I’m at 35,000 feet where, thanks to the miracle of modern satellite technology, I can do something I rarely do: watch daytime TV – specifically, a talk show discussing the recent “trad wife” phenomenon.
There is no definition of a trad wife, but they are generally young stay-at-home mothers who invite followers into their “traditional” lifestyles. They spend multiple hours each day posting video content about baking their own bread and manufacturing crayons from scratch, all while wearing pricey designer dresses and bringing in major bank as they monetize their updated version of “tradition.”
Detractors, including those who have escaped the lifestyle, say that these women are oppressed and represent everything that is wrong with “traditional gender roles.” Catholic stay-at-home wives reflexively defend the lifestyle because they see the words “wife” and “tradition” and thus think they must also be trad wives.
Meanwhile, the women themselves talk about how they love, love, love milling their own wheat while wearing five-inch stiletto heels. And they count their followers. And their money.
Let’s start by getting one thing straight. This trad wife movement is not about traditional Catholic women who happen to stay at home with their kids. It may share some external similarities with their lives, but it is very different at heart. (Remember how your mom spent several hours a day with a butter churn in one hand and a selfie stick in the other? Yeah, me neither.)
This movement reacts to the “you can have it all” mentality. We were told that a woman's only path to fulfillment was to have a career. It wasn’t enough to have kids, and it wasn’t enough to have a job. We weren’t living up to our capacity unless we were breaking glass ceilings and kicking it in the boardroom while simultaneously keeping the home fires burning.
There’s nothing wrong with breaking glass ceilings or having a career. But the immense pressure to “have it all” has exhausted many women.
Not surprisingly, it led to a backlash. And the backlash has swung too far the other way.
These trad wives seem to be trying to outdo each other as some kind of 21st-century pioneer women. One bakes her own bread; the next mills her own wheat; the next grows and harvests the wheat herself. It’s all for show, for popular consumption and for gaining followers — dissatisfied women living vicariously through these carefully curated, completely unrealistic domestic vignettes.
The point of stay-at-home motherhood, or any other kind, isn’t to outdo others to boost followers and clicks. It is to create a setting for family life and to form children.
The main difference between “trad wives” and the rest of us lies in an understanding of true Christian marriage. Sure, I’ve seen some “faith” talk in the trad wife world, but it seems to resemble the false god of the polygamous cults, the god who says that the husband reigns supreme, that his wishes always come first, and that he is unilaterally to be served.
This is not the Christian view of marriage.
A Christian marriage is a union of two people, both created in God's image and likeness, committed to joining their lives and absolutely, unfailingly, looking out for what is best for each other. Yes, men and women are different. We have different bodies, different brain structures, different strengths and weaknesses. That leads to different roles in the family. However, each couple is unique, and it is up to those two people to discern, in their circumstances, what that looks like and how to best structure their family life and raise their children.
A Christian marriage is a partnership of equals. It is different in gender, structure, temperament and a million other things, but it is 100% equal in dignity.
It is beautiful when a woman puts a real effort into pleasing her husband, just as it is beautiful when a man puts that same effort into pleasing his wife. are necessary for a marriage to thrive. Not this crazy one-way “the husband is king, and the wife is his servant” mentality that some of these trad wives seem to have retrieved from the ash heap of history.
Of course, there were problems with “traditional gender roles” in the past. They originated then, as they originate today, in the failure to recognize the woman's dignity. The problem wasn’t that she stayed home or prepared meals for her husband; the problem was that she and her work were perceived as being “lesser than” instead of complementary.
Catholic wives, you are not “trad wives.” Your value doesn’t come from your work in the home, your followers, your clicks or your 15 minutes of fame. It comes from the fact that you are created and loved by God. The beauty you bring to the world comes from the mutual love and respect you share with your husband and the lives you bring forth and form.
You don’t need your own YouTube channel to be a truly good wife, and you don’t need to live like a 19th-century homesteader. You just need to love your family and let your light shine.
So go forth and show the world what a real “traditional wife” looks like.
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