The Return of the Tradwife

The contempt oozes in every other sentence. A woman by name of Chine McDonald has written a column about tradwives, that is, about women who are happy to function as homemakers. McDonald directs a think tank called Theos. She has written her current screed for the Financial Times.

By her rather dim lights the phenomenon of the trad wive is something to be analyzed and discredited. Supposedly it signals a flaw or defect. The notion that an intelligent adult female might choose to be a tradwife does not seem to cross her mind.

The phenomenon either means that there is something wrong with the world or that there is something wrong with these women.

She does not consider the far out possibility that they may be making a decision about what is best for them. Aren’t they free to choose?

And, dare we mention, at a time when large numbers of American children are brought up in broken homes, homes where their mothers are only occasionally present, some women might have decided to prioritize domesticity and childrearing over fighting to overthrow the patriarchy.

According to McDonald, it’s all just propaganda. There, that solves it, doesn’t it?

The imagery is a 21st-cen­tury iter­a­tion of pro­pa­ganda about fem­in­ine and mater­nal ideals presen­ted in art and cul­ture for cen­tur­ies. Just like Raphael’s “Sis­tine Madonna” or Bot­ti­celli’s “Madonna Litta”, the trad­wife visu­als depict moth­er­hood as young, typ­ic­ally white, beau­ti­ful and serene. But beneath the sac­char­ine icon­o­graphy, we can dis­cern mark­ers of our cur­rent moment.

As though a stable home with two parents present and where defined roles define areas of influence and authority-- is an anomaly.

Obviously, McDonald also takes offense at the notion that these tradwives will be good mothers and will raise healthy children. Again, this is hardly an anomaly in human history. The anomaly is the current American situation where homes are broken and children are left on their own.

Again, McDonald does not want women to believe that they have a choice. The tradwife phenomenon, in her eyes, romanticizes:

… an unat­tain­able domestic per­fec­tion, you can also see it as an under­stand­able reac­tion to fear of con­tem­por­ary uncer­tain­ties. Hyper­loc­al­ism is a response to a scary inter­con­nec­ted world and you can’t get more hyper­local than the trad­wife’s realm. When mil­it­ary con­flicts are raging and eco­nom­ies col­lapsing, why not retreat to the home and make jam?

Again, this is amateur psychology, designed to tell women to get out of the house and into the marketplace. And yet, traditionally, the home has been a woman’s domain, a place where women have power and authority. Apparently, there is something wrong with that.

Worse yet, she is telling young women that no one will ever want to support them and their children. How much confidence does that build?

True enough, as Anne-Marie Slaughter explained when she resigned from her position at the State Department to spend more time at home with her children-- one of whose lives had been seriously deteriorating after she took her job away from home-- there are superhuman women who can pursue career goals and care for their children. The problem is, Slaughter explained, this is very rare, and not very likely. More power to those who can, but telling women to abandon home and hearth in favor of working in the marketplace is very often very bad advice.

One understands that Slaughter made her decision because it was best for her elder child. And yet, feminist blowhards, who shall not be named, denounced her for betraying women and betraying the revolution.

That is the feminist position. It is straight-up misogyny. Encouraging women to abandon their children in order to pursue dubious career goals is not a good thing.