Whitened smiles, blown out curls, and a 1950s dress: most surely you’ve seen social media’s horde of “trad wives.” A swarm approaching every unmade bed, dinnerless table, or heap of laundry with a piercing holier-than-thou gaze softly framed beneath doe lashes. A sight so sickeningly sweet it could be a jam preservative, rather than a role conservative.
In the age of “choice feminism,” many believe that the main objective of feminism is to allow women the autonomy to choose what they do with their life. So, in principle feminism supports a woman’s right to either cultivate a home or progress in a career. Yet despite this strong theoretical sentiment, there is no denying that society imposes contradictory expectations on women. Whichever choice she makes, she will be judged. What trad wives are promoting, is not a woman’s right to choose to make a home, but the imperative that a “proper” woman should make a home.
Not satisfied in confining women to the home, the movement centres servitude to men. Dinners ready at five, not because that’s what agrees with her stomach, but because that’s when her husband finishes work. His shirt is ironed, his lunch is packed, his bath is run. When gestures are given out of gendered obligation, instead of love, an unequal power balance is created. The very label of “trad wife” defines these women’s identity in relation to their husband, and by doing so undermines their own self of personhood. Rather than existing and living as an individual who is half of a partnership, the trad wife dehumanises herself, places herself at her husband’s feet, existing for his convenience.
But the trad wives wield a double-edged bread knife, because while they manage to persuade some people into believing women exist only to make men’s lives easier, many people are repelled by this blatant misogyny. The issue is that these women have managed to equate homemaking with mindless submission. The result is that any woman who chooses to be a stay-at-home mother or focus on homemaking is painted with the brush of inane anti-feminism.
One narrative that seems to be circling, is that no self-respecting woman would choose domestic duties. That for a woman to be intelligent or competent, she must choose to have a career. But this is simply not true. It seems that people undermine the effort that must actually be expended in running a home properly or raising children well. Work is work, whether it takes place in the home or in the wider world.
It seems that the main benefactor of women being pressured to prioritise paid employment is capitalism. Women are expected to work 9-5, only to come home and still have an entire day’s worth of work to do in the house, not even mentioning the caretaking of children. What happens is, there is simply not enough time left in the day. When you’d rather cook, you have to order in. Clothes which you really could repair are re-bought. The children you’ve missed all day are picked up by childminders. The skills which have been cultivated over millennia are being outsourced and paid for.
I see your disgust at the idea of women bent over with a needle and thread, a stove bubbling in the background, because we have been taught that this is dehumanising. But I ask you, how is it more dehumanising to work for the people you love than for a billionaire CEO? The answer is that only the latter generates money; it seems that we have begun to measure people’s moral worth on the basis of their economic utility. A very sad state of affairs indeed.
Of-course, domestic duties are not all sunshine and rainbows, and neither is all paid employment a living hell. Paid employment can give women financial independence, self-confidence, and the opportunity to achieve great things. This article is not intended to criticise women in paid employment, only the idea that it is intrinsically more valuable than domestic work. The reality is that many households in the U.K. depend upon two incomes; it’s not feasible for one parent not to work.
The myth is spread that working for massive corporations is synonymous with female liberation, whilst working in the home is brutal oppression. But women shouldn’t be staunchly expected to do either; both types of work are necessary and meaningful. Women can and should have brilliant, inspiring careers if they so wish, but the woman who stays at home has an inner life which is just as rich and does work which is just as important.
You wonder why occupations historically associated with masculinity, such as farming and soldiery, command respect, whilst the knowledge and skills cultivated by women across generations are so often dismissed as trivial. We are the sum of our ancestors: a lineage of women whose labour sustained families and communities, whose knowledge was passed down through generations, and whose work was no less demanding for being unpaid. To demean the raising of children, the preparation of food, and the maintenance of a home is to demean work upon which human life itself depends. Its value cannot be measured in wages alone.
To make a home is not to submit to a man. A woman who dedicates herself to her home has her own thoughts, feelings, ambitions, and opinions; her worth is no less than that of a woman in paid employment. Domestic labour is neither an easy option nor an escape from the demands of the world. It is necessary, skilled work that sustains human life, and it deserves to be recognised as such.
None of this means that women must devote themselves to the home. Women should be free to pursue careers, cultivate families, or find fulfilment in any combination of the two. What they should not have to do is justify their choices according to a hierarchy that mistakes economic productivity for human worth.