Why This Stay At Home Mom Isn't Having The TradWife Nonsense

I’m currently a stay-at-home mom and housewife, so I’m allowed to write this, and I do so with the disclaimer that there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with being a SAHM. In fact, there’s something pretty noble about it—as long as you haven’t chosen this particular pathway from a place of resentment or religious guilt.

I’ve long been a believer that a woman’s place is wherever God calls her. I also believe that sometimes God calls us womenfolk into places where some of our male counterparts resent our presence, and that’s just something they’ll have to get over. When John Piper decreed that women don’t belong on the police force, I don’t think it occurred to him that a lot of female rape victims may not want to relive their trauma to a team full of powerful men with weapons. I’m not a fan of women in combat, but if there’s some dynamite woman out there who can meet the same baseline physical standards as the men, then by all means, let her use her gifts where she feels led to use them.

So when I take aim at the newly resurrected tradwife movement, it’s not because I think there’s anything wrong with being loving, nuturing wives and mothers who invest fully in our families. It’s meaningful work into which I’m actively pouring myself. So that’s not my issue.

My issue is a rapidly increasing segment of the religious right that is prescribing regressive sex role stereotypes as a broadstrokes, one-size-fits all solution to the gender insanity on the left. Where the left wants to completely eliminate any distinctions between the sexes, these conservatives want to carve out pre-approved roles for men and women based solely upon our physiological differences, and they want to codify them into the collective moral consciousness as God’s design for humanity. They want men in the public sector bringing home the bacon, and they want women in the kitchen wearing pinup dresses and stilettos, feeding a toddler with one hand and basting a turkey with the other.

This is the point in the blog at which I pause to reflect upon how utterly stupid it is to fantasize about the 1950s and 60s as though they were some golden era of Leave It To Beaver American righteousness to which we should all return. We are talking about an era where chart topping songs normalized the prevalence of men’s infidelity, and women were just expected to take it. Stand by your man, anyone? People point to the lower divorce rates as some sort of proof that the model worked, but do we really call this a success if the only reason these women remained married was because they lacked the legal, financial, and religious resources to leave? Was society really that much better off? Is sweeping the rot under the carpet any better than airing it out and exposing it? We could also start a discussion about how some of the very men most lauded as “godly leaders” in that generation were the same men demanding “colored” water fountains, but that’s another discussion for another day. The point is, the 50s and 60s had a ton of their own moral decay; we shouldn’t romanticize them.

Perhaps one of the most prominent of the tradwife apologists in quintessential pick-me girl, Lori Alexander, widely known by her online persona “The Transformed Wife.” Lori has existed online as something of a curiosity, a reason to stop and gawk in horrified disbelief at just how much Stockholm Syndrome one human being can embody. In a nutshell, she teaches women that we exist for the sole purpose of pleasing our husbands and raising our children. She tells battered wives to return to their husbands and exercise forgiveness. She teaches women that it’s wrong to look for emotional support in our husbands, as they’re too busy to be expected to provide it. She says it’s wrong to work outside the home. She says it’s wrong to send your kids to Christian school because it’s your job as a mother to educate them yourself. She doesn’t believe women should have been granted the right to vote because the right to vote is essentially the right to hold office, and, according to Lori, women don’t belong in office. We belong under our husbands’ thumbs. She makes marriage and motherhood sound like absolute misery. Seriously, though, the ridiculous and legalistic content is plentiful, and I refuse to link to any of it because it will only encourage her, and I’m not interested in any way aiding or abetting her crusade against women’s dignity.

But the reason I even mention her is because we’ve got a new wave of 20 something social media influencers who have latched onto Lori Alexander as some sort of godmother figure whose delusional beliefs ought to be embraced and emulated as a solution to our culture’s gender madness. They call themselves tradwives, and a lot of men LOVE them. Their entire schtick is all about being domestic, sexually appealing, and submissive to men. They denounce feminism as the enemy of the world and secure followers by sharing Lori’s content, throwing pot shots at wounded women, and parroting MGTOW talking points about the alleged war on men.

They share videos of themselves vacuuming the living room in kitten heels and an apron and talking about how liberated they feel by saying “Yes sir” to their husbands’ every whim. They’re essentially pretty girls in Stepford costumes who appeal to lazy men who want accessories and servants, not partners or best friends. And conservative media laps it up and markets it as a reasonable model for forward movement into the next generation. It’s why we’re actually entertaining national conversations about repealing the 19th amendment, as though that’s a reasonable thing to even be debating instead of an assault on the basic human liberties we purport to champion.

The problem with tradwives isn’t their choice to live like Stepfords. That’s their privilege. If they want to live their entire lives as a giant cosplay session, they can do that. The problem with the tradwife movement is their legalistic push to cram everyone else into tidy little gender boxes that don’t fit them by pretending it’s God’s design.

I’ve come to believe that a lot of the women peddling the tradwife garbage are doing so as a way to abdicate their God-given responsibility to actively engage the world around them as thinking, contributing members of society. It’s a rejection of their own agency because they don’t ultimately want to take ownership of their own behavior. It’s easier for them to just pass the buck to someone else’s authority. Bad parenting choices? "I was just obeying my husband." Wonky theology that hurts people? "My husband told me to."

I recently had the chance to catch up with a friend whose own mother functioned as something of a tradwife, and the cost of it inadvertently wreaked havoc on their family. The daughters in the family were taught to prioritize the men’s feelings above all else. They were taught, by her example, to keep themselves fit and sexually desirable for their husbands. They were taught to swallow their own emotional needs. They were taught to keep a stiff upper lip and to soldier on no matter what. The boys, on the other hand, were placed on a pedestal. They could do no wrong. The world orbited around their intelligence and their giftings. Is it any wonder that most of the girls in this family grew up to find themselves married to men who were unfaithful to them? Should we be surprised to know that the boys ended up cheating on their wives? My friend is now my age with residual frustrations about the way “godly” womanhood was modeled for her. It did not prepare her for the world. She needed a mom with an opinion, with a voice of her own, with convictions that sometimes conflicted with her husband’s. She needed a mom who showed her how to edify men, not just submit to them.

I’ve been on the frontlines of the great transgender debate for over 7 years now, and I promise you, conservatives, this chauvinistic hogwash is our personal contribution to the gender mess. Our fixation on rigid gender norms and our refusal to contend with the rampant sexism in our own camp have both contributed to the gender crisis we now face. No one wants to hear this, of course—it’s easier to chalk it all up as an exclusively leftist problem, but it’s not. Where the right says “Only girls can like pink and glitter,” the left echoes the sentiment by declaring, “If you like pink and glitter, you must be a girl.” They’re not all that far removed from each other ideologically.

I once got into an argument with a friend when her husband refused to let their young son play with a toy kitchen. “Are you kidding me?” I asked her. “What? Is he afraid he may grow up to be someone who can cook a dinner for his wife once in a while? Is Gordon Ramsay too feminine for him?” He was locked into pointless gender norms at the expense of his kid’s ability to explore the world around him.

I had other friends who knew from a young age that they would never go to college because those funds were reserved for their brothers. Their job was to get married and start a family. They knew this at age 12, and it had nothing to do with their God-given aptitudes or giftings. It had everything to do with their sex. I refuse to remain silent in a milieu that insists our sex points more heavily to God’s intended purpose for us in this world than the gifts He gave us do.

God didn’t make all little boys to grow up to be G.I. Joe. He made some to be Leonardo da Vincis as well. He didn’t make all little girls to grow up to be June Cleaver. He also designed some girls to grow up to be the Marie Curies or the Temple Grandins of the world.

Rigid adherence to superficial gender norms is part of the problem, not the solution. Let people be who they were created to be, wear what is comfortable, and enjoy what they’re wired to enjoy without creating legalistic formulas that inevitably place a whole lot of people at odds with the reasons for which they were actually created.