Trad wife here, happy to answer questions about my lifestyle

[LookAtThatMartin]

I am a Trad wife - ask me anything.

You just KNOW she is scrubbing his y fronts until they gleam.

Honestly it’s a shame she’s not come back and to be fair is there any real need to immediately mock the woman before we’ve even heard her thoughts. Basically in doing so you’ve undermined her and treated her like the second class citizen you mock her for being. Have a word with yourselves.
@LookAtThatMartin please Come back.

I don’t think trad wife influencers really count as trad wives. It’s a pretence. But there are people doing it for real.

I can't help theorising that OP's extraordinary flounce because she could not deal with being asked what a trad wife was, perhaps is an insight into why she is a trad wife.

Because that flounce indicates an extreme lack of resilience.

So perhaps that is why. She wants to avoid challenge or responsibility or decision making and hands all that over to her husband who she sees as protecting and shielding her from anything she finds difficult or challenging. Which would appear to be nearly everything being as she sees people asking her what she means as offensive and to be run away from.

What happens in the situation where the He Man Head of All is ill, can't work and is possibly not able to do very much at all? When Tradwifey has to manage the bills, claim the benefits as well as do everything else.

Horrible but not unknown circumstances and a massive shock, I'd imagine. My (born 1890s) grandmother was 'traditional' in that she gave up her career (very reluctantly) on marriage and never worked outside the home again, but she handled the finances and managed fine when my grandfather died, ditto my Victorian great grandmother did all the accounts for the family business and had a LOT of input into everything from all I've heard. Many strong and capable women around, in all time periods.

I actually don't think a lot of marriages back then were anywhere near as 'trad' as the current cosplay indicates, at all.

Well it's about control and ownership ultimately isn't it, hair is one of the most traditionally/conventionally attractive parts of a woman's body and women's bodies and their beauty are a commodity owned by their menfolk and they don't want other men boys getting to enjoy play with their wife's beauty their toys .

That being said the Trad Wife aesthetic I'd say isn't so much about covering the hair as a religious observance in the same way some Muslim women wear the veil or Jewish women wear wigs, I'd say it's more about harking back to to that old chestnut of the mythical golden age again when men were men and women knew their place, so lots of gingham and aprons and homespun-ish fabrics with natural fibres (get a bit of the old clean living orthodoxy in there too, there's crossover), full skirted / full length dresses, homestead-y, Little House on the Prairie kinds of vibes (particularly nostalgic for an American audience), which I think is where the little headscarves come from, for the Insta Trad-Wive crew anyway. Obviously there is a huge religious crossover/element to the movement too...

Oh no... trad wives do not work outside the home.

What's a trad wife??

Sooo, this is what a “Trad” wife is/does ????

Yes exactly this - cosplay/fantasy is the word for it. My grandparents were both very 'traditional', conservative (and for one set, religious) people who did stick pretty strictly to expected gender norms in every aspect of their lives. They lived in the kind of era these movements hark on about as the ideal/idyllic times we should be trying to get back to, but life for my grandmothers didn't involve very much wafting around a homestead in homespun organic wool waving wooden toys at a delightfully clean and chubby toddler - one was working class and so had to shoulder the entire load of a running a household and raising far too many children pre-domestic appliances, modern conveniences like supermarkets or a state welfare safety net (not being physically able to feed your children/malnutrition was a very real risk for them) AND had to work outside the house as well (in menial, physically demanding roles) because one working man's salary was not enough to sustain a family on - contrary to the myth that no married woman with children was expected to work before the 60s, this has only ever been true for the wealthy. The other side of the family had more money so life was on paper at least easier for my Grandmother and she (reluctantly) gave up her work and interests outside the home on marriage and never did paid work again so in theory a traditional home maker/wife, but her form of trad-wifing involved trying to steer her household and shield her children from the random ups and downs of an alcoholic and occasionally abusive husband, including the financial and social disaster that ensued when he descended to full non-functionality and died, whilst generally coping by being a reclusive / emotionally withdrawn and largely absent figure, not atypically for that generation - again hardly the trad wife 'loving mother at the heart of the household' idyll. Don't get me wrong I'm sure some women did have lovely lives in the this time, but I'm not sure that's because of the more rigid gender expectations but rather in spite of...

I thought you were a childminder OP? I’m not well versed on trad wives but I’d have thought it entailed not working?

How are you any different from a SAHM? Why use a silly US name?

Good.

I bet your “trad” husband would be disappointed you were about to waste your time on an internet forum rather than cleaning and getting his dinner ready!

I have a question. Which comment or comments offended you and why? I really don’t see anything offensive?

C'mon you can't be on MN and not have a clue who your audience is going be, surely? What kind of questions did you think you were going to get? Most are only asking for clarification on what you mean by trad wife!

So you are not, in fact, happy to answer questions about your lifestyle.

A traditional Mumsnet 2 step: pile on then flounce off.

Most Disappointing AMA ever.

Because you refuse to disclose your definition of the thing you claim to be and want to answer lots of questions about?! Yeah that's reasonable.
Bye.

If you are proud of how you live, I can’t really see how comments questioning mean that you won’t respond. Can you explain why?

Interesting post @NoctuaAthene . I doubt if people who claim the title 'tradwife' actually had to be in a working class household in the Edwardian era with half a million kids or (God help them) a real woman on a waggon train to the West in the 1870s USA, they'd be quite so enamoured of the supposed role.

Also, posts asking for a definition of what the OP meant by 'tradwife' were perfectly valid.

I think you may be right. But like other posters I am finding a certain amusement with the 'AMA- happy to answer questions' that.... wasn't.

And a flounce after less than 30 minutes?

ask me anything

Clearly not! 😂

What is a 'trad wife' ?

Can I ask what the benefits of your kind of marriage are , in your view? What would women get from it?