Trad Wife Fad: Romancing the Pioneer

Three of my four grandparents were born on a farm and grew up in houses that would now be termed “quaint” or “rustic” in the language of real estate agents.  They were intimate with outhouses and ice delivery and a range of rural realities.  I heard tales of outdoor prairie adventures, haylofts, and the tedium of chopping wood and hauling water.  And when older, more on the reality of accidents, deadly snow storms, epidemics, and the isolation of farm life.

So, the politicized and commercialized reverence and romanticization of the Trad Wife, broadcast by influencers who allegedly grind their own flour make me grind my teeth.  You can find an astonishing array of personalities in an online search for “trad wife”, ranging from earnest evangelists to carefully crafted and well-lighted videos of child-model children gratefully receiving their nutritious home-grown artisan snacks.  And there is a contingent Greek chorus of other critic-bloggers posting exposes of other not-trad-enough bloggers.  Apparently rural seclusion does not prevent female-rivalry snark.

Full disclosure, I did have a brief affinity for baking bread and tried canning my too-many tomatoes one summer and making jam twice in a fit of early marital domestication efforts. But once I was wrangling two children the bread pans and canning jars got dusty.  I continued to love growing tomatoes—I just ate them off the vine or gave them away.

I absolutely believe everyone owes farm families and farm workers reverence for their labor and preservation of the land--but the fad for farm romanticism has a political cant that tends to deny realities of class, privilege and two generations of women’s rights.

I was 3 years out of college before I could get a credit card, a loan, or buy a car without a male on the contract.  The romanticized proposal that a young women should cheerully “submit” to their husband because this allows them to enjoy a “clear division of emotional, administrative, and physical labor in the home makes me want to craft small tasteful Molotov “craft cocktails.” 

The same website offered to send me, for only $5.99, a Kitchen Management Manual that would include a meal planner, shopping list, recipe card, pantry and freezer guide, seasonal food guide, conversion charts..AND FREE BONUS Laundry Tips!

No thank you.  Not in this Lifetime….

Help remind friends and random readers you know that, since life is hard, and women still struggle everywhere, we need to read good-humored stories of good-hearted women who will get up to good trouble when it is called for

Go to Bookshop, Amazon (for Kindle), or your favorite local book source and enjoy Not The Trip We Planned