The "Tradwife" lifestyle: Does anyone else find this appealing, or have personal experience with it?

In My Humble Opinion
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In real life I don’t know any large families with regressive religious beliefs that dictate traditional roles for moms dads and kids. OTOH I am familiar with several You tubers who vlog their daily lives as stay at home moms who homeschool,bake sourdough bread, make butter and collect eggs from their hens on their “homestead”. One who has many followers is Hannah Neelman from Ballerina Farms in Utah iirc. I think it’s a dairy farm, they sell meat too. I like her videos, but I wouldn’t call her a traditional wife but a tradwife as in she portrays a traditional wive for her subscribers, and to monetize her channel. At the same time they happen to have incredible resources to fall back on (Daniel’s dad founded several airline companies including Jet Blue) I doubt they experience the same stresses that a working farm family endures. But Hannah seems content raising her six rambunctious kids, and making videos at her Aga stove.

Another one I sometimes check on is a Catholic mom who is a little scary tbt. She doesn’t record her kids too much but you never would know there’s six kids in that house. Quiet as church mice. She actually lives in my county and her spouse was running for governor before he was busted for his role on Jan6. She touts her traditional values, quotes bible passages and homeschools her kids, often shares her goals for homesteading but she doesn’t really get into it. Mostly her videos are of her shopping hauls at Costco.l where she displays the thousands of dollars of groceries she just purchased.

So my opinion if one is on social media touting their traditional values you’re a tradwife. Because traditional wives and their families would not be filming their lives for social media. IMO.

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And if a tradwife, as I defined it in the OP and elsewhere, was indeed making monetized social media videos, the money wouldn’t be hers, or even ours. Her husband would confiscate all of it, and spend it on himself regardless of what the kids might need or want. There’s also a more-than-slight chance that he has a person on the side, not necessarily a woman.

(Yeah, about long-term mistresses: Where DO those women come from, anyway?)

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30-40 years ago I used to live in Las Vegas. Which perhaps counterintuitively, has the largest Mormon population enclave outside of Utah. Not too counterintuitive when you realize that if you leave SLC southbound on the freeway, Las Vegas is the next actual city you hit; everything else is small or big towns.

A standard joke around there in that less polite era was

Q: What’s a Mormon virgin?
A: A girl who got out of high school with only 1 abortion.

Teaching don’t take for a lot of them. And a darned good thing that is; religion is dangerous evil stuff.


Neeleman. As in DIL of David Neeleman - Wikipedia.

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I was hesitant in saying that the Mormons also have a higher-than-background abortion rate, in large part because the religion also has some…ISSUES…with babies being born out of wedlock, and it’s considered less shameful to do this, even if she doesn’t really want to, than to have that baby, whether she keeps it or not. To me, that is anti-choice, because it wasn’t her decision, and every story I’ve ever read about a woman who regretted her abortion fell into that category.

Obviously, my hesitation was because of the poo-storm that references to abortion always kick up.

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I can see the appeal of certain aspects of the traditional wife role. Not to the oppressive degree the OP describes. But I see plenty of examples where the husband’s more lucrative career takes priority while the wife is primarily responsible for taking care of the kids and much of the household. The wife may also have a job, but typically it’s something with more flexible hours.

The downside, of course, is that even under the best of circumstances, the wife has to put a professional career on hold. Also having a single source of income can also be risky.

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The social media angle makes me queasy.
Does “Pioneer Woman” from foodtv count as “tradwife”… “He’s out there working hard…?” Or even Ina Garten, “I’m cooking Jeffery’s favorites…”
Because branding ≠ reality, and I think these social media enabled people are niche-filling and image-peddling

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Ree Drummond (the star of “The Pioneer Woman”), maybe a little bit (though she kinda predates the “tradwife” thing). She has a college degree, and was planning to go to law school, but instead married her husband and moved to rural Oklahoma, to live on the ranch. In 2006, she started writing a blog about her life as a wife and mother, and started posting recipes on her blog, which quickly blew up, and led to her getting a contract with Food Network.

Since then, she’s built a business empire (magazines, books, several restaurants, and a bed-and-breakfast), many of which have been featured on her show (my wife watches her, so I see a lot of this by osmosis). She does feature her family life regularly on the show, but it doesn’t come across to me quite the same as what the true “tradwife” social media influencers portray. Also, FWIW, like some of the actual tradwife influencers, her husband and his family are apparently pretty wealthy.

Ina Garten, definitely not. She’s clearly very much in love with her husband, but there’s not much more about her that feels “tradwife” to me. She actually worked in the White House (Office of Management and Budget) in the 1970s; after that, she ran an upscale food store (The Barefoot Contessa) for two decades, in the very chic Hamptons where she and Jeffrey live, then moved into writing cookbooks, and finally the TV show.

If you watch Garten’s show (again, I wind up watching it by osmosis), you’d find that she’s more in the mold of Martha Stewart (on whose show she used to appear), and her shows, and cooking, are more about fancy entertaining (though I think she’s more down-to-earth and approachable than Stewart). She’s quite funny and engaging, and other than enjoying cooking for her husband, there’s very little about her that’s “traditional.”

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Most of what you said sounds like a CV for a foodtv show. Here we have …
Martha Stewart “mold” is not the best example

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I’m not sure what you’re saying here. I’m pretty familiar with both Ree Drummond and Ina Garten, and I tried to answer your question, while giving you some background on both of them. IMO, Drummond is at least kind of tradwife-adjacent, and Garten definitely isn’t.

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deleted!

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Thanks

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Who says the money the wife makes online wouldn’t be hers?

My understanding if you’re doing a YouTube series on your family life the whole family is kinda involved. Maybe some are not shown on camera so much.

Either way if she makes the money it’s hers. If she chooses to put all their money in one big pot that’s on her. Maybe they’ve decided together. Maybe she saves it for the kids college. Maybe she blows it at Sephora and Target. Maybe, if there is enough money they upgrade the house.

He can’t force her to hand it over. That’s a different thing. She would then be enslaved and is endangered.
Easy to stop making the videos. Don’t doll yourself and kids up, don’t clean the house, pick up chicken nuggets and Cheetos for dinner.

He can’t exactly beat her into it. A bruised up woman in a cast ain’t good viewing. No money to be made.

Tradwives are an made up thing that has to look appealing or no one will subscribe. No money if no one subscribes. Can’t sell merch if you don’t have any subscribers.

Then there are traditional wives in the sense you SAH with kids, nurture your family, are not looking for employment. You have outside interests. Hobbies. And like it this way.

The religious Traditional wife is another thing altogether.
Cannot understand their thinking. But if that’s who they are and that’s what they do, who am I to say it’s wrong?

There are, for sure real beat down women in situations they can’t get out of. They’re stuck with the jerk.
I can’t imagine he’s getting mistresses if he’s that big of a jerk. Maybe meet a few women at bars. But maintaining a long term mistress is expensive. Remember he has a wife and a slew of kids.
If he’s not providing for them she can walk.

I know, I know it’s hard if that’s all she has ever known. The welfare system can’t do it all.

But still he can’t force her, completely, without repercussions. One kid will say something to a teacher or other adult.
These things get out.
Every doctor I’ve been to in the last 10 years has asked me do I feel safe at home. I expect they ask it of everyone.

Whether her surrounding community and friends want to help or not is the real social disgrace. We let too many of these women fall through the cracks. And all those poor kids of hers.
This beat down woman would not have any money to give to the husband to use at his pleasure.
She wouldn’t be one of the YouTuber Tradwives.

Those super monetized women on YouTube are not necessarily to be pitied.
Clearly they have skills they can turn into a profit. They can walk any day they want.

OP, I think you’re conflating 2 maybe 3 different types of situations woman may be in.

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In some societies the ability of a single woman (for whatever reason she’s single) is limited, and thus exchanging sex for survival is the only option. Thus, either a prostitute, or becoming the mistress of a wealthy man (which is somewhat the same thing, but with a customer base of one).

In a more egalitarian society? Some women are taught only “man catching” skills so that’s what they have to rely on? Something else? I’ve never desired to be second fiddle so I don’t know where these women are coming from.

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It’s more of a American/Western European thing. In Israel, where there are about 50 Reform communities, 50 Conservative communities (one of which I grew up in), and 15,000 Orthodox communities, the definitions are very different.

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That’s her.

Scrolling thru IG one day her reel caught my eye. She was making mozzarella in a vintage aluminum Dutch oven that was nearly identical to one I had found cleaning out an apartment and nearly forgot about it. I had to take a look at it again , I go poking about the garage and it’s is Wagner Ware Magnalite oval Dutch oven. Good condition with insert and lid, nice art deco lines. Pretty pricey on eBay these days. Maybe I’ll do the turkey in it this year.

Anyway that’s my Hannah Neeleman connection.

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So, is this thread about:

  1. Women who play a traditional wife/mother role on monetized social media?

  2. Women who are homemakers, and care for their husbands and children, and defer to their husband as the “head of the household”?

  3. same as 2, but with a strong religious injunction to do so?

  4. same as 2 or 3, but trapped in an unhappy marriage by financial dependence or threats of violence?

  5. something else?

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I’m not sure which the OP has questions about.

She asked for persons in the situation and what their opinions/experience s. I explained my situation and got nicked for it.

So I’ve tried to understand further.
I guess I don’t really know what the OP wants to know.
The thread was in factual questions, so I answered what I thought was they wanted to know. It was moved to IMHO, so I told my opinion.

Apparently no one’s gonna tell us.

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All the good ones do, along with ER or Urgent care nurses who make a point of getting you alone long enough to feel safe to answer if your potential abuser is the one accompanying you.

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There’s a well known hand sign you can do discreetly, to ask for help.

Certain words you can say that alert caregivers you’re in danger.

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Tell us so we can be alert for it.