The Politics of the Traditional Housewife
on gender essentialism and tradwives
So, you’re considering the tradwife lifestyle. I’m guessing you’re young - somewhere in your late teens or early twenties, most likely. You probably have a penchant for the soft life, and you are most likely a gender essentialist. No? That sounds like jargon? I’m being pretentious again? Sorry, sorry, I swear I’ll explain in a minute. You’re looking to live a traditional life, because you believe it is your responsibility, or maybe you genuinely believe that it is what will make you happiest. I have gone back and forth on this mindset myself for a very large part of my life, and consequently have done no small amount of thinking on the subject. Today I’m here to lay out for you all of my thoughts on becoming a tradwife. Whether or not your mind is made up, consider giving this a once over. After all, if you’re going to commit to this lifestyle forever, it can’t hurt to read about it a little, can it?
Essentialism, Pragmatism, and your responsibility as a member of the 21st century
Sources: Essentialism Destroyed , Did feminism FAIL men?, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Since the beginning of time, mankind has searched for order. We create systems of rule, we devise authority, and we put everybody into a category. Really, our search for labels define almost everything we do, and so it is not surprising that one of the first things we did, as a species, was split ourselves in two: man and woman. There are, in essence, two thoughts around these categories:
Essentialism: everything has a set of characteristics which defines it, and our task is to put it neatly into a category
Pragmatism: an objects characteristics can help us approximate its category, but we are not tasked with defining it exactly
The majority of us, including me for many years, are essentialists. This is the dominant worldview, the reasoning for which could be anything from reigning religious beliefs to the media we consume. However, essentialism has one fatal flaw: it fails to consider the complexity of humanity. We have devised a system to put people into two categories, and when we find people who do not fit into either or who lay somewhere on the boundary, rather than change our system, we attempt to ignore them. Pragmatists consider the “margin of error” of the categories, which makes for a more realistic approach to categorization.
But, anyway, I’m not really here to convince you to lean one way or the other (pragmatism pragmatism if you believe in modern science the obvious answer is pragmatism). I’m simply here to put a name to the belief you have most likely held for your entire life. Congratulations - you are a gender essentialist! But why does it even matter?
Whether you are pro or anti-tradwife, we can all agree that the desire for this life is rooted entirely in gender roles. These are the behaviours and rules we define for ourselves because of our biological sex; girl pink, boy blue, girl color, boy kill squirrel for fun on his sixth birthday and then live with the guilt for the rest of his life, etc, etc.
As Yuval Noah Harari writes in his novel Sapiens, our modern lives are ruled by evidence based conclusions, or modern science. He writes:
Our ancestors put a great deal of time and effort into trying to discover the rules that govern the natural world. But modern science differs from all previous traditions of knowledge…
… a) The willingness to admit ignorance. Modern science is based on the Latin injunction ignoramus - ‘we do not know’. It assumes that we don’t know everything. Even more critically, it accepts that the things we think we know could be proven wrong as we gain more knowledge. No concept, idea or theory is sacred beyond challenge.
b) The centrality of observation and mathematics. Having admitted ignorance, modern science aims to obtain new knowledge. It does so by gathering observations and then using mathematical tools to connect these observations into comprehensive theories.
…
With this, I must say it. I know you’re dreading hearing it, and I’m sorry.
Gender is a social construct. There is absolutely no science backing the majority of our notions of gender roles, and the few that are backed by science do not necessitate our defining society around them. So if you’re going to define your entire life around this concept, know first that we have no way of proving its significance.
However, it is possible that you are more inclined to follow an ideology / religion than our modern method of definition, in which case none of this matters to you. Wonderful! We can now move on to discussing the meat of the subject.
Fuck your socialist bullshit, give me some logic
I am now going to lay out a pro-con list (from my journal!) which contains my arguments for and against becoming a tradwife. At this point, whether you believe in essentialism / gender roles is irrelevant.
Pros
You never have to worry about money (unless he doesn’t allow you to use his money freely (or leaves you or abuses you or cheats on you))
You don’t have to do any manual labour (unless he faces a disability or thinks that manual labour falls under the umbrella of housework (or leaves you or abuses you or cheats on you))
You get to live your soft life and be happy and carefree (unless he is the kind of man that surpresses his emotions and never offers you emotional intimacy or he doesn’t help with the kids because he deems it housework (or leaves you or abuses you or cheats on you)).
You have a partner who will stick by you through everything! ( unless he leaves you or abuses you or cheats on you).
Cons
Your work will never be recognized or appreciated. You will spend the rest of your life breaking your back to maintain a clean home and put a delicious meal on the table every night, and there is a pretty high chance that your husband will not care and will berate you for not being able to do more. This is because most traditional men have not done housework ever, and so they deem it a woman’s task, and therefore an easy one.
There is a relatively high chance you bear the brunt of parenting alone. The average traditional man’s fear of emotional expression makes it difficult for them to do the emotional labour of parenting. When they do parent, it will most likely be to enforce rules, or maybe to ‘watch the children’ which is code for possibly play with them and, other than that, let them do whatever they want.
The pleasures you enjoy will always come with a price. Don’t think that every designer handbag and mani-pedi that you are so graciously given won’t come with an expectation of obedience. And, if you truly want to be a housewife, then you probably want to be obedient. But just know that eventually, that want will fade. After years of children and bickering and servitude, when you want a break or just some help, obedience will not be looking so good.
You have no independence. No safety net. Forget the possibly far-fetched circumstances in which he cheats on you or abuses you or leaves you. What if you wait until marriage and the sex is just awful? What if he turns out to be just disgusting to live with? What if you guys get married and it turns out you just hate each other? If you spend your entire life planning to be dependent on somebody else, guess what happens when you decide you want to leave them to strike out on your own? You can’t. You end up trapped. And if you take nothing else away from this piece, please remember that there is no worse feeling than your home being a prison.
Separation of Church (Choice) and State (Feminism)
Sources: Tradwives Against Feminism
By this point in the piece, I figure I can drop any false pretenses. I’ve explained most of the reasons why I think becoming a tradwife is a mistake, but there is one left to discuss. I left this one for last because I figured this would be the least popular of my arguments, but I can’t not mention feminism in a discussion like this.
Choice feminism maintains that the individual choices of a woman are inherently feminist. This is a ridiculous concept. Your actions are not feminist simply because you exist, and when you make a decision that is tied in some way to women’s role and perception in society, you should be prepared to take responsibility for that decision.
This, of course, will not sway the decision of many tradwives because they are neofeminists - ie, they believe women will become empowered through embracing traits that are conventionally feminine. That is, they think that living the traditional lifestyle will ultimately benefit women. To them I say: open your eyes. Pick up a history textbook. If you choose to pursue a traditional lifestyle, I don’t think that makes you exempt from fighting for women’s rights; however, if you argue that mass conversion to the traditional lifestyle will benefit women, I urge you to study the impacts of the 1950’s lifestyle on women’s mental and physical health ( and also maybe just in general to study) .
Those are all of my thoughts on the “traditional lifestyle”, condensed down into a (hopefully) easily digestible blog post. I understand that many of my points will not resonate with people, but I urge you to observe the potential ramifications of comitting yourself entirely to servitude. If you do not read any of this but just take 5 minutes to imagine your life as a housewife if your husband is even a little bit toxic, I will have left you better off. And, of course, if you have read this and done that and you are still utterly convinced, then your choice is yours to make. Do it all with fervor.
