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aquascoot
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The Economy is poo
I think this uptick in tradwife content and reliance on men to provide financially (or “lead” the relationship) is tied to the state of our economy, whether we realize it or not. Costs of living are ridiculously high. I’m not going to pull up the stats, but we’ve all noticed prices everywhere steadily rising, whether that be rent, groceries, or leisure activities. This reality is especially discouraging for young people (Millennials and Gen Z) who were born into this and now have to make ends meet.
Couple this reality, which is already a lot, with problems that are unique to women such as discrimination, equal pay, and harassment, and I can understand why women are tired. It’s incredibly discouraging to work hard, deliver quality work, budget, play the corporate game, and still barely make any progress towards long term goals like saving up for a house, paying off student debt, or cushioning savings accounts. With the state of the economy and the seemingly never ending hamster wheel that we’re on, falling into a traditional mindset and coupling up with a man who wants a wife or girlfriend to stay at home while he provides financially is very appealing.
Post Girlboss Era: Women Feel Lied To
The financial fatigue that women might feel today ties in with our thoughts on the post girlboss era. The term “girlboss” was everywhere in the 2010s and describes a woman who is self-made in a man’s world, is her own boss, or who takes her career advancement very seriously. She also has a family and a social life — she can do it all!
Over time though, women started to realize that this girlboss life isn’t as glamorous and fun as it seems — not to mention it’s totally unattainable. We can’t have it all, much less do it all ourselves. Even if we have all the grit and determination in the world, women are up against systemic barriers that are impossible to break down on our own. Our favourite girlbosses of the era simply joined the system, and perpetuated the harms that were being done to women in positions lower than them.
Once this all came crashing down through scandal after scandal (my personal favourite story being Elizabeth Holmes), women felt betrayed. Lied to. We were told for years that if we worked hard, we could join the boys at the top of the corporate ladder, and it turns out that this wasn’t true.
Cue more exhaustion. The economy has us on a hamster wheel of hard work and now we know women have the odds stacked against us in the workplace. What else could push us to a more traditional mindset?
Getting Recognition for Invisible Labour
Over the past couple years, I’ve been happy to see women engage in more conversations online about invisible labour and “adult toddler husbands’’ (I just love this term). Invisible labour is all the invisible work, almost always done by women, in heterosexual relationships. This labour ranges anywhere from keeping track of what needs to be bought during the next grocery run to spending an hour comforting a distressed child after a nightmare. It’s the added up labour that women do without question or without thanks every single day in heterosexual relationships.
In Eve Rodsky’s book Fair Play, she goes into the problem of invisible labour even further and talks about the phenomenon of adult toddler husbands. Adult toddler husbands are men (usually also fathers) who rely on their wives to tell them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it when it comes to household or child rearing tasks. This inability to take initiative leads to women having an extra child to take care of and direct: her adult toddler husband.
Now, with all this coming to light and being discussed, why on earth are women seemingly flocking to traditional wife positions where they will be taking on even more invisible labour?!
While it might seem counterintuitive, I believe women are attracted to these traditional roles coupled with men who have “traditional values” for the exact opposite reason: they believe that men who value a stay at home wife or mother will recognize all the work they do at home. These men are searching for a woman who is happy to do domestic work, so obviously they will value and recognize this work. Most conversations surrounding invisible labour involve women who work full time on top of being the primary caretaker of children, and being the main adult on household chores at home. Clearly having a career on top of having children is a nightmare in terms of a to do list, so why not just pursue a tradwife life to get recognized for your work and to live a life with more leisure?
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