Thinking Trad Wife? Things to Consider

Purely anecdotal thoughts from someone who's now a grandmother, who lived the life you are aspiring to.

First this - I believed in the family structure practiced by my ancestors, with god at the head, the husband over the wife, the wife under the husband and the kids under that. Umbrella of authority, as it were. It sounds pretty simple and logical right? I mean, in all areas of life, or most anyway, we seem to have a hierarchy of power. Someone is at the top. Someone is in the middle. Someone does the dishes. And so on.

I did not interrogate it. It simply was the space I inhabited. My mother mostly stayed home, my father worked. Most of my friends mothers stayed home as well, or had part time work scheduled around their kids, who generally took center stage. The home was where children were reared. If my own home was not particularly effective, that was a failing of my mother's mental status, and bore no reflection on the system as a whole. It must work, and we had just stepped away and needed to get back to it.

Then I became a single mother of two. Because life happens. I had no job skills, and no prospects, and no choice but to find a way to feed my kids. Their father, who previously had agreed with this lifestyle in which I remained under his authority, suddenly decided that I was a mercenary bitch bent on his destruction, and refused to pay support. 

I went to college. I got a boyfriend who had more stability and commitment in his little toe than my ex had in his whole body. 

I got a degree (and became an RN), and "earned" myself a second MRS. I went to work, but part time with a schedule fit around my kids. I got written up for missing a pop-up meeting to do my daughter's hair before a school event (which I missed, because I was at work). Inhumane work, no work life balance.

Home seemed so far away. I missed long mornings with coffee and dishes and kids, no endless stress, no mountain of work at home and work at work, and juggling schedules. It never occurred to me to expect my partner to do anything to assist with the home. If he did something I took it as a romantic gesture. He did laundry, and occasionally on a Sunday morning he would get really weird about the vacuum and work until there was not a shred of pet hair in any crevice anywhere in the house - I just stayed out of the way, and said thank you a lot, hoping he would do that more often (he did not). It never occurred to me to demand more humane work conditions.

And I had started having panic attacks that I perceived as convictions of the wrongness of my choice to leave my kids in the hands of others. What was I doing, going to work every day when we could make it work with one income...surrendering my kids to who knows what, unable to protect them from the big bad world while I toiled away at a job for some nameless, heartless corporate entity. Big giant panic attacks that made me stop on the way to work and vomit out the side of my car, shaking and pale and pasty. And still, I did not ask my partner to take on a larger load. It did not occur to me. His job was to work and bring home the bigger bacon. Mine was to work and do everything else, bedsheets, toilets, dishes, meals, schedules, shopping, garden. I am not saying that he did not "help". He did. But it was just that - occasional help, not expected contribution. And I certainly still had no expectation the the system should change.

After much soul searching (and some digging into the utterly lacking mental health benefits of our insurance), I returned home. My kids left private school and we began homeschooling. There are many memories of that time that I hold tender reminiscence of. In reality, it was hard. Unpaid, unappreciated, but I was doing The Most Important Thing - I was raising my kids. And the panic attacks subsided some, so I must be doing the right thing, right? I was less stressed. I could focus fully on one thing and not feel endlessly divided between many, doing all of the things, usually badly. 

I sewed a little for money on the side. I baby sat. I gardened and canned and gleaned to keep food costs low. I bargain shopped. We did not have real vacations. But everyone was fed and clean, and the house was mass chaos but full of furry things and dirty feet, and later yarn and chicken poop. I am sure - and I know because you only need to read this blog to discover - that I spun that into a delightful romantic fairy tale. I tried some entrepreneurial ventures, but lacked the education or internal resources to push to real success in any. I do know why, now. I did not appreciate why then.

This is where the catch begins to reveal itself.

Those fun little side gigs. odd jobs, and all that unpaid labor, both physical and emotional? Unless you are lucky, or have previous education or a wide base of resources and connections on which to draw, they don't fill your retirement account, or give you any sort of stability or long-term safety or control. 

You are trading immediate comfort, sacrificing your future, for an illusion. You may believe your kids will rise up and call you blessed. Maybe they will. You may believe that your chosen life partner is committed to you deeply in a "whats mine is yours for life no matter what" sort of way, and maybe he will. You certainly do have it much much easier than your peers, who struggle to keep up with school hours and play dates and work obligations and family obligations and housework. You have all that....you just never get paid, never build any personal wealth or personal power, and that matters. A lot.

So let's fast forward a bit, shall we, from the sunny vision of the "Trad Wife", dutifully grateful (and I was!) for her loving spouse who makes it all possible, for her darling babies growing at her knee - she's made the "hard choices", she sacrificed her goals and dreams and visions. It has been, she is deeply aware and always humbly reminds herself, a privilege to have this opportunity to sacrifice herself for the greater good. And now, why she must be beloved? Cherished? Etc?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Maybe little Sleeping Beauty wakes up to realize she has no financial security heading into retirement, and if her husband drops dead tomorrow she better hope he had a plan. She better hope she can find a job when the kids go off into the world. She better hope that her thin grasp on co-opted patriarchal power doesn't slip. She better hope those panic attacks don't return with firey vengeance because she certainly does not have the financial resources to pay for therapy. 

Here's what I did:

I made cheese, baked bread, gardened, schooled kids, sold eggs. I sewed and knitted and crocheted and wove. It made for pretty pictures and non-reimbursed content, just like this post. I asked nothing of that dog eat dog 'man's world' beyond the chance to not be starved to death at the end of my usefulness. 

Which I have begun to reach. 

I have no higher education, no savings, no retirement, and am mostly unemployable. You would not believe the numbers of resumes and applications I have filled out in the last six years. I could paper a house, inside and out. I can't get hired. No idea why. I mean, really? So I push onward. 

I have a couple of side gigs - quilting and face painting - but they are gigs, not consistent income that will feed me if Mr. W drops dead tomorrow. I better hope he had a plan. Because mine? Turns out it was built on a bunch of bullshit spun up from a big pile of lies and misrepresentations, both sociocultural and religious. 

So stay home if you want, but understand fully and clearly the choices you are making. I know it's hard. I know you've been reared to believe that those strident, angry first and second wave feminists just didn't understand and need to stop being so....loud. I thought the same. I thought my gift to the universe was quietly rearing my kids and caring for my home and living the lifestyle of white patriarchal privilege, which simultaneously helped me managed CPTSD with no therapy or mental health support. I guess I saved a lot of money that way. Hell of a cost though. 

I was taking the easy way out. It was easier to go home and shut my mouth than to buck a system that dumps the majority of the load on women. 

I know it's hard. I mean I KNOW it's hard. 

But hard isn't wrong. It's just hard. You hand over the money, you hand over the power. You give up your earning potential, you are handing over your place at the table, your voice, your input. You are surrendering all of that to an authority which may be benevolent... or may be malevolent. Maybe you will get lucky. Most do not.

You need to understand completely and fully the choice you are making. It will be easier now, for absolute certain. Much. 

Later? Well. The odds are not in your favor.