Do you consider Tradwives to be Old Style?

[Deleted User]

My late Mum was I suppose a tradwife (awful term ) she married my Dad in 1935 and although she was a buyer for a large department store in Glasgow she was expected to give up work on marriage ,which she did, I think my Dad would have been appalled if she had thought of going out to work ,especially once she had my two brothers and myself , so she stayed at home and looked after the family and never went back to work again .He was of the generation that expected himself to be the breadwinner and my Mum to be the home maker

I got married at 19 and carried on working and stopped when I had my first DD at 22 and then my second DD arrived two years later I never went back to work until she was 7 and then only part-time . I went full time when youngest DD was 12 and worked until I retired in 1995. I enjoyed my time as a SAHM but once the children were old enough

I also enjoyed returning to work, but my children and OH were always top of the agenda ,probably because of my generation.

My youngest DD had five children and returned part time when the youngest was 3, he is now 16 this year ,but she went full time when he was at school I was stand -in Mum and have been happy to help as with five children and even though her husband works full time their shoebill alone was eye-watering. Now of her five children, one is married and a Mum herself, the next one down is living in London and teaching ,the next two down are both at Uni, so I only have the youngest to keep an eye on.I did say to him at Christmas If he preferred I wouldn't have to be there in the afternoon after school and he looked horrified .Oh no Gran I like there being someone indoors when I get in from school I think he just prefers the idea of Gran's HM cakes and biscuits but I don't mind .No doubt in time he will be off to Uni and I will be able to put my feet up and relax a bit more. But all the boys have been good lads and to me its been a privilege to help bring them up. We are a close knit family who get on quite well and the boys all knew as soon as Mum or Dad came home that was it I was off home
In fact my son-in-law has just arrived home so I too am now off home to sort out my dinner its worked well for us all over the past 13 odd years

JackieO xx

VfM4meplse

euronorris wrote: »

I can only assume they grew up in households that operated in such a manner, and have been brainwashed by their parents to also be subservient.

I think it's marketed as an active choice rather than something inherent in their upbringing. Subservience as a choice screams out DV and denial to me.

maman

snoozer wrote: »

A tradwife isn't just another term for housewife. As well as fulfilling the traditional household duties she is expected to defer to her husband's opinion, dress to please him and just generally be a second class citizen. despite being a stay at home mum in the eighties and being fairly old style there is no way I would have pandered to my husband to that extent.

I looked at the thread because I'd never hear this hideous term before. Then I googled what it meant._pale_ I only needed to see words like subservient and submit to know it definitely wasn't for me. I'd argue that it shouldn't be for anyone.:(

I realise that there are some quite elderly people who post on OS but the vast majority would have had all the same educational opportunities as boys. They have had the same chances to get qualifications and choose careers but still, despite legislation, this idea of women as homemakers persists. I'm constantly reading about people on here who say they work full time and then post that they do all the shopping, cooking, cleaning. childcare etc etc. That's being a second class citizen in my book. There are too many men who still want to be waited on because they feel they've done their bit by going to work or they'll do stuff like occasional DIY or wash the car rather than the daily grind of running the home.

I'm pleased to say that I had a good education, a very responsible job and did further training at the same time as doing my bit to run the home and bring up my DDs. My DH could write exactly the same thing about himself. That makes us equals and we have mutual respect.

I realise that there are some people who stay at home with young children because childcare costs in this country are so ridiculously expensive. Of course it doesn't have to be the woman but it often is. However, unless you have loads of children then that period of your life is relatively short compared with the span of a career.

Tradwife? Definitely not.:(

baggins11

It is very depressing indeed that some women today think this is a good way of living. When I read up on it I was shocked.

I was a stay at home mum for a few years until my youngest started school and I didn't go back to my original career and instead did something that fitted around the kids which I still do. I am the one who does all the parents eves, orthodontic appointments, after school taxi service etc and as a result I earn less than my husband. I am self employed and fit everything around the kids and will continue to until they head off to uni.

We don't have any family support locally so I felt it was right for us as a family and we are lucky enough to afford to make it work.

I have to say though even when I took time off work I controlled all the family finances and everything to do with running the house as I always have. We had a joint account before having kids and have always shared our money. I think if this wasn't the case then I might have felt differently about taking time out of work.

The idea of just getting an 'allowance' makes me cringe. Most stay at home mums with preschoolers work just as hard as their husbands and therefore shouldn't feel they just get pocket money!

How would these tradwives cope in the real world if they not only don't work (and I suspect don't have much self esteem) but also don't have any grasp of running household finances. You would imagine it would be easy to become trapped.

thriftwizard

Sometimes life gets in the way of total independence... I'm certainly not a Tradwife, but I stayed mostly at home when the kids were small (though I always had a few hours work on the go, fitted around school hours etc.) but it gradually became apparent that our youngest, though very bright, had challenges that couldn't be addressed within the school system as it stands. We couldn't afford any kind of alternative schooling, having 5 kids & a mortgage at that point, so I had to home-educate her, which precluded me returning to the kind of career I'd been trained for.

Her difficulties have not disappeared with adulthood & there's no way she could handle a "normal" job at present. So essentially I'm still at home with her, although I do have a small business based around pop-up markets, which she does contribute some background work to. (She also helps around the house & is currently tackling some fairly major remodelling projects; she pulls her weight in the household economy, just not in financial terms - yet.) My little enterprise wouldn't pay a mortgage or even all the bills as it stands, but at least I feel I have some independent income, and I could make much more out of it if I absolutely had to & went full-time. I also handle all the household finances and logistical decisions, but housework is shared between the four of us who live here full-time.

And there's no way I'd defer to OH! Respect him, even occasionally listen to him, but not necessarily agree with him, never mind defer to him, bless his cotton socks!

So for some of us it's not a choice between domestic subservience or full-time independence, but inter-dependence. I may moan sometimes about OH or one or other of our still-at-home DDs, not to mention the DS who's still here part-time, and I'm sure they moan about me sometimes too, but at the end of the day we're a team, and it works.

[Deleted User]

We are and always have been an equal partnership. We don't have 'set in stone' designated areas that are ours alone we muck in together everywhere it's needed and do what needs to be done together. He's stronger than me and good at maths and science and is very practical so anything in that area is his preserve and I'm the 'helper' but I'm good at cooking, household economy, planning and I can spell and deal with Joe Public and he helps if I need it in those areas. We're a team, we were when the kids were small, while they were growing and still are it works for us. We share everything from life decisions to the finances on an equal basis and we did exactly that when I stayed at home and was 'just' a housewife.

FluffyDog

Trad wives in my mind are those who want to be Amish or Mennonite. We have Hutterites and Mennonite Colonies in my province. Those women dress plain, run the kitchens, make the cloths, mind the children. Unfortunately many times the children drop out of school at age 14 to help on the colony farms ensuring that further education isn't an option.

I'm 60 this year and not the oldest of "older posters" here. But when I left school in 1977, the RCMP was just accepting women into service. I had a classmate that was one of the first female recruits. Prior to that women in the Police had been typists or assigned to cases involving children, so quasi social workers. Women of my generation were required to leave the military upon becoming pregnant. I know one female MP who tried to hide her pregnancy and her sergeant turned a blind eye until her gunbelt just wouldn't fit anymore.

All of us stayed home until our youngest was old enough to go to school

VJsmum

The thing is, women have always worked. In the days of cottage industries women and men worked together, the industrial revolution saw the separation of work and home with the women required to stay home - more due to biology than anything. Although in some places (the NE cotton mills spring to mind, but i'm no expert) working class women remained the main breadwinners...

Women staying at home became an issue of class on the one hand (being wealthy enough for your wife not to work) and the fact that women were / are paid less than men on the other.. Throw in many occupations / professions conspiring to exclude women and there you have it...

(my thesis is vaguely based on some of this stuff)

All we need now is for it to become equally acceptable for men to stay home …

VfM4meplse

FluffyDog wrote: »

Unfortunately many times the children drop out of school at age 14 to help on the colony farms ensuring that further education isn't an option.

I find this utterly contemptible, taking a child's life chances away from them and dictating what the rest of their lives should look like is just cruel.

It reminds me of "Educated", Tara Westover's autobiography documenting how few chances she had and how hard she and her siblings had to fight to go to school at a late age - but then they bloomed!

candygirl

snoozer wrote: »

A tradwife isn't just another term for housewife. As well as fulfilling the traditional household duties she is expected to defer to her husband's opinion, dress to please him and just generally be a second class citizen. despite being a stay at home mum in the eighties and being fairly old style there is no way I would have pandered to my husband to that extent.

Sod that for a game of soldiers :eek::mad: