A Reflection on Trad-Wife vs. Feminist Content

Post the U.S. Inauguration of Donald Trump I have seen the Instagram explore page take a major shift in promoting a very specific genre of content to myself.

Content featuring women pointing out that feminists hate that they choose to stay at home to care for their children and husbands, or something along that line.

It has come up on my feed so much that I have found myself repeating the argument over, and over again.

So, I’m going to go over it in depth here. 

Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies that I made.

My first and arguably most major point is that, there has almost never been a point in western history in which women have never had to work.

While that does include household duties, because that is very much work, I specifically mean earning wages work.

Just looking back as far as the 16th to 19th centuries women occupied jobs such as milliners (hat makers), washerwomen, domestic servants, midwifery, etc.,

The later you get into the 19th century during the industrial period you see more and more women working factory jobs and in the mines in order to make ends meet.

Of course, while high paying jobs such as professors, lawyers, and so on were closed off to men, women were in fact still working. 

Many of these jobs did in fact occupy domestic tasks, such as the ones listed above, but that did not mean that these women were doing these domestic tasks for their own family.

They were doing the childrearing and household tasks alongside or just plain for another household. 

Countryside homes often employed the help of servants if they could to sustain their livelihood, as the women were in charge of bread and beer making, preserving as well as cooking food, making soap and candles, doing the cleaning and washing of the house, mending and washing laundry, being in charge of the poultry, as well as many other tasks of which were not assisted by the commodities, we have today like washing machines, dishwashers, conventional ovens, etc.  

These were not simple times just because of the lack of cellphones and the internet, these women were not living a quiet, domestic, little life, they were doing backbreaking work as early as before the sun rose until it set again and only to be paid very little for it all. 

The only women who did not have to live this life, were the women married to men who owned estates.

So, you got to supervise the governess working with your children, or the cooks in your kitchen, or the servants doing the cleaning for you, but you weren’t actually doing any of it.

Which while comparably more preferable within this period, it sort of defeats the whole trad wife deal of them doing it all. 

As for my second point, feminists do not hate women who choose to stay home and look after children and a spouse.

If that is the life you want to live, and you have the means to do so I fully support women choosing that path.

That is the whole point of feminism, you get to choose how you spend your life instead of being forced to be a wife, mother and homemaker because it was the only role for you to do. 

What I often see is a cycle perpetuated by these women and the content they make.

They have decided, that regardless of what anyone may say, they are prosecuted for choosing this life.

So forth, they make content about this assumed prosecution framing it in a way as to make themselves just look so innocent and confused as to why they’re though out this way, while attacking feminism and the stereotypical feminist.

This type of content that ends up on feminist feeds, and when so many people respond there is bound to be at least one that tells this creator exactly what she claims she is being told, and it is enough to continue to perpetuating this prosecution complex. 

It does not matter how many other women may try to respectfully start a conversation with her, that confirmation bias is just too strong, and it will just push her beliefs even deeper.  

On a more personal level, I get wanting this idea of a life.

I have said many times over I want a Victorian house far enough away from town I can get away from the noise, but nearby enough I can use recourses and commodities.

I want land for goats and chickens, a flower garden and vegetable garden. I want to have home remedies.

I want children with my partner, but before that I want a simply wedding in a gothic church.

I love cooking from scratch I love being resourceful.

I love sewing both by hand, and with my antique machine.

I love painting, embroidery, piano and spending as much time off screens as possible in this day and age. 

I love reading.

I love being mindful.

I understand the allure, but I do not find it necessary to paint myself a victim to modern day feminists, instead of capitalism.