The Trad Wife Paradox with Anne Helen Petersen [VIDEO]

My mom is the antitheses of trad anything. I remember one day I said to my mom, can we get some KFC? And then my mom was like, we can't afford KFC.
Then my mom said, you know what, honey, I'm going to make you KFC. And I was like, what? You can make KFC? She's like, I can make KFC.
I was like, that's not possible. I was like, if people could make KFC, everyone would make KFC.
You're telling me KFC doesn't only come from the kernel? How do you have the secret? And we the kitchen And then she fried it And I was like wow my mom made KFC And I'll never forget I ate it and then I looked at her And I was like this shit is not KFC Some of my issues that I deal with in therapy Are probably because of that moment. You know when they say you lose trust in your parents?

I looked at this woman and I was like, why would you lie to me? Why would you say you can make KFC when you can't make KFC? And then she looked at me and then I started doubting myself because I was like, why would you think your mother can make KFC? If she could make KFC, she would have opened KFC. This is What Now?

With Trevor Noah. This episode is brought to you by Ultra Running.
Ultra makes performance running shoes that are insanely comfortable. With a roomy toe box and zero to low drop.
This helps keep your feet in a more natural position. So you can move how you were designed to.
Perfect for the road, trail, or gym, you could wear them for miles and forget that they're there. Stay out there with Ultra.
Try Ultra for yourself with a free 30-day trial and free shipping at ultrarunning.com. This episode is brought to you by Audi.
The all-new, fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron is a huge leap forward, featuring effortless power, serious acceleration, and the most advanced tech of any Audi ever. Experience technology that puts you center stage with a panoramic digital stage.
Plus, you can add an optional screen for front

seat passengers so they can stream my best work or anything you want to watch. It doesn't have

to be mine. The Q6 e-tron is not just a new EV.
It's a new way to experience driving. Learn more

at AudiUSA.com. Always pay careful attention to the road and do not drive while distracted all right this is going to be a fun one i know this is this is one of those what i call like landmine conversations yes because everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law but it's but it's probably it's probably my favorite type of conversation to have like my favorite type of topic because when you when you say trad wife so i've been saying that to everyone i you know my friends will be like oh what are you doing on the podcast i say we're going to be talking about trad wives some people don't know what it is at all and then i have to explain it i go trad traditional wife and then as soon as i describe the videos everyone knows what i'm talking about oh yeah i say it's you know these women who are they're dressed in like really old school style or dressed up vibes but then they're cooking they're preparing like everything from scratch and then everyone's like oh yeah okay and.
And then they start listing off their favorite ones. And, yeah, I'm excited to talk about it because I don't know what you're going to say.
Oh, you don't even have a feeling about where I'm at? No, I'll be honest with you. I don't.
Because this is one of those topics where you could go either way. I'm nervous because I'm afraid to offend people, which I never am in life.
So I couldn't be a trad wife Because I'm rude Oh fantastic But yeah I don't want any of my friends Who are trad wife-ish To be upset with me Wait wait So do you think some of the people In your life are trad wives? I am No but are they actually trad wives Or do you think they have traits That you would associate With a trad wife? I think they have a lot of the traits Yeah I think I think they are living. Oh, my God.
Are you ready to get me in trouble? Because now my friends. No, I just want to know.
No. Okay.
So I want to know how many of those traits you see in people before you say they are or are not a trad. I know.
Trevor, can you see how careful I am? I can see. I've never seen you like this, by the way.
I know. That's why I'm like, I wanted to do the conversation, but I've been like, oh, been like oh god i don't want to okay so i think there are the traits yeah but they wouldn't necessarily embrace the label and then because you know i grew up very churchy and very christian i know people who are like straight up man is the head of the household i'm here to honor him and honor god and raise my children that all sounds good to me keep going keep going raise my children this is fantastic they call their husband like my mom actually used to call my dad my lord and master to piss off my grandmother that's a family fact oh okay to piss off your your i mean yeah yeah ironically but like you know i i especially being like of african descent even the women who are not who have jobs and all of that embody the trad wife thing.
You know, they'd be like, my husband is the head of the household. That's the world I come from.
And I don't want to offend those women because I think there's a way we can speak about them and say they don't have autonomy and they're victims. Like we either make them victims or villains and I think it's a bit more complicated.
And then I have my own personal view on it, how I've chosen to live. How far do you think you are away from trad wife or how close do you think you are to try you know what it's so funny i have a friend who is like the opposite of a trad wife so she what does that what does that mean she's not traditional and she's not a wife but then how are you a trad wife well she's like she she doesn't even have any of like the labels Like she's child free Okay She's child free by choice Okay She speaks her mind

Yeah But then how are you a trad wife? Well, she's like, she doesn't even have any of the labels. Like, she's child-free.
Okay. She's child-free by choice.
Okay. She speaks her mind.
Yes. She comes from a long line of matriarchs.
Okay. She came around.
This is when I was pregnant with Obi. She came by the apartment and I was doing something and I did something for Louis.
And she was like, so is this how you keep a man? And I was like, what are you talking about? She was like, you're being so nice and girly. And I'm like, I'm not nice to him because i think i'm a mean wife right and she was like no you'll be i've never seen this side of you so it was it was about i think about that a lot what is what if you're secretly a trad wife and you don't know i don't cook so i think that takes me out of the equation it is one of the biggest factors yeah and it's not just cooking it's cooking like everything from scratch like from scratch scratch Yeah Obi says to me Mommy what are we going to order tonight? And then he goes delivery And my mom is like You have ruined this child So like I don't cook Because I find it very laborious Yes And obviously I work But ironically A lot of tried wives are doing work Like I work outside of the home're right right but I think they're actually doing work inside the home because they monetize it yeah yeah so it's like a lot of contradictions that's why I'm excited to have the conversation because like you know if you look at it as as a topic in isolation it's it seems like a like a really small one it's just like oh what is a trad wife why is this thing blowing up everywhere why do people want to be a trad wife or why do people idolize or hate trad wives yeah and then it gets into the larger topics of like what does it say about us as a society as a whole um and our guest today is the perfect person to have this conversation with right because um and i mean you know her writing yeah i'm a fan i'm a fan of her newsletter yeah no, she's fantastic.
So Anne Helen Peterson is a, she's an author. She is a writer who, you know, she has sub stacks.
She wrote for BuzzFeed. She also writes for Elle magazine.
She's got these fantastic articles that cover everything from politics to celebrity culture, gossip, everything we deal with in the world, essentially, that's interesting. She looks at and she's been spending a ton of time on the trad wife movement so it's not just her experience but like her insight into this world is is really really fascinating and maybe actually maybe from your side you can help me understand this like how far would you say a trad wife is from what people would quote unquote call a regular wife and i'm i'm i have all the quotes up for this entire episode for anybody who's going to come after me everything is quotes from now on all right nothing i say is is my voice or my my but yeah um and welcome to the podcast what would you say is like a like a trad wife versus a regular wife yeah you know well first of all i'm glad that we're coming into this with the ambivalence that we have right like there is so much contradiction there is so much complexity and i think i often have conversations with people who are like oh obviously these women are evil right or like they're the the the you know or their ideal yeah right so there's just not a lot of in between so the way i think of it is there's actually like these bigger buckets of trad wives that we can think about buckets of trad wives there are i think the like the ogs which are absolutely women who are deeply deeply invested in either evangelical christianity and its vision specifically of the future of America.
And I would also put a little caveat on there and say white evangelical Christianity. And some Mormons are kind of in that bucket.
So a very famous trad wife who has never ever claimed the moniker trad wife is Ballerinaina farm who has been in the news a lot lately ballerina farm is the moniker the handle for an instagram account that is run by this woman named hannah she is married she was a ballerina thus thus the ballerina part but she was married to or she is married to the son of the founder of JetBlue Airlines.

And they're Mormon and they have, I believe, eight kids.

She also is a pageant queen and recently competed in, it's like Mrs. America when you're married.

Mrs. America.

Very shortly after giving birth to her most recent kid. But so she, like the aesthetic there is very aspirational.
So Ballerina Farm, so I've gone on a deep dive. Like my Instagram algorithm is trash now.
My TikTok algorithm. I just need to start brand new accounts, just so you know.
Because everything that I've now like researched for this conversation

has led me down a deep part

now all my explore page is

is like random white women

in the middle of nowhere

milking a cow for their children's breakfast cereal

or like coming to

like they're putting together

like their homeschool

yes

elements for like 10 kids

yes

and then there are people

who just want to live like a 50s housewife

and that is different

Thank you. like their homeschool elements for like 10 kids.
Yes. And then there are people who just want to live like a 50s housewife.
And that is different, right? Like they do not have the religious component. They do not see this as God's plan for the world.
They are not necessarily invested in the more like white supremacy components of this. But they would like to spend all of their time doing things in the domestic sphere.
So that includes homesteading, right? Yeah. And like the aesthetic of homesteading that's very popular.
That includes not working for pay, right? And I think that that is the part that people are actually attracted to who find themselves fascinated by these accounts and find themselves continually going back or like, why do I keep following Ballerina Farm if her life is so distant from mine? It's because I think there is some sort of fantasy about, well, what if I didn't have to do all of the things all of the time? What if I got to focus on these parts of being a mother, of being a partner partner of being a person in the world that felt fulfilling to me so that's that's a different sort though and also like the stay-at-home girlfriends which are oftentimes linked into or put into this bucket yeah people who like they tape for tiktok especially like here is my life as a stay-at-home girlfriend and it's like making chia smoothies and like doing pilates and they're not even married like a trad wife would die if they were associated with these stay-at-home girlfriends like those women are living in sin like they are not they do not belong in the same yeah hemisphere yeah i so okay so'll be honest. I've been on a rollercoaster of emotions here, digging into the world of, I'm going to call it tradism.
You have, because when I first watched the videos, my first thought was, this is evil in some way, shape or form. And the reason I thought that is because of, I guess, like my indoctrination, like what I've seen in movies and things so it's these videos you know it's a static shot it's a woman who's dressed impeccably but like rarely made up in a kitchen yeah it has a stepwood step fit wives vibe to it you know so it's like yeah every morning i try to make cereal for my children granola made from scratch i pick the almonds from the soil and you watch this and you're like oh this is evil this is the devil this is but then when i when i like you know like ballerina farms and i watched i watched a few more videos i watched a few more videos then i was like hmm do i hate this idea and i i i'll tell you i'll tell you where i'm coming from because i see your side already christiana i'm not saying do i hate this idea or do i like it as a man i'm not saying that what i mean is there was something strangely liberating in the idea of somebody just living a simple life where there are predetermined outcomes or expectations for what you need because i don't know i like i i have this feeling oftentimes in society where i go you know in america i feel it more than most countries but i i don't know about you i hate the fact that we don't know how much we're supposed to do and sort of what we're supposed to do you mean the rat race yes the rat race how much money do we need yeah okay how much success do you need when is it done when is it achieved when is it finished are you successful oh you didn't get your master's oh you didn't get your phd oh this is the only house you've stayed in this is your only car this is the only vacation like when does it end and when i was watching these videos there was a simplistic completion that that i enjoyed about them where it was like all you have to do is wake up every day all no no i'm'm saying this is what I mean what I mean is I'm not saying it's easy but it's not infinite but it is infinite because there's always more kids there is there isn't always more kids there is because then you become a trad grandma the labor never stops this is the thing okay now I'm jumping ahead.
Go, go. Now I'm revealing myself.
Trad wives never get to retire.

That's the thing that breaks my heart.

Okay, so now I'm-

About the role.

Because it's a beautiful role.

Okay.

But your husband who goes off to work in the world,

there's a day he's going to have his retirement

and the expectation is you get to play golf,

you get to see your friends more,

maybe you're on a board somewhere.

A trad wife is still going to have to have three meals on the table every day. She's going to have to look after the grandchildren.
She's going to have to look after whoever. Wait, wait, wait.
But if she's looking after the grandchildren, who's looking after the children? Maybe I don't understand the trad. No, her children have the...
Because you guys are clearly on like the final stages. You guys are like spoiler alert.
I'm on season one of trad wife. In season six, there's different options for a trad wife options for a trad wife there is the trad wife to divorcee pipeline where you lose because you can no longer have children or your husband's left interested a lot of trad wives honestly are start wives even in very christian circles the man looks at her and he's like i have nothing to speak to you about because you're with kids all day.
And I'm in the world as an adult.

And, you know, adult socialization is important, Trevor.

You know, you get to have certain types of conversations.

And this woman has spent the last 15 to 18 years raising children.

And he feels she limits her or maybe her body is broken down because it's what children do to your body because they're fucking evil.

Ten children.

Ten children.

They've had so many children.

Do something to your body.

And they say, you know, I need a new wife.

Well,

I'm not going to be a good one. evil and um children 10 children they've had so many children does something to your body and they say you know i need a new wife or maybe she dies like you know what i mean this is a real life i'm with you in africa you see it all the time and the woman dies or the woman's gone and he's found someone else but what this woman has done which is an incredible thing take care of the home for 18 years you can't put that on your resume so if you go into amazon warehouses all over this country it's full of women who embodied trad wife ideals whether in a secular or christian way and they now have to fend for themselves make minimum wage they have no retirement they have no 401ks and they are like having to work so i'm saying that's one outcome i'm going to challenge both of you on this and this me playing a little bit of devil's advocate.
I know I'm the only guy in the conversation. So my job is also to like spice things up.
But I talk to many men, old men who will say the phrase to me all the time. They'll be like, Trevor, let me tell you something.
Happy wife, happy life. You make sure your wife is happy.
And she says something and you say, yes, love. what else do you need honey and your life will be smooth and some of those guys to be honest with you are like trad husbandy yeah right like the way they live their life is they go i wake up i make sure the family's up as well we we have breakfast i kiss everybody goodbye i go to the office i work my ass off

you know like i come back home and then i i smile and i have dinner with everyone and then i go to bed and i do it again and they tell me where they want to go on vacation they tell me what they want to eat on friday night and that's all my job is and i go isn't that like you you know what i mean Anne, after you

Well first I just want to differentiate between

Stay at home mom go isn't that like you you know what i mean and after you well well first i just want to differentiate between stay-at-home mom or stay-at-home parent and the ideology at work with the the most the with a lot of these women which is that they they really believe they really believe that women should not have power right that women should not be educated like they really believe this right it's not just in the posts okay it's no that's not as explicit right like project 2025 absolutely on board with that like their larger goal is control over women's lives and their bodies and so that's when like when i because i think sometimes we get into this game of like if you're a feminist then you shouldn't critique any other woman's choices but these women and i'm talking specifically about the ones who are very much invested in this evangelical version of like the real trad real trad is what you're saying okay They believe in a larger project in which all women's rights are subsumed under the will of men. Ah, okay.
Okay. This is where like the ideological specificity becomes important because there are some of these women who grow up in the church and get married or convert to Christianity.
They become part of the church at a slightly later age. Education is frowned upon.
So maybe you go to a little bit of Bible college, but we probably don't. You get married as soon as possible so that you can have sex, right? Because you do not want to have sex outside of marriage.
Right. That's the worst sex.
And then you become pregnant as soon as possible.

And so a lot of these women have incredibly little in terms of formal education. And if they were themselves educated in a traditional home, they were likely homeschooled and did not have a great foundation.
I'm not saying homeschooling creates bad education simply because it's homeschooling. homeschooling.
A lot of these curriculum practiced in these homes

is almost like I've heard trad wives

who've left that lifestyle

call it a form of educational abuse, right?

Because they learn so little

and it equips them so poorly.

So let me ask you this then.

What you've just described to me now sounds cultish.

It sounds oppressive.

It sounds terrible.

This is not what I see on my feed.

Like my feed, it looks sexy.

It looks fun.

It looks rewarding.

It looks engaging.

So help me understand this.

How did something, because if you just sold that to me now, no one would buy it.

How, why is that trending now?

Like, why is that huge on TikTok is like now. We're talking about today.

You know, this is not like a Facebook trend.

It's a TikTok thing that people are loving.

Gen Z are loving.

That's what I mean.

Gen Z are loving.

So why is that becoming popular now

when it has all of those negative side effects

that you're talking about?

Do people not know or do they not care?

And I have so many thoughts on this,

but as a millennial woman who has a lot of friends who have chosen to be stay-at-home moms, who are super progressive, very educated, the workplace is really hard. People are burnt out.
So I speak to friends and they're like, why work for 10 men when I can work for one? You know, and I can... Right.
Well, and you're only making enough to cover child care right so like

the calculus the calculus is broken so here you are making barely enough you're still you're behind

you're behind in the workplace in part because you know the pay gap and all of the sorts of like

various discrimination that happens in the workplace but also because you took maternity

leave which puts you backwards in the work clock for various reasons and i think that like gen z

Thank you. various discrimination that happens in the workplace, but also because you took maternity leave, which puts you backwards in the work clock for various reasons.
And I think that like Gen Z, I mean, Gen Z loves to razz millennials. But I think one of the things they see when they look at millennials is like, oh, they're trying to have it all.
Or like millennial feminists are trying to figure out how can I be a great mom, great parent, a great partner, and like a really, like have a career that I like. And it's impossible.
So what is your choice? I think this is where you get almost like this reactionary move. And I don't think that if a Gen Z person is watching this on TikTok, it means that they necessarily have conservative politics, right? It's more that the choices laid out for them seem like they suck i mean i i i get all so okay let me let me let's take a step back and let me ask you this then as a question and like help me understand is is being a trad wife problematic in and of itself or is is being a trad wife problematic when you live in a society where capitalism will define your end game or your outcome on the other side? So if we lived in a world where you didn't have to worry about surviving on the other side, is being a trad wife bad? Like, you know, I read your writing and one of my favorite articles of yours was the L one where they asked you to be a trad wife for a week.
And forgive me because I guess maybe I've never done this. I couldn't believe that you were like, I can't do it.
I was like, a week? This doesn't seem difficult for a week. All you have to do for a week is like serve someone and just like, no, no, no.
Okay. Well, my editor was like, yeah, try it out for a week.

I was like, oh yeah, this will be fun.

And then as I sat down to like figure out how to do it, I was like,

first of all, I really can't lose

a week of income. Like that's not

something I'm willing

to do for this. Like I would lose money

writing this story for

Elle magazine. And the other thing is

I talked to my partner.

I'm not married, so I'd be a bad trad wife in the beginning, right? Like I'd be a living in sin partner. And he was like, this makes me feel uncomfortable.
So that's the other part of the story is that I think some men don't want to be served in this way. You know, like I cook a lot of the food, not all of it, but I do some of it.
I mean, like a lot of families, like we're always in the struggle to split the mental load, but I don't know. I just like, we couldn't get on board and it turned out to be more interesting to write about, like not being able to do it.
We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break. This episode is brought to you by Ultra Running.
Ultra makes performance running shoes that are insanely comfortable. With a roomy toe box and zero to low drop.
This helps keep your feet in a more natural position, so you can move how you were designed to. Perfect for the road, trail, or gym, you could wear them for miles and forget that they're there.
Stay out there with Ultra. Try Ultra for yourself with a free 30-day trial and free shipping at ultrarunning.com.
This episode is brought to you by Amazon. Have you ever gotten sick on a very expensive, very non-refundable family trip? Amazon One Medical has 24-7 virtual care, so you can get help no matter where you are.
And with Amazon Pharmacy, your meds can get delivered right to your hotel fast. It's kind of like the room service of medical care.
Thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful okay because when I was going through it I'm not gonna lie I was like this is a little sexy it seemed no I'll tell you why it seemed to me like people were like living out some sort of fetish vibe totally there's an element of that no so it felt like I mean they have like 10 kids so they are having sex exactly and it was also the but they're having sex like we're talking about like the old fat like they're having sex anytime the man wants it and some of this is your selling this to trevor right now this week and you really you actually no no no you actually aren't and i'll tell you why i'm that on that element why that on that element, why. That doesn't appeal to me as much because I think one of the problems we have in modern relationships and in society is this lopsided, you know, appetite for sex.
I think sex in a relationship works best when both parties get to want it when they want it because the spark needs to come from both sides. So I actually don't like the idea.
But that trad dad you described, part of why he does that is the expectation, anytime I do want to have sex with this woman, she's going to have sex with me. No, no, no.
I think those guys, that's why this is interesting, what you're saying is, and I think we need to drill down on this because to your point, I think some people see this as, let's say the sexy version, where it's like, he tells me what he wants, and I do it.

He says, I want your hair like this, and I wear it. And when you're listening to that, you're like, yeah, it's a little 50 shades.
I'm down for this. This sounds cool.
But it sounds voluntary. And now what you're telling me is the real, like the real, not the gloss, not the stuff we see online, ironically, because they aren't online, is like, they're like, no, you do not have a right to say no to your man.
You do not, you should not tell him you don't want to do something. You have no control over yourself.
That's essentially what you're saying. Real, the real trade culture is.
There's the idea like, oh, this is all a choice, right? And so I should critique it and it's okay okay. And of course that's what they're gonna show on TikTok and on Instagram.
And of course they see this and this is where the contradiction that you two were talking about before I came on of like, they're not supposed to work but they're monetizing their feeds. They see this as ministry, right? They want to sell this vision to as many people as possible.
So to them, it is not at all at odds. Yeah.
And, you know, when you mentioned that, them seeing it as ministry, I think it's interesting for me because my father's a pastor, so I'm in a very religious bubble. I was talking earlier to the guys about the fact I tithed until very recently.
My dad is going to lose his mind if he hits this. And now I like tithe to causes and anyway, it's the whole thing.
But I know that world of evangelical Christianity and Pentecostalism and, you know, faith without works is dead. So I can understand why a woman is like, I am going to evangelize through making sour bread dough from scratch.
On the other side, because of the life I live now, a lot of the women I'm around are very secular and in many ways very progressive. But then it's also in the world.
You meet a woman said, yeah, I was like a partner at a law firm and I had my second baby. And I said, I'm not doing that anymore.
What do you say to that? Because that's not a neutral choice, but it's a choice she's had to make for her betterment and I think that's my my personal struggle with it yeah yeah I mean why do you think it's everywhere right now I think that it it touches on something like someone we're trying to figure out about the place of feminism the place of like everything to do with, J.D. Vance of it all.
I mean, I think white liberal feminism has failed, like, as an ideological... No, as an ideological...
I mean, they can't even get abortions, which is like a right that people got, like, 50, 60... Like, if you go to most Western countries, white liberal American feminism...
No, no, no, white, liberal, American feminism is a failure. It hasn't got women maternity leave.
Women cannot have abortions across this country if they want. Like the pay gap seems to be intensifying.
Like feminism was supposed to have an answer to all of these questions. And as an ideological project, it failed.
Like it's not like this cohesive block, whereas if you go to france or the uk there is a lot more unity among the idea of feminism because they've safeguarded just like basic feminist rights well maybe maybe then that's that's part of the question or like an interesting aspect of the puzzle here is you know when you when you're saying and why is it so popular you know obviously i can't speak for any women in this but if i if i just try and put myself in somebody else's shoes i do think there's an element of this even if it's even if a lot of it is fake i think there's an element of this trad wife movement that's like celebrating a form of femininity that has been sort of like lost in the in the demonized yeah in the feminine fight and then this is giving people just a little a little enclave where they can say actually i i do want to spend time with my kids i do want to i and you know sometimes this happens in life i don't know if you've experienced this in a relationship in a friendship or a general interaction. Sometimes, sometimes I almost feel like it becomes easier for people to adopt an extreme ideology only because they want aspects of it.
So now there's a woman out there who goes, look, I don't not want to work and I don't want, but it's easier for me to say and be a trad wife because then no one can sort of like judge me out of this because I'm not a feminist who's doing it wrong i'm just a trad wife who's trying do you think it gives women the space to explore all sides of being a woman or do you think like you know this this this modern feminism has become about like no if you don't do it like this then you are not and i want to hear from you first you know i don't know if i would i would frame it in terms of feminism i would frame more in terms of society, that society doesn't give, especially American society, does not give a lot of space to figure out different ways of being a woman with safety, right? So if you're looking at different ways you can go through the world, go through society today, and let's say you had something, like you grew up in a precarious situation for some reason, right? What looks most safe to you? Is it going to be, oh, someone else makes all the decisions and brings in all of the money and navigates the outside world. And then I just get to like make some decisions about things that I care about.
Or I'm going to figure this all out alone with no social safety net and no economic safety net so I think that like that's if you're looking at the world around you it's easy oftentimes especially given your situation to choose something that seems safe that seems like a path forward and patriarchy feel can feel very inviting when dressed up this way you know it interesting you say that, Anne, because I thought a lot about the fact that given my religious upbringing, given elements of my own faith, why I'm not a trad wife, apart from the fact that I've got a slick mouth. So wait, so trad wife, you're not allowed to have like what, a vibe? No, no't be You better go bake bread Okay but what about And be timid And no but It's part of that Like godliness And timidity And humility I'm never humble But wait but is this Yeah but you're Nigerian You can't be Exactly So what I'm saying is Yeah but Can you Like can trad wives be, like, sort of balling out, living their lives?

No, you have to be meek.

When the man's not around?

No, because you want to model for your sons.

This is the idealized womanhood.

And you also want to model for your daughters

this trait of meekness, right?

And I've never, never been meek.

And it was always interesting to me to be in, like,

a black majority church where these women were

actually being that for their husbands, but, like, in their nature they weren't. These are Ghanaian, Nigerian and Jamaican women.
Like we ain't meek. And the reason I think that we are seeing that like someone like Nara Smith, biracial, you know, biracial black girl with a white man, and she makes food from scratch.
They recently did a GQ photo shoot that was very 1950s inspired,

but they're like gorgeous people.

They've got these gorgeous children

with like multiracial curly hair.

You know, I think it embodies a lot of like future America.

And the important thing about her is that she's Gen Z.

She's 22 years old.

That woman is 22?

She is 22 years old.

Or maybe 23.

She has three kids.

She has three kids. Wow.
Anyways, we're seeing this movement become increasingly diversified. I know a lot of black women who are into the femininity movement who are like, I'm embracing my divine feminine and my soft life so I can find this man out there to take care of me.
And as much as I was like, I was never going to be with a man that couldn't take care of himself because I'm very Ibo in that way. The message I was told growing up implicitly by the women around me was like, have children because men are not safe.
Your children will always be there. A man will leave you.
And I think that's deeply in the, I'd say, the West African psyche of like retreating to the home is not safe for you because a man may beat you or a man may assault you. Or a man can just come from a polygamous family my grandfather had 18 wives a man will get another wife right so that i say in a west african context being a complete trad wife is being a woman who is not safe whereas i can see why in america the domestic sphere can become something that is safe because america is such a capitalist yeah yeah but this is what I mean.
Okay. So let me, okay.
Let me ask you both this because, you know, and reading your story of like trialing tradism, you were allergic to it on all levels. One of the big ones was money.
So then let me ask you both this. Let's say we took money completely off the table forever.
You would be fine. There was no issue whatsoever.
I love money so but forget it money's out of the there's no money don't worry about money anymore don't worry about money okay we live in a moneyless world okay okay does being a trad wife become more attractive to you now no not for me okay so not for you still no i'm just going to keep throwing things out and then i want to see where i get you because i don't want To lose power Okay wait wait So money no problem Still no for you And no for you Well but So like Then all I would Just do all day Would be doing stuff For the home That also served My partner Like I would be okay with it If I could just like Garden Like I could do stuff that I wanted to do no no no no you're

not understanding I now see why you would be a bad trad wife you're not you're not you're not

listening to my commands here and I'm saying you're tasked with everything but you don't ever

have to worry about money and I mean ever even if the man disappears the state or the entity will

look after you so Christiana you're not in no no okay okay okay I mean it's about the safety but it's also about

Is it the dresses?

What if I said no dresses?

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want

I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want he will look after you. So, Christiana, you're not in? No.
Okay, okay, okay. I mean, it's about the safety,

but it's also about...

Is it the dresses?

What if I said no dresses?

I want the dresses.

That's the part that's getting me.

Oh, you like the dresses?

Oh, I love the dresses.

Oh, jeez.

I like the clothes.

Okay, so it's not the clothes.

Yeah.

Not the clothes.

I'm trying to understand what it is.

Do you know what?

It's children.

I cannot be with my children all day.

I love them dearly. You make children.
I know, but I don't want to be around them all the time. Especially my own ones.
Most people don't. Most people don't.
I don't even think these child wives want to be around their children all the time. Wait, wait, before you say that, let me pitch you.
So now here's where I'm going to pitch you something else. Because I'm truly trying to think of how to get this back into society.
But I think one of the biggest things we're struggling with now in society, and we have been for a while, is our village is shrinking. And I think humans need a village more than anything else.
And as the village shrinks, people struggle to find ways to connect. So what if I traded with you? What if I said, okay said okay trad is still on the table but now you would be in a village so your kids wouldn't always be your kids alone you would be in the village there would be other trad wives around the kids are running around doing their thing am i am i getting any buyers here no because i i actually like using my intellect i like the idea of like, my home should be my retreat.
Because when you're video games. Trevor, I'm just...
Have you played video games? I'm so bad. Video games, that's a lot of intellect that's required.
No, I just feel that like, if by becoming a trad wife, the domestic space also becomes your workspace, right? And for me right now, my home, as much as my kids exhaust me yes i get to go home and we have a break from each other and we have this okay this is the reset this is and we start again and i love that i get to do this this is a job it's it's with a friend so it doesn't feel like a job i'm cheating but i get to have conversations like this speak to you ann and write and use my mind in a way that I think is important just for like, I don't know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

It's like higher state of development and consciousness and just using this thing we call our brain.

And I think that's important.

And I do feel like all my friends that are trad wives slash stay at home mothers, they talk about like the mundanity and how it's so repetitive and how they do miss the little interactions that you would have in an office like when you're going out to make coffee or like just the things that i think make an adult human an adult human people miss the office affairs i see i see what you're saying i'm not stealing the office copy paper you know it's like these different things that we do and losing that i think i would it would be it's a big part of my identity yeah and my identity would just be subsumed into being Lewis's wife and the mother of my children. And then someone's daughter or someone's sister.
And then what about that big other part of ourselves? Imagine you couldn't do comedy, Trevor. You had to look after the kids all day.
No, I understand this. No, that's why I'm digging.
Because what I've been trying to understand in this is not what the bad side of it is. Let's for a moment put aside people being oppressed or not having their freedoms.
What I struggled to find even in the article, Anne, was I was trying to understand what your allergic reaction to it was. But to what Christiana is saying now, do you share the sentiment or was there something in addition to that that you thought to yourself by doing this i'm giving up x well you know being a nanny for infants is what actually convinced me that i shouldn't be a parent like i love kids i don't want to be them all around all the time and it was like i i know that it's different when it's your own kid,

but like it gave me such a taste of how mundane the day can be when you have absolutely no one to talk to except for a six month old, right? Like it's just you. And this was in a wealthy community, like just me walking down the street, waving at other nannies, right? And hanging out with a six-month-old but i think that for me so much of it is about like that fear of not having a future and this is something we've this has been a recurring thing in our conversation right it's like what happens when the man leaves right like where is your life raft yeah if you've never had a chance to make it and then the other thing that i keep thinking about is if we flip this on and we're like, do you want to cook all the food and take care of the babies? It's like some men I know would say, yeah, I want to do all that stuff.
But they also still have the benefit of living in a society where they are praised immeasurably for that work and for that decision and where they still have all of the power.

So like that, it's almost like an unfair thought experiment because we can't even flip it around and be like, well, would you like that?

You're like, yeah, I would love to live in a society where I get to do the caregiving that I want, but still have all the power.

Don't go anywhere because we got more What Now after this. I wonder if the Tradwives we don't see online are pissed off at the Tradwives that we do see online.
Only because one of the elements that both of you have mentioned, and I've actually heard a lot of people speak about, is the lack of outside interaction, is the lack of outside connection, is the lack of just expanding your mind. And so I wonder if like OG trad wives are a little bit pissed off at these like internet trad wives because they're like, no, you're interacting with people online all day.
You're not living the trad. It's like these, have you ever followed these like TikToks where people live off the grid and they're like, I live by myself.
I'm in a forest and I make my food. I don't talk to people.
But they're on a live telling people this and they're responding to people. You know what I mean? And I'm like, but you're not living the life.
By virtue of the fact that you are displaying it you are not living the life and so i like i don't know because you you've written so much about it and you've interviewed so many people about it is there like a an inner conflict within the trad movement where they're like these people are fake trad or do they look at them as missionaries where they go no they're necessary to spread our movement well i think that that some on the far extreme side of the spectrum would definitely say that some of those cute dresses are way too revealing. Oh.
But then, I don't know. I think a lot of women aren't at all aware.
If you're really deep in this stuff, you don't have a TikTok account. You're not watching this.
Yeah. You don't have that exposure because your husband wouldn't let you have even that sort of freedom.
Okay. Wait, wait, wait.
You don't have a bank account. So now wait, wait.
So now let's go to that. Is the truest expression of a trad wife the fact that you are not opting into it? Because you see, it's interesting that you just said your husband wouldn't let you.
So are like real, real, real trad wives not choosing to be trad wives? Or can you choose to be somebody who is oppressed? I know it seems like a paradox, but can you? It's interesting because, and maybe you have a different perspective on this, because I come from more of like a black Pentecostal evangelical circles. And there is a degree of indoctrination, like just purity culture.
You're not supposed to have sex before your marriage. Save yourself for your husband.
You know, even if you're going to university or college, it's to be a good wife or whichever man will marry you. And like anything in society, you can opt out, even though you'd become a backslider.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And I think the Duggars are a great example because you see the whole spectrum.
You have like some Duggars girls who are like, I'm going to wear trousers and I'm going to show my arms. I married someone, but I'm not like my other sisters who do it in that way.
So I'd say as much as these women are, quote unquote, indoctrinated, oppressed, there is still an element of choice. And some people choose it more than others.
I think there are some women who are way more zealot. The one who would never have TikTok or even ask her husband to have TikTok.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there is like the ballerina farms with the contradictions who are dipping their toe in it and ministering.
But when you're kind of doing a puret in this gorgeous kitchen, it shows that you still have a longing for the career of a ballerina. Like, do you know what I mean? Yeah.
So there's stuff going on there. It's like you are not as far as zealous as the other girls that have been quote unquote indoctrinated in this way.
Yeah, and it's contradictory. And then there's women like myself who are like, I'm going to marry an atheist and be on a podcast with a comedian who has a very devilish job.
My mom is always praying that Trevor finds Jesus, right? This is an ongoing thing. What do you mean? You must tell your mom, Jesus is who brought me here.
What are you talking about? She should start a church. She's like, I just see him being a pastor.
Just a youth pastor. Yeah, that's amazing.
He's like, he's a man of God. But like, you know, but then still has some of the pushes and pulls, the tensions of it.
Because I'm like, am I being a, I think I'm like, I don't take these kids to church or whatever it is so you can opt out but i think the indoctrination is there but i don't think it's fair to act like these women have no choices at all right they do have choices the ones that we're seeing in particular the ones we're seeing in particular they do have choices even though choices are limited they are making choices but they're also indoctrinated it's many things at once i feel complicated and i'm i'm curious to hear from you oh there's so many things to talk about here but i think that some of them have witnessed examples made of women who leave their own entire lives right if you left if you weren't enough a part of the church, like, you're a fallen woman,

and the way that those women are narrativized in the stories that they hear in their church, in their homes, like, it's the end of your life. It's not just a spiritual death, it is a, like, you're over.
And so that is, like, do you actually have a choice? You're like, either I'm going to risk everything, or I'm going to follow this path. I think there's also a risk that happens when people like us from the outside are like, oh, these women think that they're choosing, but they're not choosing.
You're giving them this sort of false consciousness, which is very, I think, demeaning, right? Like it's saying that they don't actually know, actually know have any awareness of the world but man a lot of the women are the ones leading the charge with this they're the ones who are encouraging their husbands to become you know to go deeper into the trad like funnel right and it's because they see it as the route to their salvation but i also think it's like more and more safety right like it's that's that's a complicated puzzle that i have to make right yeah yeah and i do you know it's so funny because i speak to my friends about this about like the matriarchs being the ones that policed what we would wear the most it was never like an uncle saying that skirt is too short it'd be a woman in church being being like, why are you wearing that? I think it's a complicated loop. You know, in the same way that black parents will oftentimes beat their children more than most cops would ever because they're going, if you do not follow the letter of the law, these people, the law will come down and take you away from me it will end

your life i need to brutalize you so that you do not get brutalized by somebody who does not care

for you in a weird way i sometimes think that it might be the same thing with these societies is

that these women are not going how dare you wear that sort of from my perspective they're going

like how dare you endanger yourself how dare you how dare you walk around with a skirt that short

do you know what that says to those men do you you know where that puts you? Do you understand the position that you're now in? How dare you? In a strange way, sometimes it feels to me like the people who are trapped in the system are trying to protect the other ones from the harshest elements of that system. I think get what I'm saying? No, that's a really compassionate take.

I've always felt that the foot soldiers of patriarchy

have to be women because women nurture and raise children.

It's not the men.

So like it has to be women.

Okay.

Okay.

So let me throw something at you here.

And this is really just for thought exercise.

But what if the trad movement turned around and said to you no you have been brainwashed you have been brainwashed into thinking that a woman's role is to be in an office and a woman's role is to be in a factory and they're like this is not what a woman does every month your body releases eggs for a purpose and if you do not then your body responds accordingly and so they go like no you've been indoctrinated you've been tricked into thinking that your role is outside of the house and then they may even turn around and say to you look at how much strife and turmoil you have look at how stressed you are yeah look at how you struggle to have children and and look at how hard your life

is if they say that to you do you is there even a part of you that goes like what if well i think first of all they do say that explicitly like there there is messaging that like feminism has brainwashed you and feminism is the work of the devil like the devil is winning and i don't ever attribute any of my misery to feminism or the idea that like women have rights right i'm not talking about white feminism specifically but like the idea that women should have rights in society i attribute it to the way that our government works right the way that humans sometimes function the way that we have difficulties thinking in terms of long-term planning um our addiction particularly in america to individualism like those are the things that come to mind never like oh i was sold down the river by like the right to vote you know i mean voting is stressful you have to admit it's a stressful you know you don't mean not in washington state i get the envelope in the mail just check the little box let me okay let me let me ask you this on a on a on a political level you know at the beginning of the conversation you said there's a reason this is bubbling up now more than ever. And it's true.
I'm assuming trad culture didn't start yesterday. I'm assuming it's been around for a while.
I'm assuming it will be around for a while. But the trend has really gotten steam.
The trend is really moving in a certain way. And I'd love to know, as somebody who, you know, obviously works in this space but explores many others, how do you think they tie into each other?

What is the seduction that they're using to bring people in?

Why is that resonating with anyone, the idea of what is a real woman or we need to go back to the way women were?

Why is that connecting if it's not true at all or is some of it true? I think women are exhausted. And I think that that has only become more true in the wake of the pandemic.
So there's new research out that I saw in the New York Times recently about like, looking at, you know, two years on from COVID isolation and kids being home during like like especially that first year of covet on who took on the primary care in two parent homes yeah with separate genders and like the women right like just the bulk the incredible bulk of care and then that fatigue just continued on. There was never any recovery.

So they had people develop caregiving burnout,

but also work burnout, like all of these things together.

And then we just never had any sort of way of coping

with any of that.

If anything, parenting norms have become even more intense

in the last four years,

especially as people have anxiety over learning

loss and things that aren't actually real, right? So everything all the time. And maybe you thought that like, oh, when my kid gets a little older, it'll be a little easier.
And it's not, right? There's still all of these anxieties about screen time and safety and just everything. And so if you're dealing with that every day, just peak of exhaustion, and the only thing that you can do when you're that tired, the only thing that you can like find, muster the energy to do is either watch some Netflix or lay on your bed and watch TikTok.
What's going to catch your eye? And you know, the way that the algorithms work, as you know, right? Like you watch some of something and it gives you more of that thing. So that's part of it.
And it's not so much like, I don't want to have rights. It's this way is clearly not working.
What other options do I have? Because like the government is not going to change anytime soon because of the way that it's organized in this country. We are still going to have people in power who believe that offering affordable childcare encourages women to work outside of the home, and thus we should not have affordable Right.
So if you can't beat them, join them. It's funny.
You talk about the trends and what they actually say about society. You know, I think it's, is it Gabo Mate, the writer who says, he always talks about how when dealing with addiction, he says like, don't focus on the thing that you're craving, focus on the pain that the addiction is covering.
Do you know what I mean? And in a way, I think that with society as well. I think to myself, oftentimes we'll focus on the trend, we'll focus on what people are gravitating towards.
We don't focus on the pain that that is covering. You know, the Tradwives, I think you just eloquently laid it out.
We don't ask ourselves why it's becoming more popular. There's a lot of people going like, yeah, well, wow, that sounds nice.
To have a home, just even start with that. The idea of having a home, having a kitchen.
Because I've never seen one trad wife go, hey, today I wanted to make chicken wings, but the price of chicken's gone up, so we're just going to do like carrot sticks fried.

No, they never, there's not a single Trad Wife video that I watched that addresses scarcity or tough times in some way, shape or form. Yeah, abundance, true abundance.
It's abundance. And so I, that's, yeah, like I think when we look at that, it's, you know, it's interesting to think of it as interesting to think of it as an indicator of where society is, as opposed to is it good or is it bad? It's just an expression of women's exhaustion and this capitalist hellscape.
Yeah. Well, I do think that some women, like this is something that's been going on for like 10, 15 years.
It's the return to like crafting. Yes, yes, yes.
Like fiber arts and like domestic arts, for lack of a better word. Yes.
Or what we used to like teach as home ec. Like those things, people like doing them.
They're rewarding. It is fun to make things with your hands.
Whether it's something like a piece of wood or gardening or whatever. Like I do think that, and we know we hear about this a lot because I think a lot of millennials who like worked their butts off throughout their twenties and thirties are like, okay, do I have any hobbies? Do I have a personality? What do I like to do? And figuring that out.
So I do think that there are ways of dabbling that aren't full you know submission to the patriarchy like there's a halfway can i tell you guys a little secret on behalf of the patriarchy um men are also exhausted yeah and i i think sometimes i i don't know sometimes i find myself feeling like we're all playing like a game

and

and it almost

it almost makes me wonder

like okay well

if everyone is experiencing

this oppressive force

who's applying the force?

Capitalism

I didn't want to say it

I didn't want to say it

but like

because you know

who's not complaining

about it is companies

I don't know if you know this

oh yeah companies

companies are never exhausted

companies are never like

oh yes

we're having a tough time

we're so tired

we've decided to stop being a company for a while and just take a break just being oh we oh we've been listed for 50 years and it's time to take a break we're so you're not wrong companies are the only entities that are not tired i think it brings me back to our

conversation previously about abundance right and part of the allure of what they represent is abundance right and we have abundance on this planet we have more than enough for everyone but capitalism makes it so that that abundance is not oh yeah you have to create the scarcity Yes

Right

So there's scarcity

For nearly everyone

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right

Right capitalism makes it so that that abundance is not oh yeah you have to create the scarcity yes right so there's scarcity for almost for nearly everyone and so but if you created abundance right if you created a scenario where you could care give and share that caregiving right in the village that we all crave you could hang out with friends because you weren't constantly exhausted from the dual tasks of parenting and working your job because you're terrified of getting laid off and losing your health care. If you could also dabble in various intellectual endeavors, you could have hobbies that you were bad at, right? Like you could be a parent and a person at the same time.

And that was facilitated by the spread of all of this abundance we have on a global level.

Like that's a way of being in the world, right?

We don't have to fetishize it.

We don't have to hold it behind a locked door that's available only if you buy into these other ideas.

I mean, maybe someday. Maybe someday.

But for now, trading is the way. No.
Wait, did I learn the wrong lesson from all of this? Oh, I thought you were saying for now we all. Anne, this has been so much fun.
Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Anne.
What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions.

The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jody Avigan.

Our senior producer is Jess Hackl.

Claire Slaughter is our producer.

Music, mixing, and mastering by Hannes Brown.

Thank you so much for listening.

Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now?