The trend where women stay home and bake sourdough isn’t really working out

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I’m traveling the world to interview people about their relationships and gender dynamics across cultures. It’s been fun.

But having all these conversations has confirmed my suspicions against the Trad Wife trend. It’s more or less BS.

Sorry, but I see it as hurtful to women and relationships.

(My podcast of the resulting audio from all these convos is linked at the end of this article.)

If you haven’t been on social media lately, good job. But you might not know what I’m talking about when I say “TradWife.”

The Trad Wife trend is the notion that women can (or should) claim a role as a “Traditional Wife” in their relationships — a wife who stays home, doesn’t work a job, cooks, nurtures, and cleans.

The man makes the money; the woman makes the babies while posting to Instagram about baking bread. It struck me as odd. Now the TradWife trend seems to me more insidious.

In this article, I try to look beyond my simple jealousy of this hypothetical person — who stays home doing enjoyable things (which, for me, would include building walnut furniture for an office-weary woman devoted to having sex with me and bringing me money).

My jealousy aside, there are real reasons the TradWife thing is treacherous socially and relationally — for women of any class or creed.

Money is power

Across all the relationships I’ve observed, the person who makes the money… makes the money. It’s simple. And the breadwinner ultimately controls the money, and that money has special power in practical matters.

A young, male-bodied interviewee shared a Colombian proverb:

“El hombre trae las cosas a la casa.” 

(Translation: The man brings the things to the home.)

They went on to say that anyone can play the role of “man” — independently of gender — but the “man” naturally has a decision-making role because of his ability to fund or not fund family initiatives.

It is cliched and true: money is power.

It just is.

The breadwinner can share the money or not. Relational dynamics flow outward from there.

And when a woman is content to let a man earn all of it, she places herself in a precarious position under her man’s goodwill. His goodwill may accommodate her welfare, but, if she has little ability to earn, she has little ability to leave.

Sure, family law in the US favors women, but she’s stuck.

For her, leaving is a massive life upheaval. He, however, can hire a maid and eat at restaurants.

Moreover, the relational implications of that dynamic trickle upward into every conversation, argument, and purchase decision.

Money is very practical and foundational to our lives. When women have the opportunity to make some, a relationship has more balance, depth, and parity.

There’s no such thing as a Traditional Wife

This trend frames stay-at-home life as a return to a lower-stress lifestyle — as opposed to corporate warriorship — for women. It’s a seductive idea: to be in a role of nurturance while financially supported and emotionally held by a masculine man.

To bake. To garden. To parent. (Sign me up for that, please.)

But there’s nothing traditional about this. This version of gender roleplay was a flicker of an idea in the 1950s, but it never occurred.

Life is work. And historically, any gendered division of labor was enacted to maintain survival.

Everyone worked. All. the. Time.

And it was fairly miserable.

A mere 200 or 2,000 years ago, everyone had less time — both in their day-to-day routines and in their overall existence. In 1900, the average lifespan was 32 due to higher infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates, and poorer living conditions.

Efficiency and technology grant us more freedom now. Maternity is much less dangerous. And, while it may be possible to live off one large income, doing so is novel and decadent.

TradWifery is a mode of gender roleplay that doesn’t resonate with human history.

In a word, it’s untraditional.

The women proposing this lifestyle are often affiliate marketers

Or they’re selling courses on how to attract an “abundant” man.

A popular Instagramer sells such philosophy — and courses about TradWifery — but she has no man. She lives on her digital income streams, as her success undermines her message.

Men can’t GIVE to women emotionally or sexually

Humans do reciprocity. It’s what we do. We’re compelled to give when someone gives to us. If we give for long enough without receiving, we stop giving.

And when the man supplies the food and housing, the presumed structure of the relationship shifts to his receivership in other areas.

I’m not talking about the women becoming indentured to physical relations when a man picks up the check at a steakhouse; I’m talking about a subconscious structuring of an entire relationship.

With a man’s financial provision, reciprocity dictates that sex and emotional relating are a realm of male receivership.

The biggest complaint of women I meet is that men are not emotionally available or self-responsible, and that we rush or over-emphasize sex. These complaints are fair. And they echo an outmoded paradigm of the man providing the money and the woman providing the babies.

Yet, if women want an emotionally responsible man — if they want equal partnership — the cash flow in the relationship will need to be more equitable. Otherwise, when the man bankrolls everything, the law of reciprocity will dictate a reverse flow of emotional/sexual giving that deprives him of the ability to give in those areas.

We’ve exceeded the level of societal development wherein this mode of gender role division makes any sense

In fact, we’ve exceeded the level of societal development wherein we need partnership. We can earn our own money and eat our own lonely fast food.

Social needs are no longer baked-in to financial/sustenance needs.

On a practical level, it’s manageable to live without a partner. Yet having a partner — and a deep, intense romantic connection — remains a beautiful way to meet social needs.

We just don’t know how to do it. Too many people feel lonely, frustrated, disappointed, or resigned to single life. Equality has cost us our modes of attraction.

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This issue has felt like a burr lodged in my brain. The social drift and alienation sadden me. And it’s a problem more prominent in the USA/West than elsewhere. The less-developed world has plenty of issues — worse issues — but a mode of attraction is still present. In the progressive West, less so.

So, I’m traveling the world to see other cultures in search of what’s essential to relationship, attraction, and our identities as men and women. If anything.

You can listen to conversations I’m having on my podcast, Polarity Unscripted.

It begins with an interview with a former lover about our wild experience of attraction.

You can listen here on Apple and Spotify.

May you be loved, loving, and happy.