Christine Kelly Reads and Writes

Hear me out….I’m taking back this hashtag, name, stereotype, WHATEVER it is. Because the #tradwife stands for traditional wife, and what you see on TikTok is ANYTHING but traditional.

I first learned about #tradwives on Twitter (X) when a certain person kept showing up on my feed. They would wear silk, feather rimmed robes while hand making cereal, or lasagna- even the pasta from scratch! Yes, it was aesthcially pleasing, in her high end kitchen using her kitchenaide and cute dishes to bake in. Would I love a silk robe with feathers? YES. Would I cook in it? HELL NO. Nor would my kids wait for me to handbake cereal, nor would I get up at the ass crack of dawn to do so.

I want to point out that there is room for this in our lives. Motherhood and homemaking are a important part of our society ( a very large segment of unpaid labor that is under appreciated!). If one chooses to stay home with their kids, make everything they eat from scratch– more power to you! Would I call it traditional? NO. I would call it homemaking.

Traditional wives, in my opinion (you will read that I get scared of having opinions from this post here, yet here I am), are not the ones that stay at home, do their hair for the day to make food and cart kids around. No, traditional wives are the ones that juggle a job and childrearing. That may stay at home, but stick to leggings, because who has the money to dry clean dried spit up or …what is that stain?…out of a silk robe? They’re the ones who run to the grocery store, kids in tow, and manage to buy them cereal because adding one more thing to their plate would mean sacrificing perhaps something that fills their cup (Love is Blind?!), or debating whether they’ll do laundry at night or prep their Sourdough kit.

Traditional wives are the women who will struggle to put themselves first because there isn’t enough time in the day…not enough time to: do the dishes, fold the laundry, pick up the poop from the dog in the backyard, grocery shop, meal plan, budget… oh shit, is there a PTA meeting tonight?!

So yes, I am a traditional wife. I am juggling THREE jobs while also providing most of the childcare for my two kids. My husband cooks (because otherwise we’d rotate between tacos, spaghetti and burritos every three days), and I refuse to clean the toliets. I am a traditional wife, because I wear washable clothing and cart the kids to and from school which somehow takes up at least a hour of my day.

I am a traditional wife, I cannot afford to even buy a silk robe with feathers. I go to Goodwill to find clothes for my boys, or shop on Mercari/Poshmark. I am a Traditional wife, I feel scatter brained, unable to track when our kids are in school or not ( did I drive to drop off my kid at school when it was a day off, yes I did!).

Again, I want to reiterate, it is OK to want to stay at home, and grow your own food, and dress up each day. If that fills your cup, that’s great! There have been articles of #tradwives saying that it is beneficial to them to not have jobs, or any other focus than homemaking because then they are not spread too thin. But, again, this is homemaking, not tradition. Let’s not forget that.

Want more info on #tradwives? Jo Piazza has a great podcast episode. Check it out here!