I totally agree it’s a bad target for any human to aspire to. For all the reasons you state. But until we can stop religion from being a central organizing feature of our benighted society we’re not going to get anywhere with any heretical ideas about human equality.
The "Tradwife" lifestyle: Does anyone else find this appealing, or have personal experience with it?
Also I should add that I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with teaching someone to sew clothes or can yams or whatever it is homemakers do. I can respect that people could get really into that. I went through a (mercifully short) phase last year where I became obsessed with cleaning my house. I learned a lot from YouTube.
It’s the submitting to the patriarchy part I find problematic. It’s possible to do all those homemaking things and be a stay at home Mom and have an egalitarian relationship. My husband and I didn’t really set out to fall into more traditional gender roles, but it happened due to social forces and the nature of our jobs. I tend to do more childcare, cooking and cleaning and he tends to do more paid work. I’m very happy with that, because I have a career that keeps me active and plenty of independent pursuits, from writing to Zen temple. I would go absolutely insane as a stay at home parent.
But for some people that’s their jam.
Add “a large number of children” to the mix, and you’ve got a disaster waiting to happen. It’s been my own observation that those big old-fashioned Catholic families were rarely happy homes, for all the reasons listed above.
I’ve had the misfortune of encountering far too many women who believed that any woman who said she was happily married and her husband was a good father, was either lying or in denial.
As for the Biblical injunction that a man be the head of household and the wife should “submit”, it’s about leadership, at least from what I understand. True leadership is NOT about domination.
I had a Facebook friend back when I was on Facebook who was a Christian and a biblical scholar, he interpreted the original Greek “submit to your husbands” line as actually a command to fight alongside. The word was actually a military word. I wish I had that post to reference now.
I liked that interpretation because I think of myself as kind of a warrior for love. I’m taking bullets for him, I’m defending him with a sword. I can get behind that.
I’ve run into this mindset during pre-blizzard panic buying at the supermarket.
It isn’t pretty.
Combat
Opportunity
Stocking
The
Complete
'Omestead
Thank all of you for the smiles🤭
Update: They’re popping up galore, on my “Suggested” feed on YouTube. Most of them, that I have clicked on show an obviously AI-generated “young woman” praising the virtues of this life, while someone, almost always a woman, talks about how her parents did this, and were miserable because they didn’t feel they had any alternatives. Their dads almost always openly cheated (where do all those women come from, anyway?) and the eventual divorce rate is astronomical.
Well, yes… the Patriarch divorcing his over-40 tired, worn out, no longer fertile tradwife and acquiring a fresh, new one is also very traditional…
29 years married. My wife is better at some things, I’m better at others. Now we don’t have any sort of boundary, the jobs overlap. We do what needs to be done. That’s what it’s all about.
I generaly mow the yard, but so does she. I do more of the cooking, she does more of the cleaning. It’s a mixed bag. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I’ve told my wife “That’s not your job, it’s our job”.
I got married and pregnant and gave up my job (I had to, they were eliminating people and consolidating jobs, and there were some there who were all for it.) I was a SAHM and then. SAHW for 30+ years, till death did us part. It wasn’t a romantic marriage, more like a partnership. He alway said we were like a team of horses ‘heading for the barn’ in the sunset. He was (we found out much later) autistic, but he was a good father and provider (no need for me to work). I did plan to get a ‘nice little part time job’ but there was nothing out there in the burbs except child care and work at the grocery stores. Plenty of younger people eager and willing to take those! I was very thrifty, cooked from scratch, sewed a lot of our clothes, we went to thrift shops, spent a lot of time in nature, our vacations were weekend getaways to centrally local places (Niagara Falls, Lake George, the Adirondacks, amusement parks, the fair). I didn’t give a flying fig what the neighbors were doing and they were all horrible, cold, ugly yuppies who ignored us. I was no dumb-bell waiting for instructions from my lord and master. I was in charge of the finances, when I wanted or needed anything (within reason) I got it almost immediately (I still have my Subaru, still runs great!). So I don’t know if any of this fits the tradwife lifestyle. I never rolled over for any man, and I had a nice life. I didn’t have to drive downtown to work in blizzards any more, which made it all so much more worthwhile!
What was Lucy Ricardo? At the start of the series she didn’t even have any kids to care for.
Typical? At the time that I Love Lucy was airing, stay at home wives were the norm.
That is very true.
Stay at home with no kids? That’s a movement I can get behind.
“I have three kids and no money. Why can’t I have no kids and three money?”
Because you forgot to not have kids.
Next silly question please?
My Aunt has a purse with a 1950s style housewife clutching her face and saying, “Oh no! I forgot to have children!”
She has always reasoned that she basically raised me and that is all the mothering she has in her.
For several years now she has been a stay at home wife, taking care of the house and the dogs, cooking and cleaning, maintaining an extensive garden, and sometimes doing art projects and little side hustles. My uncle complains sometimes, but when she points out he would have to take care of himself if she went back to work, and start doing more housework and cooking, he stops complaining.
@salinqmind1
Sounds like you and your husband made it work as partners together in a life lived how you wanted it to be. That’s an accomplishment! And I appreciate your sense of humor. Men! smdh