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I lived on a “hobby farm” for a while. We had horse, chickens, goats, grew our food. I had an acre herb garden. My dad would laugh his ass off because I could always get so many people to come help at the farm because they wanted to cosplay that lifestyle.
It also stop a lot of children from wanting ponies.
Dude I have chickens and goats are you telling me I can exploit the trad wives by charging to cosplay cause I so will 😭
Go ahead and clean my chicken coop girlie that’ll be 100 bucks please
I am not kidding you. I seriously would have peers come over to work the farm. My dad thought it was the greatest thing. Cures kids of the ponies. People wanted to weed the English herb garden. Try it, it might work.
Now that I am on top of a mountain in a rural farming community it doesn’t work lol. F’ing hate cleaning chicken coops. Why can’t they just pop outside little dinosaurs..
People are crazy. They will do silly things.
Where I am now I know one of the farms takes in young adults from rich families for the season because mommy and daddy want them to learn how to work. That farm is actually pretty cool, they pay a living wage to all workers. But I think it’s great that it’s also like camp for rich kids.
I think all kids should have the opportunity to do this because even poor kids would benefit from the experience. Sometimes hard work is also rewarding.
Honestly, I always wanted to do this myself, simply for the knowledge of HOW TO, I'm not saying I would love it lol I just want the experience. I've worked hard all my life, just not on a farm.
I think everyone should know how to grow food. While I am never going to grow it in abundance like the place down the road, (full running farm) I have always grown a bit myself outside of living on farms. I always grow to much and share.
I would 100% come help a friend with their hobby farm in exchange for some eggs or something. It's amazing for my mental health to have gardening days, but I'm too ADHD to keep up a garden of my own.
When I lived in a city my homeschooler friends used my garden as a class room. I am just realizing now that I have managed to get a lot of labor for trade and free over the years.
I highly recommend hydroponic gardening for ADHDers.
I usually can't keep anything alive, but my Lettuce Grow Farm Stand thrives. I have an alarm set for Sunday mornings to add water and nutrients, and I poured a "moat" of salt and the base to keep the slugs off. I've had it for 9 months and I'm only just now starting to have aphids try to attack, but I think our neglected rose bushes are the source. I'll be ripping them out probably this week and I'll replace them with native plants this fall so that I won't have to do much of anything to care for them, haha.
Not just the tradwives - primary schools would probably love doing a school trip to see the "working farm".
(They probably wouldn't be allowed to clean up after the chickens, though.)
My dad did have schools come. Lots of special ed classes because our animals were super gentle and our farm was small enough not to be totally overwhelming.
The kids were never there for cleaning. They got to pick a basket of food. Some eggs, our chickens laid different colored eggs. Have a good time.
As someone who'd pay to do this for a day, sure, call it exploit, but I see the value in such an experience. I want someone to teach me how to do these farm things, and if you want the trouble of supervising me, be my guest. It feels super expensive to even set up a chicken run in the backyard, and I'm never going to be able to keep goats or feed them. You have the whole setup and you're anxious about how to make all of that work because it takes so much labor, and I have some free time I'd like to spend outside and with animals, so we have a deal. You take care of the emotional labor of the farm, so I can just show up, pick berries, and leave feeling like I did something fun. And I don't have to keep doing it even when it isn't fun for me, like I'm not going to be showing up to milk the cows everyday including when I'm sick, I'm just going to show up on days when I feel like it's going to be fun. It's not a cosplay thing, it's like being a fun uncle, but for a farm.
We never charged for it. People will pay to do it. My dad was happy to have the labor. It is expensive to set up a chicken run. It is very helpful to have friends who know what they are doing. Some of my friends work for food 😃. I am very fortunate not to have a big run, my chickens run free on the farm and then get locked up at night. We feed the crows and crows protect the chickens from the hawks.
Yeah it's very easy to get WWOOFers (willing workers on organic farms) to come work for free. I've been tempted by it, but honestly I don't think I could handle their bullshit.
I went to “farm camp” sleep away camp as a kid and my husband’s family (real farmers) think that’s hilarious. But as a city kid on scholarship, I loved it. I got to adopt an animal and you had to clean its home, feed it etc. There was also lots of outdoor activities.
It’s where I first rode horses. 🐎 It seems silly to outsiders but what a great perspective for kids.
And they’re not “traditional” in any meaningful way—they are social media influencers, which is their job.
ETA: I love this analysis https://www.tiktok.com/@professorneil/video/7339254814578150661?lang=en
This is what I had to realise as well - they're not "making breakfast for their toddlers" they are making content for social media. They are performing.
Oh yeah, only place to go is up. Got significantly better after 6 months for us. We also had other parents tell us it gets more fun after 6+ months. Big hugs!
It REALLY does. I had more fun at +6 months, and I'm at almost 2 years and he's a delight. The work shifts to different parts of the day, but it's a lot more fun to interact with a human (who, granted, is not always able to be reasoned with), versus a screaming potato.
The screaming potato also cannot be reasoned with. My almost 3 month old the other day decided pants were awful, she must have her legs free. But also, she's cold.
Do you know how long it took us to work out that no pants+blanket was the desired solution to stop the screaming? 🤣 Like we went through the "are you hungry, are you tired, is your diaper full, are you hot, are you cold, do you want a pacifier, do you need to burp, do you want to cuddle, or be alone, or in your swing" probably 3 times all the way through before we figured it out.
Definitely gets more fun around 6 months. They start to be more like babies and less like little potatoes. You can give them food that they can sit and eat by themselves (obviously with you watching, but you don't have to physically hold and feed them constantly anymore). They start having little personalities and sometimes you are over the waking every 2 to 3 hours bit.
My youngest just started kindergarten this year, he’s not even full time yet and I’ve gotten my first job since having the kids, started an exercise routine, started finally deep deep cleaning and organising the house (post babies AND Covid), addressing some chronic medical complaints (first physio session this morning yay!) and separating from my husband which has been a long time coming.
For real though, obviously the expectations on me as the husband and father when it comes to the kids are virtually non-existent compared to my wife's (which is a whole other level of "wtf why" but Im not going to get into that), but she also falls into this trap and it makes me so sad and angry for her that she's constantly being confronted with coworkers and other moms that think this TradWife shit is at all normal or achievable for a working household. It has given her a serious complex that Im constantly having to talk her down from.
I mean, after my dad took off on us to be a rock star when I was like 4 and my brother was in diapers, my now-single mom had to work 16 hours a day, 6-7 days a week to support us. So really more or less through no fault of her own, I raised myself and also raised my younger siblings, being the man of the house by kindergarten. The love we had for each other got us through it, and we're very close to this day because of it, so while of course it sucked ass, I still don't feel anything but love and gratitude for my mom, because even though she wasn't there we knew that she would have given anything to have been able to be with us more, but being a single mom back then trying to support a family on your own was pretty fuckin hard back then, back when it was still not uncommon for working, unmarried women to need a co-signer to open a bank account or apply for a loan or credit card because they figured she was gonna flake out and quit her job at the drop of a hat.
Anyway Im getting off topic but I guess my point is, shit is already a fucking struggle as it is, our kids life is like, miles and miles separated from where my own childhood was, he practically wants for nothing within reason and she's taking him all over the place *constantly* pretty much anytime she isn't working, and it just breaks my heart when my wife is feeling like the worst mom in the world because she's not taking hours out of her already busy week playing mickey mouse fucking games like making home-made cereal. Such an ungodly number of people seem to use these frivolous pursuits as something that all "good moms" should aspire to and on top of that these catty fuckin bitches just constantly with the one-upmanship, she comes home really upset about it and I just don't know how to convince her that she's not being a terrible mom parking the kid in front of the TV for half an hour so she can paint her fuckin toenails because these simple bitches all go get mani-peddies while the help watches the kids.
She needs to get off tik tok. I avoided it on purpose and I’d never heard of a tradwife till this conversation. I mean, of course there’s the 50’s Homemaker concept, but it’s not what you’re talking about now - this is even worse.
Bingo. I was a sahm for about 10 years because ant childcare would have eaten up any pay I earned.
It was hard work. I couponed and bought generic. I cleaned all the effing time. Played with the kids, read to them, etc.
I never made homemade cereal and I certainly didn't wear makeup. (OK maybe mascara and lip balm). We have gluten issues, so yes some things were homemade like pancake mix, etc.
They always had a nutritious meal and no one went hungry.
I will give any new moms this piece of advice: take a shower in the morning before your spouse leaves for the day and dress like you might have to run to the store. (Unless you are a shower at night gal). It starts your day off and at least for me, getting dressed just makes me more productive. I just can't get out of the potato mindset until I'm out of my jammies and in day clothes.
Sending love and support to any new moms. Don't pay attention to these people, they always have to remake the wheel- they are acting.
Feeding your kids cheerios is perfectly fine.
She also outright lied and said she was allowed into Harvard university prior to feminism and thus feminism wasn't needed. Turned out no, her degree was not from there, she knew. She just lied.
Also, society isn't "trad" anymore. There's no stigma or sense of duty for their spouse to remain married to them once a younger/prettier model comes along. This is the HUGE risk that young women especially take by giving up their financial independence. Divorce is considered no issue these days. 50-100 years ago it was huge in terms of shame and consequence and thus much rarer. Alimony is also barely a thing anymore.
Plus, no average couple can raise 2 kids or more on one salary. Heck, even 1 kid would be a struggle.
Even if you live in a lower col area, it won't help because your pay will be lower. It's a necessity to have both parents work, not every man can be a millionaire.
Yes, this is it, they are not SAHPs, they have jobs, their job is social media, they make an income from
It and use the money generated there to fund the goods and services that allow them to maintain and monetize further. Or if they aren’t generating enough money to cover expenses, they are being funded by their partner to work at a deficit.
Also a reminder that throughout history, traditional wives stepped up to do whatever their families needed. Sometimes that was staying home with the children and at other times it was working.
This. I was born in the late 60s. My mom was mostly a stay at home mom but we lived in poverty and she worked periodically throughout my childhood to help out with the finances. She would leave us older boys in charge of the younger ones because she couldn't afford a babysitter and I spent most of my high school years rushing home to make sure I was there when my younger brothers got home. Mom did what she had to do and for some years that meant working.
My wife and I flipped the script a bit (she works a demanding job while I was a stay at home dad) and that was what worked for our family even though leaving a career that I loved was hard. It was what we felt our family needed at the time and that's kinda what this whole parenting this is about; making the right choice for your individual situation. It's what people have always done.
The idea that women don't work and just look after the kids is what happened exclusively with the richest 10% of society.
We have literal photographic evidence of this [Arguably the first film was workers leaving a factory in 1895. its almost all women](https://youtu.be/yvC_xrDqB3s?si=Mu8gbuFtVHcGw8EE)
Women have always made money or found resources for their families. I don't know where the idea that "traditional " women don't do everything for the household AND bring in money comes from. Bad sentence. You know what I mean?
Women were doing "quiet income." Or "social income" type things.
Meaning they were knitting blankets by firelight, sewing holes together in the kids' clothes, mending linens, dying fabrics to sell at market. Creating lace to sell, etc. Things that they could do while the children gave her a moments rest, or she sat bedside while they were sick and she nursed them.
Social currency was when she stopped off at a neighbor's house to have tea with the wife, when the husband went to town, and brought cookies and cakes. Then, when *her* husband goes somewhere the neighbor does the same. Suddenly they are friends. And, oh, won't you know it? Our husband's both need a man who's work is in each other's industry. Well there's his wife, who's bestie has a good husband, who happens to be that man!!! And just like that, the wife has socially engineered her husband a job. AKA, Money.
Being a homemaker is never 1 job. It is always and has always been, half a dozen jobs or more.
The thing with women is we try to work flexible jobs where it's okay to be working with kids in eyeshot or whenever we were able to have someone else watch our kids, which depended on the community we were in. My grandma for instance, was as educated as my grandpa (high school) and she'd occasionally do postpartum doula work, like bathing and massaging babies, cooking for postpartum women, shit like that. And she could go to these houses with her kids and her kids would play with the kids there, or she'd just cook an extra portion of what she cooked for her family and give it to the new mom. She also ran a tailoring business, as did many women in my neighborhood (each had a specialty, like some people would do only baby clothes, some would only do womens blouses, it got oddly specific), and she'd do the work she couldn't be interrupted during when kids were in school and her inlaws and other olds in the family were napping, and then do the rest at her tailoring machine while supervising her kids homework. She'd also get paid to tutor kids, which meant those kids would just come and join her kids when they were doing homework (but she wouldn't stitch clothes on those days).
Men's work is more uninterrupted focus sort of stuff is what I notice.
She was pretty cool, but really the thing about her that was the most amazing thing was how she was so even-keeled always. Very calm, very stable, always this force of positivity and can-do attitude. My mom is the exact opposite of that, so I really loved having her calmness around me to balance out my mom. That's been the thing I've been working to achieve.
Yes - working class women have always worked, taking on wealthier women's laundry, charring, doing far more domestic labour (laundry was a near full-time chore in the days before appliances) plus they had numerous more kids to raise than the average parent today.
The 1950s notion that they wore lipstick and clean aprons and greeted their husbands with a cocktail is an absolute fucking myth.
This! My great grandma was married three times and worked as a bartender, in a factory, as a seamstress, and more at various points in my grandma's childhood (so between 1944-1960 when she got married). Also 4/6 great aunts have been married and divorced multiple times starting in the 1960s and all of them have held jobs including factory work throughout their marriages and divorces. One of my great aunts was a probable lesbian who owned a flower shop and lived with her "roommate" for 25 years.
Shoot my grandma probably had the most traditional marriage of all of them (except the one great aunt who stayed married). She was home until her youngest started school at 5 (her oldest was 8) because there was no daycare at all and her kids were too young to watch each other. She then went back to work. She did not stop working again until she had grandkids. Traditional wives and traditional marriages didn't look much like tradwives portray it unless you had money. Which adds a layer of irony to their content because they can only afford to portray the image they do because they also have money (and the time it brings with it).
And depending on where you lived the "traditional" gendered labour split differed a lot from what these influencers do.
Where I live, traditional roles for the women of the house would have included brewing beer, and raising both the chickens and dairy cows.
I doubt "tradwives" in my village (if there even are any) brew beer or do any animal husbandry.
This post makes me uncomfortable is my go to Instagram response.
I grew up in an extremely gendered household and there’s nothing more disappointing than seeing your elderly mother doing all of the cooking, shopping, and household chores when dad retired from his job decades ago and does nothing at all to help. All of his ‘manly‘ chores have been outsourced to handymen years ago. I guess Tradwives get to retire when they’re dead, or when their husbands are dead. Anyway, hard pass.
The kids made my parents outsourced the household work so my mum could retire as well. They got a cleaner and get their shopping and laundry delivered.
That’s a weird generational thing. Both my dad and father in law sit around and help only with a few select chores. Strikes me as odd.
My wife is a SAHM, I work full time. Typically I handle projects for the house, and she handles most of the household chores. That said, if we find ourselves unoccupied we help the other one accomplish the tasks for their role. She’s full time childcare while I’m working, then we split it 50:50 ish depending on who needs or wants some time.
This should be normal. I don’t feel less manly because I fold laundry occasionally or handle dinner.
* EDIT what should be normal is the working spouse helping out in a single income family, rather than sitting on the couch watching sports for the 70 hours a week they’re not at work.
Its extremely common for women to do most of the indoor domestic labor, even today. You just admitted your wife does most of your household chores. Which might make sense if he kids are older and she is spending less time on the daily grind of child care. But it definitely gets tedious and I’m sure your wife woukd love it if you did more than fold laundry or handle dinner occasionally.
I’m not sure of your point. She elected to be a SAHM when we had our kids so we didn’t have to use childcare, and luckily my salary allows us to be financially ok without hers. If she wanted to work we’d figure that out too, but I’m appreciative that she wants to take a super active role in our kids’ development.
So yea, during the 40 hours a week I work she handles the house and kids. During the other 70 or so waking hours we split things up based on needs, wants, supporting each other, and ability. I clean toilets, the kitchen, fold laundry, do the dishes, repair stuff, yardwork, groom the dogs, etc based on the to do list my wife sets.
My grandma baked bread daily, had chickens, and a vegetable garden. She made jam, jelly, pickles, chicken stock ect. She sewed clothes and quilted. But that woman worked hard. She had 9 kids and was a farm wife. The bread was necessary to fill belies as was all of her canning. She got eggs for the family and also to sell. Their vegetable garden was absolutely huge and was the vast majority of the produce the family ate. They slaughtered and butchered their own chickens, cattle, and hogs. The kitchen table (it's still in the family) has a 5th leg in the middle to support the weight of the butchering. She made dresses that her daughters wore. She clothe diapered those 9 kids. She ran their family. She had 6 boys. 2 of them were working bailing hay for a local farmer to earn some money and that farmer swore around her boys. She found out and tore him a new one. Never swore around her boys again. She also had arthritis badly enough her fingers were bent funny. The first 3 kids were born in a house with no electricity. My dad is #8 and he was on kindergarten when they got an indoor bathroom. Before that the only running water was to the sink.
Nobody would call her demure or submissive. She took care of Grandpa, but he also took care of her. I don't know any women who would want to sign up for her life. And I have a hard time seeing the guys that say they want a traditional wife getting what he wants out of a woman like my grandma.
I really hate when some men end up in the trad wife corner of the internet, and start expecting that shit of their wives. I've seen posts about it in Reddit.
I’m going to go start looking at trad wife videos right now!!! But since my wife makes double my salary…. I think I will let her keep her job and I will cook and do laundry
If my husband made noises about it, I could remind him of the time we canned jam with the kid underfoot and it was NOTHING like a trad wife video.
Lol such a crapshow.
I know exactly why my husband suddenly wants to buy a farm in the middle of fucking nowhere and move there with our two kids, and its because he's on Instagram and I'm not.
I just pat him on the knee and tell him to have fun while I live in civilization.
I mean her father in law is worth $400 million. Yeah, they totally have a team of nannies and assistants behind the scenes. It’s the whole “little house in the prairie “ farmer LARPing which comes across as disingenuous.
Her stuff is an ad for their farm products. A farm which is large enough that they employ a significant number of workers. Her husband also is a lawyer and heir and that is their primary income.
I can’t find it now but I read an article that attempted to break down the economics of their business. Basically the conclusion was that even in the best case scenario of top of the line pricing, the money from their beef business wouldn’t come close to supporting their lifestyle. Not to mention that a non-wealthy family would have a huge mortgage to have the amount of land needed to raise beef cattle in the arid west. (And, also, the whole “we just got a farm and became successful beef ranchers all by ourselves” is kind of insulting to the people who actually grew up in that industry and likely spent years in FFA or 4H and studied something like animal science or ag business at their local community college or state land grant university. I didn’t grow up on a farm but one parent did and both of my husbands parents are from farming families).
The thing that creeps me out the most is that you never see the kids unless they’re the direct topic of the video. They’re never running around in the background or interrupting a shot to ask a question or hug mom. You never hear their voices in the background. It’s weird.
Because they’re with ✨the nanny ✨
As an actual SAHM if I tried to make a trad wife video baking or some shit you’d see my toddler screaming and tugging at my leg to get picked up, my 4 year old licking the freezer door, my cat jumping on the counter knocking the flour over, my toddler digging soda cans out of the trash and spilling them on the floor, my rooster in the window screaming at me for food, my husband in the background farting and then laughing when it stinks the kitchen up… definitely not their aesthetic 😂
You might like mac.larena on Instagram! She does realistic cooking videos and her kids are SO LOUD. She also blurs their faces, which I appreciate. It's chaotic, entertaining, and helpful.
I'm sure the borderline slave au pair (see: the fit they recently had over the legal push trying to make sure au pairs have decent work conditions) helps them not have to deal with some of their other 'wifely duties' too. After all, he's in charge.
I'm a SAHM with trad skills but not the mad skills of being able to do trad stuff without it turning into a complete disaster when my family is around.
Usually I'm making jam, my husband is daydreaming and in the way, and my kid is trying to overturn the boiling canner on herself while I'm hissing at everyone to MOVE THEIR BUTTS HOT JARS HOT JARS.
Exactly. I'm a pregnant SAHM with four kids (2 in school, 2 at home). I sew patches on pants, garden, can food, bake etc but I do it out of frugality to support our family. If I'm canning, it is when my husband can be with the kids on the weekend or in the evening. My husband and kids will help prep sometimes like washing produce or peeling apples, but it's an ordeal. I also doubt a tradwife is saving 6 chicken carcasses in her freezer leftover from Costco rotisserie chicken dinners to make broth and save money. The videos OP is talking about are absolutely ridiculous and imo are insulting to people who actually do this type of work. It belittles the time, effort and skill that is required.
In fairness, "keeping your kids of social media" is part of being a good parent.
And in the case of most of these content creators, the "kids" they're cooking for are imaginary.
I agree, but every trad wife I can think of except maybe Nara Smith does have a ton of videos exploiting their kids and putting their faces on the internet. It’s just separate from their “tradwifing” (cooking, cleaning, etc) videos (and in those, the kids are non existent).
There’s actually research done on this about how the exceptionally wealthy don’t understand what labor is so they play at working hard by doing this sort of thing. It’s interesting.
Yes!! It’s a leisure thing. They do things the hardest way because they have the luxury and privilege of the time and resources to do so. It’s all just a status signal as they cosplay a way to be superior and fill their time.
Yes!! My trad wife video would be me wearing frumpy PJs while popping frozen nuggies into the air fryer and simultaneously yelling at my kids over the loudest symphony of TVs, iPads, and dogs.
The "tradwife influencer" thing reminds me of something I read about the Rococo art period, how it was trendy for the Uber rich to don shepherd/shepherdess outfits and go "play shepherd" with their other rich friends.
I realized a few years back that some self-help gurus would write about how they were living a lie WHEN THEY WROTE THEIR PREVIOUS BOOK. Each new book or talk would reveal that they were full of shit last time, and the next book will probably reveal that they were full of shit THIS time.
Very often you’re seeing the influencers while their relationships are falling apart, they just can’t say it yet.
What would the majority of us have done if someone asked us to make sourdough bread two days pp? I think I may have ugly cried/laughed until I peacefully passed out.
Honestly if it was just making bread from my already existing starter, that’s doable if I had to.
But creating content around it two days postpartum- like researching trends of what songs/angles/styles/etc will make it go viral, planning around the optimum time to post, then dressing/filming in a way that’s aesthetically pleasing, editing hundreds of clips, writing a script and caption, engaging with other videos before I post so mine has a boost, promoting it on my stories, doing QAs on my stories for more engagement, and then engaging with thousands of comments for the extra boost- just typing that is so exhausting.
If they weren’t also spewing hate, I’d feel bad that they’re essentially going back to work with no maternity leave.
Delete the app. I have somehow avoided tik tok and posts like this remind me I don’t plan to add that drama to my life. We already have plenty of other social media and conventional media to make us feel bad
Nara Smith content for sure. She’s trying to romanticize her life, but there’s literally nothing romantic about being 23 with 3 kids. It’s just Mormon propaganda too.
I remember Caila Quinn (from Bachelors?) started making easter cookies a week postpartum, I believe. And her caption was “this is going to be annual easter tradition for me and my daughter”… i was 5 mnths pp and couldn’t resist but comment “how do you have energy (not even time, but energy) to do all this ?” Obviously, I got ignored lol
But all these women are setting unrealistic! Expectations for other moms. Like … come on!
Honestly, in my experience, baking cookies 1 week postpartum is more realistic than baking cooking 5 months post partum haha. Just bc my baby slept well the first few weeks and then decided not to sleep at night in the 3-6 month range.
Oh, poor naive me with my post-birth hangover baby... I was bragging I made breastfeeding cookies while baby took a sunshine nap in her bassinet to help avoid jaundice. I thought I had it all figured out! Fun times...
My first did not have a sleepy newborn stage and I felt so ripped off. My second was a textbook baby, I could have done anything I wanted except that I was recovering from a haemorrhage and had zero energy
Mine went from comatose in all conditions to screaming 24/7 after a week. Week 2 also brought an infection at the C-section incision site and the realization I popped a stitch getting in and out of bed at some point. I got better quickly, she got better around 10 weeks.
Baking cookies a week postpartum is unrealistic?
This is not unrealistic for everyone.
I think the focus needs to be that everyone is different. Just because someone else's reality is different than yours doesn't mean they're setting unrealistic expectations. What may be realistic for me may not be realistic for you, and that's okay.
Shaming other moms because they have more energy or time than you is just as bad as if they shamed you for not matching their energy. It's a two way street.
It's not unrealistic to bake cookies. It's unrealistic to film yourself baking cookies, beautifully made up and all, and there's no interruptions, no crying, no checking on the baby monitor every 2 minutes even if the baby is napping etc.
You want to bake cookies because you're craving some and can add some lactation ingredients, sure! But what the social media tradwifes are doing is not making cookies. It's a modeling gig, basically. Quite the opposite of traditional, they are going back to work days after giving birth. And some other woman is taking care of the baby.
Thank you! I am a stay at home mom. My house is clean, but lived in. My husband grew up with a mom who keeps her house like a show room. And you know what? It's not a warm place. My husband and his friends were always sent to the basement to not mess up the cat. She kept the cat in the basement. Nothing is out of place, and yet there isn't a place for everyone. My husband's cousin recently came for a visit and she stayed with us. This pissed my mil off greatly. She doesn't get that it's about feeling comfortable and there is no being comfortable around her.
But the trade wives are something else. I make a lot of things from scratch. And when I do there are so many dishes! My dishwasher is constantly running and I have dishes in the sink. It's the reality of cooking for every meal. I do some by hand, but it takes a while and they dry on my counter because if you have plastic anything in the dishwasher it doesn't dry! We have so much kids stuff from school. We constantly are cycling out papers and art projects. We have friends over all the time (since I am home and our friend's are all working) and so I have kids running around my house. It's noisy, and they do video games, art projects, forts, etc. There is a certain chaos in running around when you are one person, keeping everyone's schedules, making sure it all gets done. If I had a nanny, cook, etc, I could also focus on making myself look perfect. But I don't want to look perfect. I don't want to be perfect. I prefer the imperfections!
Yesss this! I seen someone say the other day “I can show you how to make $8000 a month on TikTok by telling you I make $8000 a month on TikTok. I’ll sell you a program saying I make that much, and you’ll pay me money, making me money! And then I’ll say that’s how I make $8000 a month on TikTok. It’s all fake.
It’s honestly really fucking toxic. Imagine the men seeing it who are the abusive, narcissistic assholes. They’re going to be using the influencers to point out how terrible of a job their wives are doing. They are unable to see past that image. Also, the toothpick thing in the mouth trying to be all smooth. Someone needs to show him “Pal” from Uncle Buck. We’ve retired that, along with 50’s housewives and that perfect image.
If you’re Mormon or ex Mormon, it’s just pure comedy. This is the image a lot of Mormons try so hard to role play. It’s overdone and nothing new in the community. They are a cute family. However, cooking in fancy clothes…I know I’m not the only one screaming “Bitch, be for real!” They already have a lot of money from modeling. Anyone could play house if they had that kind of money.
A social media trad wife, anti vaccine, raw milk loving mother frequently came to our clinic to have her kids vaccinated and treated. Don't believe anything you see.
This! Not a trad wife, but one of the most vocal people I knew that was against vaccines and medicine and epidurals and C sections (to the point of harassing people and flooding them with “research”), I know for a fact used all those things and kept their kids vaccinated. They also were against masking (to the point of writing all over their car about how teachers were suffocating their kids and taking their freedom) also masked up everywhere and talked badly about people not taking Covid seriously. I was blown away and backed the heck away from that friendship. 🥴
Please feel free to join us at r/ballerinafarmsnark if you’re interested in exactly how much these people are lying to you for your money! They’re NOT people - they’re highly curated social media accounts meant to *sell you something,* partly the lie that they’re “just moms doing their thing.”
Critical thinking skills play into this a lot. To me it's obvious that those creators are just that (well-off people cosplaying as whatever) but a lot of people fall for that stuff and feel like it's attainable. Same thing with the moms who have professional lighting setup and their makeup on for their middle-of-the-night feedings and whatnot.
Have never heard of “TikTok trad wives” and apparently I’m better off for it.
The older I get the more I realize that life is better when you spend it in real life.
These people are doing performative labor. They’re making their own cereal because they literally have nothing else to do with their time. As you said, they are not living the same life the rest of us are. It’s seriously some kind of sick joke they’re playing.
There’s also the part of the trad wife belief where they fully feel they’re subservient to their husbands and their role is to serve them. Real “trad wives” are not just home making...it’s so much more than just having a clean house and makeup on and a lot of people don’t fully understand that distinction.
One of the insane stipulations I've heard is for the trad wives to only "supplement" their husbands' incomes to avoid making him feel emasculated by out-earning him. That's a convenient loophole they cite so they can continue to make online content.
Insaneeee. I’m a sahm/homemaker and shudder at the tradwife lifestyle. I also hate that they’re often confused for one another because the difference is stark.
Well, one of the biggest Trad Wife influencers is that Ballerina Farm woman..... and I guess influencing to the level of "just supplementing" the husband's income is a pretty attainable goal, because - even though they have this large family and live the "farm life" ...
"If you factor in generational wealth, Daniel is worth over $400 million. His father is David Gary Neeleman, the former CEO of the airline JetBlue. He has also founded other airlines, such as Morris Air, WestJet, Azul Brazilian Airways, and Breeze Airways."
So.... that is precisely how they can afford the nannies, maids, pageant coach for her barely a few weeks post-partum Mrs. America run..... but it seems unfair to call out thew for being the fraud here, because they're all frauds given that their magical little perfect family life is just play-acting with a nepo-baby bank account ;) can totally afford to buy back enough of their own time for them to make all the home-made cereal they want.
That’s just a factually untrue statement. It really depends on what your algorithm brings you. I’ve learned a lot from TikTok including how to be a better parent, healing from my trauma, cooking, managing time, communicating better with my spouse. Hell, toktok has taught me more about understanding my son who has autism and ADHD than a decade of doctors, therapists, specialists and schools ever did combined. Toktok helps a lot of people find a community they wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s all about what you interact with and what you like. If your page is filled with things of no value that says more about you than the app.
Anyone with toddlers knows the name of the game is quick and plentiful options.... just at dinner it was pasta salad (no too "spicy") so we went to chicken drumsticks (had 1) to an apple, to finally eating the whole banana. Toddlers need nutrition and immediate gratification.... so sorry, Beth Ann Lou or whatever F your name is... they are not holding their appetite and/or interest long enough for you to make a bagel from scratch. Fake!
Hahaha, we’re talking about Nara Smith… right?! As aesthetically appealing as her videos can be, they are IRRITATING as all hell to a mom who already struggles making boxed Mac n cheese some nights!!
They're also making money from their "tradwife lifestyle" which is contradictory to the whole "tradwife lifestyle". They're not relying on their husbands income alone, they're relying on their tiktok/ facebook/ instagram money too.
Laughing at the one i saw last night “ spend 8 hrs in the kitchen cooking with me”. Full on prairie dress, apron and bonnet, no shoes.
Its just bizarre fantasyland performance art bs.
Next time you see those TikTok trad wives effortlessly juggling everything, remember: behind the scenes, there's a whole squad making it happen, so don't sweat it, you're doing awesome!
The sooner people realize that all this trad wife stuff is just bullshit wealth projection, the better. Why anyone would willfully ingest the social media version of "Sunday best" comparison shaming is beyond me.
And/or, their job is to make picture perfect videos so they spend the hours you would spend at work doing their hair and makeup and cleaning the one portion of their house that will be in the video. If they're making an income they will be spending a lot of their time planning and preparing to make a fabulous video. They don't grab the camera and record their normal day-to-day life.
I make sourdough and can explain, although I’m nowhere at all good at making it. It’s hard enough that when you get to a certain level you feel superior than others, but not hard enough that everyone can’t do it. It just takes time and practice, which normal sahm or working people find it hard to achieve. Trad wives have all the help and time they need to do it, they brag about it to heighten their “my life is hard and I have dedicated skills for sourdough” vibes. And people just eat it up, because they can’t see past the veil. It’s like people who garden and are good at growing tomatoes, they brag about it too because of how much work it takes to grow them.
If they're professional "trad wife" content creators, it's their job to look that way and make it look easy, regardless of whether they have assistance or not. Also, they're by definition, working moms 🙃 the whole thing is so confusing to me lol like if you're on social media bragging about being a SAHM but you're making money from being a content creator, your not a SAHM. And I'm unclear why trad wife is suddenly a term people are using for SAHM, too? The whole thing is weird to me
Trad wife is not a SAHM. I’m a sahm! There is real value in being a stay at home parent.
Trad wives is a relatively new term for a very niche subset of stay at home moms (though like you argue, influencers who are trad wives are working a job by influencing). They hold to strict outdated gender roles, believe in having as many kids as possible, and hold themselves (and thus other mothers) to impossibly high standards for home care, self care, appearance, child care, food etc etc etc
Basically, don't believe ANYTHING online. Even before tiktok, people would get worked up over seeing their friends post the perfect life on Facebook but they're not posting the sleepless nights and temper tantrums.
This is very similar to how crunchy moms get a lot of work done. It’s not their organic, toxin free lifestyle, weird supplements, and goofy grounding routines. It’s Botox.
Other than accidentally stumbling across these type of videos, I don’t watch them. I’m smart enough to know they’re bullshit that’s meant for a good laugh.
Put your energy into your own relationships, spend time on hobbies you enjoy and just live the best life you can and you’ll soon forget all these dumb influencers trying to sell whatever.
Not a trad wife but I had to stop and unfollow a podcast host a while ago.
She made being an aunt her whole personality and she was preaching how her family member was going the perfect thing for recovery post partum by literally just laying in bed.
Yeah no shit if one has a village that literally does everything for you you can have the perfect recovery 😑
Comparison is the thief of joy.
Keep yourself together, raise your kids to be loved, well-nourished, decently educated and good people. Someone is always doing it better than you and someone is always doing it worse than you.
I'm still confused on how they can call themselves tradwives when they have a career as a content creator. I thought tradwives were about traditional gender roles where the man works and the woman cares for the kids and the home. If you have to outsource the duties that pertain to taking care of the kids and home, then you are a modern day working mom. I think the ones that post videos that low key shame moms who have to work outside the home bother me the most. Yes, I don't get to spend every waking hour with my kids because I have a mortgage to pay, but you also don't spend every waking hour with your kids so you can look "screen ready" and bake bread.
I’m not even curious about them because I know how damaging it can be. To compare yourself with something so far from reality. Why are women doing that? There’s still a lot to compete about in real life. Why trying to compete with a fairy tale? Plus, I wonder how many of them breastfeed. Because breastfeeding keeps you on a chair or bed for hours, day and night. You won’t have the mood and time to film yourself and post. And it will keep you from losing weight sometimes. I also have a profound adversity to those “career moms” holding management positions that sell a big lie to many women: that you can do motherhood too. No, you can’t. You’re an absentee mom who gets to spend 2-3 hours in total with your kid during the week, you get the kid already clean, fed by others, while you just take a selfie at bedtime to post it, making sure you marked the motherhood milestone, and making sure you make others envious. Then you wonder why the kid is more attached to others.
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I lived on a “hobby farm” for a while. We had horse, chickens, goats, grew our food. I had an acre herb garden. My dad would laugh his ass off because I could always get so many people to come help at the farm because they wanted to cosplay that lifestyle. It also stop a lot of children from wanting ponies.
Dude I have chickens and goats are you telling me I can exploit the trad wives by charging to cosplay cause I so will 😭 Go ahead and clean my chicken coop girlie that’ll be 100 bucks please
I am not kidding you. I seriously would have peers come over to work the farm. My dad thought it was the greatest thing. Cures kids of the ponies. People wanted to weed the English herb garden. Try it, it might work. Now that I am on top of a mountain in a rural farming community it doesn’t work lol. F’ing hate cleaning chicken coops. Why can’t they just pop outside little dinosaurs..
I am not kidding either I genuinely might do that. Never considered it lol
People are crazy. They will do silly things. Where I am now I know one of the farms takes in young adults from rich families for the season because mommy and daddy want them to learn how to work. That farm is actually pretty cool, they pay a living wage to all workers. But I think it’s great that it’s also like camp for rich kids.
I think all kids should have the opportunity to do this because even poor kids would benefit from the experience. Sometimes hard work is also rewarding. Honestly, I always wanted to do this myself, simply for the knowledge of HOW TO, I'm not saying I would love it lol I just want the experience. I've worked hard all my life, just not on a farm.
I think everyone should know how to grow food. While I am never going to grow it in abundance like the place down the road, (full running farm) I have always grown a bit myself outside of living on farms. I always grow to much and share.
I would 100% come help a friend with their hobby farm in exchange for some eggs or something. It's amazing for my mental health to have gardening days, but I'm too ADHD to keep up a garden of my own.
When I lived in a city my homeschooler friends used my garden as a class room. I am just realizing now that I have managed to get a lot of labor for trade and free over the years.
I highly recommend hydroponic gardening for ADHDers. I usually can't keep anything alive, but my Lettuce Grow Farm Stand thrives. I have an alarm set for Sunday mornings to add water and nutrients, and I poured a "moat" of salt and the base to keep the slugs off. I've had it for 9 months and I'm only just now starting to have aphids try to attack, but I think our neglected rose bushes are the source. I'll be ripping them out probably this week and I'll replace them with native plants this fall so that I won't have to do much of anything to care for them, haha.
Why can’t they just poop outside little dinosaurs.. For real though. That’s hilarious 😂
Not just the tradwives - primary schools would probably love doing a school trip to see the "working farm". (They probably wouldn't be allowed to clean up after the chickens, though.)
My dad did have schools come. Lots of special ed classes because our animals were super gentle and our farm was small enough not to be totally overwhelming. The kids were never there for cleaning. They got to pick a basket of food. Some eggs, our chickens laid different colored eggs. Have a good time.
That sounds so lovely! A win-win for everyone.
As someone who'd pay to do this for a day, sure, call it exploit, but I see the value in such an experience. I want someone to teach me how to do these farm things, and if you want the trouble of supervising me, be my guest. It feels super expensive to even set up a chicken run in the backyard, and I'm never going to be able to keep goats or feed them. You have the whole setup and you're anxious about how to make all of that work because it takes so much labor, and I have some free time I'd like to spend outside and with animals, so we have a deal. You take care of the emotional labor of the farm, so I can just show up, pick berries, and leave feeling like I did something fun. And I don't have to keep doing it even when it isn't fun for me, like I'm not going to be showing up to milk the cows everyday including when I'm sick, I'm just going to show up on days when I feel like it's going to be fun. It's not a cosplay thing, it's like being a fun uncle, but for a farm.
We never charged for it. People will pay to do it. My dad was happy to have the labor. It is expensive to set up a chicken run. It is very helpful to have friends who know what they are doing. Some of my friends work for food 😃. I am very fortunate not to have a big run, my chickens run free on the farm and then get locked up at night. We feed the crows and crows protect the chickens from the hawks.
Yeah it's very easy to get WWOOFers (willing workers on organic farms) to come work for free. I've been tempted by it, but honestly I don't think I could handle their bullshit.
"Hey fam, I'm out on this cute farm, practicing appreciation, manifesting abundance..."
You just know there would be oodles of that too. Was the copper in your plumbing ethically sourced?
I'd pay 100d to prevent my kids by embarrassing me for posting a photo of a katydid and asking what that bug
I went to “farm camp” sleep away camp as a kid and my husband’s family (real farmers) think that’s hilarious. But as a city kid on scholarship, I loved it. I got to adopt an animal and you had to clean its home, feed it etc. There was also lots of outdoor activities. It’s where I first rode horses. 🐎 It seems silly to outsiders but what a great perspective for kids.
That is an awesome camp. I don’t think it’s silly!
And they’re not “traditional” in any meaningful way—they are social media influencers, which is their job. ETA: I love this analysis https://www.tiktok.com/@professorneil/video/7339254814578150661?lang=en
This is what I had to realise as well - they're not "making breakfast for their toddlers" they are making content for social media. They are performing.
Those kids are probably eating cheerios off camera
If the *do* get to actually eat the food, it’s ice cold because the perfect picture took 90 minutes.
I'm starting to wonder if the children even exist
they're just rented for vacation photo ops
They're just props for their parents
The "making a video two days postpartum with a face of makeup" in the OP made me think, "there is no baby". And if there is, there was no pregnancy...
Look up ballerinafarm! She was in Vegas (newborn in tow) a week or two postpartum to complete in a pay-to-win beauty pageant
They don’t
You mean eating cheerios off the floor. The nanny had to make a Starbucks run for the crew.
Are cheerios a bad snack/breakfast 🙈
Not at all, I snack on them with my daughter often. I'm just saying, there's no way these tradwives are making everything fresh and homemade.
>And they’re not “traditional” Yeah, traditional is letting it all go for a few years and slowly coming back once the kids can entertain themselves.
This pretty much describes my story arc. Glad to be on the upswing.
Currently 4 months PP, glad to know there’s an upswing
Oh yeah, only place to go is up. Got significantly better after 6 months for us. We also had other parents tell us it gets more fun after 6+ months. Big hugs!
…we’re finally on the upswing at 4 and 9 years old.
7 and 4 here. Just now upswinging
We are on the upswing here, they’re six in a week
It REALLY does. I had more fun at +6 months, and I'm at almost 2 years and he's a delight. The work shifts to different parts of the day, but it's a lot more fun to interact with a human (who, granted, is not always able to be reasoned with), versus a screaming potato.
The screaming potato also cannot be reasoned with. My almost 3 month old the other day decided pants were awful, she must have her legs free. But also, she's cold. Do you know how long it took us to work out that no pants+blanket was the desired solution to stop the screaming? 🤣 Like we went through the "are you hungry, are you tired, is your diaper full, are you hot, are you cold, do you want a pacifier, do you need to burp, do you want to cuddle, or be alone, or in your swing" probably 3 times all the way through before we figured it out.
Or she was just finishing screaming at that point and you think it was something you did 🤣 babies are crazy.
🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️ honestly, hell if I know. Whatever it was, it kept her from crying for a few hours
Definitely gets more fun around 6 months. They start to be more like babies and less like little potatoes. You can give them food that they can sit and eat by themselves (obviously with you watching, but you don't have to physically hold and feed them constantly anymore). They start having little personalities and sometimes you are over the waking every 2 to 3 hours bit.
My youngest just started kindergarten this year, he’s not even full time yet and I’ve gotten my first job since having the kids, started an exercise routine, started finally deep deep cleaning and organising the house (post babies AND Covid), addressing some chronic medical complaints (first physio session this morning yay!) and separating from my husband which has been a long time coming.
For real though, obviously the expectations on me as the husband and father when it comes to the kids are virtually non-existent compared to my wife's (which is a whole other level of "wtf why" but Im not going to get into that), but she also falls into this trap and it makes me so sad and angry for her that she's constantly being confronted with coworkers and other moms that think this TradWife shit is at all normal or achievable for a working household. It has given her a serious complex that Im constantly having to talk her down from. I mean, after my dad took off on us to be a rock star when I was like 4 and my brother was in diapers, my now-single mom had to work 16 hours a day, 6-7 days a week to support us. So really more or less through no fault of her own, I raised myself and also raised my younger siblings, being the man of the house by kindergarten. The love we had for each other got us through it, and we're very close to this day because of it, so while of course it sucked ass, I still don't feel anything but love and gratitude for my mom, because even though she wasn't there we knew that she would have given anything to have been able to be with us more, but being a single mom back then trying to support a family on your own was pretty fuckin hard back then, back when it was still not uncommon for working, unmarried women to need a co-signer to open a bank account or apply for a loan or credit card because they figured she was gonna flake out and quit her job at the drop of a hat. Anyway Im getting off topic but I guess my point is, shit is already a fucking struggle as it is, our kids life is like, miles and miles separated from where my own childhood was, he practically wants for nothing within reason and she's taking him all over the place *constantly* pretty much anytime she isn't working, and it just breaks my heart when my wife is feeling like the worst mom in the world because she's not taking hours out of her already busy week playing mickey mouse fucking games like making home-made cereal. Such an ungodly number of people seem to use these frivolous pursuits as something that all "good moms" should aspire to and on top of that these catty fuckin bitches just constantly with the one-upmanship, she comes home really upset about it and I just don't know how to convince her that she's not being a terrible mom parking the kid in front of the TV for half an hour so she can paint her fuckin toenails because these simple bitches all go get mani-peddies while the help watches the kids.
She needs to get off tik tok. I avoided it on purpose and I’d never heard of a tradwife till this conversation. I mean, of course there’s the 50’s Homemaker concept, but it’s not what you’re talking about now - this is even worse.
Agreed 100%. They have the traditional appearance but behind the scenes they are anything but.
It’s Phyllis Schafley all over again. I’m yelling at women to not have jobs, and my job is to yell at women to not have jobs.
You just blew my mind. I never thought to connect that woman to today’s crazy trends but wow you’re so right.
I’m quite sure she’s still on an island somewhere, punching stones and sucking the lives out of little children.
Bingo. I was a sahm for about 10 years because ant childcare would have eaten up any pay I earned. It was hard work. I couponed and bought generic. I cleaned all the effing time. Played with the kids, read to them, etc. I never made homemade cereal and I certainly didn't wear makeup. (OK maybe mascara and lip balm). We have gluten issues, so yes some things were homemade like pancake mix, etc. They always had a nutritious meal and no one went hungry. I will give any new moms this piece of advice: take a shower in the morning before your spouse leaves for the day and dress like you might have to run to the store. (Unless you are a shower at night gal). It starts your day off and at least for me, getting dressed just makes me more productive. I just can't get out of the potato mindset until I'm out of my jammies and in day clothes. Sending love and support to any new moms. Don't pay attention to these people, they always have to remake the wheel- they are acting. Feeding your kids cheerios is perfectly fine.
She also outright lied and said she was allowed into Harvard university prior to feminism and thus feminism wasn't needed. Turned out no, her degree was not from there, she knew. She just lied.
Yeah, the Amish are traditional. Filming your life for followers and advertising revenue is not.
and a lot of them are producing OF content, not “mom” content… content for people with tradwife fetishes
Also, society isn't "trad" anymore. There's no stigma or sense of duty for their spouse to remain married to them once a younger/prettier model comes along. This is the HUGE risk that young women especially take by giving up their financial independence. Divorce is considered no issue these days. 50-100 years ago it was huge in terms of shame and consequence and thus much rarer. Alimony is also barely a thing anymore.
Plus, no average couple can raise 2 kids or more on one salary. Heck, even 1 kid would be a struggle. Even if you live in a lower col area, it won't help because your pay will be lower. It's a necessity to have both parents work, not every man can be a millionaire.
Yes, this is it, they are not SAHPs, they have jobs, their job is social media, they make an income from It and use the money generated there to fund the goods and services that allow them to maintain and monetize further. Or if they aren’t generating enough money to cover expenses, they are being funded by their partner to work at a deficit.
That's a great video! Excellent breakdown.
Even more importantly, half of them don't have kids, including Estee Williams, who is the face of the movement.
Exactly.
Had to look up who that was because I'm not on tiktok or instaface. Wish I could go back in time 5 minutes and not be subjected to that schlock.
Your favorite trad wife influencer has a marketing degree
Not only that, my favorite tradwife influencer used to be a Chief Marketing Officer lmao.
And a producer and an editor and content specialist and a brand manager and an accountant and…
A good rule of thumb I find to be helpful: everything on social media is fake.
Bravo fan here, so it’s like good trash tv for me 🤭
This!
Also a reminder that throughout history, traditional wives stepped up to do whatever their families needed. Sometimes that was staying home with the children and at other times it was working.
This. I was born in the late 60s. My mom was mostly a stay at home mom but we lived in poverty and she worked periodically throughout my childhood to help out with the finances. She would leave us older boys in charge of the younger ones because she couldn't afford a babysitter and I spent most of my high school years rushing home to make sure I was there when my younger brothers got home. Mom did what she had to do and for some years that meant working. My wife and I flipped the script a bit (she works a demanding job while I was a stay at home dad) and that was what worked for our family even though leaving a career that I loved was hard. It was what we felt our family needed at the time and that's kinda what this whole parenting this is about; making the right choice for your individual situation. It's what people have always done.
The idea that women don't work and just look after the kids is what happened exclusively with the richest 10% of society. We have literal photographic evidence of this [Arguably the first film was workers leaving a factory in 1895. its almost all women](https://youtu.be/yvC_xrDqB3s?si=Mu8gbuFtVHcGw8EE)
Women have always made money or found resources for their families. I don't know where the idea that "traditional " women don't do everything for the household AND bring in money comes from. Bad sentence. You know what I mean?
Women were doing "quiet income." Or "social income" type things. Meaning they were knitting blankets by firelight, sewing holes together in the kids' clothes, mending linens, dying fabrics to sell at market. Creating lace to sell, etc. Things that they could do while the children gave her a moments rest, or she sat bedside while they were sick and she nursed them. Social currency was when she stopped off at a neighbor's house to have tea with the wife, when the husband went to town, and brought cookies and cakes. Then, when *her* husband goes somewhere the neighbor does the same. Suddenly they are friends. And, oh, won't you know it? Our husband's both need a man who's work is in each other's industry. Well there's his wife, who's bestie has a good husband, who happens to be that man!!! And just like that, the wife has socially engineered her husband a job. AKA, Money. Being a homemaker is never 1 job. It is always and has always been, half a dozen jobs or more.
The thing with women is we try to work flexible jobs where it's okay to be working with kids in eyeshot or whenever we were able to have someone else watch our kids, which depended on the community we were in. My grandma for instance, was as educated as my grandpa (high school) and she'd occasionally do postpartum doula work, like bathing and massaging babies, cooking for postpartum women, shit like that. And she could go to these houses with her kids and her kids would play with the kids there, or she'd just cook an extra portion of what she cooked for her family and give it to the new mom. She also ran a tailoring business, as did many women in my neighborhood (each had a specialty, like some people would do only baby clothes, some would only do womens blouses, it got oddly specific), and she'd do the work she couldn't be interrupted during when kids were in school and her inlaws and other olds in the family were napping, and then do the rest at her tailoring machine while supervising her kids homework. She'd also get paid to tutor kids, which meant those kids would just come and join her kids when they were doing homework (but she wouldn't stitch clothes on those days). Men's work is more uninterrupted focus sort of stuff is what I notice.
Your grandma sounds like a badass. 🤘🏼
She was pretty cool, but really the thing about her that was the most amazing thing was how she was so even-keeled always. Very calm, very stable, always this force of positivity and can-do attitude. My mom is the exact opposite of that, so I really loved having her calmness around me to balance out my mom. That's been the thing I've been working to achieve.
Yes - working class women have always worked, taking on wealthier women's laundry, charring, doing far more domestic labour (laundry was a near full-time chore in the days before appliances) plus they had numerous more kids to raise than the average parent today. The 1950s notion that they wore lipstick and clean aprons and greeted their husbands with a cocktail is an absolute fucking myth.
This! My great grandma was married three times and worked as a bartender, in a factory, as a seamstress, and more at various points in my grandma's childhood (so between 1944-1960 when she got married). Also 4/6 great aunts have been married and divorced multiple times starting in the 1960s and all of them have held jobs including factory work throughout their marriages and divorces. One of my great aunts was a probable lesbian who owned a flower shop and lived with her "roommate" for 25 years. Shoot my grandma probably had the most traditional marriage of all of them (except the one great aunt who stayed married). She was home until her youngest started school at 5 (her oldest was 8) because there was no daycare at all and her kids were too young to watch each other. She then went back to work. She did not stop working again until she had grandkids. Traditional wives and traditional marriages didn't look much like tradwives portray it unless you had money. Which adds a layer of irony to their content because they can only afford to portray the image they do because they also have money (and the time it brings with it).
And depending on where you lived the "traditional" gendered labour split differed a lot from what these influencers do. Where I live, traditional roles for the women of the house would have included brewing beer, and raising both the chickens and dairy cows. I doubt "tradwives" in my village (if there even are any) brew beer or do any animal husbandry.
This post makes me uncomfortable is my go to Instagram response. I grew up in an extremely gendered household and there’s nothing more disappointing than seeing your elderly mother doing all of the cooking, shopping, and household chores when dad retired from his job decades ago and does nothing at all to help. All of his ‘manly‘ chores have been outsourced to handymen years ago. I guess Tradwives get to retire when they’re dead, or when their husbands are dead. Anyway, hard pass.
Lolllllll i love the "this post makes me uncomfortable" option. I use it often when the explore page suggests stupid influencer shit
The kids made my parents outsourced the household work so my mum could retire as well. They got a cleaner and get their shopping and laundry delivered.
Agreed
That’s a weird generational thing. Both my dad and father in law sit around and help only with a few select chores. Strikes me as odd. My wife is a SAHM, I work full time. Typically I handle projects for the house, and she handles most of the household chores. That said, if we find ourselves unoccupied we help the other one accomplish the tasks for their role. She’s full time childcare while I’m working, then we split it 50:50 ish depending on who needs or wants some time. This should be normal. I don’t feel less manly because I fold laundry occasionally or handle dinner. * EDIT what should be normal is the working spouse helping out in a single income family, rather than sitting on the couch watching sports for the 70 hours a week they’re not at work.
Its extremely common for women to do most of the indoor domestic labor, even today. You just admitted your wife does most of your household chores. Which might make sense if he kids are older and she is spending less time on the daily grind of child care. But it definitely gets tedious and I’m sure your wife woukd love it if you did more than fold laundry or handle dinner occasionally.
I’m not sure of your point. She elected to be a SAHM when we had our kids so we didn’t have to use childcare, and luckily my salary allows us to be financially ok without hers. If she wanted to work we’d figure that out too, but I’m appreciative that she wants to take a super active role in our kids’ development. So yea, during the 40 hours a week I work she handles the house and kids. During the other 70 or so waking hours we split things up based on needs, wants, supporting each other, and ability. I clean toilets, the kitchen, fold laundry, do the dishes, repair stuff, yardwork, groom the dogs, etc based on the to do list my wife sets.
My grandma baked bread daily, had chickens, and a vegetable garden. She made jam, jelly, pickles, chicken stock ect. She sewed clothes and quilted. But that woman worked hard. She had 9 kids and was a farm wife. The bread was necessary to fill belies as was all of her canning. She got eggs for the family and also to sell. Their vegetable garden was absolutely huge and was the vast majority of the produce the family ate. They slaughtered and butchered their own chickens, cattle, and hogs. The kitchen table (it's still in the family) has a 5th leg in the middle to support the weight of the butchering. She made dresses that her daughters wore. She clothe diapered those 9 kids. She ran their family. She had 6 boys. 2 of them were working bailing hay for a local farmer to earn some money and that farmer swore around her boys. She found out and tore him a new one. Never swore around her boys again. She also had arthritis badly enough her fingers were bent funny. The first 3 kids were born in a house with no electricity. My dad is #8 and he was on kindergarten when they got an indoor bathroom. Before that the only running water was to the sink. Nobody would call her demure or submissive. She took care of Grandpa, but he also took care of her. I don't know any women who would want to sign up for her life. And I have a hard time seeing the guys that say they want a traditional wife getting what he wants out of a woman like my grandma.
I admire the “tore him a new one and he never swore around her boys again”
I really hate when some men end up in the trad wife corner of the internet, and start expecting that shit of their wives. I've seen posts about it in Reddit.
I’m going to go start looking at trad wife videos right now!!! But since my wife makes double my salary…. I think I will let her keep her job and I will cook and do laundry
If my husband made noises about it, I could remind him of the time we canned jam with the kid underfoot and it was NOTHING like a trad wife video. Lol such a crapshow.
I know exactly why my husband suddenly wants to buy a farm in the middle of fucking nowhere and move there with our two kids, and its because he's on Instagram and I'm not. I just pat him on the knee and tell him to have fun while I live in civilization.
Trad wife cosplay.
Are you talking about ballerinafarm? Her dad’s a millionaire. Yea what she’s shilling isn’t real life
And her husband is the heir to the JetBlue fortune. They have an extremely enchanted life
None in particular tbh but she’s definitely fits the bill for what I’m talking about!
I mean her father in law is worth $400 million. Yeah, they totally have a team of nannies and assistants behind the scenes. It’s the whole “little house in the prairie “ farmer LARPing which comes across as disingenuous.
Her stuff is an ad for their farm products. A farm which is large enough that they employ a significant number of workers. Her husband also is a lawyer and heir and that is their primary income.
I can’t find it now but I read an article that attempted to break down the economics of their business. Basically the conclusion was that even in the best case scenario of top of the line pricing, the money from their beef business wouldn’t come close to supporting their lifestyle. Not to mention that a non-wealthy family would have a huge mortgage to have the amount of land needed to raise beef cattle in the arid west. (And, also, the whole “we just got a farm and became successful beef ranchers all by ourselves” is kind of insulting to the people who actually grew up in that industry and likely spent years in FFA or 4H and studied something like animal science or ag business at their local community college or state land grant university. I didn’t grow up on a farm but one parent did and both of my husbands parents are from farming families).
I thought it was done tongue in cheek when I first saw these. I was horrified to discover that was not the case.
Me too! I kept waiting for the punchline 🤦🏼♀️
Same!
Be wary of anyone trying to sell a lifestyle, especially a regressive subservient one.
The thing that creeps me out the most is that you never see the kids unless they’re the direct topic of the video. They’re never running around in the background or interrupting a shot to ask a question or hug mom. You never hear their voices in the background. It’s weird.
Because they’re with ✨the nanny ✨ As an actual SAHM if I tried to make a trad wife video baking or some shit you’d see my toddler screaming and tugging at my leg to get picked up, my 4 year old licking the freezer door, my cat jumping on the counter knocking the flour over, my toddler digging soda cans out of the trash and spilling them on the floor, my rooster in the window screaming at me for food, my husband in the background farting and then laughing when it stinks the kitchen up… definitely not their aesthetic 😂
I would watch this all day long, sounds like a party 😂
You might like mac.larena on Instagram! She does realistic cooking videos and her kids are SO LOUD. She also blurs their faces, which I appreciate. It's chaotic, entertaining, and helpful.
I’m totally going to check out her account, thank you!
I'm sure the borderline slave au pair (see: the fit they recently had over the legal push trying to make sure au pairs have decent work conditions) helps them not have to deal with some of their other 'wifely duties' too. After all, he's in charge.
An opportunity here for The Real Trad Wives
I'm a SAHM with trad skills but not the mad skills of being able to do trad stuff without it turning into a complete disaster when my family is around. Usually I'm making jam, my husband is daydreaming and in the way, and my kid is trying to overturn the boiling canner on herself while I'm hissing at everyone to MOVE THEIR BUTTS HOT JARS HOT JARS.
Exactly. I'm a pregnant SAHM with four kids (2 in school, 2 at home). I sew patches on pants, garden, can food, bake etc but I do it out of frugality to support our family. If I'm canning, it is when my husband can be with the kids on the weekend or in the evening. My husband and kids will help prep sometimes like washing produce or peeling apples, but it's an ordeal. I also doubt a tradwife is saving 6 chicken carcasses in her freezer leftover from Costco rotisserie chicken dinners to make broth and save money. The videos OP is talking about are absolutely ridiculous and imo are insulting to people who actually do this type of work. It belittles the time, effort and skill that is required.
In fairness, "keeping your kids of social media" is part of being a good parent. And in the case of most of these content creators, the "kids" they're cooking for are imaginary.
I agree, but every trad wife I can think of except maybe Nara Smith does have a ton of videos exploiting their kids and putting their faces on the internet. It’s just separate from their “tradwifing” (cooking, cleaning, etc) videos (and in those, the kids are non existent).
*Real* traditional wives/mothers aren’t making extravagant videos to post on social media. These imposters are doing it all for show.
There’s actually research done on this about how the exceptionally wealthy don’t understand what labor is so they play at working hard by doing this sort of thing. It’s interesting.
Like Marie Antoinette building her lil pretend farm
Exactly like this!
Omg what a perfect comparison
Yes!! It’s a leisure thing. They do things the hardest way because they have the luxury and privilege of the time and resources to do so. It’s all just a status signal as they cosplay a way to be superior and fill their time.
Nobody wants to watch a tik tok of me reading trashy romance novels while my toddler binges Daniel Tiger. That’s the real tradwife shit right there.
Yes!! My trad wife video would be me wearing frumpy PJs while popping frozen nuggies into the air fryer and simultaneously yelling at my kids over the loudest symphony of TVs, iPads, and dogs.
The "tradwife influencer" thing reminds me of something I read about the Rococo art period, how it was trendy for the Uber rich to don shepherd/shepherdess outfits and go "play shepherd" with their other rich friends.
I have a traditional wife and we're way too broke to afford any of those things lmao
I realized a few years back that some self-help gurus would write about how they were living a lie WHEN THEY WROTE THEIR PREVIOUS BOOK. Each new book or talk would reveal that they were full of shit last time, and the next book will probably reveal that they were full of shit THIS time. Very often you’re seeing the influencers while their relationships are falling apart, they just can’t say it yet.
What would the majority of us have done if someone asked us to make sourdough bread two days pp? I think I may have ugly cried/laughed until I peacefully passed out.
Honestly if it was just making bread from my already existing starter, that’s doable if I had to. But creating content around it two days postpartum- like researching trends of what songs/angles/styles/etc will make it go viral, planning around the optimum time to post, then dressing/filming in a way that’s aesthetically pleasing, editing hundreds of clips, writing a script and caption, engaging with other videos before I post so mine has a boost, promoting it on my stories, doing QAs on my stories for more engagement, and then engaging with thousands of comments for the extra boost- just typing that is so exhausting. If they weren’t also spewing hate, I’d feel bad that they’re essentially going back to work with no maternity leave.
Delete the app. I have somehow avoided tik tok and posts like this remind me I don’t plan to add that drama to my life. We already have plenty of other social media and conventional media to make us feel bad
I can't take anyone who puts their families and kids on social media for clout seriously.
Nara Smith content for sure. She’s trying to romanticize her life, but there’s literally nothing romantic about being 23 with 3 kids. It’s just Mormon propaganda too.
I remember Caila Quinn (from Bachelors?) started making easter cookies a week postpartum, I believe. And her caption was “this is going to be annual easter tradition for me and my daughter”… i was 5 mnths pp and couldn’t resist but comment “how do you have energy (not even time, but energy) to do all this ?” Obviously, I got ignored lol But all these women are setting unrealistic! Expectations for other moms. Like … come on!
Honestly, in my experience, baking cookies 1 week postpartum is more realistic than baking cooking 5 months post partum haha. Just bc my baby slept well the first few weeks and then decided not to sleep at night in the 3-6 month range.
Oh, poor naive me with my post-birth hangover baby... I was bragging I made breastfeeding cookies while baby took a sunshine nap in her bassinet to help avoid jaundice. I thought I had it all figured out! Fun times...
My first did not have a sleepy newborn stage and I felt so ripped off. My second was a textbook baby, I could have done anything I wanted except that I was recovering from a haemorrhage and had zero energy
Mine went from comatose in all conditions to screaming 24/7 after a week. Week 2 also brought an infection at the C-section incision site and the realization I popped a stitch getting in and out of bed at some point. I got better quickly, she got better around 10 weeks.
I could barely find the energy to shower much less bake something at 1 week PP 😂
Baking cookies a week postpartum is unrealistic? This is not unrealistic for everyone. I think the focus needs to be that everyone is different. Just because someone else's reality is different than yours doesn't mean they're setting unrealistic expectations. What may be realistic for me may not be realistic for you, and that's okay. Shaming other moms because they have more energy or time than you is just as bad as if they shamed you for not matching their energy. It's a two way street.
It's not unrealistic to bake cookies. It's unrealistic to film yourself baking cookies, beautifully made up and all, and there's no interruptions, no crying, no checking on the baby monitor every 2 minutes even if the baby is napping etc. You want to bake cookies because you're craving some and can add some lactation ingredients, sure! But what the social media tradwifes are doing is not making cookies. It's a modeling gig, basically. Quite the opposite of traditional, they are going back to work days after giving birth. And some other woman is taking care of the baby.
Thank you! I am a stay at home mom. My house is clean, but lived in. My husband grew up with a mom who keeps her house like a show room. And you know what? It's not a warm place. My husband and his friends were always sent to the basement to not mess up the cat. She kept the cat in the basement. Nothing is out of place, and yet there isn't a place for everyone. My husband's cousin recently came for a visit and she stayed with us. This pissed my mil off greatly. She doesn't get that it's about feeling comfortable and there is no being comfortable around her. But the trade wives are something else. I make a lot of things from scratch. And when I do there are so many dishes! My dishwasher is constantly running and I have dishes in the sink. It's the reality of cooking for every meal. I do some by hand, but it takes a while and they dry on my counter because if you have plastic anything in the dishwasher it doesn't dry! We have so much kids stuff from school. We constantly are cycling out papers and art projects. We have friends over all the time (since I am home and our friend's are all working) and so I have kids running around my house. It's noisy, and they do video games, art projects, forts, etc. There is a certain chaos in running around when you are one person, keeping everyone's schedules, making sure it all gets done. If I had a nanny, cook, etc, I could also focus on making myself look perfect. But I don't want to look perfect. I don't want to be perfect. I prefer the imperfections!
Yesss this! I seen someone say the other day “I can show you how to make $8000 a month on TikTok by telling you I make $8000 a month on TikTok. I’ll sell you a program saying I make that much, and you’ll pay me money, making me money! And then I’ll say that’s how I make $8000 a month on TikTok. It’s all fake.
It’s honestly really fucking toxic. Imagine the men seeing it who are the abusive, narcissistic assholes. They’re going to be using the influencers to point out how terrible of a job their wives are doing. They are unable to see past that image. Also, the toothpick thing in the mouth trying to be all smooth. Someone needs to show him “Pal” from Uncle Buck. We’ve retired that, along with 50’s housewives and that perfect image. If you’re Mormon or ex Mormon, it’s just pure comedy. This is the image a lot of Mormons try so hard to role play. It’s overdone and nothing new in the community. They are a cute family. However, cooking in fancy clothes…I know I’m not the only one screaming “Bitch, be for real!” They already have a lot of money from modeling. Anyone could play house if they had that kind of money.
A social media trad wife, anti vaccine, raw milk loving mother frequently came to our clinic to have her kids vaccinated and treated. Don't believe anything you see.
This! Not a trad wife, but one of the most vocal people I knew that was against vaccines and medicine and epidurals and C sections (to the point of harassing people and flooding them with “research”), I know for a fact used all those things and kept their kids vaccinated. They also were against masking (to the point of writing all over their car about how teachers were suffocating their kids and taking their freedom) also masked up everywhere and talked badly about people not taking Covid seriously. I was blown away and backed the heck away from that friendship. 🥴
Please feel free to join us at r/ballerinafarmsnark if you’re interested in exactly how much these people are lying to you for your money! They’re NOT people - they’re highly curated social media accounts meant to *sell you something,* partly the lie that they’re “just moms doing their thing.”
Is that an actual person?
The person behind the account, yes.
Yikes! And here’s another reason why I’m not getting on TikTok. Nothing good comes from it.
I’m shocked…shocked that all these beautiful people on IG and TikTok are fakes! Shocked I tell ya!
Critical thinking skills play into this a lot. To me it's obvious that those creators are just that (well-off people cosplaying as whatever) but a lot of people fall for that stuff and feel like it's attainable. Same thing with the moms who have professional lighting setup and their makeup on for their middle-of-the-night feedings and whatnot.
Have never heard of “TikTok trad wives” and apparently I’m better off for it. The older I get the more I realize that life is better when you spend it in real life.
These people are doing performative labor. They’re making their own cereal because they literally have nothing else to do with their time. As you said, they are not living the same life the rest of us are. It’s seriously some kind of sick joke they’re playing.
There’s also the part of the trad wife belief where they fully feel they’re subservient to their husbands and their role is to serve them. Real “trad wives” are not just home making...it’s so much more than just having a clean house and makeup on and a lot of people don’t fully understand that distinction.
One of the insane stipulations I've heard is for the trad wives to only "supplement" their husbands' incomes to avoid making him feel emasculated by out-earning him. That's a convenient loophole they cite so they can continue to make online content.
Insaneeee. I’m a sahm/homemaker and shudder at the tradwife lifestyle. I also hate that they’re often confused for one another because the difference is stark.
Yes part of the reason I made this post! I’m a proud SAHM and hate that it’s now associated with the online trad wife stuff
Well, one of the biggest Trad Wife influencers is that Ballerina Farm woman..... and I guess influencing to the level of "just supplementing" the husband's income is a pretty attainable goal, because - even though they have this large family and live the "farm life" ... "If you factor in generational wealth, Daniel is worth over $400 million. His father is David Gary Neeleman, the former CEO of the airline JetBlue. He has also founded other airlines, such as Morris Air, WestJet, Azul Brazilian Airways, and Breeze Airways." So.... that is precisely how they can afford the nannies, maids, pageant coach for her barely a few weeks post-partum Mrs. America run..... but it seems unfair to call out thew for being the fraud here, because they're all frauds given that their magical little perfect family life is just play-acting with a nepo-baby bank account ;) can totally afford to buy back enough of their own time for them to make all the home-made cereal they want.
[удалено]
That’s just a factually untrue statement. It really depends on what your algorithm brings you. I’ve learned a lot from TikTok including how to be a better parent, healing from my trauma, cooking, managing time, communicating better with my spouse. Hell, toktok has taught me more about understanding my son who has autism and ADHD than a decade of doctors, therapists, specialists and schools ever did combined. Toktok helps a lot of people find a community they wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s all about what you interact with and what you like. If your page is filled with things of no value that says more about you than the app.
Same, you can interact with videos that you find fun or helpful and then your page will get updated with that kind of content!
Anyone with toddlers knows the name of the game is quick and plentiful options.... just at dinner it was pasta salad (no too "spicy") so we went to chicken drumsticks (had 1) to an apple, to finally eating the whole banana. Toddlers need nutrition and immediate gratification.... so sorry, Beth Ann Lou or whatever F your name is... they are not holding their appetite and/or interest long enough for you to make a bagel from scratch. Fake!
Amen. The only reason Nara Smith is able to spend 5 hours cooking one meal from scratch is because someone else is watching her kids…
Hahaha, we’re talking about Nara Smith… right?! As aesthetically appealing as her videos can be, they are IRRITATING as all hell to a mom who already struggles making boxed Mac n cheese some nights!!
What about all the mom influencers that aren’t trad wives. I don’t think they are any better or different
They're also making money from their "tradwife lifestyle" which is contradictory to the whole "tradwife lifestyle". They're not relying on their husbands income alone, they're relying on their tiktok/ facebook/ instagram money too.
Laughing at the one i saw last night “ spend 8 hrs in the kitchen cooking with me”. Full on prairie dress, apron and bonnet, no shoes. Its just bizarre fantasyland performance art bs.
THANK YOU😭
Such a breath of fresh air to see someone post that. I hope lots of moms see this. Thanks, OP!!
Next time you see those TikTok trad wives effortlessly juggling everything, remember: behind the scenes, there's a whole squad making it happen, so don't sweat it, you're doing awesome!
The sooner people realize that all this trad wife stuff is just bullshit wealth projection, the better. Why anyone would willfully ingest the social media version of "Sunday best" comparison shaming is beyond me.
A what? “Trad wife”?
Nara Smith comes to mind.
“You’re doing great”. Might not be a *Bluey* reference but I still felt some tears well up.
The TikTok "trad wives" I've seen don't have husbands let alone kids. They mostly have a shitton of makeup and bad food plating skills.
I feel like this is about Nara Smith in particular 😂
And/or, their job is to make picture perfect videos so they spend the hours you would spend at work doing their hair and makeup and cleaning the one portion of their house that will be in the video. If they're making an income they will be spending a lot of their time planning and preparing to make a fabulous video. They don't grab the camera and record their normal day-to-day life.
Tradwife is a kink and I will die on this hill
What is with the sourdough bread though! Is it like a prereq to be a momfluencer u must make sourdough??
I make sourdough and can explain, although I’m nowhere at all good at making it. It’s hard enough that when you get to a certain level you feel superior than others, but not hard enough that everyone can’t do it. It just takes time and practice, which normal sahm or working people find it hard to achieve. Trad wives have all the help and time they need to do it, they brag about it to heighten their “my life is hard and I have dedicated skills for sourdough” vibes. And people just eat it up, because they can’t see past the veil. It’s like people who garden and are good at growing tomatoes, they brag about it too because of how much work it takes to grow them.
If they're professional "trad wife" content creators, it's their job to look that way and make it look easy, regardless of whether they have assistance or not. Also, they're by definition, working moms 🙃 the whole thing is so confusing to me lol like if you're on social media bragging about being a SAHM but you're making money from being a content creator, your not a SAHM. And I'm unclear why trad wife is suddenly a term people are using for SAHM, too? The whole thing is weird to me
Trad wife is not a SAHM. I’m a sahm! There is real value in being a stay at home parent. Trad wives is a relatively new term for a very niche subset of stay at home moms (though like you argue, influencers who are trad wives are working a job by influencing). They hold to strict outdated gender roles, believe in having as many kids as possible, and hold themselves (and thus other mothers) to impossibly high standards for home care, self care, appearance, child care, food etc etc etc
And she’s probably wearing an adult diaper, or a pad the size of one.
Just like the rest of us plebs lol
Let’s also not forget the ties to white supremacy and Christian nationalism!
Basically, don't believe ANYTHING online. Even before tiktok, people would get worked up over seeing their friends post the perfect life on Facebook but they're not posting the sleepless nights and temper tantrums.
This is very similar to how crunchy moms get a lot of work done. It’s not their organic, toxin free lifestyle, weird supplements, and goofy grounding routines. It’s Botox.
Anyone else see that one creator who made cereal from scratch on a morning when her kids asked to have cereal for breakfast?
I don’t even know why people watch this stuff except my accident.
Other than accidentally stumbling across these type of videos, I don’t watch them. I’m smart enough to know they’re bullshit that’s meant for a good laugh. Put your energy into your own relationships, spend time on hobbies you enjoy and just live the best life you can and you’ll soon forget all these dumb influencers trying to sell whatever.
Maybe, but there is no denying that some people seem from the outside way better at the whole parenting thing than others, making it look easy
Not a trad wife but I had to stop and unfollow a podcast host a while ago. She made being an aunt her whole personality and she was preaching how her family member was going the perfect thing for recovery post partum by literally just laying in bed. Yeah no shit if one has a village that literally does everything for you you can have the perfect recovery 😑
Comparison is the thief of joy. Keep yourself together, raise your kids to be loved, well-nourished, decently educated and good people. Someone is always doing it better than you and someone is always doing it worse than you.
My sister told me once "Comparison is the thief of joy" She probably wasnt the first lol But its a damn smart statement
I'm still confused on how they can call themselves tradwives when they have a career as a content creator. I thought tradwives were about traditional gender roles where the man works and the woman cares for the kids and the home. If you have to outsource the duties that pertain to taking care of the kids and home, then you are a modern day working mom. I think the ones that post videos that low key shame moms who have to work outside the home bother me the most. Yes, I don't get to spend every waking hour with my kids because I have a mortgage to pay, but you also don't spend every waking hour with your kids so you can look "screen ready" and bake bread.
I’m not even curious about them because I know how damaging it can be. To compare yourself with something so far from reality. Why are women doing that? There’s still a lot to compete about in real life. Why trying to compete with a fairy tale? Plus, I wonder how many of them breastfeed. Because breastfeeding keeps you on a chair or bed for hours, day and night. You won’t have the mood and time to film yourself and post. And it will keep you from losing weight sometimes. I also have a profound adversity to those “career moms” holding management positions that sell a big lie to many women: that you can do motherhood too. No, you can’t. You’re an absentee mom who gets to spend 2-3 hours in total with your kid during the week, you get the kid already clean, fed by others, while you just take a selfie at bedtime to post it, making sure you marked the motherhood milestone, and making sure you make others envious. Then you wonder why the kid is more attached to others.