I think that has a lot more to do with income inequality and inaccurate (or, incomplete at least) reporting than anything else. 35 years ago would be the end of the 80s. So fewer women working full time in addition to being a full time homemaker. Now, with incomes for the top few percent being so far beyond the rest of the working class (see countless threads) there’s a feeling (with much argument) that it’s impossible to live such a middle/upper-middle class lifestyle without two incomes.
So yeah, if in the 80s, you could be a full time homemaker and mother, without ALSO having to work full or part time, you’d probably be happier. I’d also like to see such research and polls broken out by economic class and race, because, well, I’m suspicious, but I bet the biggest change would be in working-class whites in terms of “happiness”. Anyway, my opinions are equally IMHO, so, what have you.
In more direct terms of addressing the OP though, my wife makes substantially more money than I do, working in STEM for that matter, while I’m more the liberal arts type, so I don’t have any direct attraction to any version of the traditional wife or tradwife either!
But, speaking to the more commonly discussed variants in-thread, I have numerous anecdotal experiences. Growing up in southern NM in the 80s, I had a large number of classmates in public schools who were children of immigrants, and in situations I would probably have defined as working poor. Their fathers (generally) worked extremely hard at various skilled and semi-skilled labor, and their moms raised the big familes, kept order, cooked, and often had small side hustles (some of the best green chile tamales you could imagine came from a classmates mom who sold them out of a van near school).
Many of the girls wanted more (and nearing unity in the Honors and AP classes I took), but there were also plenty who felt that the highlight of their lives was finding a handsome, Catholic boy who would love them, get married right out of high school, and raise a passel of kids of their own just like mom.
Sorry, had to add a break there. I just deleted about a page’s worth of another sad anecdotal story about a friend of mine from 25ish years ago that fell for a girl from a sheltered, religious household and how they rushed into marriage and it ruined both of their lives because of misplaced assumptions from both about said traditional roles and responsibilities, because it was too much and too painful.
Let’s just say that there is SO much built into those assumptions, covering every facet of a relationship to sex, the role (or banishment) of sexual desire, desire for children, what responsibilities each gender should have and how hard it can be to meet them when you aren’t rich that outside of small, very structured communities, it can all come crashing down when any party involved starts to break from that programming. And the blame, dear FSM, the blame, the anger, the regrets, and later, the guilt.
So back to the OP - I am sure, even in this day and age, there are plenty of people who find traditional gender roles in a marriage attractive. But it either requires a lot of effort and mutual understanding (rare, but by no means impossible), or it requires some legal, social, or other rigid structure to enforce it if such understanding and effort is no longer mutual.
And to me, most of the modern interpretations of the traditional wife lean heavily into the latter - once the contract is made, there is no backing out no matter how bad the situation gets. And taking into account the social underpinnings of that structure, it’s almost always the female of the traditional pair that are bound, but not protected by the structure.