Recent Research About Attitudes Towards Tradwives Proves...Exactly What We've Always Known

I can't stand tradwife content. To me, it isn't just dangerous to suggest that the ultimate (and only) path to happiness as a woman is to reject feminism, submit to your husband, and serve your "natural" role as a homemaker to your "provider" husband. It's also....cheesy. 

Because one thing we need to remember? The tradwife influencers who pop up frequently on your feeds are monetizing these ideas....all while telling other women that feminism (you know, the thing that enables them to do what they're doing) is what is failing them. It's a full-on grift.

Now, to be clear: I am not anti stay-at-home mom (or even stay-at-home wife). I stayed home when my twins were born, and I fully support any woman taking on that job (because yes, it is a job). My gripe is with the attitudes of servitude and submission the tradwives pedal. It's with the dismissal of all the unpaid work women do, and how it leaves the financial risks of being without your own income out of the question. But while I worry about how trad wife content will affect young women, the truth is, I've always been even more concerned about how it will affect men.

Because now we have evidence to support what I've always known: Support for the tradwife movement was linked to negative perception of women among the men surveyed. For research published in Psychology of Women Quarterly, study authors surveyed 595 men about their familiarity with and opinions on trad wife content. According to their findings, men with attitudes of hostile sexism were more likely to support the trad wife ideology. 

These men, according to this research, frequently view performing domestic labor and caring for children as the easy way of the paid workforce (it's not). 

This is exactly how so many women end up in ugly, abusive, controlling marriages with totally warped power dynamics. This is what contributes to women being told they should fill "traditional roles", then being told they "don't work" or "don't contribute", so they can't have any say in how the family or household runs.

Again, it's not the opting out of the traditional workforce I take umbrage with here. It's the idea that women only belong in one place, and that this place is reserved for people who are less competent, less powerful, and less respectable. And how does a stay-at-home parent differ from a tradwife, you ask? Well, the former can have an egalitarian partnership, while the latter is based on an ideology that puts women in the backseats of their own relationships.

And there are dangers to that – financial dangers, physical and mental health dangers, and more.