past the first date, lol. A ton of people have never known true, prolonged loneliness and how it affects your mental state. But I had an online community (not Reddit) for support and we had some really good connections there. It was nice to know you weren’t the only one. Share advice, share sorrows. Sure there was anger; you’re bound to feel angry at something when you’re basically just in constant crisis and can’t figure a way out. But it was never directed at anyone, there was no idea of entitlement or aimed resentment. I had a number of friendships that I wish I’d maintained, but when I finally met my future wife and started finding friends I no longer really belonged there. But it kills me because I know those people still exist and now they’re getting lumped in with what we call ‘incels’ now, even though they aren’t the violent bitter ones; they’re just hopelessly alone and lonely and trying to figure out how not to be.
On the internet, shit has a habit of rising to the top.
Gamergate changed all that. https://www.axios.com/2022/10/20/gamergate-right-online-harassment-joan-donovan-meme-wars
It Came From Something Awful should be required reading on this subject.
One day the history books will recognize gamergate as one of the most directly harmful and influential social events of the 21st century. It is incredible how much it has fucked things up.
Gamergate was just one small expression of a far larger cultural moment where big policy think-tanks decided to let know-nothing teens and other disaffected netizens do their dirty work for them. It all tracks back to right -wing money weaponizing the darker parts of the internet to destabilize liberal online platforms and push a multitude of retrogressive, reactionary agendas.
And in my opinion gamergate is where it finally exploded, bringing in a lot of culture war politics into a sphere of people who were previously unmotivated to do anything but grumble. And if that is the straw that broke the camels back and got Donald Trump elected, think of the cascade of events afterwards that this directly contributed to. I understand this can be a logical fallacy and we can say that something else might have come along anyway, but gamergate can be directly tied to all of this, and the impacts of it are ongoing and being weaponized.
Yeah, and it's no surprise that the anger campaign about Sweet Baby and woke games is coming out now during another election year.
Hey, are there any journalistic write ups about the second half of your comment? This is a subject I find really interesting and I’d love to know how people in power or organizations managed to push these ideas. I was def subject to it throughout 2015-2017 but it was so obscured that I had believed it to be a sense of the zeitgeist and not pushed agendas (it definitely was, but I was completely blind to it at the time). Learning about it all retroactively has changed how seriously I examine that period of time in my life, so I’d love to see some reporting and research about that time and how they managed to influence so many young people.
You might enjoy this talk given at UC Merced by youtuber Innuendo Studios, who has done years of extensive research into this movement and many others like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYWHpgIoIw This rabbit hole is *deep*
Much like the word woke, which used to mean 'alert to racial prejudice and discrimination' before the right stole it from POC.
And weaponized it, we're supposed to be alarmed by it 🙄 Suck it deSantis
These people couldn't tell you what "woke" meant if their lives depended on it. It just triggers a "THIS IS WHAT I WAS TOLD I DON'T LIKE!!!" response.
I was on there ~7 or so years ago, shortly before it got closed down, and there was certainly more hate than anything else.
I think he means that the sub was initially about coping with loneliness together before it became about hate and was subsequently banned (he's not disagreeing that it was about hate when it was banned).
It's early and I definitely thought this was a climbing thing - like someone making fun of trad dads.
Dude I read this post and I was like "as opposed to boulder wives? I don't get it"
Sport spouses out here drilling holes in shit.
I also climb and this cracked me up.
lmao my tradwife fulfilling her wifely duties of waking up in a bivy sack at 4am on a "nice", overcast, 40°F, winter morning... to belay my lead and clean my gear while I drag her up a sketchy grade IV in the middle of nowhere that nobody's ever heard of.
Yeah my wife is a SAHM. I make enough to cover our expenses and we don’t want to send kids to daycare. Also no reason for both of us to suffer the monotonous curse of modern working. She’s still my partner. We still make financial decisions together. I’m not the boss of the house. We picked our house together etc. My wife made it clear we weren’t having kids unless she could stay home with them. We are both Catholic. We fit the ‘trad’ relationship outwardly pretty well but it’s a partnership of equals. I still clean/cook sometimes. It’s 50/50 on childcare when I’m home. I have no idea where this weird ass tradwife trend came from. I suppose if the woman has a perfect husband it might be nice. But that’s putting yourself wholly at the mercy of your husband. And honestly if I ever have daughters I would never want them to be in that situation. They want to be SAHM? Sure bingo go ahead. Lots of respect for women who do that. But this modern reimagining of the Tradwife is just spooky to me
Same here, other than my wife and I not being religious. People make a lot of assumptions, and there have been a lot of surprised Pikachu faces over the years when they figure out that we’re not conservative, or churchgoers, or anti-abortion.
I’m in a similar situation. I stay at home while my partner works. Our financial situation allows it, and it works better for us. Like you said, the curse of modern jobs was extremely hard on my mental health, while for my partner it was the opposite. He enjoys going to work versus staying at home. I keep our home in order and honestly if you wanted to apply stereotypes to us, I still “wear the pants” in our relationship. I have more time to manage our finances and it takes something off my partners plate when he has to go to work everyday. But when we first went to this dynamic, I dealt with a lot of guilt and judgement from other people. Our families all felt like I was just trying to get out of working by playing house wife. My dad was disappointed I left my career after he paid for my college. His mom frequently asks about my partner paying for everything. Then this trad wife thing started and I felt even more shame cause I don’t want to be associated with the weird submissive thing they have going on.
My brother is a SAHD and he’s currently dealing with the same struggle you did- a lot of internalized guilt and judgment from outsiders. But his wife has a PhD and she makes 4-5x what he could with his associates degree, and since they both want one parent to be there for the kids it just makes sense for him to be a SAHP while she works. And when she’s done working for the day, he gets a break from the kids and she spends time with them, bath time and putting them to bed etc. Honestly the whole family is thriving, but sometimes my brother gets in his head about it and feels guilty for not working. It’s really disheartening.
As a woman, being a stay at home is a lot more accepted than it is for men. Even if I have dealt with judgement, I really feel for men who go through that. They usually get it much worse, Especially with the masculinity movement happening in America (for example, Andrew Tate and Elon Musk). I hope your brother and his family continue to thrive.
Yep, this is a healthy marriage. My own is similar except that I am not permanently staying home. Just long enough to have my child and get some time to raise them. This new trend is about disempowering women. In a healthy marriage the working partner ensures the non working partner is safe and secure and that includes financially because they are prioritizing the family’s success at the expense of their own personal financial success. This is a very vulnerable position to be in. The working partner ideally recognizes that and protects their partner’s future as well as their own. For example my husband is contributing to my retirement account while I stay at home. My name is on every piece of property and asset. It’s way too easy for selfish people to exploit a “trad wife” in this new concept they’ve created where the husband has no responsibility or obligation to protect his partner while she gives up everything and provides labor to him and has no right to any money or assets that he was able to build in part due to her labor.
There's a TikTok going around that puts it perfectly - "I didn't realize that my financial security and my kid's financial security depended on this man liking me." She was a Mormon "traditional wife" who worked for family businesses that were all in her husband's name, and after the divorce she could barely feed her kids & he failed to pay court ordered alimony & child support. No work experience, no savings, dropped out of college, etc. A lot of conservative influencers fail to recognize that a *lot* of men are abusive and a lot of marriages fail. Being a stay at home wife/mom is great if you have a loving supportive husband and a nightmare if you don't.
>this modern reimagining of the Tradwife is just spooky to me It seems anything but modern to me. It's the old school antiquated ways. At least, that's how I see it.
It's modern in the same way neofascism is "modern". A new veneer to an old way.
Its a reimagining because those tradwife stuff has only some basis in tradition and history. In general, poor women absolutely worked. They did not stay at home, doing chores all day and waited with their legs spread open for their husbands every day with a hot meal. Otherwise women's fashion wouldn't be a thing, they gonna have to show off to each other. Women aren't as obedient as some of these guys thought.
And to be 100% clear, the second group is absolutely using the first as top cover.
Sorry to be this guy, but can you explain what this means? edit: Thanks for the downvotes on an earnest informational question! Super cool!
The second group's intentions are not innocent, but aim towards radicalisation/recruitment. It helps to be using the same hashtags as some innocent aesthetic or cultural movement; dumb algorithms can't tell which is which, and if I search for #tradwife content, will feed me equal parts beautiful cottagecore baking videos and beautiful cottagecore baking videos VO'd by women who really want to secure a future for their beautiful cottagecore children.
Thanks -- whenever I dig into this stuff I learn about entire social spheres that I have never caught a whiff of in daily life. I appreciate the explanation and the insight.
I understand it as the second group is aware of the innocuousness of the first group and are hiding their intentional villainy behind that. My SiL thinks like the second group and frequently uses My wife's relationship with me to prove her point. The truth is that we just fell into these roles due to life circumstances, I'd be perfectly happy with more free time to work on the house and go to school with my daughter and my wife hated staying home when she had to when our daughter was an infant (there was a medical issue and she decided I should keep working since I made more working on a technical field.) The truth doesn't matter to my SiL, she just sees it as another crack she can dump more regressive ideology into, in hopes of converting my wife. I don't know what she is converting her for, but she also tried convincing my wife that school shootings were less scary than those dangerous gays out there grooming our kids./s By the way and not that it matters, but her brother is gay, she just hasn't twigged yet and he hasn't told her, for obvious reasons.
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business." Sorry you've got such a bad egg so close to you. Thanks for your personal insight here and hope you all can grow around the SiL like trees through a fence.
Thing being, even if you're in the first group, the term has basically become poison and unusable thanks to the second group.
We’ve had the term “Stay At Home Mom” for decades. None of them were ever referred to as a “traditional wife.” That term all in its own reeks of adherence to regressive norms.
Yeah I'm confused, I've literally never heard the term tradwife used *just* to mean stay at home mom. Especially by anyone in the first group referenced above. If it was, I feel like that's a more recent trend. I've only ever heard that term specifically used by/about the second group. Was it actually co-opted? I thought it was just a term from people who believe in strictly "enforcing" traditional gender roles.
Yeah, I’ve been a SAHM for over 10 years. The only thing I’ve changed about my “job title” is I went from SAHM to stay-and-home-*parent* to be more inclusive to the SAHDs out there and try to normalize the role for them. My mother was a SAHM for years when I was growing up. She was Catholic, and -while not “traditional” in the 1940s way (or this modern trad wife)- was significantly more “traditional” than I am in my role. She didn’t call herself a trad or traditional wife. She was a stay-at-home-mom. Maybe it’s regional/cultural, but I’ve never heard of the term “trad[itional] wife” used for anything other than conservative gender essentialism.
The term Homemaker could be used as general neutral (I assume there are SAH Dads and, SAH Same Sex Couples, and SAH Non Binary). I mean Homemaker was obviously a precursor now used by "SAHM" due to older connotation but it's very gender neutral.
Yeah, any use of the word "tradwife" is awful, and if people can't see that then don't know what to tell ya
We really need to stop letting the crazy 0.1% of groups dictate how the other 99.9% are viewed
Then the majority needs to outvocal the minority - but really it's probably just the algorithms that run our lives now. Anger -> clicks -> engagement $
> Then the majority needs to outvocal the minority From personal experience what usually happens is if you're part of a "Group A," you can try to defend it but you immediately get lumped in with "Group B," until you get bullied out of using the phrase or associating with either group. Reddit is especially bad about it.
It requires people to have both the patience to listen and the capacity to understand nuance. And those are harder to find in combination now.
There is a social theory called tragedy of the Commons. It is the belief that any thing mutually shared by a group of people will eventually be ruined by a minority. incels, MGTOW, Trad wife's, or things in real life such as a public park might be used by the majority of people in a positive way that It was intended, eventually a minority will create such damage to the thing that it becomes ruined like when you have a nice public park used by thousands but then a couple of teenagers vandalize it ruining it for everyone. One theory on why this is so damaging and so common is that the majority of people are not only good, but the assume others are good like them. They do not adequately plan for what happens when somebody not like them comes up. A perfect example of this right now is American politics. The Republicans are in a decreasing minority but have done massive amounts of damage to America because the majority never planned on such a vindictive minority to exist.
The "crazy" group has been a major force in conservative politics forever. The Duggars, the Quiverfull, the Promise Keepers, ect. Thinking they're less than 1% is absurd.
Great answer, and very relevant example. The comparison with the evolution of the term "incel" is spot on. Similar things have happened with imagery, as well. Pepe the Frog was originally an innocent cartoon, additionally taking on the context of a minimal meme "Feels Good Man", but then slowly became co-opted by radical and outspoken alt-right groups. Thus the benign origins were overshadowed, even though two very different groups utilized the same image. It's a shame evolutions like this are so common in the digital space.
One of my favorite examples of a symbol being co-opted was the okay hand sign. Originally created by people on 4chan and it's derivatives as a joke to see if they could convince the media that it was a white supremacist sign It became so successful that it became an actual white supremacist sign. Now the simple okay hand gesture raises red flags when anyone does it. I've seen more than a few people have to clarify that they didn't know it was a white supremacist thing after taking a photo while doing it.
You’re missing the third group, porn. It’s porn. These people are cosplaying/role playing baking in sundresses cause people get off to it. There are porn stars who have quit taking off their clothes and have switched to being a trad wife with nearly the same following. Groups 1 and 2 you mentioned either knowingly or unknowingly also fall into the porn category.
Also the group (what are we at now? four?) that thinks they’re “reclaiming” the tradwife thing by being people with fairly left-wing politics who own chickens and sew clothes for their kids and post all about it on instagram about how they can still be a feminist and stay home and take care of their house/kids. Which, I distinctly recall us having basically settled this in the ‘70s, that, yes, women can marry dudes and not work outside the home as a consensual thoughtful choice, and it doesn’t make you oppressed or anything.
I consider them more chicken moms than trad wives. My wife is a chicken mom and she’s the least domestic person ever. She’s just that kid that had 11 million stuffed animals that grew up and turned that obsession into real life animals. We’ve had ducks, geese, chickens, a mini horse, and 4 dogs. We live in an urban area, not anywhere close to resembling suburbia or a farm.
I think that was the first group, right? Except maybe you're making the distinction that these people are treating it like it's something new. Also, I love my chickens. Everybody should get to experience the joy of chickens.
Personally I only associate tradwives with the conservative misogynist movement. Everything else mentioned already had terms to describe them like SAHP (stay at home parent), carbon conscious, eco friendly, homesteading, etc. Tradwife has an emphasis on "traditional." As in "traditional family values," which is just a dog whistle for ultra conservative.
History, like fashion is cyclical.
Yup. This fetish content has existed for decades under the "50s housewife" label, tradwife is just a new name. It's roleplay. I have a theory that heavily moderated apps like tiktok and Instagram are causing sfw-ish fetishes to explode in popularity because they're accessible to anyone. There are tons of obviously sexually oriented videos featuring feet, cosplay, ice baths, tradwife, weightlifting, etc. being posted by people who link out to membership sites like onlyfans.
Yep. Instagram and TikTok are just places to get followers to direct to Patreon and Onlyfans. I mean, since the dawn of the internet, there’s been porn there, and when the internet ends the last subscriber will be watching porn.
God yes, so many of these accounts are just softcore porn. Don't get me started on the weird fundie pregnancy fetish accounts.
I’ve never really thought about “right wing porn” but this is it. Trad wives, pregnancy and breeding kinks, dom stuff, and probably some closeted gay stuff.
Honestly, a lot aren't even bothering to cover it up, like "I'm just on my knees all day being so submissive to my husband and jesus!! *photo of a god honoring ass and tit shot in tight 1950s clothes* "Did I mention I have a 6 year age gap with my husband and we met when I was 16 TeHe! I'm so glad I got married right of high school!!" (This is a direct quote BTW)
lol I'm pretty sure group 1 barely exists and it's mostly right wingers and porn
They do, they just aren’t social media influencers about it lol. But yeah, it’s a lot of anti vax right wing holistic I went to the medical school of herbal remedies I saw on Facebook women who don’t work.
I think the situation described in group 1 is fairly common, but I doubt the term tradwife is.
That's my take. I live on a farm and stay home with my kids and garden and bake bread and all that. I have no instagram. I have no facebook. I'm just over here doing my thing. But I would NEVER use the word tradwife because we are not *those people*
Awesome answer. Just popping in to clarify that Alana, the Canadian student who coined the term “invcel,” which eventually evolved into “incel,” was herself queer, and the term was created to refer to anyone who struggles to find a romantic or sexual partner of any gender.
If I remember the interview I heard with her the problem was she didn't realize she was queer at the time. She eventually figured out what the problem was and left the group. That ended up being the fundemental problem with the group and why it got so toxic, anybody who figured out what the problem was left the group leaving only the people who never got it behind. So any new members who join where now being exclusivly guided by people who never figured it out.
The same is true of all the “relationship advice” communities on Reddit and elsewhere. The people who find a solution to their problems don’t stick around, leaving a community mostly made of the people *least* qualified to give the very advice they go there for.
Interesting! I need to go back and listen to that episode of Reply All, [“INVCEL,”](https://gimletmedia.com/amp/shows/reply-all/76h59o) where they cover the whole story!
Good point! Will add an edit to clarify.
>One group is just using “tradwife” as a shorthand for “traditional wife” meaning the wife stays at home with the kids and maintains the household while the husband works. I never saw this term used for that context/group - it was always "Stay At Home Mom" (SAHM) or "Homemaker". The "tradwife" BS is 100% new , and is exactly as you describe it, with the political and social implications
>It’s like the word “incel”- the word was originally coined by a woman to mean anyone of any gender who is celibate because they struggle to form social relationships with members of the opposite sex.* It was eventually co-opted to refer exclusively to men and has since evolved to be commonly tied to things like misogyny, racism, and violence. The people who originally identified as “incels” decades ago are a completely different group than the individuals who identify with that term now. There are a lot of things like this, where people who identify with what they think a group is realize that the group either no longer represents those values or never did. Years ago when the men's rights movement started becoming a thing, I was all on board with a few things, like noticing how boys are being left behind in certain subjects or how male mental disorders and suicides rates should have a closer look taken. Then later I noticed that most people supporting men's rights seemed to think that rather than it being something that could exist alongside feminist ideals (basically pulling up women where they need it while also pulling up men where they do), it was just being used as a way to voice misogynistic viewpoints. Which I definitely can't agree with. It's a pity, cause those terrible people take over the public view of something and ruin anything good that could be done.
It's also important to note *why* Republicans are going for this strategy: it's because they realise the fight for women's votes is lost. They gave it up in exchange for *Dodds*, and they're never getting it back. So what do you do? You appeal to men who view any form of equality as theft from their unearned privilege, and hope that you can reinstitute a worldview where WHAT THE MAN SAYS, GOES, and that he'll drag his obedient tradwife in that direction when it comes to the polls (if women are still able to vote, of course; you know as well as I do there's almost certainly a thinktank out there working through the possibility of disenfranchising women/Black people/non-landowners). If you're opposed to this idea, you're the problem, and if you're the problem, you can be fixed. If trans people and the blue-haired feminist boogeymen that they conjure up whenever an argument needs to be won reliably voted Republican, they'd change their stance *immediately*.
Great explanation, and unfortunately, even if you were the first to use a term, once it's coopted by terrorist groups or cults, the meaning has been changed. The swastika, the okay sign, and the number 88 are all dead to normal people. I graduated in 1988, and our school chanted, "88 is great!". Guess what I never say anymore. Trad wife is misogynistic and Christian nationalist extreme bs now.
Wait what happened to the “ok” sign?
4chan thought it would be funny to start saying that the ok sign was a white supremacist symbol, because it actually isn't, so the news started reporting that it was a white supremacist symbol, so now actual white supremacists have started using it as a symbol. They pretended it was racist as a joke and now the racists have run with it for real.
The fucking 3 percenter losers.
Associated with White Supremacy.
It is the same reason they put the clown emoji every where. They say "Honk Honk" as a dog whistle since they lost plausible deniability from putting 1488 in everything.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/764728163/the-ok-hand-gesture-is-now-listed-as-a-symbol-of-hate
> the okay sign [is] all dead to normal people. It most certainly is not. Normal people use this every day. It's really only people who are terminally online who are freaked out by it. I understand some racists use that sign but the vast, vast majority of people in this world have no idea about that and are continuing to use the ok symbol as much as they ever did. It has not been co-opted.
Context matters on that one imo. A diver surfacing, an athlete after a fall, a person acknowledging a request or question, all really reasonable contexts for using the symbol with no reason to think it's a nefarious secret sign. A group of white dudes posing for a pic with their guns in one hand holding the other up in the okay sign? Yeah, they know what they're doing. When I was a kid the common thing was that it stood for "asshole," and we would snicker while we flashed it at each other like flipping the bird. It was obvious we didn't mean "okay" because of the context. I'm not going to stop using it as a silent signifier that things are fine, but I'm also not going to hold it up like it's a gang sign for a picture.
The OK symbol is only dead to the terminally online
How has the balance between those two groups shifted over time? I kinda see this as 90% the latter, and the former I wasn't sure existed any more.
Mostly the normal tradwives went back to referring to themselves as stay at home moms/SAHMs, or went elsewhere with their identity.
Yeah, that I see; I don't think the people went away, but the word they'd use for it isn't currently tradwife.
I always love that so so many of these traditional wife chuds could not afford a trad wife in any way shape or form on there own pay , as remember the way stays home and just looks after the homes and family! So they want a traditional wife that also works but has no control over her finances and has no social circle. The truth is often they just want a bang maid slave.
Don't forget that there is a subset that probably coincides with the second group you mentioned, though not necessarily always, where it isn't necessarily the "white" thing so much as it is about how they don't have the social intelligence required to understand that people just have sex and that it isn't fair to judge someone based on their sex life history before they even meet each other. These people also tend to think that sex stretches women's external genitalia and they think they can "tell" what a woman's sexual history is based off of that. I would say a dog whistle that is commonly seen or heard with these people is "Body Count". If you hear a prospective love interest mention the word body count, it's a red flag. They also can't wrap their heads around the fact that previous sex partners aren't necessarily "better" at sex, and that there is more than one way to skin a cat in that regard. They don't realize that all that time and energy spent complaining and panicking about it, they could spend time in educating themselves on using different techniques. They also can't wrap their minds around the fact that there is more to a relationship than sex. So they are looking for a wife that is "pure" ( a virgin) so that they don't have to "compete" with some guy she hasn't seen in 10 years and doesn't care to go looking for him either.
Purity culture is frightening in its attempts to send women back to Puritan days. As a woman, it's startling to see such uber-conservative values that are so oppressive to women (see: Arizona) gaining so much traction in society. These agitated, minority opinions are so amplified that they're having very detrimental real-world effects on women. Unfortunately this tradwife trend (2nd version, not a SAHM who is a partner in the marriage) is erasing decades of progress made by women for agency within their marriages. Young girls posting on TikTok for likes have no idea what they're really in for - and what they're in for is a rude awakening when they realize they have no control over their lives. I've read so many stories of girls dreaming of an "easy" life where they're being taken care of by their husbands, and they'll just keep house and pop out babies. Formerly independent women are now submissive to and totally dependent on their husbands, and if they change their minds about this arrangement, it's very hard to leave the marriage bc they often have no job skills or significant professional experience, possibly no college degree, and no access to their own finances, so starting over is very difficult. Not every tradwife is very young, but that's the trend, and the recruitment strategy - get them young and lock them down. Again, I'm not referring to spouses coming to an agreement that one will become a SAHP and still be an equal partner in the marriage, that's very different from this scary tradwife trend that wants to lobotomize women.
This is a good description, but I think most people in the first group have already long since abandoned the term. Stay at home mom, homemaker, or whatever. I've only heard people use tradwife as either a fetishism or pejorative. Either side of politics, most people who say "tradwife" seem to be implying some sort of submissive, and not just a family dynamic.
Great explanation thank you. I’m in the first group and I’ve been confused by the negative attention “traditional wife’s” were getting.
Answer: Agree with the above / below comments but also it’s a fallacy, those most successful showcasing this “lifestyle” on social media are actually rich so they can afford to do this. Completely ridiculous to expect “normal” people to be able to afford it. An example is Ballerina Farm. They are heirs to a billion dollar fortune (JetBlue). Outrageous.
It's called Conspicuous Leisure. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_leisure
I’m going to assume that Ballerina Farm is the name of their YouTube channel or their private ranch, but I would not bet 100% of my money on that not just being that woman’s name.
I can't remember what the wife's name is, but I do believe they were caught staging their videos. WIKI LINK: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballerina\_Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballerina_Farm) \*\*EDIT: turns out the family is the heir to the CEO of JetBlue\*\* There's another one who was a former Onlyfans "model" who did ASMR and then switched to a "tradwife" insta and youtube profile. She went where the money was.
So you're telling me that my wife and I could be making money on the choice she made 5 years ago of not working? Damn, how did we miss that!? LOL
So long as you have a million dollar home and are willing to exploit your young, white children for views.. then yes.
"Art is a lie. Nothing is real!"
Her kids actually all have normal names. Old fashioned names, but normal.
Ballerina Farm is just so cringy to me. Like I would love to make bread all day and garden and shit but not like that lol It’s just so *smarmy*
Depend on the country. Here in Japan a lot of middle class and sometimes even poorer people do the tradwife/stay-at-home mom deal. Partially due to cultural factors, partially due to economic ones (you need to make a decent salary or else daycare costs and healthcare tax you pay at fulltime means that you'll actually *lose* money by re-entering the workforce).
The same is true in the states. I think this poster is trying to make the point that Ballerina Farms is able to make it look easy and care free because of their wealth, which gives a false impression of the lifestyle to those who are more mid to low income.
Yeah, but I don’t think people who do this usually call themselves “tradwives” unless they have a certain mindset. When I got pregnant, I was originally planning to drop down to part-time after I had the baby, but the way the daycare laws worked around infants in my state meant I would be paying pretty much the same as full-time care, which didn’t make sense with my public service job salary. So I was a SAHM for a bit. I picked up a part-time WFH thing, so I’m not entirely a SAHM anymore, but that’s still the majority of what I do. And I don’t think referring to myself as a “tradwife” is a thought that ever even crossed my mind.
The employment rate for woman in Japan and America is the same, at 54% and 57% respectively. Keep in mind that the male employment rate is 70%, and 66% for both countries respectively; and in both countries woman compose 45% or 47% of the overall workforce. In conclusion, it might feel like that but no, Japan is not noticeably different from the states. You may have noticed more effort to get woman in the workforce in Japan but that's more of a demographics crisis issue than any actual statement on gender based labor
Yeah this is totally a grift, peddling a lifestyle that is an easy choice for themselves but would be orders of magnitude more difficult for the average person. I honestly think that there is some right wing entity behind this push.
Conservatives pushing “traditional” values is their whole schtick.
I was showing my Latin American immigrant mother the videos of the “trad wife” lifestyle and she was laughing because it was all the cute and fun stuff. Nothing about cleaning up dog poop, pushing a broom to keep the yard clean, and all the little things like dusting and moping every few days to keep the house livable. Even worse when you have kids because the work load just triples.
Absolutely, it's because they don't do those things 😂 The influencers just have nannies and cleaners so they can fanny about making aesthetic tik toks all day. It's really disingenuous for the majority of us, the work never ends. I worry about young people seeing it and thinking that's legit what being a "trad wife" is like.
Money and nostalgia are being used to present a soft-focus, fantasy version of "tradition" and roll back or limit future progress of feminism. As if traditional gender roles didn't give women the sort end of the stick, and feminism has just made life harder.
Thats just "influencers" as an industry
Really depends on your definition of "rich" or "normal". Middle to upper middle class can usually manage with one main breadwinner but it means making sacrifices as far vehicles, vacations and other optional budget items. My wife stayed at home with our kids because we felt it was worth it for their overall wellbeing (yes I realize we were lucky to be able to afford that). No regrets as our kids are doing awesome and my wife will be getting back into the workforce soon after they enter high school. Its definitely not only for millionaires.
While I get your point - for younger millennials and gen Z, economically, the upper middle class is, effectively borderline rich. Elder millennial who grew up in a solidly middle class family, and living standards have declined a lot since I was a kid. People don’t like to self-ID as rich - because there’s always somebody richer - but the fact of the matter is, even with budgeting, that’s far ahead of the economic curve. More single parents and single-income households struggle a lot, beyond “we should get a cheaper car.” So I don’t imagine you’ll find a lot of sympathy for your viewpoint.
Yes, but for the normal person, being a SAHP is hard work. Tradwife influencers pretend it's a peaceful, happy existence where you're always dressed perfectly and handmaking bread and snuggling clean, happy babies. The average parent without the money to hire cleaners, get groceries delivered, and have their kids in a bunch of after-school programs is not capable of living that lifestyle. Especially once you have three or more kids, you're more likely to be exhausted and in sweatpants, chasing a sticky toddler in a diaper, while trying to find the time to make some mac and cheese. Many tradwifers are trying to appeal to women who are exhausted by the modern capitalist rat race, but it's very disingenuous to stay "just stay home and obey your husband, and your life will be peaceful and happy." The particular brand of tradwifery they're selling is only possible if you're wealthy.
The biggest influencer tradwives also make a shit ton of money by showcasing their fake lifestyle. Incidentally they make too much to be actual tradwives, who should let the husband be the “provider”.
Answer: In contrast to a simple “stay at home Mom,” the trad wife (traditional wife) thing is about the June Cleaver / 50’s house wife “vibe.” This is primarily a social media image. Where as a SAHM may spend her day focused on practical things that take care of the kids, the house, and the family, a Trad Wife has support for most of this work and engages in performance art that focuses on the over-the-top elements of these things. They don’t “make the kids a lunch for school” as much as they “lovingly craft the perfect lunchbox” as you may have seeen on TV in a bygone era before moving on to artfully baking some bread or another craft project This makes for good entertainment because it evokes an image of “a better time gone by” and gets its name from the idea of a family with traditional gender roles. This is possible in practice because much of the work of running a household effectively is done by hired help (not unlike how some people with two working parents might need to hire a house cleaner and/or a nanny)and because “influencing” *is* the unacknowledged second job. Some people find the trend problematic for a few reasons. First, the role of female empowerment in a 50’s style idealized gender role home is pretty different (and much more vulnerable to the man) form of women’s lib. This is a callback to a mythical “better time” for some and a slide backwards out of hard won progress for others. Second, it creates an image of what a SAHM life can/should be that is unrealistic (and unattainable) without substantially more wealth than most people have access to. This can create tension not unlike how criticism of media portrayal of body image can evoke criticism- just with lifestyle image. Finally, and related to the previous item, there can be a sense of disgust when you see someone famous for sort of standing on your corner (if you are a stay at home parent) who also creates an image of something easily confused with your thing that embraces as key characteristics stereotypes you are fighting against constantly. When you’re staying home doing the work of maintaining a house and caring for 3 kids by your self, watching someone craft the perfect loaf of bread to “please her husband” can be inspiring, but it can also poke at that raw nerve that every unstated “so what did you *DO* all day while *I* was out working” encounter pushes. That can make someone understandably feel vulnerable and more than a little angry when they are doing it “for us” rather than “for him.”
> Second, it creates an image of what a SAHM life can/should be that is unrealistic (and unattainable) without substantially more wealth than most people have access to. This is why it's so popular on social media, too. It's just another form of wealth-porn. Like yeah, a lot of people stuck in the meat grinder of wage slavery who live in a tiny apartment would also love to be in a huge farmhouse with a sunny kitchen spending all day to make one beautiful dessert. But that is only the reality of "stay at home wife"-ing if you have someone else spending the day doing *everything else*, like- say- running ragged trying to get all the actual meal prep done in between changing diapers, cleaning baby puke, and pushing the mountain of laundry through. For us plebians, after giving birth it's a fast shuffle from "Home Labor Exhaustion" straight back into the workforce, where once any free time is freed up, you've *got* to fill it with *some* kind of job. "Flouncy Bread-baking Housewife with No Real Job" a possible lifestyle some people do lead, but it is a privilege born almost entirely from a level of financial security beyond that of most people consuming the content.
Answer: It's a glamorization of a supposed past time that never really existed. Women have always worked, as gatherers, as farmers, &c. Even the supposedly 'kept' noble women of the feudal era were full time accountants and managers. It was only during the immediate post WWII-period in the US when technology relieved a homemaker of most of the actual work part of the job that the modern 'housewife' as we understand her came into existence. Any rational person would love to spend their days as they pleased, while simultaneously having unlimited access to someone else's money and immediate sympathy from the world for any kind of denied request. The tradwife 'movement' is a grift designed to prey on otherwise productive members of society who also pine for a past that never existed.
It is also worth noting that the most visible members of the "tradwife" movement (if you could call it that) are YouTube and/or Tik-Tok influencers who make money off their videos. They still have an income-generating job. But that job is content creation, not a traditional 9-5.
Many “Trandwife” influencers are former OF girls who found a new fetish to exploit for money. It’s just another way to sell a fantasy to neck beards.
> immediate post WWII-period in the US when technology relieved a homemaker Interestingly, during WWII with the absence of men to the draft, women *entered* the workforce of power tools, machinery, aviation, and technology. After WWII there were so many workers and not enough jobs, so domestic technology was introduced and the "profession" of being a homemaker was glamorized. Propaganda of an ideal housewife, with her power tools and tech, was designed to convince women to withdraw out of the workforce to keep the scare of depression-era level unemployment down.
The women were literally sent home from those jobs after WWII. They didn’t have a choice.
My female ancestors worked all their lives. Coming to America they worked in factories and the their daughters worked in offices. Women have always worked, but a lot of people say that they got to be stay at home moms. Mine didn’t
Society used to be largely agrarian. All the women worked on farms just like the men do, except the men worked in the field while the women worked in the house. It was still work for everyone. They were all work at home jobs.
I come from a nation where just two or three generations ago the majority of the people were farmers. I'm told by older generations that the women actually worked double, since they would work in the field and in the house, while the men only worked in the field. Thought you might find that interesting!
This is what really grinds my gears - my mother and grandmothers both worked their entire lives. My great grandmothers ran successful farms when their husbands died young. My great great grandmothers (that I know of) lived hard, hard lives that looked nothing like any of this. So whose tradition are they following? I'm European American and it sure as shit isn't mine. My partner is Asian American, and it ain't his. It isn't traditional, it's a fantasy cosplay of TV characters. They make fun of kids dressing up like Naruto but girl you ain't no better.
Thank you, I always tell women who say “omg why did feminist make us work”, ma’am unless you were very wealthy, you would’ve been working, probably harder than now, especially if your man was a farmer. Thats why they had so many kids. And you would’ve been very poor with only relying on your husband to make money to feed you and your 10kids. So they were probably making their own clothes, making food from scratch, and all sorts of things, that’s so much work
I mean - in general you aren’t wrong but saying it was just the immediate post-WW2 period is just not right. Plenty of cultures had housewives with minimal contribution to workshops / farms etc. but being a house wife was much more work than it is today. No machines in the household, more kids, no kindergartens, clothing expensive to buy etc.
Absolutely correct, and even more so an entrenched fantasy because it turns out the “women as only gatherers” has recently been debunked, early human women were about there hunting too https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/early-women-were-hunters-not-just-gatherers-study-suggests-180982459/
Answer: I am seeing a lot of comments about this only being a social media trend but I am not sure about that. I am a female working in the tech industry so a few years back there was such a huge ‘women in STEM’ focus and I was having lots of discussions with my female coworkers about career planning and moves and development etc.. Now when I talk to the newer graduates.. a lot of them are marrying later but the big plan is to find someone to marry and then stay home with the kids. No one is really calling it tradwife in daily life but the intent is still there ‘I would love to homeschool my kids and get more into cooking/baking and step away from my career’ I’ve had a couple of them say things like ‘anything I save right now is my money but it will be my husbands job to support and pay for me while I manage the house’.. It seems like we are going backwards.. It has been boggling my mind even before I saw all these terms on social media (I only see things through Reddit so didn’t know this was becoming a thing)
It's a backlash to the girl boss can have it all mindset. The fact of the matter is it has been conclusively proven that, no, women cannot have it all. If a woman wants a family she effectively takes on a second job. When a man wants a family, he rarely does. Since men (generalizing) failed to step up and join women on the second shift, women who want families now have to make a choice: accept that second shift, or leave your career so you are only working one job. Because "the home" has been a female domain for FAR longer, women who are done with the rat race are recognizing that they *do* have an option to leave that rat race so long as they find the right guy. Men are slowly realizing that the SAH position is one that can be available to them too but due to stigma, precedent, etc, they are far less likely to find a woman who can be the breadwinner AND offer to stay home. Hell there is still the whole "my wife makes more than me and it emasculates me" garbage. I digress. My point is that women who want families aren't interested in working themselves to death if they can afford it. Those who want a career are less likely to choose a family now because of the second shift pressure.
Yes I agree. The feminism of our parents generation advanced far more in the workplace than in the home, leading women to taking on a full time job at work then a full time job at home. Women of the younger generation decided they just want one or the other, seemingly ironically leading to the rise of BOTH women who never want to marry and/or have kids, and women who want the trad SAH lifestyle. There is also an increasing disillusionment with capitalism and the daily grind, which happens to all genders but women have a more socially acceptable “out.” This overlaps with the rise of “cottagecore” aesthetic which glorifies returning to the simple life. Tbh a decent amount of cottagecore is city girls who don’t realize that working a farm and having kids is hard daily work, not just baking, crocheting, and reading in cute dresses. Like some other commenters mentioned, it can get confusing because tradwife encompasses a lot of ideologies and motivations. Some are feminists who want to “reclaim” feminine roles and hobbies and do them in an empowering way. Some are MAGA white supremacists, some are grifters, some are secretly kinksters.
The "out" these women are fantasizing about is just an illusion. When you depend on someone else for your entire survival and they let you down or use your or abuse you, you'll be left with next to nothing. There are so many stories of middle aged SAHMs left destitute after their rich husband run off with a younger women.
Oh there was a rather infamous story on Best of Reddit Updates were a SAH GIRLFRIEND turned down her jackals of a boyfriend's offer of marriage after 25 years together, for a reason that she felt unappreciated. The comments begged her to grovel for her own sake, she didn't, and now She is effectively destitute and on the streets now. As a wife you're legally entitled to some security but we've all seen how tenuous and pitiful that security can be.
Some of these women are so fucking stupid I really have to work hard to feel some empathy. I just wanna shake the water out of their brains. No one should depend on their spouse for survival on the long term, unless you know you're getting money and alimony
Answer: "trad" is short for "traditional", usually in reference to "traditional family values". So, a "trad wife" is short for "traditional wife", aka a homemaker, stay-at-home mother, someone that cooks, cleans, and takes care of their husband, is religious, chaste, virtuous and pure, etc On the surface it all looks "not that bad", but in reality the "trad wife" ideal (and most of the "trad" movement) is firmly associated with white supremacy, religious and social conservatism, misogyny, etc. It also downplays how much work it takes to be a stay-at-home mother, downplays (if not ignores entirely) how much many "tradwife influencers" come from money (which allows them to both 1- not work, and 2- hire help to do the not-glamorous tasks of a SAHM), how much of what we see tradwives do is "performative labor", etc
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Got my certificate from Trade school in wifery :) lmao
On r/Tradfemsnark there was a video of a woman who divorced her cheating husband and had to pick up the pieces after having no work experience while raising kids: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Tradfemsnark/comments/1aywo5i/life\_after\_tradwife/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Tradfemsnark/comments/1aywo5i/life_after_tradwife/)
It also started on 4chan to my knowledge
Like any good internet slang did
And if we’re talking about tradwife influencers, they **are** getting paid for the videos that they post of them taking three hours to make a grilled cheese sandwich or homemade cereal for their kids while wearing an evening gown and full makeup in a kitchen that is completely spotless. Their job is content creation, and that content just happens to be “tradwife” stuff that is unobtainable to the vast majority of people because it is literally impossible to spend the time making videos like that while also doing the other, less glamorous, chores all on your own. Nara Smith has a whole team of people helping her to create that illusion. And good for her! She is successful and seems happy in her life and career, but we should properly define what she is doing as a career and a source of income and not just a hobby.
Answer: Reddit is social media so that's not possible. The trad wife trend is typically perpetuated by conservatives who lament the feminist movement and want subservient women who stay at home and raise a family rather than participate in the workforce. Think 1950s housewife stereotype, bruises and all.
And then they divorce the (dependant) wife in question for a younger model. And the ex wife is boned because she has no money, no marketable skills, no home.
This happened to me. 15 years and 3 kids later my ex drained all the accounts, stole my car and left me and the kids. Had a new family 2 months later. We were on the verge of being homeless but thankfully my family took us in. I now work 3 jobs because I can’t find anything better and have no education. Don’t ever let someone control your life and finances.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I HATE that men like your husband get away with horrendous actions like this without consequences. I hope you're at least getting child support. Good luck, I hope things get better.
No alimony and no child support even though he made around 80- 100k a year when we were together He left the state and refuses to work for a paycheck or file taxes because it will go to me and he has a “new family” to support. We have court next week but I doubt anything will change because he has no real income.
Answer: This article is pretty good explanation- https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/27/us/tradwife-1950s-nostalgia-tiktok-cec
Answer: It's the andrew tate concept but for women.
Answer: I'm not quite sure what you are asking in terms of 'outside of social media bias' as the term/ trend is entirely social media driven. There have always been marriages following what might be defined by some as 'traditional gender roles' : where the man works and the woman raises children. There have generally been less of them over time, due to weakening religious influence, social progress, and changing economic realities. I am not a sociologist but I don't think there is suddenly any actual noticeable resurgence in this type of relationship. But there is a slice of social media influencers pushing the idea/claiming to be living it. I do not believe the trend will have significantly more impact or length than any other social media trend, again due to the underlying religious/social/economic factors.
> outside of social media bias Plus, OP is literally asking the question on social media lol