The tradwife movement

[Chocaholick]

AIBU to find the ‘tradwife’ movement absolutely horrific?

Essentially it’s a small core of women with deep internalised misogyny, who are making £££ by pretending they don’t work and indoctrinating young women to be ‘submissive’ to men and wait on them hand and foot, while feeding the manosphere and emboldening its members. It uses Christianity to brainwash followers into believing it’s God’s will for husbands to basically treat their wives like servants and ‘lead them’, and imposes a very long list of ‘duties’ on women while all that is expected of men is to work a job (like they wouldn’t be if they were single!).

It seems to be really catching on, even here in the UK.

Feminism has failed you? Thats the most entitled mistaken statement Ive ever read. Youve fallen for a load of propaganda that every issue in life for a woman is caused by 'feminism'.

If you like the idea of marital rape being a prosecutable crime, and owning your own property, then you have feminism to thank. Feminism just means having rights. Equal rights. Thats a bog standard basic. You have thr luxury as we all do of taking those rights so completely for granted but its a mistake to do that. Things can go backwards pretty damn fast, the US and Afghanistan just a couple of examples.

People fought, lost everything and even died for you to have that right, and you're not even grateful. Feminists are literally the only people that have fought for womens respect so dont start blaming them for anything. Work related problems are usually rooted in a LACK of feminist principles by workplaces, such as very poor maternity care/time off/job protection/discrimination.

bloody hell. Gilead / next top model mash up

Is there a reason why other than SAHM, you've deliberately chosen options for women that you can describe in disparaging terms using sexist language? Why to you, the alternative choices to SAHM include only 'man hating' 'frothing' and sex work, rather than, say, being a doctor, a scientist, a teacher, or any one of the countless other options women have to make a positive difference?

Thats an interesting comment and I do believe one of these AI tech bosses said something similar. While im sure AI will have an impact on all fields its funny how its the male dominated sectors like coding which will take much bigger hits than female dominated sectors like care, nursing, teaching etc

I’d love to read this if you can remember the name!

But they do, unless these women have a gun to their head or are being trafficked.

Part of what puts my back up about modern feminism (I'm 59) is the victimisation of women instead of the pioneering (I'm just as good enough as any man) feminism of the 70s, I grew up with. As you get older you being to see that 'organised business feminism' has to keep reinforcing the idea that women are oppressed, unhappy, etc in order to create the demand for their business model (not very well articulated, I know).

Each of us have the ability to create the life we want (to a certain degree).

Completely this. The missing part of the jigsaw is any kind of men’s moment that actively sought to take responsibility for men’s behaviour and crimes, work towards real change, and actively sought to tackle the impact on women and girls (and men/ boys) of sexism and gender stereotyping.

Partly capitalism but partly men just letting women do all the work, figuratively and actually.

I’ve several friends who became stay at home mums but their partners/ husbands hadn’t understood/ fully committed to the idea/ had had stereotypical ideals of what that meant when extended family isn’t near by to help out. Ie, I go to work and come home and put my feet up and am served. They all became trapped as the relationship became more abusive and controlling and they were unable to financially leave and lost out on careers for a while.

Where I’ve seen it work is when the men are as domesticated as the women and recognise that that doesn’t get easier when children arrive. They understand that children are a 24 hr job and the sahm is unable to clock off ever.

It’s a failure of society, education and certainly related to consumerism and capitalism.

society is fed extremely unrealistic views on how very hard it is to raise small human; evolutionarily speaking, there was a team of older women around to help out.

Cultures where the mother stays at home for 40 days post partum and is waited on hand and foot understand this evolutionary backdrop.

Maternity leave is treated like a holiday now. Great stuff if you can be doing the school run 3 days after a c section but it’s not to be taken as a life goal.

I also don’t fall for the ballerina farm shite; they’re making a lot of money from it and you bet there are others helping out behind the scenes.

Good point! Yes all of those things as well. Thousands of choices.

How much free will exists now? In the age of social media?

Truth and reality are curated and created online; it’s all BS.

Its no coincidence that girls are easily groomed online, are easily brainwashed and manipulated, and very vulnerable to social contagion.

Reading is dying a death but reading develops critical thinking. Short form online content actively destroys critical thinking.

An interesting thought and perspective.

You're right to identify it as relating to the manosphere, it's the other side of the coin and it's obviously part of the same agenda.

The rise of Christian nationalism needs our full attention.

Yesteryear. On player there's a Stacey Dooley episode on this. She stays with a family. Wife is post grad educated but stays home and homeschooling the kids. Dad is in charge but her justification is it reduces friction. One boss. But they seem happy and she has the means to.go if she wants. I think it HAS to be a choice and in many cases its not but if an intelligent woman freely chooses it, I dint think we can legitimately criticise it.

It's called Yesteryear.

I suspect it’s the same as the manosphere stuff, complete click bait and not something the creators actually buy into, it just makes for views and money. Not that it isn’t harmful of course.

Indeed, it's nothing to do with Christianity. It's an ideological movement designed and financed by enemies of liberal democracy to undermine our way of life. Lies, lies and more lies.

There probably are some genuine trad wives out there, but the social media versions are just savvy, social media influencers cos playing as trad wives as they know its an extremely profitable niche. Similar to Andrew Tate/HS TikkyTokky, its all smoke and mirrors. Incredibly damaging for young people and those that can't see through the bullshit.

Only 20% of married women worked in the 1950s, up to 50% by the 1970s. Working mothers are a relatively recent phenomenon. I think as with anything, if the women have a choice and this is how they want to live their lives then we shouldn’t judge. If they’re being coerced, manipulated or forced then we should care.

I suspect the latter is true to an extent but I do think psychologically some women like to marry so called ‘alpha males’ who are a bit controlling, throw their weight around and expect them to follow traditional roles.

The 1950s isn’t ‘recent’. Over half of women worked in 1700.

Whatever rocks your boat. Maybe its better than running round after a man, doing most of the childcare and housework and trying to hold down a full-time job. (this is a bit toungue in cheek before anybody complains)

Depends on the class and the locality I think - in my family with the exception of my paternal grandmother who worked as a milliner in a hat factory, every single other woman on both sides of mine worked in the local cotton mills. They switched to munitions when WW2 was on as they lived down the road from an A V Roe aeroplane factory, but as soon as the war finished they were back in the mills until they retired.

The sad (and extremely dangerous) thing is, that a lot of these influencers with extreme views and the lifestyles to match, don’t believe half as much in what they’re saying online as they’d have you believe. It’s the same with popular ‘red pill’ influencers. They know extreme opinions and saying shocking things draws a large audience, and that equals big bucks. Many of them are primarily motivated by money rather than truly believing what they say. Without social media these trad wives may just have been women with more traditional attitudes who are SAHMs without all the ridiculous opinions, but they see a way they can make their lives more extreme and monetise it. Same with some of the incel wankers - without YouTube they may just have been slightly sexist, but fairly harmless blokes, but they see an opportunity to be outrageous and, in some cases, become millionaires - a lot of people would do & say a lot of outrageous things that they don’t really believe if they had the chance to earn a million quid off the back of it. It’s fucked up because they’re brain washing vulnerable young people who haven’t had the life experience yet to form their own opinions and think critically, and indoctrinating them into these extreme lifestyles as a way of finding their identities. IMO social media is the root of all evil. I ‘went dark’ from SM years ago and never looked back. I’m terrified of my (still very young) kids discovering it though. I just hope and pray there’s a backlash by the time they’re teenagers

Well it is relatively recent in the grand scheme of humanity… it’s within many people’s living memory.

I also intentionally specified married women since we’re discussing trad ‘wives’ and married women have always statistically been less likely to work, even in 1700.

^This

Economics. Virginia Woolf got to sit around and contemplate and write about womens liberation, but sadly Nellie, Sophie and Lottie, who worked for her wouldn't have had that luxury (and there's evidence that she was a complete cow to work for).

Sadly the huge flaw with feminism is that women do screw over other women (just like men). We live in a exploitative society and a great deal of it is based on people wanting to part you from your money in one way or another, even if it is by selling you an ideology, be it trad wife or feminism.

I 100% agree with everything you’ve said. I like working and being independent but life is a constant merry go round of work, childcare, planning meals, cooking, laundry etc and I wish I could afford to go part time or even stop work so our home life was calmer. I had about a year out of the workplace when children were preschool age. The lack of money was tough, but our home was spotless, we had a proper home cooked dinner every day and I had energy! Full time work (and in fairness, ten years and perimenopause) has not helped in that regard.

This book was published before Facebook and social media was a big thing, and drew on research into depression and the rise of advertising/ visual media across the world in the 21st century

https://amzn.eu/d/09Xl3E1x

It actively charts the rise of anorexia and depression to visual media/ advertising. Certain small islands that were late to access TV saw rises in depression and eating disorders within a decade of it arriving.

Its a very valuable read to understand how human psychology can be affected by comparative media. A rare few are completely unaffected. They have natural “immunity.”

The comment up thread that “women were happier in the 1950s” (a comment that is definitely not true and does not take into consideration class, poverty, health and rights of the time) may be true from the perspective that visual media was less prevalent so women were freer from comparison and perhaps had better self esteem (till they married/ depending on who they married).

If you understand the history of propaganda and how photography was co opted into this from the early days (Stalin etc), you have some mild ability to recognise the vast extent to which was are fooled by ALL media - tv and film included - and how that impacts human behaviour and beliefs.

this bbc article today even points out that the algorithms favour some comments but not others:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyvw9pgjveo