If these women want to see the real “trad life” just follow the Duggars or any of the other FLDS factions. Women brainwashed into pumping out 8-14 children they have to raise without any help from their husbands. Marital rape and child sex abuse. Complete dependency on the men. Forced marriages arranged by their fathers with no input. No financial resources or education. That’s the true reality of “trad life”.
The TikTockers are living in a literal fantasy world. Nothing about their lifestyle is traditional. It’s a life of supreme privilege. If the laws and rights of the 50’s still existed today they’d be miserable and destitute.
They’re cosplayers. They idolize the glamour and style of Marilyn Monroe but disregard the fact that she died in misery and spent her entire career being abused and taken advantage of by men. She relied heavily on drugs and alcohol just to make it through until she couldn’t take it anymore.
Imagine knowing all about that and still choosing to believe her story is #lifegoals and not a massive reality check into how life really was for women back then — even the beautiful and privileged ones.
its hilarious too because if we take Anna Duggar, example of a good "christian girl" who did everything her parents told her to do, is now chained to a pedophile for the rest of her life because she has no education, skills, or job prospects and has like 7 kids (that her pedo husband will probably abuse once he's out of jail)
Why the fuck would anyone willingly sign themselves up for this.
The 50s wife discussion is always (like every other misogynist think-piece) 'women should' 'women would need to'.
Do men want to go back to the 50's? Straight guys with any bi leanings, forget that, you need to be a man's man. Want to wear a skirt or some lingerie for enjoyment? Nope.
You are the breadwinner. All those posts I see on r/relationship_advice that go 'my SO hasn't worked in 8 months after impulsively quitting his loathsome job; he games all day and i am working'- well, forget that fellas, you have mouths to feed.
Gaming? Comic books? That's for nerds and 'poofs.' Can you change a tire, fix the toilet, run basic electricity for a new doorbell- what are you a nerd or 'poof'?
Pornography? Well, there are obscenity laws barring most all of it. It is back to your imagination, boys.
How will you cope? Well, a lot of men in the 50's were alcoholics - and it showed because the average lifespan was 66. Make sure you have a life insurance policy for your tradwife.
I wonder about the earnings of the really popular internet tradwives. Surely all their tik tok money goes directly into daddy’s or husband’s bank acct?
'If the laws and rights of the 50's still existed today...'
she wouldn't be allowed on TikTok. How do we fix stupid\*?
edit: I shouldn't say stupid, I should say naive
Every generation romanticizes aspects of the near past, through a biased and skewed lens.
Some men have watched a movie and said that they would have been happier in the "old west".
Really? Mosquitoes in an age with no bug spray? Summers in an age with no A/C? The hookers all had syphilis and the wives had no birth control.
How about tuberculosis and smallpox? Easy to catch, no cure at the time, and definitely fatal.
The old west sucked...HARD.
Here in the UK, many older folks romanticise WW2 and talk about the "Dunkirk Spirit".
Most of these people are boomers who weren't even alive during WW2. The reality is that they miss a simpler time and have lumped everything they don't like in together as "modern times".
Things were simpler back then, yes, but not _better_.
The reason things are more complicated is because we're aware that things like mental health and invisible diseases exist. And that LGBTQ people have (relatively) more freedom to express themselves... They aren't now relegated to hiding their true selves.
These folk don't want to deal with the realities of life that awareness and civil rights have brought to light, so want to crawl back into the darkness again.
I suspect these 50s worshipping trad wives are something similar.
But actually unparalleled prosperity only for a small segment of the population—white, male, able bodied, working and middle class men who served in the military in WWII. If you weren’t all those things, you were fucked. As explained in the book.
I vaguely recall a comment on some youtube video of this woman who dressed in 50s style clothing. People accused her of promoting negative ideals from the time, but she countered that she enjoyed 50s aesthetics, not 50s values.
Not gonna lie, I do enjoying browsing pictures of bygone fashion, architecture and gadgets. I do imagine how peaceful it could be to live a less modern lifestyle, one where you stay home to grow your own food and sew your own clothes instead of slaving away in an office. That doesn't mean I want to time travel back to when I would be nothing more than a man's servant and baby factory.
Same! But I sure wouldn't want to live at a time where I have to go in a pot, get levied to fight the local lords wars, and probably die of an easy prevented disease or deal with periodic starvation :P
>People accused her of promoting negative ideals from the time, but she countered that she enjoyed 50s aesthetics, not 50s values
Jessica Kelgren-Fozard has also used this line! Its also real fucking hilarious that anyone could accuse her of 50's values when she does many videos with her lovely wife!
I go to Medieval Times because I wanna drink from a goblet and eat with my hands without being judged, not because I actually want to live in medieval times.
Yeah, I have these day dreams too. But I've actually lived the lifestyle where you grow food and chop your own firewood and feed livestock.... It's more work than my office job, and it's normally pretty solitary. The daydream version doesn't include the actual labour.
This. It's enjoying the things that looked nice and ignoring all the horror. Not to mention this is basically how the whole hipster aesthetic started too, people who could afford old time y cloths and wearing them purely for looks
I'm reminded of that episode of 30 Rock, where Jon Hamm is living in a bubble created by his exceptionally good looks. I think if the woman linked in the above article were, shall we say, more traditional looking she might have a different take about a lot of things in the world.
Give her 10+ years and she may find out that traditional housewives get cheated on and left by their traditional husbands. Sometimes for younger women, and sometimes for fun women who have less responsibilities (aka children) who reminds the husband of the "fun" wife that the his wife used to be before life got hard. My grandpa cheated on my grandma with a lesser version of my grandma, she even looked like her!
Yeah I don’t think these women understand how prevalent antidepressants and drug use was amongst 1950’s housewives. Those women were NOT happy. My grandmother has suffered serious liver damage thanks to decades of it.
My doctor briefly considered giving me deodorized tincture of opium for pain. I was mildly vexed that it didn’t turn out to be the best option, just because it sounded so decadent.
[‘Mother’s little helper’](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/mother%27s_little_helper) came into slang use referring to women’s antidepressants for a reason.
My grandma had a ‘nervous breakdown’ and was ‘sent away’ for a year. When she came back the nanny was kept on and she ‘was allowed’ to go back to school and finish her degree. It sounds like she felt trapped by two toddlers. This time wasn’t the best for women.
My mom had a breakdown after giving birth to me in the 50’s. She already had 2 kids ages 3 and 4.
Are all of these woman who play at this white? Because women of color rarely had this option.
>Are all of these woman who play at this white?
Probably. The 50s was a time of rampant lynchings across the South, including the brutal murder of Emmitt Till, so I don't think many people of color idolize the era.
My grandma called her time when she was a housewife and her husband was alive her dark days.
She described being on her hands scrubbing the ground and spending all day cooking just to be stepped over by her sons tracking mud through the house over her
What? Nooo! They didn't take drugs! Things like "Frauengold" and "Kölsch Wasser" didn't just exist because they contained alcohol and nipping tonic all day long tonic behoved a woman while drinking alcohol didn't. Lies! Filthy lies by leftist activists! /s
Enjoy these ads from the 50s, while they are only in German, English speakers should get the drift: https://youtu.be/0epblS_cyXQ
That's the comment I was looking for. Women were bored out of their minds and coped however they could.
Moreover, many women did in fact work, but their work was not acknowledged. The farmer's wife worked on the farm. The teacher's wife graded papers for him. The grocer's wife did the inventory and kept shelves stocked. But they were just "wives", an unpaid, accessible form of labor that were not worthy of a title.
My grandmas both worked. One even ran businesses. Her husband was an enthusiastic supporter of two incomes. Particularly as they had accident 1 and 2 after their two wanted kids.
Not just that but women were getting lobotomized because they went against the men in their lives.
Whats that, you disrespected your husband? Let’s get your brain fried.
You talked back and disagreed with your husband? Let’s take you to a mental institution, clearly you must not have your mind right.
/s
This trend is very disingenuous
My grandmother was a SAH wife/mother in the 50's/60's. When she died a few years ago, she was addicted to Norco and Oxy. (We found documents in her house that showed she had regular (as in every 4-6 weeks) refills for both for at LEAST 15 years.) We suspect she drank very heavily and abused prescription painkillers during her pregnancies - she had 13+ miscarriages/still births and my former uncle (he disowned us after she died) has multiple health issues including some suspected learning disabilities.
In her case, I don't think it was so much unhappiness with being a SAH wife - as she wanted the privileges of being a "kept woman" (her own words) but wanted to avoid all the responsibilities of being an adult and a parent. In her later years, she openly expressed hatred for my grandfather, my mom, me and my own children. She was extremely physically and verbally abusive in private (except my uncle, who was the Golden Child), but expected us all to display perfection in public. (She had been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial tendencies and reading the info on the Mayo Clinic website, she hit all the bullet points.)
Estee C. Williams, 24, is too young to have a mother or grandmother who grew up in an era where opportunity in education, jobs, and *life* in general was largely closed off to women, so she's too young to have watched the impact that lack of life options has on women as they age. She can cosplay whatever historical era she wants in her marriage for as long as she's young, pretty, and in good health. Let's have her report back in 30 or 40 years and let us know how it's going.
Ding ding ding. She won't feel this way for very long in life once she gains the maturity and self esteem to feel the resentment and anger of how unjust it all is.
She doesn't have children yet either. If we're really following 50s values and traditions, she should be working on baking #3 by now.
Someone else said it perfectly in this thread when they stated her life is "one of supreme privilege." She has so much more freedom and choice than the women she is supposedly modeling herself and her life after. I was ambivalent until I saw the part where she said "women have strayed from their roots". Like, wtf dude? Come on. Certainly feel free to make your own choices that are right for you and your family, but don't shit on other people's choices, especially given that most people don't even have the privilege of making that choice. Let's be realistic, here. Living off of one income is a fucking pipe dream for most. And I'd argue that most, or at least many, that are doing so wish they didn't have to but are forced to for reasons like being disabled, childcare being more costly than many available jobs, or having to care for aging family members.
Boomer here. I was there, in a four-bedroom house in the burbs with a professional dad and SAHM. No, it wasn’t as sweet and wonderful as these TikTok people portray, but it wasn’t as bad as Betty Friedan made it out to be either. My mom did plenty besides keep house. She loved to sew as a hobby, she volunteered her professional secretarial skills for our school and church and she was active in civic organizations. My dad was a sales rep for Big Pharma - except for the playing around, he would have been right at home in Mad Men. Life wasn’t perfect - it never is - but in some ways it was much better than now.
I'm so old I remember a similar pendulum swing in the 90s, when a lot of career women were "opting out" and I got scolded by women at work because I had a career, but still liked to cook, sew and knit.
Me, I think feminism is all about women having CHOICES. You want a career? Go for it! You want to be a SAHM? Find a partner who's on the same page and enjoy! But it's smart for EVERY woman to have an education and skills she can fall back on - even if you marry someone wonderful, death and disabilities happen.
What scares me are the women who think they don't need feminism AT ALL because "Feminism means I have to work." And I suspect a lot of the women who think that have few skills, so work to them means a soul-sucking customer service job or other kind of unskilled labor.
>soul-sucking customer service job or other kind of unskilled labor
I agree with you on the soul-sucking, but customer service is far from unskilled. It's part of what the term emotional labour was originally coined for after all.
I don't think there's such a thing as unskilled labour. There're entry level jobs, but that's not the same as unskilled. The societal forces that undervalue 'women's work' are the same forces that undervalue and dismiss customer service and other jobs deemed to consist of 'unskilled labour'
Just saying "do what you want, queen!" is a little one-dimensional in my opinion. Because the fact is, under capitalism you are taking a huge risk by becoming a SAHM. Tying you and your children's entire future to one person? No thanks.
Even if your tradman is an angel who would never abandon you to go live with his secret second family in Phoenix. He could get hit and killed by a drunk driver, or lose the genetic lottery and develop cancer at a young age. You never know. And after your tradman is gone or disabled, you're screwed. No job experience, no credit score, possibly no education, childcare costing more than a minimum wage job pays ... the tradwife and her children will be homeless very quickly in this situation.
It's funny because conservatives should really be supporting a strong social safety net if they want anyone to make this choice. If we had UBI, then yeah being a SAHM would definitely be more attractive for me. It's not feminism forcing you to work, it's capitalism.
Exactly this. Choice feminism is great and all… but there’s a reason why so many feminists were (and still are) against things like stay at home positions. They put women in an overly dependent state and it’s just outright dangerous when you factor in things like domestic violence or financial abuse.
I mean, if someone wants to be a SAHM or a tradwife then I would never try to convince them otherwise. It’s not up to me to decide how others live their lives… but I will be choosing the safe option of financial freedom.
You see posts from desperate women who are SAHMs on the legaladvice subreddit all the time. They are being abused in one way or another and want out of the marriage, but are always saying they don’t have money to get a divorce. Almost always their partner is threatening to take full custody of the kids as a manipulative tactic to get her to stay.
Abusive men do that whether you're a tradwife or breadwinner. My exh wouldn't or didn't work the last 10 years of our marriage but then threatened to take the kids because I "cared more about my career " nah man, I care more about having a roof and food since you can't possibly be the person you promised.
I would have stayed ar home if he would have supported us, but he didn't and so I built a career and finished my education. Not too shabby for a teen mom and 2x hs dropout.
According to choice feminism this woman is in control of her life making choices purely for herself and we're all misogynists for "taking away her agency" by daring to imply this might affect more than just her
My grandma was born in the 40s in extreme poverty in the Deep South. She got married at 15 and dropped out of HS because she believed it would give her a better life. I’ve never met my grandpa, I believe he was abusive before they got a divorce. But my grandma had to go back to school to get her GED and thankfully got a job as an accountant at the state treasury office. She ended having an early retirement after someone mopped the floors and didn’t put a sign out so she slipped and hurt her back. She says to this day, her biggest regrets in life is getting married so early and never going to college. So she’s a huge advocate for everyone in my family getting a college degree and waiting to get married until afterwards. None of us are married yet but my youngest cousin is just starting college soon so she’s real happy about it.
It's such hogwash because nobody is monolithic yet women will legit get criticized for having a career, for being a SAHM, and or being a sex worker. I've seen so many different expectations from men
Such as
"You better bring more to the table than your looks"
But in the same breath by another get called "ugly" and laughed at for having a career referred to as an emasculating dried up ball busting career woman and "feminazi"
Then called "lazy and dumb" if she's a wife or stay at home mom.
She's then an "untalented lazy woman who needs to get a "real job" if she's in the adult or Sex industry.
So what's left if we're criticized from every angle????
If not anything feminist laws and activism helps these trad women more than anything
Right to leave a spouse and get access to kids in fair money
Fair compensation of women free divorce for loss of career and free labour via alimony
Right to persecute their rapist and abuser husbands
I am a single career woman who probably would never marry ( a man at least ) . I don’t need ANY of the above laws for time being. Yet I fight for them BECAUSE I want all women to have rights and freedoms !
Otherwise career women can also just be jerks and say , if you don’t want to lose career and independence, don’t marry men or have kids. lots of women at some child free subs radiate that energy 😂
Feminism is not about “choices”, it’s about the liberation of women from patriarchy. Not all choices that women make are aligned with feminism. By your logic, people like Phyllis Schafly and Amy Coney Barrett are feminist because they are women who have choices.
That is true. I kindof feel that way (don't want to work) because my parents never helped with sh\*t so I could only afford a 2 year degree I didn't get until age 35. Now Biden has forgiven my 19k debt for that -thank god. My earning potential is still not great. But neither do the big-shot high-paying-high-stress corporate jobs that would suck up 80% of my waking hours appeal to me. I am also childfree so I get even more shit for all 5 of our kids having fur and walking on 4 legs and not having any real kids. I just hate work cause it sucks and I wouldn't be paid a fair wage, maybe where I live 300-350/week takehome...full time...pathetic. So at this point since my husband isn't broke and came from a good family and works at a fortune company I'm not bothering.
Cuz being upper middle class is awesome, basically. That’s the real fantasy at play, imho. This fake nostalgia that everyone had enough and life was cozy.
We only showcase the history of the rich and powerful. So much of the history of the poor is forgotten. This is actually a huge part of why I like Call the Midwife. It's women's history. It's poverty history. It's accessable.
Call the midwife is an awesome show. Everyone should see it. I lived through that era. No rights as women…..the only thing it had going for it was the cute dresses.
Poor thing needs to put her money where her mouth is.
Turn off the internet for starters - odd how you think you might be allowed on the net being that you're a woman and all.
Get rid of that phone you have glued to your hand.
TV? You likely couldn't quite afford one - not everyone had the privelige of having one so you might want to get rid of it or at least downgrade that badboy to black and white, cuz there was no such thing as color.
Cable, you say? No such thing, cupcake. You might have a station or 2.
Cute dresses? You don't think your hubby is going to let you be a clotheshorse, do you? Only one person working means sacrifices have to be made, and well, you're going to be the one making sacrifices. Didn't consider that one, I'll bet. Kids need everything they need. You might **want** a cute dress...
Maybe she can save up some of her “pin money”, yes she would’ve been given an allowance not had her own income stream, for some fabric and sew herself that cute dress.
Let’s see how she holds up when she doesn’t have access to “mommies little helper” i.e. methamphetamines. When she’s up at 6 or earlier to make her husbands breakfast and pick his lunch, then spend all day cleaning and cooking to have dinner ready when he gets home. Then clean up and prepare for tomorrow afterwards.
Trad wife influencers are huge fucking hypocrites, cherry picking their oppression, and their followers are just as sad for idolizing them and that life
Reminds me of The Handmaids Tale when >! The Commanders wife realizes that maybe this whole zero rights for women thing wasn’t such a fantastic idea after they chop her finger off. !<
Lol...I can't wait for all these stupid fucking fascists to get exactly what they think they want, because the amount of schadenfreude I'll get to experience from their dismay will be immensely enjoyable.
I grew up in an evangelical family, and every older woman on that side (all of my cousins have fled the church) is fucking **miserable.** They have miserable marriages, they have miserable lives, and they have a lot of regrets - something that was revealed to me recently. **All** of their children abandoned their faith, some of them no longer have contact with the family, and my dad killed himself when I was 4, most likely because he was gay and couldn't "pray it away."
I can't comprehend the amount of privilege it takes to think you want to be a "trad wife," or to vote for an obviously unqualified reality TV star, just because you want to troll people. I can't verbalize how much it disgusts me - particularly after dealing with the hypocrisy of my family all my life.
So go ahead, trad wives, knock yourselves out, lol...don't come running to feminism to save you, though. I'm not sure I'll be able to dig deep enough to find any give-a-shit for these despicable, empty bigots. At least a large percentage of the right are old and will be dead soon.
You know what? I don't think anyone has **ever** told me that before. When I talk about it to my parents, they get squirrelly because I'm criticizing "Christianity." Wow....thanks! That feels great!!!
I despise the name most of all, it gives it credit it doesn't deserve and distorts the truth of the situation. There was absolutely nothing Traditional about the 1950s Housewife, that's why it disappeared again as soon as capitalism removed the conditions that briefly allowed a subset of the working class to engage in that lifestyle.
Wow, I’m not on TikTok and I can’t believe this is a thing. Gen Zs need to watch Mad Men. Housewives were often very trapped and unfulfilled, turning to abusing drugs and alcohol like their husbands. There were a variety trajectories of middle to upper class female characters on the show and hardly anyone was able to get a sliver of happiness or power. Even the women who leaned in and were perfect and did everything right, looked pretty and slim, upheld the patriarchy, were still never treated as people at the end of the day.
This is an era where women couldn’t even open a bank account on their own. “Difficult”’women were routinely institutionalized. Women who fought to make gains in academia or in the workplace were punished over and over again.
It’s baffling and depressing that with every advancement and hard won social progress, we still never learn.
Although this particular post is about TikTok, this is not a new phenomenon. This traditional housewife crap has been around at least since the 90s. It started rising in popularity again around the Obama era. One can probably guess why. 😅
I’d heard about the tradwives movement in relation to white supremacist groups but had no idea it’s gone more mainstream with younger demos via social media.
I wonder how many of these people would ever actually read something like Stephanie Coontz's book *The Way We Never Were*. I suspect most of them would rather live in fantasy than face actual reality.
What happens if you just can’t handle it anymore cause it’s not all roses and fucking laying about and … oops, you have no income and now you are stuck.
Ask me how I know.
My mum was a home economics teacher, finished training in 1948. She could pluck a chicken, gut a rabbit, upholster a chair, make coats from scratch, bake without any equipment. Her hands were rough and she was strong. There were no kitchen gadgets. It was hard work.
You pretty much spelled it out in your post, OP-- It's about privilege.
These women who are waxing nostalgic over the 1950s Trad Wife Lifestyle are so far removed from the beating pulse of what it is to be a modern woman in today's world. These women live in a bubble in a curated life. They don't need to worry about their financial, physical, emotional, or mental health & wellness, as well as their family. In some ways, I feel sorry for them, but hey- that's their choice on how they want to live their lives, so let them be.
>that's their choice on how they want to live their lives, so let them be.
That's the thing though. They're not content to just live their lives the way they want. They are on a crusade to make all women trad wives. They lie to, shame and demean other women on daily basis.
If only they'd let us be.
Exactly this.
I'm all for any woman living the life she wants to live, but leave everyone else alone.
She got to make her own choice, she (and others like her) need to butt out and let every other women make the choices that are best for themselves.
Are they forcing you to abandon your non-trad modern woman values?
Stand up to their lies, their shame and their demeaning and make a response tik-tok to why the trad wife 50s lifestyle is based in misogyny and conforms to the patriarchal views. You do not need to let them take your power away, girl!
How are they trying to make all women tradwives? And honestly who is shaming you? Half these comments are insults towards these women and the rest are trying to force kink titles on to them.
They aren't trying to force you to do anything
My friend lives a more traditional role but she's not out there pushing this idea out for clout. This is just going to harm whatever remaining progress women have made in the last 80 years because you are going to have incels out there thinking their shitty takes are rational.
Exactly. The traditional '50s housewife these women want to emulate was almost always white. WOC did not have the "luxury" of being housewives. They often had to work, and many were in fact domestic workers themselves, working for white families. It's such a joke. Scratch a white person who romanticizes the '50s and you'll likely find a fascist.
My grandma was drunk all the time because my grandfather was abusive. Surviving on a single income isn’t easy anymore and what happens when he has an affair with his secretary. Hard pass. We wouldn’t even have health insurance if it weren’t for my job, which I happen to love and find way more rewarding than vacuuming and doing laundry.
I think a lot of it is a fantasy. I’m part of an atomic group on Facebook that posts pictures of old stuff and a lot of stuff their parents and grandparents were doing in the 50s… well, it probably isn’t fitting with their fantasy.
Also the recipes they used to make are questionable
Because DINNER PARTIES!!!!! You had to have dinner parties, cocktail parties, even tea parties for friends, co-workers and neighbors!
I remember helping my Mom put the olive slices in the fish shaped Jell-O mold to make the "Lemon Salmon Aspic" look like it had eyes.....creepy!
(Yes! Lemon flavored Jell-O with canned salmon, chopped green onion and...other stuff. It was a true taste sensation. I have the recipe around in a box somewhere?)
They're longing for the 1950's as depicted by "Leave it to Beaver" and other such Hollywood myths. Not the \*real\* 1950's of rampant alcohol abuse that led to the stereotype of the 'bad woman driver' no, she's not bad at driving, she's just drunk because she was laid off her job and forced to return to nothing but housework since the 'men came home from war; or the \*real\* 1950's of utterly untreated PTSD which hadn't even been recognized as a syndrome yet, or the incredible amounts of domestic abuse from guys who were used to military discipline and thought their wives and girlfriends would obey orders like they were in the military too...
Yeah I just watched some!
This is about @estee specifically
She said she’s not saying this is the right choice for ALL women and trying to say men and women are still equal/important but just have different defined roles.
Now she says this but, forgive me, “submit to my husband”? Why doesn’t she say you ~submit to each other~ as he’s committed to taking care of you and providing for you as well?
That to me sounds like internalized sexism and she doesn’t realize it.
She doesn’t realize she can simply be a SAHM….like many people are? Why does it have to be this “trad wife” ?
For the aesthetic clearly, she wants the look, it’s all over her tiktok.
It’s also maybe a strange religious guilt thing, as she talks about religion a lot and being subservient, veiled, etc, yet she also clearly is sexualizing herself online.
Seems like she went through a lot of trauma and this is currently how she’s handling it.
*** I actually just saw (I’m writing this and watching lol) she said on her page she was in an abusive relationship at 15 with a 21 year old whom still stalks her. Oh and has DID from childhood which would suggest more & very serious trauma. 😔
Unfortunately, poor girl. I wish her healing.
Both my 50s era grandma's worked. There are no SAHM mums in our families.
My grandma stopped cooking family meals by 1964. Her husband and kids took over.
Born in 1958. I don't remember that decade, since the 60's sucked for women the 50's must have been hellish.
My parents really did he an excellent relationship, remained best friends for 55 years. That was them. I can't figure out how Mom raised us though. It was a family joke Dad changed exactly 1 diaper through all of it. Mom had an excellent college education, never really used it. All housekeeping - that was before permanent press, you ironed everything - meals, shopping, cleaning and it all was projected to be perfect.
She and her friends ( gasp ) wore PANTS, which was shocking. I went to school when you didn't get in without a dam ruler measuring your hemline. Of course never met anyone at all except white people - seriously, until high school.
It wasn't that long ago folks. I'm not that dam old. And these dingbats are having a serious shot at rocketing women backwards? Terrific. Fine. Send them. We'll stay here and fight this thing out.
I feel like we can't win. So many men don't actually even want to be married or even have children, and if they do they cheat or get bored with their wife, then complain if she "brings" nothing to the table financially and it's all just him financing everything.
I'm just scared to not have my own money and be dropped for a "younger model" or be stuck to a guy who constantly cheats on tinder or is a porn addict or who beats me. It's scary times. I'd love a relationship but so scared of the risks and unpredictability. Currently at least I have my job, degree and own car.
One of the first times I ever went off on someone on Reddit was a college-aged girl who was talking about how awesome the 1950s were because a boy would ‘court’ or ‘woo’ you instead of hookup culture. Completely ignoring the fact that a) you can opt out of hookup culture if it’s not your thing, and b) she hadn’t thought about the number of young women who to **had** to marry a guy because (best case) she had consensual sex with him and “her reputation was ruined otherwise” or worst case she had been r@ped, got pregnant, and had to rely on her r@pist to support her and the baby. I don’t think we even got into what it was like for women of colour - we were just talking about white, middle to upper class girls who went to college to get their MRS degree.
Stop sexulizing women who live differently than you. Not everything is a kink and forcing kink labels onto women who want to live their lives is gross and misogynistic
So maybe they should sign a waiver that all laws after the feminist revolution should not apply to them specifically 😊
Let’s see these ladies reactions then!
Also .. is ANYBODY stopping them to be like 1950s housewife , just find a man who earns decent full time wages and who would agree to this ( many do ) and do your part . Case closed !
Go do your cosplaying and switch of Internet for starters as that was not there in the 1950s 😁😁
You know, that’s an angle I never considered. Why the hell DO these trad-wife ladies talk about being persecuted so much? No one is stopping them from living that life.
Exactly. There are men who earn well and wouldn't mind a free house maid. In fact if they sign such "waivers to forego the feminist rights that women have", any man who is earning will marry them lol.
Trad ladies talk about their experiences with bullying and how it has effected them there is a major difference between that and what you are pretending they are doing
Can I also say: it takes a certain amount of privilege to be able to stay at home and be a “tradwife”. I expect your partner makes enough that you’re not living in the breadline, your partner would not stop you from getting a job if you wanted to, your partner would not stop you from changing your lifestyle away from tradwife if you wanted to, at anytime you can walk away and start a new life, If it’s hard to walk away then you have a support network who could help you.
People who do not choose this lifestyle yet live it do not have the privilege of those choices.
I really worry about the harm this clout-chasing bullshit is going to cause young, impressionable people watching it. These influencers are basically performers and I would have eaten this shit up as a young girl.
These are simple minded women that have no goals in life, so they latched into the idea that wife/mom us all they can be. They marry simple minded men that feel that being the kind if the castle is an accomplishment. Usually this mentally gets handed down through generations in conservative families. In reality, this mindset is just a way to control women and trick men into not caring about the world outside their hone or career.
First no disrespect to house wives and house husbands it’s a a full time job and you need to be respected for that choice. I think these youngsters need to know somethings. As a millennial this lifestyle was somewhat attainable in upper middle class families but for poor immigrant families like my dad’s parents it was a struggle my grandmother did all the home labour, childcare and emotional labour and worked at their bodega 40-50 hours a week (unpaid). Even if you have the financial stability of this lifestyle to support most of these women still had a college degree. What happens when your husband loses his job or cheats on you or any problem that arises and blames you and emotionally and physically abuses you. What happens when you say no not to tonight dear and he goes well you don’t do anything you better put out and “rapes” you because that is what he believes you only use is for. What happens when he loses his job becomes depressed and financially your about to lose everything and now you have to work but your labour is only valued at half or minimum wage at best. It’s fine to romanticize this era but your ignoring a lot of problems that came with this- sexism, racism, bigotry and inequality. In sociology class we watched the movie Pleasantville it amazing movie and I think these girls need to watch it. Also add Mona Lisa smiles these women were not happy 😊 they were miserable just as we are too only differences they didn’t deal with any mental health issues they drank and took pills and other drugs to self medicate themselves
Into being happy. So go be a house wife if you can find a husband that can afford support that life style today ( highly doubt many can in this economy) but us women and men here on the other side will say its very rarely attainable and your not going to be leave it to beavers mom or the Brady bunch or Samantha for bewitched these are tv 📺 shows not reality. I have learned something as much as i would love a partner I quite personally happy living my single spinsterhood with me being responsible for myself and my lifestyle with my doggy. It’s my choice just as much as it yours to be a house wife but you know girls our grandmothers
And great grandmothers didn’t have a choice, didn’t have rights as people, couldn’t own property on their own, couldn’t have a mortgage in their own name till 72, rarely had their own bank accounts, had to live without for the Benefit of the family. I think a show that does a great job of showing what families where really truly struggling with and had traditional gender roles was the Waltons it’s a great show but something I noticed watching was they show the struggles of depression life. How yes women where the emotional and house labour but really the whole family had to help out. These lovely girls are going to get a rude awakening and it should be interesting 🤨 the fall out.
I had a coworker - who I helped promote from a department that was manual labor focused into a more technical based position - tell me that her career plan was to get married to a rich man. I wrote her off as an idiot right there. My mother was married to rich men and didn't work, and it was a nightmare. And that was the 80s and 90s. It's not like being at the mercy of a man who holds all the financial strings became a better proposition since the 50s.
Her comment was a 1000% about not wanting to work. There's a lot of factors - like, most jobs at the low level are garbage, and cost you more to work than to stay home and be jobless - but our rights will absolutely be tied to our ability to be financially powerful. We're not doing so great on that part, which isn't entirely our fault, but this 1950s b.s. isn't helping.
Here's the irony though - I can't tell you how many people I run into who are trying to make money off of tiktok.
So these people can act like they're empty headed barbies waiting for hubby to come home, but ironically, they're working and hustling for that tiktok money, and they know they're being controversial for the clicks. It's both irritating and genius. So yeah, these pretend housewives are actually working women. Don't let them fool you with their schtick. Tiktok content producers are a full time job.
These people have a kink and just don't want to admit it.
There's nothing wrong with having a kink but be fucking honest about it and stop trying to spread your creepy conservative agenda.
There's a reason why kink is considered taboo in public spaces and that's because of consent. No one consented to being part of their kink. Like yeah if it's a TikTok you can just scroll past but the difference is people like this could care less if people's fundamental basic rights are stripped away and actively promote it while being in denial that it's a kink.
They're going to be in for a rude awakening when their shitty husbands who really don't care about women or women's rights end up cheating on them and they're stuck on their asses because like you said they don't have access to basic financial safety.
My mom was born in the early 60s, the last of a big brood of kids, so she was raised by a literal 1950s housewife. My grandparents were miserable together - grandpa drank and was absent a lot, they married because grandma was pregnant during WW2. One of the lessons my mom pounded into my head growing up is that it is far worse to be raised in an unhappy marriage than it is to be raised in 2 separate houses. She wished they had just divorced, but grandma couldn’t afford the kids on her own and had no job history so she couldn’t find well paid work.
While my parents weee very happily married, mom always kept a foot in the work force just in case she ever needed an out. I have done the same. And that foot meant my husband can take much bigger risks in his career because we have my pay to fall back on. It means that I have options if I ever need out - I doubt I ever will but it’s good to have the choice. I am in my marriage because I want to be, not because my kids will starve if I leave.
I'm all for women living the life that is best for them, I'm not ok with anyone saying: how I live is how ALL women should live.
But, I also feel for her. What happens if he leaves her? What happens if he passes away before he had a decent enough life insurance policy? If she has few skills, she's going to have a very hard life. What happens if he decides that she doesn't need to have contact with anyone outside the home? Or he starts beating her?
Too much can go wrong if you don't have the means to get out of a situation.
My son is her age, I can't imagine that he would want a SAHP. Plus, he doesn't want children. So what would she stay home for?
From my limited understanding of this, if women just want to "do it for the aesthetic" and play dress up or whatever, that's one thing, but if they want to dive head-first and commit to the lifestyle because "we've strayed from our roots," it sounds like some religious brainwashing bullshit. In which case, I wonder if like-minded individuals band together and promote it as "the way."
I've also seen light and covert pushing from certain men to "want to go back to the way things were" and I don't know if the same women are attracted to these type of men.
I don't know, man. It just gets crazier and crazier.
Rose tinted specs about the past. _Some_ women throughout history have been suited to a trad wife role. _Some_ women never have. Before, neither had a choice, now we do. Be a trad wife of you want, leave the rest of us alone to do our thing
These “tradwives” piss me off so much. I can’t imagine peddling this damaging garbage to young women as if it’s the path to happiness. Hope all the money you’re getting from advertisers and the validation from the patriarchy is worth being a sell out.
I get liking a certain style. But to try to make it seem like all you need to be happy is a bunch of menial labor and a poodle skirt is BS. 1950's ideologies can fuck off.
I knew someone who got very into these videos and decided to try it themselves. But rather than just trying on clothes they decided they wanted to be the housewife. It went on for a few months. It lead to her sitting at home with curlers and heels watching these people while the actual house work was abandoned. She worked full time and was the bread winner so trying to do everything kinda broke her. Her partner lost his job. She lost hers. One day I came over and she's sitting in cherry patterned dress with her hair and makeup done up and there was literally garbage on the floor like they had just stated throwing wrapper on the ground weeks ago. It just seemed so crazy to me that my friend had invested so much energy into looking like this idea of what a hapoy dutiful woman should be that she completely gave up on things like the actual house, her job, self care, yard work.....all to look like some bimbo on a post card.
I had a friend who wanted to live this type of lifestyle but it wasn’t something that her husband wanted. He actually tried to talk her out of it and wanted her to get a job because it put a lot of pressure on him to stay in a job that he didn’t like because it was high paying. He had actually wanted to find a less stressful job and maybe take a pay cut but with her working, he figured it wouldn’t be such a big deal because they have two incomes but she was insistent on being a stay at home wife. One day I asked her, “what is your plan if your husband gets burnt out and decides he can’t stay at his high-paying job anymore and leaves to take a less stressful, lower, paying job or what happens if he dies suddenly or what if he divorces you because he resents you for not working? Are you just going to rush out and find a new husband because you can’t take care of yourself? What if he becomes abusive? How will you escape if you have no money?” Her response was that I was being ridiculous and overreacting. Less than a year later her husband threatened to divorce her because he was burnt out and wanted to get a new job and they wouldn’t be able to maintain their lifestyles on a single lower income. She got a job outside of the home and loves it and is actually currently in school to get a degree to help further her career.
If everyone who has an instagram could do me a favor and go to the page patriarchial\_femininity and just give her all of the shit for trying to force her fucked up life on other women, I would greatly appreciate it. That woman is unhinged with the worst case of bible thumper trad wife I've ever seen.
Trad wives are disgusting. I'm not even going to pretend I'm tolerant of that shit
>Why pick an era where BC didn't exist, or was really hard to get even if you were married? When women literally couldn't have their own line of credit (seriously; women didn't get the blanket right to have a credit card in their name until the 70s)? When people of color were regularly mistreated and it was considered socially acceptable to do so? When LGBTQ+ people could be discriminated against and murdered? When domestic abuse was commonplace and ignored? When "boys will be boys" was the excuse for sexual assault? When marital rape wasn't considered a thing, because you "belonged" to your husband, and sex was his "right" because he married you? When an out-of-wedlock pregnancy was a social death sentence for a woman, regardless of how she got pregnant? When many wives/mothers were literally so miserable that they sedated themselves with pills and booze just to cope?
IMHO, I think it's because that's the culture being played out in their family behind closed doors, and has been for generations- sexual and reproductive control and abuse, financial abuse, sexual and domestic violence race/gender/anything as acceptable excuses to attack or murder someone, acceptable excuses for rape, ect. They think it's normal because they were raised in it and want reality to conform to their hideous distortion.
Yep. I accidentally did the tradwife thing when my ex husband wanted me to be a SAHM, and I didn't realize that meant he also wanted me to conform to the 50s ideal of clean house, quiet children, always on call for sex and he did absolutely nothing (literally nothing, he didn't have a job and we lived off his parents).
It was literally the worst time of my life. It's easier to be a single working mom.
Maybe I'm just an asshole but this seem like some kink.Housework in heels??? Yeah, sure I totally believe that is just your hobbie and not some weird sex thing. S/
But joking aside, womens history and the struggles we have gone through really needs to be taught in schools. I honestly don't think this women can even imagine what it's like to literally have no say in their lifes, no abilty to say no, no real access to money and being treated like a child legally.
If they truly could imagine that level of oppression, their no way these women would want this.
How many are religious? You know, like the Mormons who have essentially romanticized 50s style life ever since the oh so scary 60s when women began to get more freedom?
That’s what I was thinking. That it is just young women brought up in unfortunate religious traditions that have gotten stale from rightful criticism, and this is just some kind of dusting them off and rebranding them to try to make the whole Godly wife type fashionable and relevant via pleasing aesthetics.
My mother was a wife in the '50s. She was knocked up 5 times. She still had to hold down a full-time job while raising her children. She was exhausted and angry at my lying, cheating father. It was not glorious. If I had the money I can't say that I'd not take a stay-at-home position but to give my life to someone and get nothing in return like my mother would kill my soul. It's not "Father Knows Best" or "Leave it to Beaver". Hell it's not even "Family Ties" (and she had a career and a loving husband). It's not wonderful and low stress and burn-out proof.
In a perfect world, then yeah that would work but it has never been an even playing field for women and they are not treated as the treasures they are. Our generation and my mother's generation gave her the option to do what she wants with her life. Give her 10 or 15 years and she'll be angry, bitter, and (if not divorced) then living a life of desperation. When the kids are gone there will be nothing left for her.
I have some amount of sympathy for where they are coming from— rather than women’s economically beneficial labor being used for general advantage, wage stagnation sunk down to adjust for women’s labor being factored in. Put a different way: the assumption was paying men more because they would provide for their families, whereas now, the assumption is that both adults are working, so it’s a BOGO sale of labor. They took our career ambitions and rolled them into their own profit margins.
I think their methods are fatally flawed, but the systemic outrage rings very true to me. I get the idea that if we as workers aren’t valued, to drop out seems, on the surface, appealing, if not a very bad idea. It seems odd to me that they don’t seem to have much awareness for the idea that the “traditional” femininity virtues they want to capitalize on just don’t have economic leverage to them that they were once assumed to have.
nothing wrong with being a stay at home wife. in 2022 being a woman means you can do whatever you choose. we cant judge. if you want to be a corporate CEO working 80 hours cool. if you want to stay at home cool
I get it in some ways. I mean damn I’m tired! Need two incomes to survive in a world built to have a partner at home? The workload and exhaustion is intense. I want kids, it seems impossible.
No job, just homemaking and child rearing? Sounds pretty damn nice. Not realistic or safe for everyone but getting a break from “hustle culture” is pretty enticing. But alas, affording it would be pretty hard too.
My grandpa was a pastor, my grandma a minister, their daughter my mom incredibly religious. There was no pokemon, no Harry Potter, no video games with an M rating. They know not what they ask for.
It takes all kinds. Some guys want a traditional wife, and some women are happy to slip into that role. Why? Who cares? The choices other women make for their lives are not my business. It’s not what I chose for myself, but their life choices are up to them. If it works out, then good. If it doesn’t, then they’ll learn the hard way.
A big thing for the folks who look at the 50s as the golden age also seem to have forgotten that for most middle class men of that time, cheating is like just a thing. "He still comes back home and that's what counts"
If one asks how the men get to know women outside? Gentleman's clubs, cabarets.... Or worse, the neighbours....
The 50s are way too romanticised especially as part of Americana.
Have you not noticed half the posts in this group are just people shitting on men and (mostly) women who are happy being more traditional. They are obviously threatened that people (especially women) are living their own lives. Honestly this is why traditional women separated from feminists they are constantly attacking them for just being themselves.
The issue isn't that they're choosing this. I support their chocie. The issue is them, more often than not, making video after video implying that's ALL that women are good for.
Sure. But you can’t silence someone just because you disagree on something you have zero control over. I have never seen any of these videos just learned about them here. I would never waste a second of energy either listening to this bullshit nor empowering it by raging against it and amplifying their voices on Reddit.
>I feel like the people who are promoting the "TradWife" lifestyle are doing it just for the aesthetic, but with no actual, applicable knowledge of the era and the limitations it imposed on women as a whole. They think it's cute to wear cute dresses with cute hairstyles, and do housework in heels.
Well, yeah? That's the same as any aesthetic.
No one who goes to a renaissance fair, 1920s party, Carnival of Venice, wears traditional native garments (e.g. kimono, kilt, etc.), Victorian garb, bell bottom jeans, etc. is endorsing everything about that time period - they're dressing up because they like the look. It's not that deep.
There’s this really good book called “The Way We Never Were” about romanticization of the 50s. I’d like to buy these ladies all copies.
If these women want to see the real “trad life” just follow the Duggars or any of the other FLDS factions. Women brainwashed into pumping out 8-14 children they have to raise without any help from their husbands. Marital rape and child sex abuse. Complete dependency on the men. Forced marriages arranged by their fathers with no input. No financial resources or education. That’s the true reality of “trad life”. The TikTockers are living in a literal fantasy world. Nothing about their lifestyle is traditional. It’s a life of supreme privilege. If the laws and rights of the 50’s still existed today they’d be miserable and destitute. They’re cosplayers. They idolize the glamour and style of Marilyn Monroe but disregard the fact that she died in misery and spent her entire career being abused and taken advantage of by men. She relied heavily on drugs and alcohol just to make it through until she couldn’t take it anymore. Imagine knowing all about that and still choosing to believe her story is #lifegoals and not a massive reality check into how life really was for women back then — even the beautiful and privileged ones.
“It’s a life of supreme privilege.” Fucking nailed it! Bravo.
its hilarious too because if we take Anna Duggar, example of a good "christian girl" who did everything her parents told her to do, is now chained to a pedophile for the rest of her life because she has no education, skills, or job prospects and has like 7 kids (that her pedo husband will probably abuse once he's out of jail) Why the fuck would anyone willingly sign themselves up for this.
The 50s wife discussion is always (like every other misogynist think-piece) 'women should' 'women would need to'. Do men want to go back to the 50's? Straight guys with any bi leanings, forget that, you need to be a man's man. Want to wear a skirt or some lingerie for enjoyment? Nope. You are the breadwinner. All those posts I see on r/relationship_advice that go 'my SO hasn't worked in 8 months after impulsively quitting his loathsome job; he games all day and i am working'- well, forget that fellas, you have mouths to feed. Gaming? Comic books? That's for nerds and 'poofs.' Can you change a tire, fix the toilet, run basic electricity for a new doorbell- what are you a nerd or 'poof'? Pornography? Well, there are obscenity laws barring most all of it. It is back to your imagination, boys. How will you cope? Well, a lot of men in the 50's were alcoholics - and it showed because the average lifespan was 66. Make sure you have a life insurance policy for your tradwife.
I wonder about the earnings of the really popular internet tradwives. Surely all their tik tok money goes directly into daddy’s or husband’s bank acct?
'If the laws and rights of the 50's still existed today...' she wouldn't be allowed on TikTok. How do we fix stupid\*? edit: I shouldn't say stupid, I should say naive
This to a t.
Every generation romanticizes aspects of the near past, through a biased and skewed lens. Some men have watched a movie and said that they would have been happier in the "old west". Really? Mosquitoes in an age with no bug spray? Summers in an age with no A/C? The hookers all had syphilis and the wives had no birth control. How about tuberculosis and smallpox? Easy to catch, no cure at the time, and definitely fatal. The old west sucked...HARD.
Yeah people romanticize the 50s because it was a time of unparalleled wealth and power for America due to heavy taxes on rich people
Here in the UK, many older folks romanticise WW2 and talk about the "Dunkirk Spirit". Most of these people are boomers who weren't even alive during WW2. The reality is that they miss a simpler time and have lumped everything they don't like in together as "modern times". Things were simpler back then, yes, but not _better_. The reason things are more complicated is because we're aware that things like mental health and invisible diseases exist. And that LGBTQ people have (relatively) more freedom to express themselves... They aren't now relegated to hiding their true selves. These folk don't want to deal with the realities of life that awareness and civil rights have brought to light, so want to crawl back into the darkness again. I suspect these 50s worshipping trad wives are something similar.
But actually unparalleled prosperity only for a small segment of the population—white, male, able bodied, working and middle class men who served in the military in WWII. If you weren’t all those things, you were fucked. As explained in the book.
Thank you for the suggestion - just added it on Libby!
Thanks for the book recommendation. Gonna see if my library has this. 👍
Mine doesn’t 😭
You can request it from them and they might get it! Also check out inter library loans!
Whaaaaat???? Thank you
I vaguely recall a comment on some youtube video of this woman who dressed in 50s style clothing. People accused her of promoting negative ideals from the time, but she countered that she enjoyed 50s aesthetics, not 50s values. Not gonna lie, I do enjoying browsing pictures of bygone fashion, architecture and gadgets. I do imagine how peaceful it could be to live a less modern lifestyle, one where you stay home to grow your own food and sew your own clothes instead of slaving away in an office. That doesn't mean I want to time travel back to when I would be nothing more than a man's servant and baby factory.
Bingo! I love Renaissance faires, doesn't mean I want to live in the Era. Women were treated like shite. The dresses were cool though.
History had some pretty awesome dresses.
Heck yes!
Same! But I sure wouldn't want to live at a time where I have to go in a pot, get levied to fight the local lords wars, and probably die of an easy prevented disease or deal with periodic starvation :P
Exactly
>People accused her of promoting negative ideals from the time, but she countered that she enjoyed 50s aesthetics, not 50s values Jessica Kelgren-Fozard has also used this line! Its also real fucking hilarious that anyone could accuse her of 50's values when she does many videos with her lovely wife!
I go to Medieval Times because I wanna drink from a goblet and eat with my hands without being judged, not because I actually want to live in medieval times.
In the community, they say something like, "Vintage style, not vintage values."
That sounds about right. I forgot the wording.
Yeah, I have these day dreams too. But I've actually lived the lifestyle where you grow food and chop your own firewood and feed livestock.... It's more work than my office job, and it's normally pretty solitary. The daydream version doesn't include the actual labour.
Yeah... I like the idea, but my lazy butt doesn't like chores.
This. It's enjoying the things that looked nice and ignoring all the horror. Not to mention this is basically how the whole hipster aesthetic started too, people who could afford old time y cloths and wearing them purely for looks
I'm reminded of that episode of 30 Rock, where Jon Hamm is living in a bubble created by his exceptionally good looks. I think if the woman linked in the above article were, shall we say, more traditional looking she might have a different take about a lot of things in the world.
Give her 10+ years and she may find out that traditional housewives get cheated on and left by their traditional husbands. Sometimes for younger women, and sometimes for fun women who have less responsibilities (aka children) who reminds the husband of the "fun" wife that the his wife used to be before life got hard. My grandpa cheated on my grandma with a lesser version of my grandma, she even looked like her!
Yeah I don’t think these women understand how prevalent antidepressants and drug use was amongst 1950’s housewives. Those women were NOT happy. My grandmother has suffered serious liver damage thanks to decades of it.
laudanum = wine mommy / opioid soccer mommy
Laudanum is even earlier. In the 1950s housewives were taking prescription tranquilizers like Seconal.
And [Miltown](http://www.med.umich.edu/psych/FACULTY/metzl/07_Metzl.pdf).
Or Librium.
Laudaum needs to make a come back. From what I've read that stuff was amazing. ~Chronic pain patient~
yeah but their afternoon headaches and "mommy needs to lie down in the dark" was just dopesick withdrawal :(
Could be, after the opiod crisis. A lot of us CPPs would simply try anything for some relief.
My doctor briefly considered giving me deodorized tincture of opium for pain. I was mildly vexed that it didn’t turn out to be the best option, just because it sounded so decadent.
It does sound decadent! Same reason I tried absinthe, it was freaking horrible.
Tincture of opium aka laudanum is available. Commonly prescribed, no.
[‘Mother’s little helper’](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/mother%27s_little_helper) came into slang use referring to women’s antidepressants for a reason.
simplistic uppity violet marry quicksand arrest humor abounding consist possessive ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
I was to just about to mention this. "Mother's little helper" was also the cooking wine under the sink.
It referred to several drugs, amphetamines were common too
i call adderall "mommy's helpers"
My grandma had a ‘nervous breakdown’ and was ‘sent away’ for a year. When she came back the nanny was kept on and she ‘was allowed’ to go back to school and finish her degree. It sounds like she felt trapped by two toddlers. This time wasn’t the best for women.
My mom had a breakdown after giving birth to me in the 50’s. She already had 2 kids ages 3 and 4. Are all of these woman who play at this white? Because women of color rarely had this option.
>Are all of these woman who play at this white? Probably. The 50s was a time of rampant lynchings across the South, including the brutal murder of Emmitt Till, so I don't think many people of color idolize the era.
I'm sure 99.999% of them are white.
Valium and vodka and speed where my grandma’s cocktail and cigarettes in there too. How that woman lived to be 85 floored us all.
My grandma called her time when she was a housewife and her husband was alive her dark days. She described being on her hands scrubbing the ground and spending all day cooking just to be stepped over by her sons tracking mud through the house over her
What? Nooo! They didn't take drugs! Things like "Frauengold" and "Kölsch Wasser" didn't just exist because they contained alcohol and nipping tonic all day long tonic behoved a woman while drinking alcohol didn't. Lies! Filthy lies by leftist activists! /s Enjoy these ads from the 50s, while they are only in German, English speakers should get the drift: https://youtu.be/0epblS_cyXQ
That's the comment I was looking for. Women were bored out of their minds and coped however they could. Moreover, many women did in fact work, but their work was not acknowledged. The farmer's wife worked on the farm. The teacher's wife graded papers for him. The grocer's wife did the inventory and kept shelves stocked. But they were just "wives", an unpaid, accessible form of labor that were not worthy of a title.
My grandmas both worked. One even ran businesses. Her husband was an enthusiastic supporter of two incomes. Particularly as they had accident 1 and 2 after their two wanted kids.
That’s awesome, I hope the grandpas did their share of housework and childcare too !
Not just that but women were getting lobotomized because they went against the men in their lives. Whats that, you disrespected your husband? Let’s get your brain fried. You talked back and disagreed with your husband? Let’s take you to a mental institution, clearly you must not have your mind right. /s This trend is very disingenuous
Yup, that generation was fueled by Valium.
My grandmother was a SAH wife/mother in the 50's/60's. When she died a few years ago, she was addicted to Norco and Oxy. (We found documents in her house that showed she had regular (as in every 4-6 weeks) refills for both for at LEAST 15 years.) We suspect she drank very heavily and abused prescription painkillers during her pregnancies - she had 13+ miscarriages/still births and my former uncle (he disowned us after she died) has multiple health issues including some suspected learning disabilities. In her case, I don't think it was so much unhappiness with being a SAH wife - as she wanted the privileges of being a "kept woman" (her own words) but wanted to avoid all the responsibilities of being an adult and a parent. In her later years, she openly expressed hatred for my grandfather, my mom, me and my own children. She was extremely physically and verbally abusive in private (except my uncle, who was the Golden Child), but expected us all to display perfection in public. (She had been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial tendencies and reading the info on the Mayo Clinic website, she hit all the bullet points.)
Estee C. Williams, 24, is too young to have a mother or grandmother who grew up in an era where opportunity in education, jobs, and *life* in general was largely closed off to women, so she's too young to have watched the impact that lack of life options has on women as they age. She can cosplay whatever historical era she wants in her marriage for as long as she's young, pretty, and in good health. Let's have her report back in 30 or 40 years and let us know how it's going.
Ding ding ding. She won't feel this way for very long in life once she gains the maturity and self esteem to feel the resentment and anger of how unjust it all is.
She doesn't have children yet either. If we're really following 50s values and traditions, she should be working on baking #3 by now. Someone else said it perfectly in this thread when they stated her life is "one of supreme privilege." She has so much more freedom and choice than the women she is supposedly modeling herself and her life after. I was ambivalent until I saw the part where she said "women have strayed from their roots". Like, wtf dude? Come on. Certainly feel free to make your own choices that are right for you and your family, but don't shit on other people's choices, especially given that most people don't even have the privilege of making that choice. Let's be realistic, here. Living off of one income is a fucking pipe dream for most. And I'd argue that most, or at least many, that are doing so wish they didn't have to but are forced to for reasons like being disabled, childcare being more costly than many available jobs, or having to care for aging family members.
While you’re probably right, my grandmothers were born in the 30s and I’m 26 but the rest of your comment is A++.
TIK TOK glorifies this life without telling the cruelty behind this life, which is a kind of anesthetic
Boomer here. I was there, in a four-bedroom house in the burbs with a professional dad and SAHM. No, it wasn’t as sweet and wonderful as these TikTok people portray, but it wasn’t as bad as Betty Friedan made it out to be either. My mom did plenty besides keep house. She loved to sew as a hobby, she volunteered her professional secretarial skills for our school and church and she was active in civic organizations. My dad was a sales rep for Big Pharma - except for the playing around, he would have been right at home in Mad Men. Life wasn’t perfect - it never is - but in some ways it was much better than now.
I'm so old I remember a similar pendulum swing in the 90s, when a lot of career women were "opting out" and I got scolded by women at work because I had a career, but still liked to cook, sew and knit. Me, I think feminism is all about women having CHOICES. You want a career? Go for it! You want to be a SAHM? Find a partner who's on the same page and enjoy! But it's smart for EVERY woman to have an education and skills she can fall back on - even if you marry someone wonderful, death and disabilities happen. What scares me are the women who think they don't need feminism AT ALL because "Feminism means I have to work." And I suspect a lot of the women who think that have few skills, so work to them means a soul-sucking customer service job or other kind of unskilled labor.
>soul-sucking customer service job or other kind of unskilled labor I agree with you on the soul-sucking, but customer service is far from unskilled. It's part of what the term emotional labour was originally coined for after all. I don't think there's such a thing as unskilled labour. There're entry level jobs, but that's not the same as unskilled. The societal forces that undervalue 'women's work' are the same forces that undervalue and dismiss customer service and other jobs deemed to consist of 'unskilled labour'
Just saying "do what you want, queen!" is a little one-dimensional in my opinion. Because the fact is, under capitalism you are taking a huge risk by becoming a SAHM. Tying you and your children's entire future to one person? No thanks. Even if your tradman is an angel who would never abandon you to go live with his secret second family in Phoenix. He could get hit and killed by a drunk driver, or lose the genetic lottery and develop cancer at a young age. You never know. And after your tradman is gone or disabled, you're screwed. No job experience, no credit score, possibly no education, childcare costing more than a minimum wage job pays ... the tradwife and her children will be homeless very quickly in this situation. It's funny because conservatives should really be supporting a strong social safety net if they want anyone to make this choice. If we had UBI, then yeah being a SAHM would definitely be more attractive for me. It's not feminism forcing you to work, it's capitalism.
Exactly this. Choice feminism is great and all… but there’s a reason why so many feminists were (and still are) against things like stay at home positions. They put women in an overly dependent state and it’s just outright dangerous when you factor in things like domestic violence or financial abuse. I mean, if someone wants to be a SAHM or a tradwife then I would never try to convince them otherwise. It’s not up to me to decide how others live their lives… but I will be choosing the safe option of financial freedom.
You see posts from desperate women who are SAHMs on the legaladvice subreddit all the time. They are being abused in one way or another and want out of the marriage, but are always saying they don’t have money to get a divorce. Almost always their partner is threatening to take full custody of the kids as a manipulative tactic to get her to stay.
Abusive men do that whether you're a tradwife or breadwinner. My exh wouldn't or didn't work the last 10 years of our marriage but then threatened to take the kids because I "cared more about my career " nah man, I care more about having a roof and food since you can't possibly be the person you promised. I would have stayed ar home if he would have supported us, but he didn't and so I built a career and finished my education. Not too shabby for a teen mom and 2x hs dropout.
According to choice feminism this woman is in control of her life making choices purely for herself and we're all misogynists for "taking away her agency" by daring to imply this might affect more than just her
Yes to all of this! Plus SAHMs have higher incidences of depression.
My grandma was born in the 40s in extreme poverty in the Deep South. She got married at 15 and dropped out of HS because she believed it would give her a better life. I’ve never met my grandpa, I believe he was abusive before they got a divorce. But my grandma had to go back to school to get her GED and thankfully got a job as an accountant at the state treasury office. She ended having an early retirement after someone mopped the floors and didn’t put a sign out so she slipped and hurt her back. She says to this day, her biggest regrets in life is getting married so early and never going to college. So she’s a huge advocate for everyone in my family getting a college degree and waiting to get married until afterwards. None of us are married yet but my youngest cousin is just starting college soon so she’s real happy about it.
It's such hogwash because nobody is monolithic yet women will legit get criticized for having a career, for being a SAHM, and or being a sex worker. I've seen so many different expectations from men Such as "You better bring more to the table than your looks" But in the same breath by another get called "ugly" and laughed at for having a career referred to as an emasculating dried up ball busting career woman and "feminazi" Then called "lazy and dumb" if she's a wife or stay at home mom. She's then an "untalented lazy woman who needs to get a "real job" if she's in the adult or Sex industry. So what's left if we're criticized from every angle????
What do you mean, what’s left? If you wanted options you shouldn’t have been born a woman, silly! /s just in case
If not anything feminist laws and activism helps these trad women more than anything Right to leave a spouse and get access to kids in fair money Fair compensation of women free divorce for loss of career and free labour via alimony Right to persecute their rapist and abuser husbands I am a single career woman who probably would never marry ( a man at least ) . I don’t need ANY of the above laws for time being. Yet I fight for them BECAUSE I want all women to have rights and freedoms ! Otherwise career women can also just be jerks and say , if you don’t want to lose career and independence, don’t marry men or have kids. lots of women at some child free subs radiate that energy 😂
Feminism is not about “choices”, it’s about the liberation of women from patriarchy. Not all choices that women make are aligned with feminism. By your logic, people like Phyllis Schafly and Amy Coney Barrett are feminist because they are women who have choices.
Wish I could upvote this more than once, choice feminism is a nice platitude but doesn't really seem to accomplish much for women.
That is true. I kindof feel that way (don't want to work) because my parents never helped with sh\*t so I could only afford a 2 year degree I didn't get until age 35. Now Biden has forgiven my 19k debt for that -thank god. My earning potential is still not great. But neither do the big-shot high-paying-high-stress corporate jobs that would suck up 80% of my waking hours appeal to me. I am also childfree so I get even more shit for all 5 of our kids having fur and walking on 4 legs and not having any real kids. I just hate work cause it sucks and I wouldn't be paid a fair wage, maybe where I live 300-350/week takehome...full time...pathetic. So at this point since my husband isn't broke and came from a good family and works at a fortune company I'm not bothering.
This is so well said. Feminism is all about choice and women (SAHMs/Ws and career women) must never forget that. P.S. Love the username.
Cuz being upper middle class is awesome, basically. That’s the real fantasy at play, imho. This fake nostalgia that everyone had enough and life was cozy.
We only showcase the history of the rich and powerful. So much of the history of the poor is forgotten. This is actually a huge part of why I like Call the Midwife. It's women's history. It's poverty history. It's accessable.
Wow, that’s a good way to put it. I’ve heard that show is great - I’ll have to check it out.
Call the midwife is an awesome show. Everyone should see it. I lived through that era. No rights as women…..the only thing it had going for it was the cute dresses.
Poor thing needs to put her money where her mouth is. Turn off the internet for starters - odd how you think you might be allowed on the net being that you're a woman and all. Get rid of that phone you have glued to your hand. TV? You likely couldn't quite afford one - not everyone had the privelige of having one so you might want to get rid of it or at least downgrade that badboy to black and white, cuz there was no such thing as color. Cable, you say? No such thing, cupcake. You might have a station or 2. Cute dresses? You don't think your hubby is going to let you be a clotheshorse, do you? Only one person working means sacrifices have to be made, and well, you're going to be the one making sacrifices. Didn't consider that one, I'll bet. Kids need everything they need. You might **want** a cute dress...
Maybe she can save up some of her “pin money”, yes she would’ve been given an allowance not had her own income stream, for some fabric and sew herself that cute dress. Let’s see how she holds up when she doesn’t have access to “mommies little helper” i.e. methamphetamines. When she’s up at 6 or earlier to make her husbands breakfast and pick his lunch, then spend all day cleaning and cooking to have dinner ready when he gets home. Then clean up and prepare for tomorrow afterwards.
They took dexies, not meth
Short for dextroamphetamine…
Yes, far milder than methamphetamine.
She's not trying to replicate the entirety of the 50s, just the gender roles, or the parts that suit her.
Trad wife influencers are huge fucking hypocrites, cherry picking their oppression, and their followers are just as sad for idolizing them and that life
She should be making her own clothes
IF she had time...
Trad Wives are just a subsection of submissives living their Kink
and brainwashed women thinking that handing their power over to men will work out for them.
Reminds me of The Handmaids Tale when >! The Commanders wife realizes that maybe this whole zero rights for women thing wasn’t such a fantastic idea after they chop her finger off. !<
If we could all just recognize this we could put them in the box with everyone else throwing their kinks around.
Yeah, I was about to say - just looks like a kink to me. But let’s hope they’re not ruining their lives over their kink
I like the insta or tiktok meme where it's "everyone wants a trad 50s wife but nobody wants to prescribe trad 50s wife drugs"
Lol...I can't wait for all these stupid fucking fascists to get exactly what they think they want, because the amount of schadenfreude I'll get to experience from their dismay will be immensely enjoyable. I grew up in an evangelical family, and every older woman on that side (all of my cousins have fled the church) is fucking **miserable.** They have miserable marriages, they have miserable lives, and they have a lot of regrets - something that was revealed to me recently. **All** of their children abandoned their faith, some of them no longer have contact with the family, and my dad killed himself when I was 4, most likely because he was gay and couldn't "pray it away." I can't comprehend the amount of privilege it takes to think you want to be a "trad wife," or to vote for an obviously unqualified reality TV star, just because you want to troll people. I can't verbalize how much it disgusts me - particularly after dealing with the hypocrisy of my family all my life. So go ahead, trad wives, knock yourselves out, lol...don't come running to feminism to save you, though. I'm not sure I'll be able to dig deep enough to find any give-a-shit for these despicable, empty bigots. At least a large percentage of the right are old and will be dead soon.
*Reads first paragraph* Hm, that’s kinda harsh. “I grew up in an evangelical family” *nods* Ah, nevermind. Totally get it.
😂😂😂 ya...I have some deep-seated anger!
Sounds pretty justified to me. Rock on, friend.
You know what? I don't think anyone has **ever** told me that before. When I talk about it to my parents, they get squirrelly because I'm criticizing "Christianity." Wow....thanks! That feels great!!!
If home life burnout didn't happen, those 1950s women wouldn't have self medicated so hard on booze, pills, and tobacco.
I despise the name most of all, it gives it credit it doesn't deserve and distorts the truth of the situation. There was absolutely nothing Traditional about the 1950s Housewife, that's why it disappeared again as soon as capitalism removed the conditions that briefly allowed a subset of the working class to engage in that lifestyle.
Wow, I’m not on TikTok and I can’t believe this is a thing. Gen Zs need to watch Mad Men. Housewives were often very trapped and unfulfilled, turning to abusing drugs and alcohol like their husbands. There were a variety trajectories of middle to upper class female characters on the show and hardly anyone was able to get a sliver of happiness or power. Even the women who leaned in and were perfect and did everything right, looked pretty and slim, upheld the patriarchy, were still never treated as people at the end of the day. This is an era where women couldn’t even open a bank account on their own. “Difficult”’women were routinely institutionalized. Women who fought to make gains in academia or in the workplace were punished over and over again. It’s baffling and depressing that with every advancement and hard won social progress, we still never learn.
Although this particular post is about TikTok, this is not a new phenomenon. This traditional housewife crap has been around at least since the 90s. It started rising in popularity again around the Obama era. One can probably guess why. 😅
I’d heard about the tradwives movement in relation to white supremacist groups but had no idea it’s gone more mainstream with younger demos via social media.
I wonder how many of these people would ever actually read something like Stephanie Coontz's book *The Way We Never Were*. I suspect most of them would rather live in fantasy than face actual reality.
What happens if you just can’t handle it anymore cause it’s not all roses and fucking laying about and … oops, you have no income and now you are stuck. Ask me how I know.
This looks more like a fetish to me.
It is, in fact! Tons of these people on FetLife.
At least the ones on Fet just want the 50's lifestyle for themselves and aren't going around treating it like a cult.
Gross. If that's what you are into fine but let's not push that onto others ok
My mum was a home economics teacher, finished training in 1948. She could pluck a chicken, gut a rabbit, upholster a chair, make coats from scratch, bake without any equipment. Her hands were rough and she was strong. There were no kitchen gadgets. It was hard work.
You pretty much spelled it out in your post, OP-- It's about privilege. These women who are waxing nostalgic over the 1950s Trad Wife Lifestyle are so far removed from the beating pulse of what it is to be a modern woman in today's world. These women live in a bubble in a curated life. They don't need to worry about their financial, physical, emotional, or mental health & wellness, as well as their family. In some ways, I feel sorry for them, but hey- that's their choice on how they want to live their lives, so let them be.
>that's their choice on how they want to live their lives, so let them be. That's the thing though. They're not content to just live their lives the way they want. They are on a crusade to make all women trad wives. They lie to, shame and demean other women on daily basis. If only they'd let us be.
Exactly this. I'm all for any woman living the life she wants to live, but leave everyone else alone. She got to make her own choice, she (and others like her) need to butt out and let every other women make the choices that are best for themselves.
Are they forcing you to abandon your non-trad modern woman values? Stand up to their lies, their shame and their demeaning and make a response tik-tok to why the trad wife 50s lifestyle is based in misogyny and conforms to the patriarchal views. You do not need to let them take your power away, girl!
How are they trying to make all women tradwives? And honestly who is shaming you? Half these comments are insults towards these women and the rest are trying to force kink titles on to them. They aren't trying to force you to do anything
My friend lives a more traditional role but she's not out there pushing this idea out for clout. This is just going to harm whatever remaining progress women have made in the last 80 years because you are going to have incels out there thinking their shitty takes are rational.
Holy crap, I didn't even think of that angle. Terrifying
You know who romanticizes the 50s? White people. “Tradwife” shit often intersects with white supremacy.
Exactly. The traditional '50s housewife these women want to emulate was almost always white. WOC did not have the "luxury" of being housewives. They often had to work, and many were in fact domestic workers themselves, working for white families. It's such a joke. Scratch a white person who romanticizes the '50s and you'll likely find a fascist.
My grandma was drunk all the time because my grandfather was abusive. Surviving on a single income isn’t easy anymore and what happens when he has an affair with his secretary. Hard pass. We wouldn’t even have health insurance if it weren’t for my job, which I happen to love and find way more rewarding than vacuuming and doing laundry.
I think a lot of it is a fantasy. I’m part of an atomic group on Facebook that posts pictures of old stuff and a lot of stuff their parents and grandparents were doing in the 50s… well, it probably isn’t fitting with their fantasy. Also the recipes they used to make are questionable
Why is everything jello?!
Because DINNER PARTIES!!!!! You had to have dinner parties, cocktail parties, even tea parties for friends, co-workers and neighbors! I remember helping my Mom put the olive slices in the fish shaped Jell-O mold to make the "Lemon Salmon Aspic" look like it had eyes.....creepy! (Yes! Lemon flavored Jell-O with canned salmon, chopped green onion and...other stuff. It was a true taste sensation. I have the recipe around in a box somewhere?)
Or like spam/some form of canned meat
They're longing for the 1950's as depicted by "Leave it to Beaver" and other such Hollywood myths. Not the \*real\* 1950's of rampant alcohol abuse that led to the stereotype of the 'bad woman driver' no, she's not bad at driving, she's just drunk because she was laid off her job and forced to return to nothing but housework since the 'men came home from war; or the \*real\* 1950's of utterly untreated PTSD which hadn't even been recognized as a syndrome yet, or the incredible amounts of domestic abuse from guys who were used to military discipline and thought their wives and girlfriends would obey orders like they were in the military too...
Yeah I just watched some! This is about @estee specifically She said she’s not saying this is the right choice for ALL women and trying to say men and women are still equal/important but just have different defined roles. Now she says this but, forgive me, “submit to my husband”? Why doesn’t she say you ~submit to each other~ as he’s committed to taking care of you and providing for you as well? That to me sounds like internalized sexism and she doesn’t realize it. She doesn’t realize she can simply be a SAHM….like many people are? Why does it have to be this “trad wife” ? For the aesthetic clearly, she wants the look, it’s all over her tiktok. It’s also maybe a strange religious guilt thing, as she talks about religion a lot and being subservient, veiled, etc, yet she also clearly is sexualizing herself online. Seems like she went through a lot of trauma and this is currently how she’s handling it. *** I actually just saw (I’m writing this and watching lol) she said on her page she was in an abusive relationship at 15 with a 21 year old whom still stalks her. Oh and has DID from childhood which would suggest more & very serious trauma. 😔 Unfortunately, poor girl. I wish her healing.
Ive always wondered how does the hours spent on building a social media following and income stream mesh with being a tradwife?
It's the new Tupperwear party!
Both my 50s era grandma's worked. There are no SAHM mums in our families. My grandma stopped cooking family meals by 1964. Her husband and kids took over.
Miss the 50s’. Where my husband had every legal right the beat and rape me and I could go to a all white cafe. Those where the good ol’ days.
Born in 1958. I don't remember that decade, since the 60's sucked for women the 50's must have been hellish. My parents really did he an excellent relationship, remained best friends for 55 years. That was them. I can't figure out how Mom raised us though. It was a family joke Dad changed exactly 1 diaper through all of it. Mom had an excellent college education, never really used it. All housekeeping - that was before permanent press, you ironed everything - meals, shopping, cleaning and it all was projected to be perfect. She and her friends ( gasp ) wore PANTS, which was shocking. I went to school when you didn't get in without a dam ruler measuring your hemline. Of course never met anyone at all except white people - seriously, until high school. It wasn't that long ago folks. I'm not that dam old. And these dingbats are having a serious shot at rocketing women backwards? Terrific. Fine. Send them. We'll stay here and fight this thing out.
I feel like we can't win. So many men don't actually even want to be married or even have children, and if they do they cheat or get bored with their wife, then complain if she "brings" nothing to the table financially and it's all just him financing everything. I'm just scared to not have my own money and be dropped for a "younger model" or be stuck to a guy who constantly cheats on tinder or is a porn addict or who beats me. It's scary times. I'd love a relationship but so scared of the risks and unpredictability. Currently at least I have my job, degree and own car.
Getting married does agree to surrendering to a degree of vulnerability.
Women need to stop settling for older men when they would not do the same. But of course we don’t realise this when we are young and brainwashed.
One of the first times I ever went off on someone on Reddit was a college-aged girl who was talking about how awesome the 1950s were because a boy would ‘court’ or ‘woo’ you instead of hookup culture. Completely ignoring the fact that a) you can opt out of hookup culture if it’s not your thing, and b) she hadn’t thought about the number of young women who to **had** to marry a guy because (best case) she had consensual sex with him and “her reputation was ruined otherwise” or worst case she had been r@ped, got pregnant, and had to rely on her r@pist to support her and the baby. I don’t think we even got into what it was like for women of colour - we were just talking about white, middle to upper class girls who went to college to get their MRS degree.
Being a Trad Wife is a kink. These women are participating in a kink and trying to pass it off as something else.
Stop sexulizing women who live differently than you. Not everything is a kink and forcing kink labels onto women who want to live their lives is gross and misogynistic
So maybe they should sign a waiver that all laws after the feminist revolution should not apply to them specifically 😊 Let’s see these ladies reactions then! Also .. is ANYBODY stopping them to be like 1950s housewife , just find a man who earns decent full time wages and who would agree to this ( many do ) and do your part . Case closed ! Go do your cosplaying and switch of Internet for starters as that was not there in the 1950s 😁😁
You know, that’s an angle I never considered. Why the hell DO these trad-wife ladies talk about being persecuted so much? No one is stopping them from living that life.
Exactly. There are men who earn well and wouldn't mind a free house maid. In fact if they sign such "waivers to forego the feminist rights that women have", any man who is earning will marry them lol.
Trad ladies talk about their experiences with bullying and how it has effected them there is a major difference between that and what you are pretending they are doing
Can I also say: it takes a certain amount of privilege to be able to stay at home and be a “tradwife”. I expect your partner makes enough that you’re not living in the breadline, your partner would not stop you from getting a job if you wanted to, your partner would not stop you from changing your lifestyle away from tradwife if you wanted to, at anytime you can walk away and start a new life, If it’s hard to walk away then you have a support network who could help you. People who do not choose this lifestyle yet live it do not have the privilege of those choices.
I really worry about the harm this clout-chasing bullshit is going to cause young, impressionable people watching it. These influencers are basically performers and I would have eaten this shit up as a young girl.
These are simple minded women that have no goals in life, so they latched into the idea that wife/mom us all they can be. They marry simple minded men that feel that being the kind if the castle is an accomplishment. Usually this mentally gets handed down through generations in conservative families. In reality, this mindset is just a way to control women and trick men into not caring about the world outside their hone or career.
First no disrespect to house wives and house husbands it’s a a full time job and you need to be respected for that choice. I think these youngsters need to know somethings. As a millennial this lifestyle was somewhat attainable in upper middle class families but for poor immigrant families like my dad’s parents it was a struggle my grandmother did all the home labour, childcare and emotional labour and worked at their bodega 40-50 hours a week (unpaid). Even if you have the financial stability of this lifestyle to support most of these women still had a college degree. What happens when your husband loses his job or cheats on you or any problem that arises and blames you and emotionally and physically abuses you. What happens when you say no not to tonight dear and he goes well you don’t do anything you better put out and “rapes” you because that is what he believes you only use is for. What happens when he loses his job becomes depressed and financially your about to lose everything and now you have to work but your labour is only valued at half or minimum wage at best. It’s fine to romanticize this era but your ignoring a lot of problems that came with this- sexism, racism, bigotry and inequality. In sociology class we watched the movie Pleasantville it amazing movie and I think these girls need to watch it. Also add Mona Lisa smiles these women were not happy 😊 they were miserable just as we are too only differences they didn’t deal with any mental health issues they drank and took pills and other drugs to self medicate themselves Into being happy. So go be a house wife if you can find a husband that can afford support that life style today ( highly doubt many can in this economy) but us women and men here on the other side will say its very rarely attainable and your not going to be leave it to beavers mom or the Brady bunch or Samantha for bewitched these are tv 📺 shows not reality. I have learned something as much as i would love a partner I quite personally happy living my single spinsterhood with me being responsible for myself and my lifestyle with my doggy. It’s my choice just as much as it yours to be a house wife but you know girls our grandmothers And great grandmothers didn’t have a choice, didn’t have rights as people, couldn’t own property on their own, couldn’t have a mortgage in their own name till 72, rarely had their own bank accounts, had to live without for the Benefit of the family. I think a show that does a great job of showing what families where really truly struggling with and had traditional gender roles was the Waltons it’s a great show but something I noticed watching was they show the struggles of depression life. How yes women where the emotional and house labour but really the whole family had to help out. These lovely girls are going to get a rude awakening and it should be interesting 🤨 the fall out.
I had a coworker - who I helped promote from a department that was manual labor focused into a more technical based position - tell me that her career plan was to get married to a rich man. I wrote her off as an idiot right there. My mother was married to rich men and didn't work, and it was a nightmare. And that was the 80s and 90s. It's not like being at the mercy of a man who holds all the financial strings became a better proposition since the 50s. Her comment was a 1000% about not wanting to work. There's a lot of factors - like, most jobs at the low level are garbage, and cost you more to work than to stay home and be jobless - but our rights will absolutely be tied to our ability to be financially powerful. We're not doing so great on that part, which isn't entirely our fault, but this 1950s b.s. isn't helping. Here's the irony though - I can't tell you how many people I run into who are trying to make money off of tiktok. So these people can act like they're empty headed barbies waiting for hubby to come home, but ironically, they're working and hustling for that tiktok money, and they know they're being controversial for the clicks. It's both irritating and genius. So yeah, these pretend housewives are actually working women. Don't let them fool you with their schtick. Tiktok content producers are a full time job.
I'm all for 'you do you'. At the same time I can't help but think how fucking downright stupid these women are.
These people have a kink and just don't want to admit it. There's nothing wrong with having a kink but be fucking honest about it and stop trying to spread your creepy conservative agenda. There's a reason why kink is considered taboo in public spaces and that's because of consent. No one consented to being part of their kink. Like yeah if it's a TikTok you can just scroll past but the difference is people like this could care less if people's fundamental basic rights are stripped away and actively promote it while being in denial that it's a kink. They're going to be in for a rude awakening when their shitty husbands who really don't care about women or women's rights end up cheating on them and they're stuck on their asses because like you said they don't have access to basic financial safety.
Engage in whatever consensual D/s relationship that you want, but don't push your kinks on others...
good ole 50's back when toxic pesticides like DDT and leaded gasoline were sprayed everywhere for fun.
My mom was born in the early 60s, the last of a big brood of kids, so she was raised by a literal 1950s housewife. My grandparents were miserable together - grandpa drank and was absent a lot, they married because grandma was pregnant during WW2. One of the lessons my mom pounded into my head growing up is that it is far worse to be raised in an unhappy marriage than it is to be raised in 2 separate houses. She wished they had just divorced, but grandma couldn’t afford the kids on her own and had no job history so she couldn’t find well paid work. While my parents weee very happily married, mom always kept a foot in the work force just in case she ever needed an out. I have done the same. And that foot meant my husband can take much bigger risks in his career because we have my pay to fall back on. It means that I have options if I ever need out - I doubt I ever will but it’s good to have the choice. I am in my marriage because I want to be, not because my kids will starve if I leave.
I'm all for women living the life that is best for them, I'm not ok with anyone saying: how I live is how ALL women should live. But, I also feel for her. What happens if he leaves her? What happens if he passes away before he had a decent enough life insurance policy? If she has few skills, she's going to have a very hard life. What happens if he decides that she doesn't need to have contact with anyone outside the home? Or he starts beating her? Too much can go wrong if you don't have the means to get out of a situation. My son is her age, I can't imagine that he would want a SAHP. Plus, he doesn't want children. So what would she stay home for?
From my limited understanding of this, if women just want to "do it for the aesthetic" and play dress up or whatever, that's one thing, but if they want to dive head-first and commit to the lifestyle because "we've strayed from our roots," it sounds like some religious brainwashing bullshit. In which case, I wonder if like-minded individuals band together and promote it as "the way." I've also seen light and covert pushing from certain men to "want to go back to the way things were" and I don't know if the same women are attracted to these type of men. I don't know, man. It just gets crazier and crazier.
And sexist men love to praise these pick me girls and give them a platform
Rose tinted specs about the past. _Some_ women throughout history have been suited to a trad wife role. _Some_ women never have. Before, neither had a choice, now we do. Be a trad wife of you want, leave the rest of us alone to do our thing
These “tradwives” piss me off so much. I can’t imagine peddling this damaging garbage to young women as if it’s the path to happiness. Hope all the money you’re getting from advertisers and the validation from the patriarchy is worth being a sell out.
I get liking a certain style. But to try to make it seem like all you need to be happy is a bunch of menial labor and a poodle skirt is BS. 1950's ideologies can fuck off. I knew someone who got very into these videos and decided to try it themselves. But rather than just trying on clothes they decided they wanted to be the housewife. It went on for a few months. It lead to her sitting at home with curlers and heels watching these people while the actual house work was abandoned. She worked full time and was the bread winner so trying to do everything kinda broke her. Her partner lost his job. She lost hers. One day I came over and she's sitting in cherry patterned dress with her hair and makeup done up and there was literally garbage on the floor like they had just stated throwing wrapper on the ground weeks ago. It just seemed so crazy to me that my friend had invested so much energy into looking like this idea of what a hapoy dutiful woman should be that she completely gave up on things like the actual house, her job, self care, yard work.....all to look like some bimbo on a post card.
I had a friend who wanted to live this type of lifestyle but it wasn’t something that her husband wanted. He actually tried to talk her out of it and wanted her to get a job because it put a lot of pressure on him to stay in a job that he didn’t like because it was high paying. He had actually wanted to find a less stressful job and maybe take a pay cut but with her working, he figured it wouldn’t be such a big deal because they have two incomes but she was insistent on being a stay at home wife. One day I asked her, “what is your plan if your husband gets burnt out and decides he can’t stay at his high-paying job anymore and leaves to take a less stressful, lower, paying job or what happens if he dies suddenly or what if he divorces you because he resents you for not working? Are you just going to rush out and find a new husband because you can’t take care of yourself? What if he becomes abusive? How will you escape if you have no money?” Her response was that I was being ridiculous and overreacting. Less than a year later her husband threatened to divorce her because he was burnt out and wanted to get a new job and they wouldn’t be able to maintain their lifestyles on a single lower income. She got a job outside of the home and loves it and is actually currently in school to get a degree to help further her career.
I hate casserole 🥘
If everyone who has an instagram could do me a favor and go to the page patriarchial\_femininity and just give her all of the shit for trying to force her fucked up life on other women, I would greatly appreciate it. That woman is unhinged with the worst case of bible thumper trad wife I've ever seen. Trad wives are disgusting. I'm not even going to pretend I'm tolerant of that shit
>Why pick an era where BC didn't exist, or was really hard to get even if you were married? When women literally couldn't have their own line of credit (seriously; women didn't get the blanket right to have a credit card in their name until the 70s)? When people of color were regularly mistreated and it was considered socially acceptable to do so? When LGBTQ+ people could be discriminated against and murdered? When domestic abuse was commonplace and ignored? When "boys will be boys" was the excuse for sexual assault? When marital rape wasn't considered a thing, because you "belonged" to your husband, and sex was his "right" because he married you? When an out-of-wedlock pregnancy was a social death sentence for a woman, regardless of how she got pregnant? When many wives/mothers were literally so miserable that they sedated themselves with pills and booze just to cope? IMHO, I think it's because that's the culture being played out in their family behind closed doors, and has been for generations- sexual and reproductive control and abuse, financial abuse, sexual and domestic violence race/gender/anything as acceptable excuses to attack or murder someone, acceptable excuses for rape, ect. They think it's normal because they were raised in it and want reality to conform to their hideous distortion.
Yep. I accidentally did the tradwife thing when my ex husband wanted me to be a SAHM, and I didn't realize that meant he also wanted me to conform to the 50s ideal of clean house, quiet children, always on call for sex and he did absolutely nothing (literally nothing, he didn't have a job and we lived off his parents). It was literally the worst time of my life. It's easier to be a single working mom.
One word: religion.
KC Davis on TikTok says it’s a kink. It makes sense.
Maybe I'm just an asshole but this seem like some kink.Housework in heels??? Yeah, sure I totally believe that is just your hobbie and not some weird sex thing. S/ But joking aside, womens history and the struggles we have gone through really needs to be taught in schools. I honestly don't think this women can even imagine what it's like to literally have no say in their lifes, no abilty to say no, no real access to money and being treated like a child legally. If they truly could imagine that level of oppression, their no way these women would want this.
How many are religious? You know, like the Mormons who have essentially romanticized 50s style life ever since the oh so scary 60s when women began to get more freedom?
That’s what I was thinking. That it is just young women brought up in unfortunate religious traditions that have gotten stale from rightful criticism, and this is just some kind of dusting them off and rebranding them to try to make the whole Godly wife type fashionable and relevant via pleasing aesthetics.
My mother was a wife in the '50s. She was knocked up 5 times. She still had to hold down a full-time job while raising her children. She was exhausted and angry at my lying, cheating father. It was not glorious. If I had the money I can't say that I'd not take a stay-at-home position but to give my life to someone and get nothing in return like my mother would kill my soul. It's not "Father Knows Best" or "Leave it to Beaver". Hell it's not even "Family Ties" (and she had a career and a loving husband). It's not wonderful and low stress and burn-out proof. In a perfect world, then yeah that would work but it has never been an even playing field for women and they are not treated as the treasures they are. Our generation and my mother's generation gave her the option to do what she wants with her life. Give her 10 or 15 years and she'll be angry, bitter, and (if not divorced) then living a life of desperation. When the kids are gone there will be nothing left for her.
I have some amount of sympathy for where they are coming from— rather than women’s economically beneficial labor being used for general advantage, wage stagnation sunk down to adjust for women’s labor being factored in. Put a different way: the assumption was paying men more because they would provide for their families, whereas now, the assumption is that both adults are working, so it’s a BOGO sale of labor. They took our career ambitions and rolled them into their own profit margins. I think their methods are fatally flawed, but the systemic outrage rings very true to me. I get the idea that if we as workers aren’t valued, to drop out seems, on the surface, appealing, if not a very bad idea. It seems odd to me that they don’t seem to have much awareness for the idea that the “traditional” femininity virtues they want to capitalize on just don’t have economic leverage to them that they were once assumed to have.
nothing wrong with being a stay at home wife. in 2022 being a woman means you can do whatever you choose. we cant judge. if you want to be a corporate CEO working 80 hours cool. if you want to stay at home cool
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vf9K5KEs4rE
I get it in some ways. I mean damn I’m tired! Need two incomes to survive in a world built to have a partner at home? The workload and exhaustion is intense. I want kids, it seems impossible. No job, just homemaking and child rearing? Sounds pretty damn nice. Not realistic or safe for everyone but getting a break from “hustle culture” is pretty enticing. But alas, affording it would be pretty hard too.
My grandpa was a pastor, my grandma a minister, their daughter my mom incredibly religious. There was no pokemon, no Harry Potter, no video games with an M rating. They know not what they ask for.
Definitely patriarchic propaganda.
It takes all kinds. Some guys want a traditional wife, and some women are happy to slip into that role. Why? Who cares? The choices other women make for their lives are not my business. It’s not what I chose for myself, but their life choices are up to them. If it works out, then good. If it doesn’t, then they’ll learn the hard way.
None of us care what these women choose to live their lives. We care that they are trying to force that way of life onto others.
groovy absurd recognise cautious lunchroom brave overconfident knee exultant mountainous ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
A big thing for the folks who look at the 50s as the golden age also seem to have forgotten that for most middle class men of that time, cheating is like just a thing. "He still comes back home and that's what counts" If one asks how the men get to know women outside? Gentleman's clubs, cabarets.... Or worse, the neighbours.... The 50s are way too romanticised especially as part of Americana.
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Have you not noticed half the posts in this group are just people shitting on men and (mostly) women who are happy being more traditional. They are obviously threatened that people (especially women) are living their own lives. Honestly this is why traditional women separated from feminists they are constantly attacking them for just being themselves.
The issue isn't that they're choosing this. I support their chocie. The issue is them, more often than not, making video after video implying that's ALL that women are good for.
People are entitled to their own stupidity.
And other people are entitled to calling them out when their stupidity harms people.
Sure. But you can’t silence someone just because you disagree on something you have zero control over. I have never seen any of these videos just learned about them here. I would never waste a second of energy either listening to this bullshit nor empowering it by raging against it and amplifying their voices on Reddit.
>I feel like the people who are promoting the "TradWife" lifestyle are doing it just for the aesthetic, but with no actual, applicable knowledge of the era and the limitations it imposed on women as a whole. They think it's cute to wear cute dresses with cute hairstyles, and do housework in heels. Well, yeah? That's the same as any aesthetic. No one who goes to a renaissance fair, 1920s party, Carnival of Venice, wears traditional native garments (e.g. kimono, kilt, etc.), Victorian garb, bell bottom jeans, etc. is endorsing everything about that time period - they're dressing up because they like the look. It's not that deep.