Moms Need Help: Domestic Labor, Trad Wives, and Motherhood Under Capitalism

*Mr. Sandman by The Chordette's lofi remix plays* music is in the description Beaver: "Girls got it lucky don't they mom?" Mrs. Cleaver: Why do you say that? Beaver: Well they don't have to be smart They don't have to get jobs or anything. All they  got to do is get married. Mrs. Cleaver: Well Beaver today girls can be doctors and lawyers too you know. Beaver: You mean there's no dumb people left in the world? *abrupt vhs stop and rewind sound effect* When you think of a housewife what do you  p

icture? A 1950s blonde making her husband dinner? A frazzled over tired woman running after her  toddler? A modern fresh-faced woman happily cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and taking care of the kids with ease on some sort of farm? I guess whatever you may imagine is how you view the work  of a housewife. If you think it's an easy relaxing job where you just get to stay at home all day and  play with your kids then you imagine the blonde or the happy woman who is doing her biologically  desti

ned job of nurturing and cleaning, but if you know how hard it is to be the default parent  particularly a stay-at-home mom in today's day and age in the US you know that the worn out dejected  mom is closer to most women's actual realities. Being a stay-at-home mom you're not only a mom  giving round the-clock child care you're also a cook, a housekeeper, a chauffeur and more all  rolled into one. It's hard work that goes largely unappreciated and it's mostly done by women.  According to Oxfam

"Women reported doing more than 3/4 of unpaid care work globally when compared  to men and make up 2/3 of the paid care Workforce. They carry out 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care  work every day when valued at minimum wage this would represent a contribution to the global  economy of at least 10.8 trillion a year." Many say at home parents work around the clock. If you  have young children work can often mean nighttime feedings, greeting early morning risers, and late  night meal prep. "We're p

arents with no support we feel guilty taking breaks because it quits all  your responsibility on the other one." And this isn't to say that sayat home moms hate their kids  or their role as the default parent, but just that caregiving and domestic labor is work that never  really gets appreciated because it's just women's work, it's just what you're supposed to do as a  woman and didn't you want kids? Being a mom who gets to stay at home and be with her kids all day  is amazing why are you compl

aining? And this hurts even more when coming from other women especially  tradwife mom influencers whose job it is to sell you this dream of housewifery and motherhood  without disclosing that they're getting paid to do so. Ultimately they're the Hypocrites because  though their stay-at-home moms they're also work from home moms. They make an income and have a job  which they're telling you to give up. The majority of Housewives and mothers who have to stay at  home don't have time to make highl

y curated and filtered content of themselves cooking meals  from scratch. And in fact though we like to think of Housewives as women married to rich men who  can afford to stay home on one income many stay at home moms are immigrants and from the lower  class. In 2014 a Pew research study showed that in the US stay-at-home mothers are younger poorer  and less educated than their working counterparts. For example 34% of stay-at-home mothers are poor  compared with 12% of working mothers. They're

also less likely to be white and more likely to be  immigrants. And according to a new Institute for family studies analysis of the 2017 American  Community survey mothers married to husbands who work full-time and year round the population  most likely to have the option of staying home they found there's a U-shaped curve between  mother's chances of being out in the labor force and her husband's earning income. That is the Real  Housewives of America are most likely to be found among women mar

ried to men earning just a little  or quite a lot. Close to half of mothers whose husbands earn 250,000 or higher a year 46% are not  in the labor force. On the other end of the income Spectrum 35% of mothers whose husbands make less  than 25,000 a year are stay-at-home moms mothers. Married to husbands with an income between 50,000  and 75 ,000 the group that includes the median husband's income of 60,000 are the least likely  to stay at home. And even if you want to re-enter the workforce afte

r giving birth due to lack of  maternity leave it's still a lot harder to do so and most women have at least one year without  any earnings. About 43% of women workers had at least one year with no earnings. This is at least  twice the rate of men according to the Institute of women's policy research. And the penalties of  taking time out of work are high. For women who took just one year off from work their annual  earnings were 39% lower than women who worked all 15 years between 2001 and 2015

. And because of  rising child care costs most families can't afford to send kids to daycare, so one parent must give  up their career and it's usually guess who the mom who already isn't supported after giving birth  by her employer and due to the gender pay Gap will probably never make as much as her husband. Aside  from economic factors women are also encouraged to stay at home and give up their careers due to  this sexist sociocultural norm that women are just naturally more nurturing as a p

arent. So because  of the way the US employment healthare and Child Care Systems are set up along with gender norms  more times than not it's the lower income mother who has to stay home because her husband just  makes more money. However there are a few moms who re-enter the workforce and are the main bread  winner with a stay-at-home dad. And in fact women in the US are now more Highly Educated than their  male peers. In 2021 the census estimated that 21.1 million Americans were enrolled in Co

llege about  12 million of them were female and about 9.2 million were male. That's a difference of about  2.6 million or 56 to 44% split, in other words the current figures certainly suggest that the  Gap is only likely to grow in the coming years. And when it comes to earnings a 2019 Pew research  study found that about 16% of all young women who are working full-time year round live in 22 metros  where women are above or at parity with men when it comes to wages. There's this Geographic  dich

otomy as well where women make more in stereotypically more politically liberal cities as  opposed to more conservative rural areas. As a work from home Mom myself of a toddler I'm on a lot of  parenting forums and this class dichotomy between wealthy career moms and poor stay-at-home moms  really caught my attention because it disrupted at least my own notion of what stay-at-home moms  look like. To me a stay-at-home mom was a wealthy white wine mom in a city suburb but in fact that  type of wo

man today is more likely to work outside the home and it's poor married women are more  likely to stay home. What shocked me the most was the amount of poor stay-at-home moms with no  job and no income who were mainly posting about how frustrated they are as stay-at-home moms due  to the fact that they have no Village and their husband is working non-stop all week and when  their husbands are home they need to rest and recharge meaning they can't help out with child  care or domestic responsibil

ities. The following posts are from the mom Forum what to expect a  U.S.-based pregnancy and parenting brand. "My partner works every day except Thursdays and Fridays. He  leaves at 5:00 a.m. and isn't home until 10:00 p.m. or so. I'm a stay-at-home mom I feel like I'm  always doing this alone and it's pushed us away as a couple. His job allows me to be at home with  our boy however I feel we are now like housemates who happen to have a child together." "My husband  works in trucking but he's lo

cal which sometimes doesn't make a difference when he's gone before  we wake up and home when the kids are asleep. I'm exhausted we have three kids 9, 5 and 3 months. I'm busy Non-Stop and understand how much my husband works but last night after a very hectic  he evening with the kids and putting them to bed I sat down to eat my dinner as usual and it just hit  me. I realized how many nights I spend alone eating dinner. I felt so lonely but I know that I have a  full house." "My fiance works in

the oil fields in Alaska and we live in Alabama so he's gone for 3  weeks and then he's home for 3 weeks. The 3 weeks he's gone definitely suck big time. Feels like I'm  a single mom." "My husband works 6 or seven days a week 10 to 12 hours each day we have four kids.  We can't really plan a family day because he's always working it stinks." Honestly the more posts  I read on these forums the more I become convinced moms in the US live in an actual healthscape.  So in this video I want to explo

re this topic of stay-at-home moms more closely and help us  rethink what stay-at-home moms really look like, and this General stay-at-home mom Paradox. This  idea that kids will make you happy or complete you and therefore you shouldn't complain about  Mom duties or the fact that you have to cook clean and do laundry and take care of the household  budgets, expenses, grocery, bills, shopping, doctor appointments Etc, all while your husband gets to  have a life outside of the home albe it even i

f it's a stressful one. I also want to dispel this  idea that stay-at-home moms are only wealthy white women who can survive off of one income  because that just erases the very real fact that many stay-at-home moms today are stay-at-home  moms because they're poor and have little to no access to affordable child care or higher  education. Working class women and lower income women have always had to work across the board and  didn't have the opportunity to stay home. But we've created such a ha

rd economic landscape that that  today lower inome women have no choice but to stay home due to how terrible the economy is and in the  rise of the sexist notion that that's where women belong. We'll be discussing all of this and More  in part one from a historical and intersectional lens - why do we have these gender spheres to begin  with and how for decades it was only middle class and wealthy white women who could ever come close  to this housewife ideal, but who also due to their whiteness

and class status were the most visible  when fighting against these gender boxes. We'll also be talking about this constant state of  capitalist flux American families seem to be in where the alienation of male labor results  in stricter gender norms for women. In part two we'll be delving into current family demographics  in the US as more single women with kids are on the rise as well as look into same-sex families  and childcare takers of adult parents. Part three will have a heavier focus on

cishet married women  with children today who either work or stay home and why it's so hard to have it all. Next I want  to talk about why trad wife mom influencers are so dangerous and to be brief the short answer is  they enforc this myth that being a stay-at-home mom is a woman's only Destiny and push this  idea that angry feminists are forcing women to work and shame Housewives when that's not true. Women having their own source of income is vital especially if they're in a financially unst

able  situation with kids a scenario I unfortunately come across way too often on parenting slom  forums. Sure it's not every woman's dream to be a girl boss or even have a career and we  shouldn't ostracize women who choose or want to stay at home, but then why shame women who want  to work or have a career and kids in order to make sure they're financially stable and independent? As the center of American progress puts it "work is essential to women's Economic Security, social  inequality, and

a robust and sustainable economy for all." Lastly I'll talk about where stay-at-home  dads and work from home dads fit into all of this. Before I start this video I just want to say that  you should definitely check out Shanspeare's videos on trad wives as well as Intelexual Media's videos , specifically the ' 80s history and '90s history ones. Their work is required  viewing. All the links to my research are in the description below. So without further Ado let's  get into it it's going to be a

long one. Before we take a look into today's modern  families let's first take a look into the history of the traditional read - white - American Family. Elaine Tyler May a US historian wrote in their article Family Values the uses and abuses of  American family history in 2003 that as a Young Nation the US lacked institutions were national  identity typically derived from - particularly the U.S. back in 1776 lacked a rigid cast system based  on a monarchy and aristocracy. She argues lacking th

ose characteristics the United States invented  its own traditions and placed the family in the center, as the institution where citizens were  bred and nurtured. Believing in the rights of the individual but fearful of tyranny from above as  well as Anarchy from below the nation's Founders invested in the institution of the family the  responsibility for maintaining social order in the Democracy. When it came to women's roles in  colonial society historian Linda Kerber notes in her book women o

f the Republic that the family was  an important ideological and political institution in the founding of the nation domestic gender  roles, particularly women's roles as mothers of future citizens was Central to the creation of a  Democratic Society. Perhaps that is why the framers of the Constitution dismantled virtually all  vestiges of Old World hierarchies with the single exception of coverture the common law practice  that rendered a married woman politically and legally covered by her hus

band. As a femme couverte a  married woman exercised her obligations to the state through her role as wife and mother in  the family. So white Colonial families in the new nation began with puritanical marriages and  women had this expectation that they would nurture the home and the nation's future citizens, thus  creating in theory these two distinct spheres where women work inside the home as mothers  Educators and caretakers while the men work in politics, governing and outside the home. And

though  there's this long-standing idea that this is always been the case since the nation's founding  it's not entirely true. As written in the social history of the American family and encyclopedia  most white colonists were poor agrarian farmers who lived off the land in pretty bleak conditions  and thus all the labor and production done on the farm was equally valued and equally shared. Most  colonists made their living in agriculture either by owning and farming land or working on someone 

else's. The majority of colonists would have been considered self-employed but fairly poor. Life  expectancy was around 45. Mortality death rates were high at most stages especially infancy.  In these tumultuous times a shortage of women resulted in high numbers of single men. Those  who married formed what today's sociologists would call co-provider families, essentially the  household was a place of production. Each member's labor was valued as it helped to sustain the  family. Although this

was clearly a patriarchal society with men having more legal power than  women, wives labor was valued as an economic contribution to the survival of the household as  was the husbands. Men sought strong skilled wives who could make the journey across the country  and or endure the rigors of low Tech farming life. A gender division of labor existed with men  usually plowing and planting in the fields and hunting and women tending to Gardens and chickens  processing foods and milking cows. To bri

ng in some cash women and children often did piecework such  as sewing items for sale in the home. Thus white settler families in the US though subjugated women  constitutionally, legally and had gendered division of labor the even more patronizing women's sphere  wasn't prevalent just yet. Rather everyone in a household had to work together co-provide if you  will because if they didn't they would die. And I just like to point out here that though we like  to think of colonial women as being so

demure and subservient to men the majority of women weren't  drinking tea in Williamsburg or going to balls but working on farms with kids alongside their  husbands. Women especially poor women have always been essential laborers who never had it easier  than men or just stayed indoors all day. Not to go off on a tangent but it's even been noted  that women were Hunters as well as gatherers, Centuries and centuries ago. During colonial times  and pre- Civil War Black women were enslaved by whit

e families to do domestic duties by those  white women who could afford it. According to Duke University in 1860 1% of white Southern families  own 200 or more human beings but in states of the Confederacy at least 20% owned at least one  and in Mississippi and South Carolina it was as high as 50%. The domestic duties of enslaved  Black women included child rearing, laundering cooking, cleaning and at times even working in the  fields. Enslaved Black children were forcibly sold like animals and

ripped away from their families  all while their mothers were obligated to care for white children. This idea of being your own  Farm Boss producing for yourself working side by side with your family wasn't one Black families  could take part in. Black enslaved women's labor wasn't their own their bodies weren't their own  and neither were their children. The emergence of the woman's sphere wouldn't come about until the  late 1800s with the rise of cities, the Industrial Revolution and new techn

ologies and factories. When  it came to white families many who had made their livelihood in farming and had expected their  children would do the same, were displaced by by technological advancements that increased  agricultural production while eliminating the need for so much human labor. Men who had seen  themselves as autonomous their own bosses had to move to the city where they attempted to  sell their labor to new manufacturers in what seemed to them alienating working conditions.  At fi

rst women and children especially among new European immigrants took similar jobs  though they were paid less. It is estimated that in a number of cities children contributed  to 20% of the family's income. Production became increasingly separated from the home, and the  home became viewed as one's own private Haven in a dog eat dog world. Thus the normalization of  factory life meant that production would leave the domestic sphere the home and be done elsewhere. It seems that with each era sinc

e then the worker and the means of production have become more  and more removed, and parallel to that gender roles have become more and more strict. Husbands  now worked outside the home instead of alongside their wives as that's where the money was and in  theory the women would stay home the husband had to be out in the public sphere creating the wealth  but his wife was free to manage the private sphere, the woman's sphere, enter The Cult of Domesticity. Together a successful husband and wif

e created a picture of Perfect Harmony as he developed skills  for business she cultivated a complimentary role mainly taking care of the children, the meals, the  chores and the household overall. During that time the newly created roles for men and women were  thought to reflect their true nature. A true man was concerned about success and moving up the  social ladder he was aggressive competitive rational and channeled all of his time and energy  into his work. A true woman on the other hand

was virtuous her four chief characteristics were  piety Purity submissiveness and Domesticity. She was the great civilizer who created order in  the home in return for her husband's protection Financial Security and social status. Women's  virtue was as much of a Hallmark of Victorian society as materialism, as long as women functioned  flawlessly within the domestic sphere and never venturing from it, women were held in reverance  by their husbands in general Society, but this was carried to ri

diculous extremes. To protect  young women's Purity certain words could not be spoken in their presence undergarments were  unmentionables a leg or an arm was called a limb for example. And though the women's sphere seems patronizing it was seen by many including other women as equally important. As written in  Godey's Lady book from 1856 the companion of man should be able thoroughly to sympathize with  him. Her intellect should be as well developed as his. We do not believe in the mental ineq

uality  of the Sexes, we believe that the man and the woman each have work to do for which they are  specially qualified, and in which they are called to excel. Though the work is not the same it is  equally Noble and demands an equal exercise of capacity. The woman's sphere wasn't intended to be a  bad thing and in fact was seen as extremely vital work which very much is. Where the problem arises  however is when staying home and childbearing and rearing and domestic duties are believed to  jus

t naturally be what women are best suited for and that they're not suited for governing or  running businesses or doing anything outside of the home and even when they do work outside the  home they should get paid less for it. Women are irrational and illogical but raising babies and  children is their job make it make sense. In the end the domestic sphere is important but it isn't  a woman's only place because then it just starts to feel patronizing and infantalizing, like throwing  women a bo

ne by saying you're so important or you're important too but not actually meaning  it because you as a man would never do a woman's work like take care of children or wash dishes  or clean the house do laundry Etc because it's beneath you no matter how hard you try to Hype  it up as important. During the early 1900s when one woman Anna Jarvis tried to actually have a day  to appreciate mothers and the woman's sphere and who succeeded in 1908 but eventually she became so  fed up with the holiday

of Mother's Day due to its commercialization that she tried to have the  whole thing cancelled. Jarvis once said according to an article published in the St Louis Post  Dispatch on Mother's Day in 1944 the telegraph companies with their ready-made greetings the  florist with their high pressure campaigns and the awful prices and the candy manufacturers  and greeting card manufacturers have made a racket out of my ideas. The failure of Mother's  Day and at times even International women's day in

actually meaning anything for the status of  women particularly stay at home moms who Society claims are so important just speaks volumes to me. Before we move on from the Industrial Revolution I want to add that This Woman's sphere was more of  an unattainable ideal than an actual real reality for most women. Millions of poor immigrant women  and children worked in factories just as much as men they just happen to make less money. During  a Wisconsin Bureau of Labor investigation into a potato

chip factory in 1902 the investigator  noted the shops were open to every sort of objection they were dirty poorly ventilated  unheated, usually on the cramped second floor of a dilapidated building, and reached by steep  cluttered stairways. An inspector reported that as the door was opened it was at first impossible  to see the sords because of the clouds of dust the investigator found it difficult to give an  adequate picture without seeming to overstep the limits of the truth. Unless you wer

e a rich  married white woman with servants who were mostly Black or immigrants it was impossible to live up  to this idea that you could stay at home and do all the housework and Child Care by yourself.  As historian Elaine Tyler May wrote only the most privileged white Protestant women in the towns  and cities had the resources that allowed them to devote themselves full-time to nurturing their  families and rearing future citizens. Their Leisure Time for moral uplift depended upon the labors 

of other women enslaved Black people, immigrant household servants, and workingclass women who  toiled in factories to provide the goods and services that would enable privilege white women  to pursue their role as society's moral Guardians. And it was those very women affluent and educated  women who had the time to organize and gather who first rebelled against their constrained domestic  roles, arguing that the system of coverture denied them their rights as Citizens. The doctrine  of covert

ure this idea that women had no legal rights once they got married was gradually  abolished in the late 19th and early 20th century. In some cases it had happened state by state for  example in 1848 New York state passed the married woman's property act this allowed married women  to own property in their name apart from their husbands, but it's important to note that these  women who rebelled against the woman's Sphere for example suffragists who fought for women's right  to vote at the turn of

the century were primarily only fighting for white women's right to vote.  Some white women suffragists were particularly angry when the 15th amendment was passed in 1870  which gave Black men the right to vote as it was passed before the white women's right to vote  in 1919. When suffrages gathered in Seneca Falls New York in July 1848 they advocated for the  right of white women to vote the participants were middle class and upper class white women a  Cadre of white men and one African-Americ

an male Frederick Douglas. The esteemed abolitionist  had forged a strong working relationship with fellow abolitionists and white women suffragists  including Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B Anthony no Black women attended the convention. Although  Black women were profoundly absent at Seneca Falls a greater degree of cultural inclusion was  on the horizon African-American abolitionist Sojourner Truth spoke at a women's right convention  in Akron Ohio in 1851. During her famous speech on the abol

ition of slavery and the promotion of  women's rights truth allegedly bared her breast and proclaimed ain't I a woman? The feminist movement  has a long history of racial exclusion that we shouldn't forget. I think it's also important to  point out how white women racially benefited from the domestic sphere, pioneered in the 1800s, by being held up as pure and virtuous and morally upright and in need of protection from racial  others. White women benefit from their perceived piety and Purity and

this representation of  all that is good in a white man's world. This privilege is very seldom talked about when it  comes to discussions about the domestic sphere and its history because it's not an easy past to  confront but it's crucial not to leave out the fact that white women never did their housework  or child rearing alone. We can't forget about the racial hierarchy that subjugates Black and brown  women who up until recently never really got the chance to partake in this very white sph

ere of  raising future citizens namely because their kids weren't and still aren't seen as real citizens  but second class ones who are disposable. With the Industrial Revolution we can see this beginning  of a pattern when it comes to women's roles as workers and mothers that has repeated itself in  US history time and time again. First there's this alienation of Labor leading to the solidifying of  gender roles that suppress women and then middle class and upper middle class white women living

  out that role realize that it doesn't make them happy. Next they rebel against their patriarchal  position but leave marginalized women out of that conversation at least until the past few decades  as we'll get to later. This cycle would be seen again in the 1950s post World War II as women who  once worked in factories were told to return to the home and given this unattainable idea of being  a perfect housewife that of course made them all super happy. In More work for mother Ruth Schwarz  C

ohen wrote that psychiatrists, psychologists and popular writers of the era critiqued women who  wish to pursue a career and even women who wish to have a job referring to such unlovely women as  lost suffering from penis envy, ridden with guilt complexes or just man-hating. Cohen highlights  how during the 1950s and the Resurgence of The Cult of Domesticity further shifted child rearing  and domestic work to women, mainly through this normalization of the happy housewife on shows like  Leave it

to Beaver, but also through targeted ads and consumerism for the latest appliances that  showed how easy housework can be and how much companies cared about when hum's wellbeing. Isn't  it wonderful how this washer does all these heavy things? Implying that a woman can and should do it  all without complaint and all by herself. However as many have suggested this image of the Suburban  housewife the white woman toiling away for her husband in the middle class suburbs leaves out a  great many wo

men, primarily Black women who worked as domestic servants and nannies and who had  to leave the rich white towns before Sundown due to racial segregation. Black women took  care of white children and households since since the founding of the US and then continued  to do so through the 1950s because of legalized racial segregation. It was essentially impossible  for Black people and families to integrate into society and Achieve similar Financial stability  to white people until recently due to

racism. Even though Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique from  1963 was important in highlighting the way white Suburban moms in New York and Long Island felt  neglected purposeless and resentful and that's a real problem, there's also no accountability  in their benefiting from a racial hierarchy even during one of the largest women's Liberation  movements in history. White women weren't doing it alone and this techno-fascist fantasy where the  white upper class can rid themselves of their role i

n racial oppression through buying the  latest Appliance never fully manifested. Though you can't say companies didn't try to totally  get rid of Black domestic servants by trying to automate their jobs. Honestly if there weren't home  technological advancements I don't know if white women would ever feel so bored with their lives if  they could still subjugate Black women. Today Black and brown women continue to be employed as  caregivers primarily to the elderly in nursing homes. Since the 197

0s Black women who worked as  domestic servants were moved to the healthcare sector and the effects of this can still be felt  today. In the journal article structural racism and Black women's employment in the US Healthcare  sector Janet Dill and Mignon Duffy wrote Black women have the highest probability of working  in the long-term care sector 37% and in licensed practical nursing or eight occupations 42%. Our  findings link Black women 's position in the labor force to the historical legacie

s of sexism  and racism dating back to the division of care work in slavery and domestic service. In general  it's easy just to focus on the dominant image of the white college educated 1950s housewife who  left college at 19 to get married and have kids because then we don't need to think about the ways  in which those middle and upper class white women also benefited from the labor of Black domestic  workers who never really had a choice on whether they could pursue higher education and leave 

the domestic sphere because they were at times born into it. I want to acknowledge that this is a  slippery slope and it's easy to start playing like the oppression Olympics on who had or has it worse  and whose struggle is really valid but in reality we shouldn't compare because they're incomparable.  The point of highlighting the differences in these histories and racial hierarchy is to point out  how women's issues Encompass not just one type of woman. During the 1960s second wave feminism h

ad a  very narrow Focus. This meant that the perspectives of lower class women or women of color were not  considered. Betty Friedan the author of The Feminine Mystique even went as far as calling lesbian women  one of feminism's foremost internal threats which attempted to isolate homosexual women from the  feminist movement. Because these beliefs excluded those women who were not white heterosexual  and middle class it's clear that second wave feminist thought did not include an intersectional

  perspective. However this doesn't mean that Black women weren't at the Forefront of the 1960s  women's movement. The Montgomery Bus boycott wouldn't have been possible without the support  of Black domestic workers. During the boycott many chose to walk to their employers homes instead  of riding the bus which caused them to arrive at work late and in many circumstances fatigued.  Many white employers unintentionally helped the boycott because they had to pick up their Black  domestic workers

who refused to take public transportation. Movement Scholars have argued that  because over half of the Black women workers in Montgomery during the boycott were employed in  white households, the boycott simply would not have succeeded without their support. Now I'm  going to bring him a cup of coffee just like he brought me a cup of coffee this morning  and that young man is what marriage is made of. It is give and take 50/50 and if you don't  get it together and drop these Macho attitudes you

are never going to have anybody bringing  you anything anywhere any place anytime ever. In the 1980s and '90s The Cult of Domesticity  seemed to finally be abolished. The gender role issues women were facing in the'80s were vastly  different than those in the ' 50s as by this time most Americans were comfortable having female  doctors lawyers Mayors and bosses and the number of women attending college surpassed men. The decade also narrowed the wage inequality Gap in 1979. Women made on average

58 cents for every  dollar a man made by 1994 the average woman made 72 cents for every dollar a man made. However there  was still a racial pay gap between women. In 1989 white women working full-time made a median weekly  wage of $334 while Black women made $301 and Latino women made $269. Women in in the 1980s were still  employed in traditionally low salary jobs such as Clerical Service or factories but they were  also moving into other segments. On top of that there was this notion that a

woman could have it  all and though we should support a woman's career she should still be a mother and do domestic work  which made family life particularly married life very stressful. Women were expected to give 100%  of themselves at work and at home, yet this was not sustainable. Men began doing more housework  and child care during the 80s but studies show that it was not significant. Sociologist arle  Russell Hochschild studied the division of household chores in her book the second shift

  published in 1989 she concluded that while some men had stepped up their game, women performed  approximately 15 more hours of household work per week or one additional month of work per year.  When the activists of the 1960s fought to liberate women they envisioned a world with flexible  workplaces where both Partners could enjoy professional success, homes where both Partners  shared in the responsibilities and a government or corporations that would provide  child care. However they did not

Envision a world where everything would stay the same and where  women would have to do more to succeed. Yes women were allowed to have lives outside of the home and  even given credit cards in their own name apart from their husbands as of 1974, but almost nothing  at a systemic or cultural level changed for them. The government during the 1980s was extremely  conservative the idea of a free public option for healthcare maternity leave and child care was  out of the question. And though women

seemed to win in their fight for entering the outer influential  sphere of business and politics when they spoke out about workplace harassment they were silenced. Anita Hill was infamously dismissed by an all-male panel of politicians when she called out Supreme  Court nominee Clarence Thomas for sexual assault. The 1990s third wave feminist movement despite push  back from Republicans did make significant gains however. In that by 1993 there was a federal law  against all forms of marital rape

a fight that had begun in the 1970s. In addition professor and  civil rights Advocate Kimberlé W. Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality which he introduced  in 1989 took hold and the ways different women see the world was finally considered not just white  middle class and upper class Protestant cishet married women. So now that we are fully fleshed out  in the history of the origin of the housewife as well as their fight against the domestic sphere  let's take a look at where Modern families

are today and then more specifically how stay-at-home  moms and working moms are holding up. *Mr. Sandman by The Chordette's lofi remix plays* music is in the description Before we get into the current state of  stay-at-home moms and cishet married women with children. Let's talk about other family Dynamics as  the typical 1950s nuclear family though still the majority in the US is far from the only type of  family there is. According to the US Census Bureau in 2020 about 2 thirds of all us hous

eholds were  family households. The same share a decade earlier. Married couples accounted for about 71% of these  households however the census showed that the biggest increases among non-family households  were male householders living alone and female householders who were not living alone but with  children. Single women households with children have continued to rise since the introduction of  no fault divorces during the 1970s. According to the US Census Bureau as of 2020 out of 10 million

  single parent families with children under the age of 18 almost 80% were headed by single mothers. A  third lived in poverty. Today one in five children under the age of 18 a total of about 15.7 million  children are being raised without a father. Around half 51.4% of single mothers have never married  almost a third 29% are divorced and about 2 thirds are white and 1/3 are Black. At any one time 2/3 of single mothers or 73% are working outside the home as they can't afford to work and provide

  for their children without a partner. This is a slightly greater share than the share of married  mothers who are also working outside the home which is 67%. However only half of single mothers  were employed full-time year long about 1 in 5. 20% were jobless the entire year, 41% were employed in  low-wage jobs. Even if a single mother is able to work her earning power still lags significantly  compared with men's about 83 cents to $1 for the same job leaving a wage gap of 17 cents on the  dol

lar. A Single mother's average income is 51k a year while married couples make around 106k  a year. As someone who was raised by a single mother these statistics are painfully familiar  thankfully I lived in a multi-generational home with my grandmother but this isn't the norm  especially in white households. Overall only 7% of households reported being multigenerational  with three or more Generations living Under One Roof. Non-white people in the US are more likely  to live with three or more

Generations Under One Roof. Nearly 20% of all Native Hawaiian and other  Pacific Islander households are multigenerational among white households it's 5%. And honestly having  a large family community supporting one another is necessary under a system that makes child rearing  a one person or at most a two person job. It takes a village to raise a child but in the US it's the  cultural norm to kick your kids out at 18 or even sad or make them start paying rent. Along with  the rise of single mot

hers there's also been an uptick in child Caregivers for parents or adult  family members like grandparents. As of 2005 1.4 million children ages 8 to 18 provide care for  an adult relative, 72% are caring for a parent or grandparent and 64% live in the same household  as their care recipient fortunately most of these children are not the sole caregiver. However it  is expected especially for non-white households that are more likely to be multi-generational  for the older siblings to help out e

specially the older daughters in both adult caretaking and  sibling caretaking. Economist Pamela Jakiela and Owen Owen Ozier of Williams College Massachusetts studied  this phenomenon of children taking care of other children seen through the lens of the younger  child it's Charming to have an older sister taking care of them, but this uneven burden of care  work has real costs for older girls. For instance it often means they have less time for their own  schoolwork and play. Because of how the

US is set up with little to no child care stigmatization  of asking for help with parenting, which is seen as a private personal matter, a lot of the time  the older daughters have to help with household duties and child rearing to help their mom out.  And in the US non-white immigrant women are more likely to be stay-at-home moms. The Institution  for Women's policy research calculated from the 2013 American Community survey that immigrant  women are less likely than U.S. born women to be in t

he labor force 56.2% compared with 59%, while  many immigrant women are thriving in the workforce others encounter challenges that hinder their  participation or limit their access to higher quality employment. These challenges include  the same barriers that all women face such as underevaluation of work performed predominantly by  women and the lack of work family infrastructures and often additional challenges as well such as  limited English proficiency and for those who are undocumented lac

k of access to legal status. From  a 2015 earnings study by the IWPR more than one in 4 immigrant women in the US has a bachelor's  or Advanced degree compared with 30% of us-born women. Among the 10 largest sending countries  of female immigrants Mexico, the Philippines China, India, Vietnam, Korea, El Salvador, Cuba and  the DR and Canada immigrant women from India the Philippines and Korea are the most likely to have  a bachelor's degree or higher. Some immigrant women who have college degree

s however find that their  qualifications are not recognized in this country, and can only find low-skilled low-paying jobs.  Immigrant women also make less than their male counterparts. As for LGBTQ+ families there  were about 1.2 million same-sex couples in the US in 2021 according to the census data. Roughly  710,000 of the same-sex couple households were married and about 500,000 were unmarried. Among  children living with a mother who had a same-sex partner or spouse 12% lived in a househol

d below  the poverty level compared to 9% of those with a father in a same-sex relationship and 10% of those  with a parent in male female relationships. In 2004 of 9,328 same sex couples with children whose  census returns were randomly selected for analysis by the Census Bureau 26 % of male couples included  a stay-at-home parent. So to conclude if you're living in any other type of living Arrangement  other than a cishet U.S.-born marriage you're more likely to live below the poverty line rec

eive less  government benefits and face significant amounts of employment discrimination. And though the  prevalence of differing family Dynamics is growing specifically workingclass single mothers and LGBTQ+ families the government has not done much of anything to facilitate that change and in fact  has begun to crack down on LGBTQ+ people and their rights and education as well as enforce this  harmful rhetoric that women are being too selfish and should just settle for men who treat them like 

[ __ ]. So now let's look into the current state of cishet women in marriages with kids at home  and at work who make up 2/3 of all U.S. households. Today we're living in current fourth  wave era of feminism. Feminists continue to fight for Reproductive Rights, closing the pay Gap, maternity leave and an end to sexual harassment. The newest wave of the women's movement also  pushes back against this persisted myth that women should stay home take care of the kids,  their husbands the house and

shut up about it. We want the right to choose if we become mothers  if we get married and even if we have a career. Lastly we realized that in order to have at all a  career and kids we need a community and government intervention. We need support of men helping us  along if we choose to get married to one, to help us out at work and to treat us with respect. Having  it all doesn't mean doing it all. But unfortunately in the modern US this idea of the independent  family unit where everyone does

their share alone and without complaint is extremely prevalent, as  it helps to uplift this American ideal where you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and remain  self-sufficient even if you're a mother which makes zero sense. Becoming a parent takes a village  but in the US any sense of a village is demonized and any asking for government support is you being  lazy. And if you're wondering where this dangerous notion comes from that families and mothers should  operate independently rather t

han being communal you can thank Ronald Reagan. Reagan shifted  the relationship between the family and the state once again placing the responsibility for  society's welfare on the family not the federal government, and retreating from the policies of  Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Derogatory stereotypes from welfare Queens to dead beat  dads reflected the prevailing notion that citizens responsibilities to society were tied to  their family roles. According to Reagan threats to the na

tion emerged from feminists who allegedly  shirked their domestic roles and Welfare mothers usually represented as Black, even though most  women on welfare were white, who eschewed marriage in favor of the Dole. The antidote once again was  the nuclear family and traditional Family Values, which of course hearkens back all the way to the  1800s, as we just talked about in part one. When the world is chaotic go into the comfort of your own  home where your mom is there with a bowl of warm soup r

ight where she's supposed to be. And if you  can't do that or don't do that then get out of the kitchen if you can't do it all have a career  and be financially independent as well as be an independent mother who doesn't nag her husband or  political leaders for support then don't be one. So due to this lack of help and this dangerous ideal  that you should be self-sufficient even while doing the job of raising kids which is inherently  communal, many women decide that they need to stay home and

give up working. I'd only have 6  weeks maternity to leave anyway, all my income would go to child care what's the point of working?  What if my child gets sick will I have enough sick leave to take care of them? If husbands bring in  more money it makes sense for lower income women to stay home. Like we mentioned before it's more  likely for either extremely wealthy women to stay home or extremely poor women, but it's the women  living in poverty that need to save up more, that don't have dome

stic help, that feel the pressure  of being a mom more than those on the other end of the spectrum. Along with this notion of rugged  individualism and economic constraints some women decide to become stay-at-home moms because they  and their male spouses have internalized this long persisting sexist notion that women just are  more nurturing and biologically programmed to be better parents. As well as more fit for doing  laborious tasks like cooking, washing dishes and sweeping. It's all of the

se combined factors that  have increased the amount of stay-at-home moms in the US. As of 2023 nearly 25% of American  Mothers now identify as stay-at-home parents. A sharp rise from the 15% in 2022. Like I mentioned  in section one there's this cycle that seems to crop up every 30 to 50 years or so which is  that the rise of alienation of male labor leads to more rigid gender roles, which then  leads to more women staying home, which then leads to anxiety and civil unrest among women  the rise

of work alienation due to covid, and most people working [ __ ] jobs that they find no  meaning in, the lack of any real connection to a community due to hyper individualism, and a lack  of third spaces and car culture has bred online communities of stay-at-home moms who have had  to give up their jobs or who are in financially precarious relationships with men who they and  their children become wholly dependent on. It's a recipe for disaster and a situation that is  ripe for men to abuse. And

it just makes me sad that after years of fighting for women's rights  to have lives outside of the domestic sphere that here we are again right back to where we started.  Though women have credit cards now and coverture laws aren't a thing anymore it just seems like  things haven't really changed. Even if you are a woman with a career with a stay-at-home husband  you're still seen as the primary caretaker and housekeeper. Women do much more work in the  house than men even when they out earn the

ir husband says Kate Mangino a gender expert and  the author of equal Partners improving gender equality at home. The effect is that some women  report not being able to reach their professional and income potential. They feel like they can't  volunteer for that trip even if it might lead to a promotion because of the work at home. Husbands  meanwhile have hours of extra time each week to spend on Leisure work Pew found that allows men  endless opportunities according to Mangino. The husband can

learn a hobby he could sleep he could  go back to school or take a class that could make more money in the future, and if you know how hard  it is to take care of a newborn even with help it's exhausting. Newborns can't sleep by themselves  poop by themselves pass gas by themselves eat by themselves they can't even sit up until around  6 months of age, and yet women are told in the US that they should be ready to go back to work  after 6 weeks. How are women who want to breastfeed which is reco

mmended until 6 months to 2 years  of age supposed to do that if they have to be back at work after a month and a half? Sleep in  and of itself is a huge struggle for the first year and this leads to the phenomenon of cry it  out or controlled crying and sleep training in the US with mothers letting their babies learn  to self soothe at Young ages in order for them to fall asleep on their own. This is controversial  in other parts of the world where co-sleeping and soothing your baby to sleep is

the norm. This is  one of the most contentious issues on parenting forums today but a big reason why U.S. mothers  resort to controlled crying is because they need to sleep in order to work the next day, if they  want to keep their job and income and remain financially independent. Sometimes I think about  how in the past at least in other cultures like in ancient China women would be sent off to their  marital homes with a dowry that would consist of valuables that their husbands would usually

leave  for their wives but if they were bad husbands they would take the dowy for themselves. But usually  the husband would let their wife keep this small fortune for themselves as the women usually middle  and upper class women wouldn't be able to work and had bound feet. And sometimes I compare this to the  status of women today women who have no inherited wealth but are in the same position married off  no family in sight and this time with no dowy no valuable possessions just their limited

education  and who now have to depend on their husband for an allowance. Yes believe it or not some women  have to receive an allowance from their husband because they don't work, rather than a what's  mind is yours policy. So these moms on their allowance buy themselves a little coffee treat  now and then and that alone is a big deal. It's really Bleak. I know not all women want to have  careers and that's fine but even having a little job outside the home is crucial in order not to  be depend

ent on others. What if your husband gets sick? What if they die? What if they become violent? What's the backup plan? Most women I'm sure have happy marriages and Partnerships and support  groups but not all. Earning one's own income under a capitalist system is sadly the only way to  ever really be free and a lifestyle that has only recently become available to women of marginalized  racial backgrounds. But some people say isn't being a housewife enough isn't it just a blessing to be  a mom and

stay at home while your husband takes care of the finances? Where is your gratitude?  Why are you complaining about being able to stay home with your kids? And like other waves  of feminism there's always been a conservative backlash but this time the conservative backlash  comes from online Trad wives who say that women should be happy with their biologically destined  role of mother and wife but who themselves are paid influencers so let's talk about it. Now I want to take a a closer look int

o Trad wife mom influencers who are pushing this conservative  agenda online that being a stay-at-home mom and wife is this beautiful thing women get to do and  the angry feminists telling you to get a job are wrong. So first off I want to say that generally I  understand where this push back is coming from as I've already stated women's work is undervalued  and underappreciated and historically has largely been done by Black and brown women who are already  viewed as less than and treated as se

cond class citizens even by their white female peers, and  women today who stay at home aren't just on their phones all day, they're doing housework bathing  and changing diapers making meals breastfeeding pumping Etc. So I get why there's this urge to talk  about housework and The crucial role of domestic labor and the women who do it. The glorification  of stay-at-home momming is purposeful to dispel this myth that stay-at-home moms don't do anything. Women who take care of the children and do

mestic duties need to be valorized and seen as important  and not in a paternal commercial or patronizing way but actually through government intervention  by giving stat home mom stipends for their labor so they're not dependent on their husbands and so  they could afford child care if they need it. Not to mention giving an increase in labor protections  and wages for Black and brown women in domestic care and caregiving roles. It's also important  to raise awareness about how stay-at-home moms

aren't just upper class well-off white women  but also Black and brown immigrant lower class struggling women. But in fact this is a big reason  why these government benefits don't exist, white supremacy doesn't allow it to. Politicians and  government officials say it's because they don't want to give wealthy people who could afford  X Y or Z handouts but it's actually because they don't want to help those at the bottom. Another reason why I get this Trad wife thing is because women aren't a m

onolith, some women  are happy to be stay-at-home moms and do their patriarchal role and take care of the domestic  sphere, and that's fine. Women are autonomous human beings and who do things intentionally and with  purpose and sometimes being a stay-at home home mom is what they want to do and they do it with  pride. If they find joy in household and motherly duties let them. Taking care of a house and kids  is satisfying it can be personally fulfilling but that also doesn't pay the bills. Whe

re I do  draw the line is at this idea that there's some angry blue-haired feminist agenda forcing women  to go out and be girl bosses and that feminism is ripping us as women away from femininity and  where we truly belong, as if stay-at-home moms are victims out of the patriarchy but a feminists who  are obligating young women not to have kids not to get married and not to stay at home, when like we  already discussed the main reason for feminism is to give women options and also valorize wome

n's  minds and work both in and outside the home. But these conservative trad wives believe that it's  the liberal women's agenda to ruin the sanctity of the family by being educated in birth control  bodily autonomy and that no not everyone dreams about being a mother or pleasing a husband. I get  that the commercialization of the girl boss was all-encompassing and not all women have dream jobs  but again staying at home though fulfilling won't help you when your bills are late or when you  end

up in financial debt because the main bread winner is out of commission. Tradwife ideology  purposefully puts women at a disadvantage in order to serve the patriarchy. Though I think it's  good we go against that reduction of girl boss feminism being stay-at-home moms and returning  to the woman's sphere isn't the answerr. And yet this conservative content seems to be extremely  popular mainly because a lot of it isn't outright conservative, but as Katie Couric's website says  trad wives claim

their lifestyle is about paying homage to a slower more intentional lifestyle. It's  about romanticizing the past not pushing a modern agenda. Easy for white women to say. Ballerina  Farms Hannah Neelman with 9 million followers is a mother of seven who rarely ever videotapes herself  outside of her Utah Farm as a Trad wife. As far as Trad wives go Neelman is largely un problematic  in the absence of hashtags let alone spoken words. The ideologies underlying her traditional lifestyle  are relati

vely inconspicuous. However when I discovered who she really is the daughter-in-law  of Jed blue founder David Neelman who boasts a net worth of $400 million, her silence felt more like  an intentional choice to obscure the perception of her family's affluence. Another tradwife influencer  Estee Williams who has 118,000 followers embodies The ideologically Driven 1950s Trad wife. Williams's  content centers on sharing the Christian anti-feminist anti- colge submissively feminine  beliefs that un

derpin her calling to the Trad wife life. In one of her pinned videos Williams  details her rules for marriage the highlights of which include never leaving the house after  dark by herself, no opposite sex friendships, biblically submitting to and serving her husband,  and styling herself according to her husband's preferences. One look at the hashtags William  uses across her videos will tell you everything you need to know about what kind of audience she  wishes to reach. By using the # make

wives great again Williams makes a less than understated  illusion to the former president's Infamous campaign slogan which has become the Lynch pin  of the far right white nationalist movements across the country. Similarly # revolt against the modern  world represents yet another example of William's Ultra conservative Outreach. In this case she  references a 1934 book written by Julia Evola an Italian fascist who gained a cult-like following  in radically right-wing circles during the afterma

th of the 2016 election. These influencers  work along a spectrum from either conservative right to alt light to alt-right Trad wives but  no matter their place on this spectrum they're trying to recruit people mainly disgruntled  poor white women who have no choice but to stay home to the right they do this by glorifying the  domestic sphere by saying how happy you could be or should be in it and tapping into this anxiety  and fear about the modern world. Rightfully they do talk about how hard

it is to be a woman who  has to do it all but they suggest giving that up for biological essentialism rather than solidarity  with other women. One of the most Insidious things they do to me at least is pushing homeschooling  and sewing this distrust in your community. I recently came across an Instagram video where  a tradwife influencer was talking about how I can't believe we send our kids off to strangers  for8 hours a day in order to push homeschooling and one commenter rightfully said they

don't have  to be strangers. You as a parent for the sake of your kids wellbeing need to be in community with  other parents teachers caregivers Etc. It's not this thing that you do alone. Kids need a group of  trusted adults to go to when they need to that's not just Mom and Dad. But in the US at least  when it comes to conservativism that is seen as wrong and other people even teachers are seen  as strangers not people who work their whole lives to educate children. It's just so odd to me how

you  wouldn't want your kid exposed to new ideas other than your own but that's what conservativism  is fighting against - public schools liberal art colleges Etc as they see them as recruitment  grounds for the left. In a Republican's mind you can't trust the government institutions not even  schools, you can only trust your nuclear family and that family should be totally self-sufficient  and not even as a mom should you depend on anyone but yourself. Pick your own food School your  own kids

when in reality wealthy white people never did it on their own without the labor of  Black and brown character caregivers. Glorifying the past is pushing a modern agenda, an agenda of  wanting to go back in time when white people were unquestioningly right and supreme and white women  were coddled or at least in theory. They really were not doing that well mentally or financially  but I guess we'll forget about that. This isn't to say that women dream of Labor that all women  want to have career

s and work 8 hours a day and be away from their home and kids but rather that  they don't and shouldn't have to do it all by themselves. All the housework all the child rearing  and holding down a job in case things go bottoms up. There's this Communist Party phrase from China  I know but let me finish that women hold up half the sky and that Echoes these separate but  equal spheres we have in the US but if women really are equal to men then men also need to  help women. Husbands need to start v

alorizing their wives outside of their role of just being  a wife and mother and government officials need to fight for women's rights, maternity leave  Child Care Etc instead of just working to ban Tik Tok. So let's talk about some men who are  stepping up and becoming stay-at-home dads. So what about the stay-at-home dads? As women  increasingly earn more money than men they become the sole Bread Winners in some households.  Since the 1990s women have surpassed men in receiving bachelor's degr

ees each year the  number of women pursuing higher education continually increased over the last 40 years the  numbers outpaced men in both College enrollment and graduation. Caregiving costs have dramatically  escalated making it less financially worthwhile to have both parents working outside the home  when you factor in the cost of hiring a nanny sending your kid to daycare and Elderly Care  with the expenses of communting back and forth to an office it makes sense for one parent to  opt out

of the workforce and stay home men are decidedly working from home working parttime or  giving up working altogether in order to take on household and caregiving duties stereotypically  done by women. Similar to the financial crisis era many men left the workforce during the pandemic  and have not returned. As of last month over 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 are  not working or looking for work in the US. For example the number nearly doubled from 1989  to 2012 but they're still re

latively unusual. Of U.S. families with opposite sex married parents  5.6 have working mothers and nonworking fathers compared to the 28.6 with working fathers  and non-working mothers. It's worth noting that this includes people who are unemployed  but may be seeking work so it's an imperfect estimate. In the EU it's ever rarer about one in  100 men pause their careers for at least 6 months for child care compared to one in three women. One BBC article who interviewed both European and US stay-

at-home fathers noted the relative  Rarity means that men who make this Choice can feel like the odd ones out and sometimes are  judged harshly even in cultures where fathers are expected to be more involved than in the past  they still are expected to be the Breadwinners of the family and are frequently stereotyped as less  nurturing or domestically Adept than mothers. One Black American father Eric Taylor said I feel  like sometimes I'm being watched by some kind of male oversight hierarchy gr

oup somewhere that's  watching me and keeping tabs and saying why do you do the dishes so much? Even though Taylor  does contribute financially to his family he's sometimes pricked by guilt over not being  the main bread winner. I struggle with feeling like I'm not providing for my family he says I  internally struggle with are you that guy that just stays home this kept guy who is maintained  by your wife while she goes out and brings home the bacon. Illustrating how these strict gender  norms

and spheres hurt not only women but men. Believe it or not they can be just as capable  as parents and taking care of the house cooking doing laundry Etc. It's honestly ridiculous  how we've ided the boring household chores as just women's work as if men are incapable of  taking care of the home in which they also live. As someone who grew up within a wealthy suburb  this Dynamic isn't surprising to me even though I still held this bias that stay-at-home moms  were rich and pampered my friends g

rowing up all had working moms whose husbands stayed home  and raised the kids picked them up from school did the dishes vacuuming and were highly involved  in their kids lives. And honestly it's a welcome change. Of course whoever's out there bringing  home the metaphorical bacon fields guilty for not helping out with the kids and vice versa but  now it at least seems there's equal opportunity missing out and guilt so gains are being made, but systemically there's still a long way to go not to

mention sociocultural Norms that need  to change. For example when dads do something it's like wo you're such a good father versus when  moms do something it's like whatever you're a mom you're supposed to do that. There's this  expectation that since dads don't have to do anything when they do it's like they really care  rather than just doing their share of parenting. Lastly we really need to end the stigma when  it comes to different family Dynamics single parents same-sex parents interracial

parents  they all have struggles especially in a racist homophobic individualistic Society. Lastly we need  to stop the pressure of women having kids because not all women want to have kids if you don't  want to have kids you should not have kids. So that's it for this video. Overall all  married women with kids who stay at home are having a rough time right now but especially  poor women who are less likely to be educated and more likely to be dependent on their partner  financially, which no

matter how loving is still a precarious position to be in when you are  forced out of the workforce for years because the government can't give women free child care.  The US is one of the wealthiest countries in the world without Health Care without maternity leave  without job security for mothers no wonder why the birth rate is falling. And tradwife ideology is far  from the answer and honestly to me just wants to bring back a form of white supremacy where white  women were uplifted as the on

ly true women while Black women took care of their houses and children. This doesn't mean that white wealthy Suburban Housewives had or have no real complaints because  the patriarchy affects all of us and what a lot of white women trad wives forget to tell their  audiences is that white women in the past were extremely unhappy and unfulfilled even with being  rich and with Black domestic servants and that's the point I really want to drive home, even women  who supposedly had it all ended up un

happy with their patriarchal designated role from the 1800s  to the ' 50s to today so what would make you think that implementing that Cult of Domesticity  now would be any different? You have to use your critical thinking skills. What mothers need is  support from their communities their governments and their husbands less alienation from the  community, and more getting to know people around you your neighbors teachers and other parents  because no one can raise a child alone. Shout out to the

stay-at-home dads and to the dads that  step up and to dads who don't feel emasculated by their wives who make more than them. Let them be  examples for all the angry single men out there who say women today are too picky too selfish  and too high maintenance. So that's it for this one thank you so much for watching and if you're  a mom struggling out there I hope this made you feel better and less alone it's rough out there.  So please give this video a like or or comment if you have something

to say or share it with  someone and I'll see you in the next one bye!