The Tradwife Tragedy

Exclusive to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Have you heard of the Tradwife Movement yet? It’s an acronym for “Traditional Wife.” So far, it resides especially among millennial and Gen Z women. These young women would prefer being stay-at-home wives, keeping house, and raising kids as depicted in ’50s and ’60s movies, TV series — Leave it To Beaver, The Dick van Dyke Show, Dennis the Menace, The Donna Reed Show, I Love Lucy — and so forth.

At hazard of melting a few feminist, LGBTQ — and other currently uncategorized snowflakes — I would suggest that these OG young ladies are embracing their honest, basic, biological genetic nature in the face of a hostile and self-destructive culture.

Now being rather strangely in touch with several of the above, particularly the feminist branch — because I was raised by my mother, grandmother, and their stalwart aid, Helen Kovachik — I can speak with experience and a reasonable amount of credibility.

In particular, my mother, a successful Broadway actress ( Having Wonderful Time“ etc.), gave up her career, worked as a chef, and then a teacher and finally a college professor in order to raise me.

She was a great mom and so I should have realized the implications when she told me every once in awhile that she would have much prefered to stay at home, keep house and raise a bunch of kids, even in preference to her Broadway career.

I always thought that was interesting but I failed to take it seriously until I got my second datapoint.

For convenience we can call that second datapoint Myra. She was a successful women’s rights attorney and best friends with Steve Goldberg, another quirky gambling legend straight out of the late 20th century. That’s why, along with my last wife Chrissy, we were having a comped lunch at Donald Trump’s Atlantic City Taj Mahal before it went bankrupt.

Myra told us she had her dream job but she was unhappy and seriously depressed. Now Myra’s dream job was, as she described it, “suing abusive husbands into the gutter or putting them in jail.” But, she said, feminism had betrayed her.

“How so?” I asked.

“Feminism told me I could only be happy if I had a career. I now realize that was a lie, a big lie. My inner voice is telling me I should have gotten married, and been a home-maker raising children.

“My clock has been ticking for years and I’ve been ignoring it in favor of the feminist ideal. I’m afraid it’s too late for me now. All I can see ahead is a lonely old woman.“

She went on to tell us that a majority of her friends, mostly successful professional women, felt similarly.

So, my mom wasn’t alone. How about you?

And, do you have to have a job to be a feminist?

I suspect a lot of that notion has something to do with what the government-corporate-complexlearned from putting Rosie the Riveter to work during WWII, particularly the advantages of being able to tax the female half of the population as well as the male half. That’s a conspiracy theory for another time. But consider Marilyn Waring’s “If Women Counted” — or a TED TALK right from the lady herself.

My grandmother was a militant feminist, marched for the right to vote and never held a job a day in her life.

So where did the part of feminism that goes far beyond “equal pay for equal work” and the right to vote come from?

Chrissy’s daughter got a college scholarship and partied it away but she learned something important anyway. “All my Women’s Studies profs were man-haters. I like men,” she told me.

Now, of course, not all young women feel that way. How many who do feel that way won’t admit to it? After all, they would be betraying today’s pseudo-feminism and a big chunk of everything they’ve been indoctrinated to believe about being a modern woman.

But that’s only the first half of the tragedy.

The second-half is that current American culture, in addition to emasculating men in subtle and not so subtle ways, has made it almost impossible to be a Tradhusband, that is, a bread-winner who can afford to support a stay-at-home Tradwife and family.

It’s the taxes.

Even in the ’90s, my friend and sometimes mentor James Libertarian Burns, wanted to be married rather than “indulge in victimless crimes with his hooker,” as he delicately put it. But although he had a decent casino income, he never felt he could afford the stay-at-home wife and kids he wanted. Sadly, he never married.

In the 50s and 60s, the historical period most Tradgirls (I know, I’m being “un-woke“) favor, it was possible for one breadwinner to support the whole family.

But even 30 years ago according to The Family Research Council, taxes had increased so much that in a two-parent family – – –

One parent worked to support the family, the other to support the government.

So, even before the Turn of the Century, the result of supporting government was that there was rarely a stay-at-home mother and the average teen hadn’t had an uninterrupted ten minute conversation with either parent in the last month. Half the kids had used tobacco, two thirds had used alcohol, and one third “illegal” drugs. -CNN & COMPANY, 19 Oct 1995

In a rather extraordinary effort to overcome this, my son and his wife arranged their working schedules so that one of them could always be home with my granddaughter. The result was that they were rarely home and awake at the same time. They eventually divorced, explaining that, in keeping their daughter safe, they’d become strangers.

So girls, if you want to have babies, thanks to Uncle Sam and his mimics, you have a better than 50/50 chance of ending up raising them on your own. And you won’t be able to be a stay-at-home mom because you’ll need at least one job.

And that’s the true Tradwife Tragedy.

What are you going to do about it?

In this case I’m asking because I don’t have a clue and I’m hopeing some of you problem-solvers out there do – – –

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L. Reichard White [send him mail] taught physics and the philosophy of science, designed and built a house, ran for Nevada State Senate, served two terms on the Libertarian National Committee, managed a theater company, etc. For the next few decades, he supported his writing habit by beating casinos at their own games. His hobby, though, is explaining things he wishes someone had explained to him. You can find a few of his other explanations listed here.