I married my husband in July of 2025. At the time, I had no job. I don’t recall my savings being in the best spot. And for the first year of our marriage, he covered most of our bills. So how did I resist the pressure to become a trad wife in Trump’s America?
I had a lot of trepidation about starting marriage on an uneven playing field. The circumstances of our union were rather rushed and not what we envisioned. As someone who is more online than they’d like to be, in a few short years I saw social media trends shift from glitzy girl bosses to aesthetic farmhouses full of children and gingham. I knew the tumultous political landscape that was fueling that change and did not want to be a part of it. To assuage this fear, I had to do an inventory of my life, my goals, and what I was bringing into our relationship to remind myself that I could never be a trad wife because that isn’t a goal of mine. In fact, I don’t think I could be one even if I wanted to.
Before we got married, my husband moved into my apartment of 4.5 years. Our ideal? No. But that in and of itself gave me a sort of leg up. I was familiar with all the bills, the budget to run the household, who to go to for what if something went wrong. I wasn’t a teenager (my God) or early 20-something with no awareness of my finances let alone ours. I was 30 years old and had been financially independent for the 8 years between graduating college and combining some finances with my husband. I think on a simple, fundamental level running our household was not my only purpose nor goal. I had run this exact household single-handedly for years and was actively advancing my career to do so more comfortably. I was set to begin my master’s program, first year fully funded, two months into our marriage cementing my switch from education to librarianship. Having kids was a conversation in our relationship but not a solidified plan in any way. My only debt was the car I bought brand new in my name only in 2022. Although my emergency fund had shrunk during the first half of the year, I still had a decent retirement account, nearly flawless credit, and an airtight budget. I was not an ideal candidate for trad wifery because I was already too of the world and not the domicile to begin with.
For his part, my husband knew both himself and who he was marrying. He had zero debt whatsoever, a master’s degree in his career field, a job to match and his own path in mind. Seeing him graduate early in our relationship actually kickstarted me doing what I needed to for grad school. We had been together for nearly 3 years by the time we got married, having started dating in our late 20s when we both were firmly established as “grown ups.” Before we ever became an item, we discussed our worldviews, our life goals, and what we wanted in a partner. AKA if marriage is a contract we both wanted to sign one day, would this be a worthwhile venture? What is there to be gained and perhaps more importantly, to be lost?
I’d be remissed to gloss over how my husband is my best friend. He is patient, gentle with me, steady, and heavily attuned to both my needs and his. Marriage is a contract but it’s also a lifelong romantic relationship and the prospect of having found my person at 27 is exciting and reassuring to me, not a death sentence. There is no “you guys don’t understand, he’s actually…” with my husband. He has commandeered all of my friends into being solidly ours now. We don’t eat our meals at opposite heads of a nine foot dining table and discuss spreadsheets over liquor like some kind of House of Cards power couple. I say this to say that you can marry someone you actually like and not get swept into all this.
So what is the undercurrent here? Yes, two industrious, well-educated folks decided to get married a year into Trump’s second term. So what?
Let’s start with identity politics. I am queer and nonbinary. My husband and I are both Black. Arguably, that makes being a trad wife inaccessible to me, despite what the soft life divine feminine influencers will lead you to believe. That is to say that traditional, cisheteronormative gender roles are not at play in our relationship in the way I think is foundational to being a trad wife. And within those traditional gender roles, the soft life divine feminine Black women making videos on YouTube are aware how femininity is a construct of white supremacy and thus, inaccesible to many Black women lest they somehow change themselves. Even aesthetically (which let’s be real – a lot of this boils down to aesthetics and not people’s lived experience), the soft life girls push $500 Dyson AirWraps for easy blowouts, floral prints…all the goddamn blue floral prints you could ever want, and dresses because they know that natural hair and I don’t know, jeans, are not “divine” enough – “feminine” enough. The “living single, dating myself” crowd are precisely positioning themselves to find a husband. As for me and my house (pre-marriage), it wasn’t 100% sure fire I’d even marry a man, let alone that I’d be his emaciated, flouncing, Snow White and the animals cleaning wife. Before I met my husband, I spent 3 years conscienciously not dating and focusing on building myself up as a single person, so that my identity would not be rooted in a relationship.
Practically speaking, like I said, my spouse moved in with me. So the narrative of the man being the provider, Gaston tossing Belle around (I don’t like Disney this much, but the metaphors stick) dynamics wouldn’t work here either. I did not have a household to entice a man. I had one because I needed a place to live. I didn’t hop from my family’s house into my husband’s arms – far from it. And that said, I had (and have) my own money and status without my husband. We met as English teachers. Zooming into what that means, we met at a job that meant both of us were college educated and solidly “middle” “class.” I wasn’t working when we got married because I had health issues, not because I didn’t want to or expected him to cover everything ’til the end of time. And specifically for the early 20-something and teen (my God) trad wife trend, I couldn’t fit into that because my sole purpose in life is not to serve my man. I wasn’t raised to do that. I was raised to fend for myself, specifically with education as my ticket to do so.
Speaking of how I was raised, there’s a religious undercurrent to trad wifedom. My husband and I were both raised Christian – him as a West Indian Catholic and myself as a Methodist. But my parents stopped taking me to church when I was still in elementary school. I read part of the Bible once when I was 10 and didn’t pick it up again until I was 30, despite some of my family members best efforts. We do go to a nondenominational Christian church and even there, we’re constantly met with, “When are you having kids? How many?” Although we believe in God, we believe in a radical Jesus. We believe that Jesus was a Palestinian refugee that a lot of today’s ruling class Americans would imprison or detain as soon as they heard his teachings and saw him gain a following. Trad wifedom and its social media aesthetic serve as but one of the propaganda branches of Christian hegemony. Within that, yes, there is undoubtedly privilege in us being a cishetero-passing, Christian couple. But again, can’t emphasize enough, queer and nonbinary here. I am not a Proverbs 31 woman and never can be. Notice how the cover photo for that article is a thin, smiling white woman in an expensive kitchen, hugging her laundry because she loves serving her family. Even within Black Christian traditions, who I am and how I believe the world should look would get me proverbially stoned. And the fact that my husband chose me as his spouse before God would earn him a couple side eyes.
In examining how from birth, I wasn’t going to be a trad wife, I’m reminded of my introduction to feminism. I went to a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania beginning in 2013, when conversations about rape culture on college campuses abounded. Feeling like a fish out of water, I researched feminism and remember being very…confused, as that introduction was more The Feminine Mystique than The Combahee River Collective. In researching, I watched a talk between Janet Mock and bell hooks (I believe it’s this one but I truly have not revisited it in the 12+ years since then and thus cannot cosign all 2 hours of dialogue) that felt more aligned with my experiences. On my maternal side, all the women in my family worked going back to my great-great-grandmother around the turn of the 20th century if not earlier, and before that they had likely been enslaved. Many of my direct ancestors were teachers, but I thought heavily about Black women, Black Southern women in particular, who worked in domestic service or agriculture. In that history, I can see how the idea of being a stay at home wife and mother is appealing to some Black women. Perhaps we have progressed enough for that lifestyle to be attainable to us. But for me, it was never appealing. My mother has a college degree. Her parents met in college although my grandma didn’t finish. My grandpa’s mother had a nursing degree from Meharry Medical College – a feat for a Black woman in the early 20th century. While it was giving more uppercrust, Jack and Jill than many other Black women’s experiences, there was very much a whispering of the importance of having your own, ’cause a man can snatch it away or die in a heartbeat.
The early 20-something and teenage (again…my God, please) trad wives or better yet, stay at home girlfriends, confidently address their “haters” by saying that they have no backup plan – their husband simply won’t leave them. They cover their ears and sing “la la la” when the millennial stay at home moms warn them, “he will in fact leave you for a younger model when you hit your 30s and your body reflects the children you birthed.” On the contrary, my husband and I have discussed divorce at length. We heavily considered a pre-nup, not as an omen but as assurance for both of us. If we got a divorce tomorrow, I wouldn’t be completely ass out. In fact, I’d have something of a plan precisely because we have planned for that unlikely event. Do people get married to get divorced? Not often. But statistically, it’s possible. As I mentioned, I have accountSSssSsss (plural) I can pull from if need be. My credit cards are mine, not mine because I’m an authorized user on his. We recognize that we may end up growing apart and thank God, I had the upbringing and thus the education and credentials, like a teaching certification that feels bulletproof, to fall back on.
My husband is a deeply private man. I try to only share about him with his permission and even still, on private accounts. So I’m reminded of a quote from the classic television show Bridezillas – “it’s nobody’s fucking business what we do.” The innerworkings of our marriage are just that, inner. But I will say this when it comes to the domestic divide in our household which is not a secret: it does not fall solely on me. As I mentioned, when we got married, I was out of work due to health problems. For the first year of our marriage, my spouse has held us down with the cooking, cleaning, laundry, pet care, you name it. Weaponized incompetence is not a factor nor is resentment. And he does it not just because he loves me but you know what else? His ass needs to eat too. We recognize that provider and receiver is not a dichotomy we abide by. I couldn’t be a trad wife because my husband’s skillset is probably above the red-pill, Provider ™ pay grade. In our first year of marriage, he’s actually delighted in becoming a great cook. Little by little, he is replacing my “ineffective” cleaning arsenal (I still don’t see what’s wrong with the old broom and today he told me he needs a proper mop, not a Swiffer). We both do what we can when we can and recognize our strengths and deficiencies. I couldn’t marry a person, let alone a man, who doesn’t know their head from their tail when it comes to a house. And I find it downright suspicious that trad wives, especially the younger members of the cult, show themselves running pretend errands, stopping for a cheeky Mormon soda, and having elaborate beauty routines instead of showing the brunt work of homemaking.
Again, anchored in the fact my husband is private, a conversation about us having children is both brief yet necessary, so I’ll focus on myself before marriage. My trad wifedom is rendered impossible due to my lack of children. At 31, I should be in the upper single digits when it comes to kids to be productive member of society, according to the cult’s ideals. So the fact that I’ve selfishly prioritized myself and a – hold on, they’re gonna throw up – career over procreating is truly disgusting on my part. For a while there, it was looking like I may be the cool, rich auntie. As a former child and former teacher, I am firmly of the belief that children are oppressed members of society and their creation and subsequent treatment should prioritize their humanity. Unless we are ready to go to bat for universal healthcare, public education reform, addressing the illiteracy epidemic and the uptick in homeschooling, and Black maternal mortality rates, we can’t have a conversation about childrearing in earnest. And again, by virtue of me being Black, my children would be. They’re not who the trad wife, womanosphere is looking out for. I’d argue that making by children content online, they’re not even looking out for their own.
The long and short of it is that when I spiraled and thought, “Am I becoming a trad wife? Have I betrayed womanism?” I realized I could never, short of being beamed up or falling very, very hard. My upbringing, my politics, and in my husband’s words, my tenacity wouldn’t allow it. Also, as a 31-year old, I am an old hag and not possibly a good candidate for the lifestyle. I am not committed to a version of femininity that would allow me to be one. And frankly, the viral-est of the trad wives themselves are still working as influencers. Speaking of Nazi Germany’s popular women’s magazine, historian Claudia Koonz writes,”Frauen Warte contained nothing too political – just broadly appealing lifestyle content about keeping a clean and well-provisioned home while raising a healthy family, with occasional debates about how much makeup one should wear. A barefaced look was preferred – much like the ‘clean girl’ trend of today” (source). We should all be critical of such content and it’s parallels to past iterations and be asking ourselves, how am I situated against this backdrop?
Sources and Further Reading
From Nazi Germany to Trump’s America: why strongmen rely on women at home (The Guardian)
Teenages are Becoming Tradwives and It’s SCARY (YouTube)
The “Stay at Home Wife” Trend is Deeply Concerning (YouTube)
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