On the one hand I can empathize with the current disillusionment of Gen Zer ladies looking at us burnt out (whether from career, motherhood, or a combination of both) millennials. I understand seeing all of our complaints and deciding, “well, I’ll just opt out of that!” But it makes me so completely sad because they’ve obviously missed the inherent flaw in that logic. I believe many of us were told the same message exhaustively: don’t rely on a man; you have to rely on yourself. And we believed the people telling us this because we *saw* the damage that had befallen women who had relied on a man. The first wife who supported her husband through medical school and then got left for a younger version of herself. The one who had a baby right out of high school and by her mid-20’s looked like she had lived 10 lives already. The mom who dedicated her life to her kids, then after the divorce had to work tirelessly to pay for a crappy apartment while her kids went to Dad’s McMansion on the weekends with the new girlfriend and the nanny. There are reasons we chose to make ourselves miserable in this “new” way of not accepting anything less than full independence. And I’m afraid those reasons have been erased/whitewashed/explained away.
I will forever be mad about that line in Anne's House of Dreams (I think?) where she says her pupil Paul was a 'true poet' and she 'only imagined silly stories' (or words to that effect). The ONLY difference between Anne and Paul is that Paul is a boy. His 'poetry' is basically identical to what Anne said as a kid. Some readers argue that Anne's real dream was a home of her own, and maybe it was to some extent, but early Anne also had an imagination and dreams of writing.
It's not new - back in the early 00's the NYT did an article about the 'opt-out' trend, although in the absence of social media I don't think it had as much visibility as today's trad wives or their predecessors.
I get the uncertainty- my SIL is a SAHM and I remember having a moment when my 2nd grade niece said she wanted to be a mom on the first day of school board.
when dealing with the uncertainty of my career and what I wanted to be “doing,” it felt much easier to decide to be a SAHM. When I was first out of law school I literally had a job where I was paid $12 an hour to work 2 days a week and worked for my MIL’s team of contractors about 10-15 hours a week at Duke Eye Center for $20 an hour doing data entry/verification on medication studies for sponsors.
In summer 2015, I left the extremely low pay firm, then I got fired from my new job in civil litigation with a boss who had very poor emotional regulation skills- he had zero sense of work life balance but it scared me away from law and working in a field dominated by old white men for a while! I went back to working on my MIL’s team of contractors- I didn’t need a career, I just needed some extra income.
I kept working for Duke from 2016-2019 but when I had my second kid I couldn’t figure out how to work even 10 hours during naps that no longer lined up and part time preschool wasn’t helping much. I was solely reliant on my husband’s income for the first time in my life and I didn’t like it. But summer of 2019-summer 2020 the only money I brought in was one personal injury settlement percentage, maybe 2k. In July 2020 I sent the kids back to school because I felt I was losing my mind at home- in August my dad and officially launched our website for our firm and I started to have an actual salary again. Now that it’s been 4 years I still don’t love law but I like having a consistent salary and knowing I have marketable skills.
I literally told my sister yesterday I get the feeling of wanting to return to the relative “safety” of being a SAHM at times- practicing law tends to be a field where everyone is always annoyed- the clients, opposing counsel, the medical providers I’m calling for records. It feels thankless and somewhat akin to motherhood. I still feel like I am working 60 hours a week like I did in 2015 but now half of it is in service to my home/kids.
Now that I’ve been married for 10 years I’m less satisfied with the marriage plot namely because women don’t cease to exist the moment they get married- but so many of us get trapped in service to our kids that we forget how to be whole people. On another note- my MIL didn't have a paid job until she was 40 and at 65 yo she says she has no idea when she will retire- but they like to go on multiple expensive beach vacations and own several different properties so I don't think they're particularly concerned about money.
I wonder if we'll see a shift in 10-20ish years with trad Gen Z women seeking divorces, parting ways with religious institutions, and otherwise processing choices they made during their youth that have had major effects on their lives and identities.
The Bustle article was really interesting. Those social media posts from tradwives are disturbing. I have a friend who’s chosen to be a SAHM. Her husband and his families are conservative leaning. She says that she actually like staying at home with her kid (and she has another one on the way), but at the same time they’re not in the best financial condition. However, the cost of child-care in the US is such that it would hardly be worth it for her to go back to work, at least in the public sector (she used to be a teacher). I don’t know how I would feel about staying at home and being financially dependent on my husband. Even though I trust him, it’s not just about how assets would fall out if we ever got a divorce. It’s also about my own stagnant career. I suppose I could do what the first tradwife would do and just rely on my family and then jump back into working, but it was drilled into my head that women should have their own money.
Also, to satirize the first tradwife quotation: I don’t want to conform. It’s okay to relax and create a life that’s different than what the patriarchy wants you to live. https://youtu.be/jvU4xWsN7-A?si=Am51zHbcM7hSv61J
My mom worked when we were children but stayed home when we were teenagers, and I remember being in women’s studies my freshman year at Duke and having a conversation about how I wanted to work (I wasn’t sure about what type of job, but I knew I wanted my own money), get married, and have children and try to “have it all” as the phrase goes. Nearly all the young women in my class also wanted to get married, have children, and work too although there were some queer students who said they weren’t sure marriage was something they wanted to pursue.
I have talked to a lot of the Gen Z crowd because I keep getting the “fun” job of mentoring younger (21-23 year olds) teachers because I have a reputation for being patient with younger, newer employees and helping them improve more than any of the other more experienced teachers at my job. Both of the girls I worked with regularly (22 year old Christian white girl and a 23 year old Catholic Hispanic girl) want that traditional wife life and to stay home with their children if they can afford it eventually, but they’re not confident that that will happen because of how expensive basic expenses have been in recent years. My coteacher who is Catholic would like to marry her boyfriend that she lives with now, but they literally don’t have enough money to where she feels like she could have the type of nice church wedding she wants.
the reason republicans have always been against subsidizing child care or requiring companies to provide maternity leave is because they want women to stay in the home. They don’t want moms to have any support that could make it easier for them to work. And for the moment they have won. Some women have decided to give up. It’s a constant swimming upstream. Post-pandemic, post-apocalypse, who has the energy?
On the one hand I can empathize with the current disillusionment of Gen Zer ladies looking at us burnt out (whether from career, motherhood, or a combination of both) millennials. I understand seeing all of our complaints and deciding, “well, I’ll just opt out of that!” But it makes me so completely sad because they’ve obviously missed the inherent flaw in that logic. I believe many of us were told the same message exhaustively: don’t rely on a man; you have to rely on yourself. And we believed the people telling us this because we *saw* the damage that had befallen women who had relied on a man. The first wife who supported her husband through medical school and then got left for a younger version of herself. The one who had a baby right out of high school and by her mid-20’s looked like she had lived 10 lives already. The mom who dedicated her life to her kids, then after the divorce had to work tirelessly to pay for a crappy apartment while her kids went to Dad’s McMansion on the weekends with the new girlfriend and the nanny. There are reasons we chose to make ourselves miserable in this “new” way of not accepting anything less than full independence. And I’m afraid those reasons have been erased/whitewashed/explained away.
100 million percent.
I will forever be mad about that line in Anne's House of Dreams (I think?) where she says her pupil Paul was a 'true poet' and she 'only imagined silly stories' (or words to that effect). The ONLY difference between Anne and Paul is that Paul is a boy. His 'poetry' is basically identical to what Anne said as a kid. Some readers argue that Anne's real dream was a home of her own, and maybe it was to some extent, but early Anne also had an imagination and dreams of writing.
omg PAUL - legit had forgotten him until this moment. i seem to recall him having a "crop" of dark curls or something lol.
Ha! I remember him having 'golden curls' but I don't have my copy to check!
It's not new - back in the early 00's the NYT did an article about the 'opt-out' trend, although in the absence of social media I don't think it had as much visibility as today's trad wives or their predecessors.
I get the uncertainty- my SIL is a SAHM and I remember having a moment when my 2nd grade niece said she wanted to be a mom on the first day of school board.
when dealing with the uncertainty of my career and what I wanted to be “doing,” it felt much easier to decide to be a SAHM. When I was first out of law school I literally had a job where I was paid $12 an hour to work 2 days a week and worked for my MIL’s team of contractors about 10-15 hours a week at Duke Eye Center for $20 an hour doing data entry/verification on medication studies for sponsors.
In summer 2015, I left the extremely low pay firm, then I got fired from my new job in civil litigation with a boss who had very poor emotional regulation skills- he had zero sense of work life balance but it scared me away from law and working in a field dominated by old white men for a while! I went back to working on my MIL’s team of contractors- I didn’t need a career, I just needed some extra income.
I kept working for Duke from 2016-2019 but when I had my second kid I couldn’t figure out how to work even 10 hours during naps that no longer lined up and part time preschool wasn’t helping much. I was solely reliant on my husband’s income for the first time in my life and I didn’t like it. But summer of 2019-summer 2020 the only money I brought in was one personal injury settlement percentage, maybe 2k. In July 2020 I sent the kids back to school because I felt I was losing my mind at home- in August my dad and officially launched our website for our firm and I started to have an actual salary again. Now that it’s been 4 years I still don’t love law but I like having a consistent salary and knowing I have marketable skills.
I literally told my sister yesterday I get the feeling of wanting to return to the relative “safety” of being a SAHM at times- practicing law tends to be a field where everyone is always annoyed- the clients, opposing counsel, the medical providers I’m calling for records. It feels thankless and somewhat akin to motherhood. I still feel like I am working 60 hours a week like I did in 2015 but now half of it is in service to my home/kids.
Now that I’ve been married for 10 years I’m less satisfied with the marriage plot namely because women don’t cease to exist the moment they get married- but so many of us get trapped in service to our kids that we forget how to be whole people. On another note- my MIL didn't have a paid job until she was 40 and at 65 yo she says she has no idea when she will retire- but they like to go on multiple expensive beach vacations and own several different properties so I don't think they're particularly concerned about money.
I wonder if we'll see a shift in 10-20ish years with trad Gen Z women seeking divorces, parting ways with religious institutions, and otherwise processing choices they made during their youth that have had major effects on their lives and identities.
The Bustle article was really interesting. Those social media posts from tradwives are disturbing. I have a friend who’s chosen to be a SAHM. Her husband and his families are conservative leaning. She says that she actually like staying at home with her kid (and she has another one on the way), but at the same time they’re not in the best financial condition. However, the cost of child-care in the US is such that it would hardly be worth it for her to go back to work, at least in the public sector (she used to be a teacher). I don’t know how I would feel about staying at home and being financially dependent on my husband. Even though I trust him, it’s not just about how assets would fall out if we ever got a divorce. It’s also about my own stagnant career. I suppose I could do what the first tradwife would do and just rely on my family and then jump back into working, but it was drilled into my head that women should have their own money.
Also, to satirize the first tradwife quotation: I don’t want to conform. It’s okay to relax and create a life that’s different than what the patriarchy wants you to live. https://youtu.be/jvU4xWsN7-A?si=Am51zHbcM7hSv61J
My mom worked when we were children but stayed home when we were teenagers, and I remember being in women’s studies my freshman year at Duke and having a conversation about how I wanted to work (I wasn’t sure about what type of job, but I knew I wanted my own money), get married, and have children and try to “have it all” as the phrase goes. Nearly all the young women in my class also wanted to get married, have children, and work too although there were some queer students who said they weren’t sure marriage was something they wanted to pursue.
I have talked to a lot of the Gen Z crowd because I keep getting the “fun” job of mentoring younger (21-23 year olds) teachers because I have a reputation for being patient with younger, newer employees and helping them improve more than any of the other more experienced teachers at my job. Both of the girls I worked with regularly (22 year old Christian white girl and a 23 year old Catholic Hispanic girl) want that traditional wife life and to stay home with their children if they can afford it eventually, but they’re not confident that that will happen because of how expensive basic expenses have been in recent years. My coteacher who is Catholic would like to marry her boyfriend that she lives with now, but they literally don’t have enough money to where she feels like she could have the type of nice church wedding she wants.
Yes, please - a puppy photo in every post!
the reason republicans have always been against subsidizing child care or requiring companies to provide maternity leave is because they want women to stay in the home. They don’t want moms to have any support that could make it easier for them to work. And for the moment they have won. Some women have decided to give up. It’s a constant swimming upstream. Post-pandemic, post-apocalypse, who has the energy?