An alarming rise in #TradWife and #PrincessTreatment aspirations?

That was exactly my reaction! Go us, we're princesses! Yay!

i would agree with you .
for me i have a health issue that flares up and calms but is chronic . im offically signed off . But we have a fairly traditional relationship. i do most of the jobs when he is at work and did the child care .
far better than dealing with a work place who are angry i cant work over time in the school holidays or when im ill. And i enjoy the freedom i have , i can suit my day to how im feeling.
we have been together over 2 decades and i worked at the start , but we both decided i should stay at home when our child came along .
This was really important to me for a variery of issues.
Some people think i will be in a mess when it comes to pension or if he leaves .
what i would suggest is make sure your married , get child benefit even if your family earns over because you get the contributions .
I also insist on a monthly budget and there is no his and my account .Everything goes into one account .
I cant see it ,but if we split i wouldnt go for attachment to his earnings or pension.
The house and car are on paper mine ,however he knows if he tried to play dirty i would go for his pension and shares .
He knows this as iv told him .
But unless he goes off the rails i cant see that happening .
i would always advise to be married tho if you stay at home or have a career on hold

There's also a big difference to a woman's life depending on whether she has parents who can help out. DH's parents are in another country, and mine have always been unable / unwilling to help.

The most successful families I know have grandparents doing a lot of childcare. We don't all have that, and on a societal level women increasingly won't as people have to work for longer and longer.

Before I had kids I had a 'career' (which was incompatible with children, really), then I got made redundant after maternity leave no 1 - oh I wonder why that was?!!

I then became a SAHM in a different more conservative country (with a small c, other policies were far more liberal around environment, public transport and taxation) as DH got offered an amazing job just when I'd been made redundant. Those were the best years of my life. Mothering was actually valued in that country, the wellbeing of children put first. DC1 and I used to travel, do wonderful things it was completely amazing.

Then I came back to the UK, by which point DH's career had progressed to the point I can never catch up financially, so I ended up doing a job I don't particularly love for its flexibility. I earn 38k half time - so take home half that - this means I can do all school drops and pick ups, all clubs, I manage the household entirely. DH jokes he makes the money and I spend it, but he's not at all interested in dental appointments / buying uniforms / organising clubs etc. The mental load of our household is entirely mine.

Do I regret this? Yes. Am I unfulfilled in my work? Most definitely and at times I find it soul destroying and hate it. However, on the flip side, I have two very well adjusted kids that I get/got to spend time with.

I've got several good degrees and very good qualifications, partly funded by the state, which I am now not using at all - it's a waste but I've tried several times for other opportunities - jobs very similar to that I left at my first mat leave and I don't know if it's age or the obvious fact I'm a mother but I don't even get interviews for jobs more junior to that I used to do, successfully.

I didn't get to choose this, as was made redundant but also I did love the time with my little ones. It was immensely rewarding. I know DH felt he missed out on certain things.

In the UK I don't think having it all is possible for women. In the country we lived in for several years, there is an expectation a parent will take time out until about age 7 so the returner programmes are a lot better. I wish we still lived there, not least because the unpaid work I did and still do is so much more highly valued. The reason we came back was really to do with elderly parents and also language related but I think we'd have overcome that with time.

I also know several women who have tried to stay in professional jobs whilst picking up the slack with the kids (not earning quite enough for a nanny) who are close to a nervous breakdown. I know two who became disabled IMO because they were doing this (obviously it's impossible to know for sure), so now they don't have the option anymore.

I suppose you could call me a trad wife. I do 100% of cooking, cleaning, childcare etc. In fact DH had never even changed a nappy. But that is the norm in my culture for 90% of women and I am happy.

I don't find it strange to aspire to this life, but the romanticising and almost fetishizing of it on social media is quite disturbing. Women getting up at 5 am to brush out their pin curls and do their makeup to loom nice for their husband, it's basically cosplay.

This.

It's a question of choice. A lot of women see the trad wife as the least worst option currently available. That doesn't make it a good option.

In a world where women are considered to be public property, some women are choosing to be private property, is how I interpret it.

@LongFacedRat , I truly don’t see the issue. If that is what makes people happy then they should do it and we shouldn’t just dismiss a life choice out of hand without giving it proper consideration. Our grandmothers and other women fought for our right to have a choice.

Yes! Exactly! Someone else has pointed out that most of us have jobs not careers, and work for the money, not for the love of it. To have a job that is a career that you love is the luck of a very small minority of people. Many women would be more fulfilled at home, maybe turning a hobby or interest into a career, or becoming involved in politics or working for voluntary organisations e.g. I no longer work outside the home (I work in it, writing, painting, gardening in my late DH's garden, and doing some contracted work, too) but volunteer with the local exhibition centre (LA run), as well as other activities which contribute to the community without me being (usually) paid (one activity I do does attract payment on occasions). When I worked at a job I neither liked, enjoyed, or felt I was good at I was much less content. And when I want to go away I can.

Rubbish. You have your steak cooked how YOU like it, nor according to some fashionable view on how you SHOULD like it. I prefer fillet medium rare, but I am not a fan of blood all over my plate.

Rubbish. You have your steak cooked how YOU like it, not according to some fashionable idea of how you SHOULD like it. I like fillet medium rare, I am not fond of blood all over my plate.

It's all part of the 'social media influencer' sphere. Plenty of young, good looking women have realised they can make easy money using social media rather than working a conventional 9-to-5 job. Hats off to them for capitalising on a new opportunity. At some point, the market will be saturated or go out of style, and something else will take its place.

There are the 'Only Fans' types that sell sex and kinky outfits. They give the impression any woman can make loads of money doing this, but only a few women rake in that kind of income consistently .

There are women showing off make-up tutorials or clothing advice. They get lots of sponsorships and businesses giving them free items to advertise to their subscribers.

There are women showing off 'healthy' living, trendy diets and fitness regimes. Again, they get free stuff and sponsorships to flog.

There are women travelling around with their phone camera constantly filming their 'experience' in a foreign city or country. They visit tourist spots, review restaurants etc etc.

There are the 'tradwife' influencers doing the same thing - cooking, showing off their children and chickens, blah blah.

There are knitting and crafting influencers.

It's all the same thing. Young, good looking women capitalising on their attractiveness in different ways to gain male and female followers and 'farm engagement' on various social media platforms to generate revenue.

We've moved on from the glossy, 'lifestyle' magazines that women would buy and read. The modern medium is tiktok, YouTube, Instagram etc.

thats what i think . we have quite a traditional relationship .very happy . Finances in place .But alot of woman in particular are unhappy about it . im not sure why we have been together over 2 decades .
i do think there is a social media hype /trends but for most its just practical .

Wow. Thanks for that! That genuinely hadn't occurred to me. If I ever am invited to dinner with a rich man who wants a SAH wife to treat like a princess I will remember!!!

It’s not cooked at a particular temperature, it’s cooked to a particular temperature. Rare, medium-rare etc. describe the maximum internal temperature of the steak. A medium-rare piece of meat reaches a maximum temperature of 130F (54C). The length of cooking is an imprecise way of estimating what temperature will be achieved.

But it is a massive princess fail, because any princess knows you cook a fillet steak to medium-rare and no further. Anyone asking for fillet done medium deserves to get onglet instead.

I think this particular trend will sort itself out, quite a few of the OG tradwife influencers are getting divorced or giving tell all interviews about how awful their lives are. It’s unsustainable really.

Being a SAHP for a time is fine but it’s rarely pretty/tidy enough to be instagrammable!

I’ve seen some of the trad wives on tik tok. Portraying their ‘simple lives’ as being all baking gardening and happy kids, while ever-smiling, and talking in calm gentle voices, while standing in gorgeous or quaint kitchens. I’m yet to see a trad wife clean the loo.

Then I’ve seen a couple of videos by different ex trad wives. They are crying in their cars while telling their stories. About how their husbands have divorced them, left them with nothing or little money. They have multiple kids and are trying to survive doing poorly paid jobs. Because having a career and an independent income did not fit into the trad wife lifestyle.

I get worried when people say things like women need to live the lives they want to live. Sure, do that. But have a job that brings income and a pension plan too. I think it is really unwise to ever financially rely solely on a man. Currently, in Australia, women over retirement age are the fastest growing cohort of homeless people.

American Christian Nationalism seems to be a common theme in a lot of the trad wife content on social media.

I think it’s an interesting phenomenon. I agree that it has the potential to be very damaging long-term and also think it is symptomatic of mental health crises stemming from women needing/trying to be a perfect breadwinner, wife, mum, daughter, friend etc all at the same time. Like it’s all got too much and they are choosing to step back but feel like they have to make it a ‘thing’ to feel legitimate.

I don't have a major issue with the whole trad wife thing, but i do think it can be dangerous as it sets a unrealistic and Romanticized version of life that rarely exists.
Yes Women should have the choice to stay at home, but lets be honest with young women about both the benefits and the dangers.

A young woman who has not worked in years, no pension, no income of her own is in a massively precarious position, not only in the marriage, but if the marriage fails.

It will be interesting in a few years to see if we have a influx of these women in their late 30's and 40's whos husband who they thought would always provide and protect them and do the right thing by the family are now discovering that he is actually leaving to bunk up with his 25 year old co-worker and has no intention of being financially decent. These women are now left to be the main provider to children, and to try to get a job with no work history or experience and no safety net to catch them.

In a free society people are free to choose what they want as long as it doesn't impact others negatively. If women want to take on that role I'm not going to tell them they are wrong. As long as they are happy go for it, and if it doesn't work out try something different.

I’ve not heard the princess or soft life stuff, sounds.. a bit dim? But I have seen various trad wife accounts on Instagram, it’s certainly a big thing. I can understand it actually, every generation is to a certain degree a reaction the one before it and young women have seen us ‘have it all’ and they don’t want it. And I don’t blame them. I look at the most recent two generations of children raised and I can painfully see that society could have done with more mothers at home raising their children, rather than letting the government drag them up ham-fisted just to be the next generation of low-brow worker bees.

I think the online influencer element of this really muddies the waters. It's largely fake, or maybe better to say, spin. Like all lifestyle influencers.

It's also muddied because there are some who consider anyone who talks about mothers and even homemaking as important, or the problems of needing two incomes, or is critical of the progressive feminist consensus (such as it is) on this, is a tradwife - I've seen Mary Harrington disparagingly referred to as a dangerous tradwife more than once.

I home educated my children for many years, and so have some long ties to some American homeschooling groups, and I became friends with many of the other women. Many are quite conservative and quite religious (though not necessarily evangelical.)

Even within that community, I don't think the "tradwife" thing as some describe it is common. There was a period, back in the 90s, when there was growth among certain patriarchal evangelical sects, and they had some influence in that culture. But they were considered dangerous and weird by many even in that conservative community, and they have been very much on the wane for many years.

Lots of people have said things upthread that are on the money, I think, so far as seeing mothering as important, the problems that come from the assumption that there will be two incomes, and so on. I think we all know that realistically, it can be very difficult to have only one income (which is why influencers want to monetize it all I suspect.) It's even harder in the UK compared to the US and region makes a difference too.

In my experience the economic bracket of most women who do this is husbands with a fairly standard middle class kind of income (though often they may be in trade rather than white collar work) but they live in a more lower middle class/working class lifestyle in terms of neighbourhood, vacations, cars, etc. They are taking a financial hit for the mother to stay home, but also generally feel it gives the whole family a better lifestyle - they tend not to put much value on things like yearly vacations, fancy neighbourhoods, etc. Wealthy families seem to be rarer than hen's teeth - they might have mums at home but it's not connected to a larger philosophy in my experience.

But while most I think accept that many don't have a real choice about working, I think there is also typically a strong view that as a society we should prioritize social models that allow families to make those choices. So that tends to inform their politics. So you won't see them, for example, supporting Swedish style daycare, because that tends to lock in two income families as necessary for any but the extremely wealthy. I think criticisms that it's unrealistic in the current economy kind of miss the point, to some degree it's about a practical criticism of that model and who it's really meant to be good for.

A knock on effect of more women working after kids is massive increase in house prices. When I bought my first house in the 80s the maximum loan was based on x2 the male income and 1/2 the female, and you couldn't borrow a penny more. This was based on the assumption that the woman would give up work or go part time when kids were born. Now most people have no hope without 2 full time incomes. Same with rent increases now which will require 2 incomes for a family sized home. So economics have a major influence on who can't be a "tradwife" or SAHP if that's what they wanted

I think there has always been women like this in America, the difference is now they are also "social media competing," with each other.

I don't think it's a culture they can export here, tbh. It needs that perfect storm of hard core religion, affording big houses easily, no decent maternity policies and the whole jocks/cheerleader culture in high school.

I don't think it's any more likely to take off in the UK than seeing arranged marriages and moving in with the in laws. It's a culture we just don't relate to.

Agree. 4G and tradwife are both reactions to the lack of choice for women. Feminism was about choice. A capitalist world, however, has seen the chance to double the workforce and thus cut wages by including all women as workers. Now a SAHM is unemployed and econimically inactive - insults both. And many have accepted this. Since the eighties women who stayed at home have been seen as wasting their potential. Some feminists (I could think of another word) have even advocated that women who stay at home with their children should have to pay back the cost of their education (they usually mean degrees) as though raising children were a waste of education.

It makes me so angry that women are forced to do the triple shift of work, children and domestics and we tell them that this is liberation. It's just another form of being a 'support person' to men - one could call it slavery and for many women in many cultures there is no way out.