Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Are Trad Wives Happier Than You？

00:00:00.000 Hey guys. Hi. Hey. I'm going to ask a radical question today. It's radical. Are trad wives

00:00:13.280 happier than I am? Are they? Are they happier than me and my friends and a lot of women who

00:00:21.660 have been striving, a lot of feminists who have been striving for a long time for an ideal that

00:00:27.700 seems more and more elusive every single day. See, here's the thing. A lot of my friends aren't 0.96

00:00:34.800 happy. They're not. I mean, happiness is also so hard to define, right? It's a strange, it's a

00:00:42.820 strange concept. But a lot of my friends are overworked, overstressed, burnt out. Me too.

00:00:49.260 Hey, like raising my hand over here. Raising my freaking hand. Life is hard. And so just bear with 0.96

00:00:57.340 me for a second. If many of the women that I know who are badass boss babes, or just moms who work 1.00

00:01:07.440 and try to juggle momming and working, and also feel like they're failing at both of those things, 0.78

00:01:14.000 again, me raising my hand, I am momming, I'm working outside the home, I feel like I'm a

00:01:19.140 failure at both of those things all of the time. I don't know how to juggle it all, my career,

00:01:26.120 trying to stay relevant in a weird world, being fulfilled, being a good mother, being good at

00:01:32.540 work, being a wife. Oh, God, I'm a crap, crappy wife, a really bad wife. It's just a lot of women 1.00

00:01:39.440 I know, me included, are unhappy and anxious. Now, I don't want to be a trad wife. I don't 0.97

00:01:48.160 believe in being submissive to anyone, much less my husband. And yet I'm wondering about happiness.

00:01:54.920 I'm wondering if there is something inherently happy-making about having a set of rules to follow

00:02:02.880 instead of just this vague notion of success in all of the things that is never, never actually

00:02:10.180 achievable. And yes, there is a small part of me that would love to be taken care of financially,

00:02:17.300 though not necessarily by my husband, but by winning the lottery or by a social safety net

00:02:23.280 or a benevolent universe. I've also been digging into what kinds of things make us happy. And

00:02:30.260 there have been a lot of studies about this. There have been years-long studies about this

00:02:34.720 done at very fancy places like Harvard. And the number one thing, the number one thing that has

00:02:40.760 been found to make people happy is relationships. Healthy and stable relationships. Now, I do not

00:02:49.060 think that being submissive to your husband makes for a healthy and stable relationship. But maybe,

00:02:55.660 just maybe, not constantly bickering over who is doing more or who is doing what, maybe that is

00:03:03.740 healthier and more stable. I don't know the answer. So after we did our episodes on Trad Wives,

00:03:10.920 we got a lot of feedback. This is a world of Instagram that a lot of you didn't know about.

00:03:16.500 and even though I sent many of you on a rabbit hole to some weird-ass places,

00:03:22.360 I'm glad that we got to talk about it. But some of the feedback came from women who do consider

00:03:28.540 themselves tradwives. Or, more accurately, they consider themselves tradwife-adjacent.

00:03:35.340 They stay at home. They very much consider themselves traditional mothers. They also

00:03:41.180 tend to uphold many conservative values and gender roles in their lives. And some of these women felt

00:03:47.460 like they weren't getting a fair shake when I was talking about trad wives, even though I will say

00:03:52.320 the trad wives we are talking about are highly specific. These are women who are putting 1.00

00:03:57.060 themselves in a box with all of their rules. That said, I never want anyone to feel like they're not 1.00

00:04:03.860 getting a fair shake. I want everyone to have all the shakes. I want to shake it out. I don't know

00:04:08.700 what that means. I just, sometimes I say things. They don't even make sense to me. What I do know

00:04:14.260 is being a woman in the world is hard. And being a mother in the world is hard. And it's a lot

00:04:19.060 easier if we choose to listen to one another. So I'm here to listen. I invited some of these women

00:04:24.520 to come on the show today so we could talk it out. What am I missing? What am I getting wrong?

00:04:30.820 There's a spectrum here. There's a spectrum of different types of relationships and different

00:04:34.580 types of motherhood. And these women wanted to talk to me about their lives. Some of them even 1.00

00:04:41.960 told me that they think their choice, their choice to stay at home and to be the primary caregiver of 1.00

00:04:46.620 their children, is much more radical than a lot of feminist choices, because they are actually

00:04:51.960 opting out of the current system that is, to be honest, incredibly broken. Maybe we'll finally 1.00

00:04:58.220 answer that question that I asked at the beginning of this episode. Are more traditional lives and

00:05:03.540 mothers happier than, say, mothers who work outside of the home and are juggling responsibilities

00:05:10.260 with their husbands. Is anyone actually happy these days? There's no right answers here. 0.51

00:05:16.680 First up, I am talking to Bianca Saeed. Bianca is a stay-at-home mom of two kids.

00:05:22.700 She considers herself a traditional mother, though not necessarily a trad wife.

00:05:33.540 the vast majority of feminists would probably call me a trad wife so there's that oh really 0.98

00:05:41.660 okay why do you think the vast majority of feminists would call you a trad wife 0.99

00:05:45.460 well i choose to stay home and stay out of the workplace because i don't think it's my 1.00

00:05:51.820 responsibility to provide anything for myself i actually think that's fully on the male because

00:05:58.480 he, you know, he helped me create life and my body and brain took on the entire burden of that.

00:06:04.800 And even after the baby is born, nurses, because the baby just prefers mom all the time.

00:06:11.640 It's a completely unfair disadvantage that men have. Not that it's a disadvantage to us to be

00:06:17.760 mothers, but it's a, it's very, it's a unique position that we're in that makes many things

00:06:25.060 more difficult for us so i don't think that i should have to contribute any income

00:06:30.080 to the situation but um let's see i cook uh i don't really clean um let's see i follow an

00:06:39.320 ancient text called the quran uh hmm i'm monogamous that's pretty trad of me isn't it

00:06:45.740 i mean i'm the thing is like i here's the thing i i'm a feminist i'm monogamous i love being

00:06:53.880 married. Super happy with being married to my husband. I have three kids, which is more kids

00:07:01.120 than the average. I think the average is something like 1.76 children. I'm well above it then. And I

00:07:09.700 like my kids. I like motherhood. I do a lot of things with my kids. I'm with them a lot. I also

00:07:15.100 have help. I have a full-time caregiver so that I can do work and also be with my kids individually.

00:07:23.140 I really like them a lot more one-on-one than three-on-one, and I don't think it's terrible

00:07:29.400 to say that. But the thing that I keep going back to, and maybe this is my own shit, is that 0.98

00:07:35.440 if my husband were to die tomorrow or leave me for, I'm not even going to say the trope of leave 0.99

00:07:42.080 me for another woman, could leave me for an elephant, but just disappear, I want to make

00:07:47.740 sure that I could support myself. And so that's why I worry when we talk about complete financial

00:07:54.100 independence on men. And that's why I want us to have these conversations, why I want everyone to

00:07:59.060 have these conversations, because I don't even think that it should just be women who are 0.98

00:08:03.000 financially independent. I think we should all be able to support ourselves. And that might not

00:08:09.420 mean that someone is working right now, but that they have a fuck it fund in case things go south

00:08:15.240 or that they have a degree or a certification i'm not for everyone having to go to college i

00:08:21.480 think that college is changing a lot but a certification in a skill to fall back on in

00:08:28.000 case things go wrong in a partnership yeah they do oh yeah um so i just i want i'd love to hear

00:08:34.400 your thoughts on that so uh this is probably one of my radical takes is that um i i just keep the

00:08:42.660 faith and know that like if shit were to hit the fan that I would figure it out like that's my most

00:08:49.380 basic answer and that's truly what I believe I do have a degree um I was working towards a master's

00:08:55.900 degree when I got pregnant and decided I um was gonna focus on my my health and my pregnancy

00:09:02.940 besides going to school um and I would be able to probably get a job but you know what really gets

00:09:09.220 me there are those that it puts the burden on mothers to then find somebody else to raise their

00:09:16.900 kids if that mother wanted to raise her own kids. This is one of the systems I think is fucked up 0.99

00:09:22.700 is that I do not think that mothers, especially with young children, should be made to provide 0.97

00:09:29.940 the income to their home for basic necessities. I think that's wrong. I think that mothers are

00:09:35.980 doing a service to the community entirely just by doing a good job at raising humans um and so

00:09:42.940 of course this like i said it's radical um society would have to actually support us and i don't know

00:09:49.680 if that'll happen or not um it doesn't work in america no no that that's not gonna happen here

00:09:57.120 this is why having these conversations is so much better than i think so many people are shouting at

00:10:03.020 each other on social media. We agree. I think that mothers are doing a tremendous amount of work.

00:10:10.720 It is labor. We should be paid for what we do. And there should be a system in place that supports 1.00

00:10:18.220 women while their children need them until they are school age, right? But we live in America, 0.96

00:10:25.200 and even countries that have more support systems don't support mothers the way they should.

00:10:30.700 And so because of that, the system forces us to have to be financially independent if there is not another person making money in the picture. And that's why I think it is so broken. And I think that's where we all do start to feel topsy-turvy because motherhood is work. Mother should be paid. Mother should be supported for that work.

00:10:53.060 And if it's not the husband paying to support everyone, and it's not the government, then who is it? Because yes, a mother should be able to choose to just take care of a child. 0.98

00:11:09.960 and not no I'm going to rephrase that a mother should be able to choose to take care of her

00:11:13.040 child I don't want to say just because it is not a just a mother should be able to choose to take

00:11:17.560 care of her child and be supported without having to have that support come from a partner

00:11:24.680 who may be there and may not be there and I also believe in the institution of marriage like I said

00:11:31.460 I love my husband I love my marriage I'm actually very happy that we got married much later in life

00:11:37.420 Because I do feel like we knew ourselves a little bit better.

00:11:41.820 We knew what we were getting into.

00:11:44.560 But at the same time, marriages fail at a very high rate, at least 50% of the time.

00:11:55.020 So, yes, I think we agree.

00:11:57.120 The system, it's the system that is broken. 0.62

00:12:00.460 And I think it's this system that kind of unwittingly pits women against each other to say,

00:12:05.900 you're a traditional wife or you're a traditional mother or you're a working mother we're all

00:12:10.680 mothers just trying to make it work when we are being socialized and we know that we're coming

00:12:15.660 out of a few generations of mothers that were encouraged to stop mothering and to go get a job

00:12:22.640 and start contributing to the household income our country does not prioritize family our country

00:12:27.760 prioritize making as much money as possible as fast as possible so that that makes this like

00:12:34.000 all of the citizens in the country what's their focus from uh the age that they can go to school

00:12:39.360 all the way up is like get the best paying job get it as fast as you can get as many certifications

00:12:45.400 as you can um network right all this stuff about getting the highest paying job and nowhere in

00:12:53.960 there is like what you take home ec for like one like like one class or something and it doesn't

00:12:59.020 What does that cover about, like, parenting?

00:13:01.840 We certainly did not get much wisdom from our mothers and our grandmothers.

00:13:06.400 So what do we do? 0.52

00:13:08.400 We enter motherhood as millennial.

00:13:10.640 Are you a millennial?

00:13:11.260 You're a millennial.

00:13:12.120 I'm an old, old millennial.

00:13:13.960 I can just call myself a millennial because I was born in 1980.

00:13:18.140 Yes, you're an elder millennial.

00:13:19.880 I'm an elderly millennial.

00:13:21.980 You're not elderly.

00:13:22.900 Elder, okay.

00:13:23.600 Elder.

00:13:23.960 Elder.

00:13:24.400 Oh, that makes me sound so smart.

00:13:26.080 Yeah, better.

00:13:26.560 but yeah so the the millennial generation right we we decide that we want to have kids we do it

00:13:32.820 later than our mothers did it and we have we wait longer between kids but we have our first child

00:13:37.860 and we realize what the like i thought i was going back to work after like a month or two like

00:13:44.480 or sometimes even sooner it's like okay so i can feel like i'm failing at this just so that i can

00:13:50.620 go you know make more money but i really want to do this right and so then they figure out our way

00:13:56.500 to make it work where they can stay home, they still feel the pressure to bring income because

00:14:00.360 their husband was socialized in the same cohort as them thinking, yeah, you should be contributing

00:14:06.240 financially, you know? And so since motherhood, parenthood is different for males and females.

00:14:13.520 So for the mother, energetically, man, psychologically, physically takes so much more

00:14:19.520 than the male so it's not 50 50 50 50 never made sense it's like i am going to this is like a

00:14:27.940 culture change right where it's like i'm going to focus my efforts on taking care of our kids

00:14:32.480 we're going to adjust our lifestyle to whatever income he's making hopefully you know for for

00:14:37.460 the majority middle class can can try to do this and um i'm only going to focus on raising my kids

00:14:43.780 I am not going to take on also all the cooking, all the coordinating, all the cleaning, all the

00:14:51.020 everything else. And that's one of these problems with the trad wives is that they make it like, 1.00

00:14:57.400 yeah, I stay home, you know, with my kids and I take care of the home. It's the least I could 1.00

00:15:02.940 do for my husband who makes the income. Why? Making like, please, my husband would never

00:15:10.240 compare bringing in an income to raising children and it's not because it's not important it is

00:15:17.560 important but he can't do what i'm doing which is incredibly significant so there has to be that

00:15:25.020 mutual respect there and um you know the new trad wives okay we are not subservient we are not

00:15:32.180 submissive um and we want to focus on conscious parenting i'd say would we call you a trad wife

00:15:39.160 then i guess so but trad wife has also gotten such a bad name in the press right yeah and again

00:15:47.100 there's a spectrum here yeah and and all of these voices all of these opinions need to be heard

00:15:53.940 or otherwise how are we gonna not just fix a broken system but navigate the system

00:15:58.900 exactly like you said when i had kids i didn't feel like i had a great mothering role model

00:16:08.240 i was an only child my parents had a terrible marriage um my mom was very financially dependent

00:16:14.540 on my dad and that totally bit her in the ass in the end and i felt like i was flying blind 0.89

00:16:21.080 and i would i but and i also did really want to check out of corporate hustle culture i was i was 0.99

00:16:29.420 miserable working for media companies that were failing all the time and also that had no respect

00:16:35.760 for me had no maternity leave had no respect for how mothers had to function in the world

00:16:42.600 and yet i did also want to support my family i am sometimes the breadwinner in my family

00:16:50.640 sometimes it is my husband but at the end of the day i think we all want the same things we want

00:16:56.060 our kids to be happy and we're making the choice not just happy but we want them to

00:17:00.620 we want them to be healthy we want them to stay alive we want them to grow right yeah and we're 0.99

00:17:08.560 all doing the same stuff what i have to say is that with the trad wives that i was taking a look 0.55

00:17:13.940 at on social media it was the submission that got to me because i don't think anyone should be

00:17:19.900 submissive to anyone like you said i want there to be respect i want there to be respect in a

00:17:26.620 marriage where we treat each other as equals because we're each doing labor your labor just

00:17:34.020 happens to be recognized by the outside world yeah yeah and it's different it's a different

00:17:40.080 type of labor um it's not not just and it's it's not just recognized too it's glorified

00:17:46.000 and it's made me the the end-all be-all of like adult uh contributions could i write a dystopian

00:17:54.740 novel where motherhood is glorified the same way that ceos are glorified in america like if you're

00:18:06.940 a really great mother you are just like the pinnacle of humanity that'd be awesome wouldn't

00:18:14.580 that be great what is the one thing that you would like people to know about traditional motherhood

00:18:20.600 that you think that people have misconceptions about and that you that you'd like to tell people

00:18:25.900 who might look down on what you're doing yeah and this goes into the question you were asking

00:18:32.220 me earlier about opting out of the systems um i think there's a lot of um

00:18:38.140 there's a lot of expectations placed on us by many different places but being a traditional

00:18:48.840 mother as i would define it is simply going to your biology it's like okay what would make

00:18:55.980 things most harmonious for me you know getting getting the circadian rhythm whatever um making

00:19:03.160 sure that your kids are getting outside enough being able to be close to your kids um paying

00:19:10.360 attention uh it really comes down to like holding the space for your kids and choosing to prioritize

00:19:17.980 that. Like, bring back childhood. Children should be children. Moms should be given the space to

00:19:25.340 parent their kids without outside pressures. And I know that's not always the case, but

00:19:29.800 if you can make any little change and say, you know, fuck any cultural norm, fuck it. I'm going 1.00

00:19:36.660 to do it my way. And I don't care who stares at me. I don't care who side-eyes me. I don't care

00:19:40.680 what my mom thinks, you know? Any way that you can, like, get in tune with your intuition

00:19:45.120 and and listen to yourself trust yourself to make the decisions for your kids because

00:19:51.220 i'm a believer and the creator creator gave your kids to you to you you know what you are the expert

00:19:59.080 and and sorry but dads just don't have they're just not they're a little bit they're a little

00:20:05.040 bit under us when it comes to the expertness of our kids but i also have friends that it's two dads

00:20:13.420 and they're great they're wonderful parents so there is that question of what happens

00:20:19.600 when you take a mom out of the equation totally is it just men or is it the fact that

00:20:27.400 men have the mom present so then they don't have to do all of the things we are going to take a

00:20:36.600 quick break here when we get back we'll be talking about whether bianca would want her two children 1.00

00:20:41.040 to take on the same gender roles 1.00

00:20:43.020 that she and her husband have taken on for themselves. 1.00

00:20:59.580 How many kids do you have and what gender are they?

00:21:02.240 I have a daughter who's six and I have a son who is two.

00:21:07.880 Oh, yeah.

00:21:08.620 I have a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and a baby baby.

00:21:12.520 Wow.

00:21:13.680 There's so many of them here.

00:21:16.600 So for your daughter, what do you want to teach her about her role in the world?

00:21:23.460 Do you want to encourage her to be anything that she wants to be?

00:21:26.480 Do you want to encourage her to be a more traditional mother and traditional wife?

00:21:32.300 Man, for my daughter, I—so a little bit about me.

00:21:38.220 I have, um, my two parents and my mom is very, uh, she still works.

00:21:44.200 She's in her fifties and she's like hardcore with the, in the workforce going for, you

00:21:49.400 know, whatever.

00:21:50.180 Then my mother-in-law, my in-laws are, um, from a Pakistani village. 0.85

00:21:54.640 So she has been a stay at home mom. 1.00

00:21:57.660 Trat. 0.98

00:21:58.020 She's an OG trad wife, like her entire life. 0.79

00:22:02.000 And for my daughter, I really try to set the example of all of our worth is the same, right?

00:22:08.960 We're all valuable the same, but we're all different.

00:22:12.060 And it's not just male, female, black, white.

00:22:15.580 We all have different personalities.

00:22:17.100 We all come from different backgrounds.

00:22:19.320 We all have different things that we were like gifts that we were imbued with, right?

00:22:23.940 Some people are good at other things, whatever.

00:22:25.600 I want her to listen to herself.

00:22:28.600 I want her to turn inward and be able to hear that voice

00:22:32.200 It's part of why I parent the way that I do

00:22:34.440 I have a high tolerance and what my dad would say

00:22:37.180 I tolerate a lot of disrespect right because I just let her be who she is

00:22:42.420 And and I want her to listen to herself. I want her to trust herself and follow her instincts

00:22:48.360 But I also want her to see 0.55

00:22:51.100 How I do things versus her grandmothers because both of them work themselves to the bone in different ways 0.70

00:22:58.040 and i fucking refuse i refuse i will prioritize relationships and i'll figure out the rest like 0.89

00:23:06.080 when i need to cross that bridge i think that's that's what i would want to leave my daughter with 0.97

00:23:11.480 is that your relationship you know is the priority beyond um beyond anything else i would love for

00:23:19.920 there to be much more balance and a middle ground for all of us but especially for women 0.70

00:23:29.140 you know I don't want to lean in anymore I think that that really screwed a lot of us over 0.96

00:23:35.480 in a lot of ways yeah but I also don't want to lean out I don't want to check out I like the

00:23:40.660 world I like creating content I like making podcasts and writing books and uh and you should

00:23:46.280 to be able to do that stuff yeah yeah there has to be a middle yeah

00:23:51.480 you know what we decided we discovered we're both right we're both right

00:23:58.920 and like normal people can have normal conversations that's great

00:24:03.600 normal people can have normal conversations exactly exactly bianca and i agree on a lot

00:24:11.460 We disagree on a lot, too.

00:24:13.180 But that is okay.

00:24:15.000 Many different things can be true.

00:24:17.980 I was contacted by a lot more stay-at-home mothers who told me that they often feel demonized by social media.

00:24:25.040 Which is insane to me because I feel demonized as a mom who works out of the home.

00:24:31.420 Mind-blowing.

00:24:32.360 It is so clear to me that the social media algorithms are messing with all of us.

00:24:36.900 They're messing with all of us and they're pitting all of us against each other.

00:24:40.800 In the next part of this episode, I'll be talking to two women.

00:24:44.420 One of them is Andrea Haskins. 0.75

00:24:46.240 She is a former schoolteacher turned full-time mom and breastfeeding counselor, and she's 0.96

00:24:51.280 the co-founder of something called the Radical Moms Union, which is a group of like-minded 1.00

00:24:56.140 women who want to fight against current systemic problems, mostly all of the bullshittery around

00:25:01.820 motherhood. 1.00

00:25:03.440 We'll also be talking to another member of the Radical Moms Union named Nikki French.

00:25:07.720 She is a proud stay-at-home mother of three, and she considers herself to be the traddiest member of the Radical Moms Union. 0.74

00:25:16.540 What we'll really be getting into is the deep divide that this tradwife conversation is creating between mothers who work outside of the home and mothers who work inside the home. 0.90

00:25:27.760 We kind of are vibing with these tradwives, and I was kind of relating to what some of the stuff I saw them saying.

00:25:36.620 but a lot of the think pieces on them are very negative trad wives we love them well talk to me

00:25:43.360 about that so talk to me about why you were vibing with the trad wives what was it about them that

00:25:51.700 you were going yeah totally me too well in terms of i guess shared values like i said we're all 1.00

00:26:01.980 about keeping the mother baby together and following biological norms in terms of mothering

00:26:08.040 and parenting and like they were they were also on that side and I also just thought some of the

00:26:16.400 trad white people who are doing this for content I just found it very clever like look they're

00:26:22.460 monetizing not making money isn't that awesome there's so many things people monetizing all 0.99

00:26:29.740 sorts of stupid stuff like just let them be kind of yeah yeah well and you know i do think i will 0.95

00:26:39.660 i will tell you i think that trad wives are ridiculously clicky uh i i keep getting 0.99

00:26:45.840 interviewed about trad wives and by mainstream publications and i think they've realized that

00:26:52.580 people love clicking on this there seems to be really strong opinions on either side and we

00:27:00.000 live in this world where people just love to have strong opinions about things and they don't like

00:27:05.420 to be in a kind of middle ground my problem is like everyone who's posting or saying anything

00:27:14.500 that's sort of like in the realm of maybe men and women aren't supposed to be equal all the time or

00:27:20.960 Or maybe I like motherhood and I like being with my kids and I, you know, I actually like my husband.

00:27:28.060 And, you know, anyone who says any of that stuff is like lumped in with these other kooks that are just like, you know, cartoon characters, you know.

00:27:39.760 So there is a spectrum. And I don't like how anyone saying that they are fulfilled by motherhood is kind of like lumped in to them.

00:27:53.060 Right, right. Here's the thing. I like my husband most of the time. I love my kids and I love motherhood way more than I thought that I would.

00:28:01.620 I genuinely enjoy spending time with my kids. And so I think two things can be true. And

00:28:09.960 the internet does make it very binary. It's either you are a hardcore feminist who only 1.00

00:28:14.760 sees your kids for half an hour a day and you work, work, work all the time, or you stay at 1.00

00:28:19.960 home and you submit to your husband and you do not do anything else but raise your children and

00:28:27.320 clean the house. And there are two kinds of women. But in fact, there are as many kinds of women as 1.00

00:28:32.800 there are kinds of men. Time for a quick break. We will be right back. 1.00

00:28:50.000 Do you think the Internet seems to have a problem with stay-at-home moms? 1.00

00:28:53.960 It's twofold. One is that, you know, social media algorithms push things that are going to upset you a little bit more than things that would make you happy.

00:29:03.100 But I also know that I see a lot of content around moms who are excited that their kids are going back to school because they've been miserable at home with their kids all summer. 0.50

00:29:13.340 and, you know, framing stay-at-home moms as people who, you know, women who don't have a life

00:29:22.060 otherwise. They never leave the house. They're miserable. They are there because they're being 1.00

00:29:28.400 forced to be there. They don't have a life. They don't, yeah, they don't, they're not happy.

00:29:34.520 And then, yeah, I see a lot of content around women who are, you know, they say that their

00:29:40.920 mental health would suffer if they didn't have a job and then you know it has 30,000 likes and

00:29:45.900 all the comments are like oh my gosh yeah I could never just be at home with my kids that sounds

00:29:49.440 horrible and you know I'm sure that there's plenty of content from the other way where 0.70

00:29:54.680 where women are saying that they feel very fulfilled by it I just think that it's 0.93

00:30:00.640 pushed more heavily than if you were to be like oh my gosh I love staying home with my kids 0.91

00:30:04.760 you would sound crazier than someone who said oh I love being employed and I love you know

00:30:10.220 having that outlet. I think that is so funny because I get pushed all of the content of

00:30:19.260 I love staying home with my kids. I love taking care of my house. And then I feel all of the guilt

00:30:24.660 and shame as a mother who works outside of the home and has child care for the majority of the

00:30:32.400 day. So are we being pushed the things that will push our buttons? Are our buttons being pushed

00:30:40.040 and we think we're seeing more people see shame where there is no shame like nobody could nobody

00:30:46.540 could make a reel about oh you must be so miserable that your life is grocery shopping and playgrounds

00:30:51.540 and I'm like oh my gosh maybe it is like I don't feel threatened by that I'm not ashamed you know

00:30:57.620 that I don't work outside the home but I also think that that the content is very polarizing

00:31:03.640 and very sort of binary you're in this camp or that camp and it's designed in a lot of ways to

00:31:10.380 pit us against each other that there's working moms and not working moms and there's happy moms

00:31:14.860 and unhappy moms and I just I reject that premise or that narrative I also wanted to bring it kind

00:31:22.220 of back to why I said we kind of liked the trad moms and I related to it is because they are

00:31:32.960 prioritizing children and family and that's not to say like you shouldn't have a career I actually

00:31:38.820 was listening to an interesting podcast and the woman was talking about women and women kind of

00:31:46.140 having phases of their life and putting motherhood first at the beginning of your child's life

00:31:54.560 so I also think as a society we need to kind of reimagine what it might be like to have a career

00:32:04.620 and be a mother because obviously we can't do it all like we've found that out you know we're 0.56

00:32:11.580 like it's great that everyone has choices but like we said in the article the choices suck 0.97

00:32:17.660 everyone is burnt out everyone is tired there's no support and that's why the trad wife life seems

00:32:26.180 so attractive so we are you know proponents of anyone choosing to be with their family and put 0.64

00:32:34.860 family first and put their children first you know especially in the formative years and being

00:32:42.520 creative about how you are going to re-pattern your career. And not everyone has to just follow

00:32:51.280 this one path. Growing up as millennials, there was one path. You go to college, you get a job,

00:32:57.380 you wait three years, you have a kid, you have another kid. It was very straightforward for me

00:33:03.800 at least. So just as women, we need to understand that our babies, our children need us in those

00:33:11.360 formative years and kind of rethink I guess the trajectory of a career because right now like the

00:33:19.060 standard American motherhood experience is burning everyone out I think that's true but I also think

00:33:28.020 that that point of view then makes moms who choose to keep working during those years feel a lot of

00:33:34.260 shame um because I think that our kids need us I don't think mine need me all the time I have a

00:33:40.660 great caregiver. My mom is here. My two, two of them are in school already, my four and six year

00:33:47.480 old. And so I don't want to be home all the time. In my eyes, it's just like a short time.

00:33:56.840 I mean, depending on how many kids you have, I guess. I only have two. But I mean, they're already

00:34:05.020 both one is in school and one is about to go in school so that was just like a short time

00:34:12.020 that I could give up I guess my career which I didn't really like the career I was in before

00:34:18.260 I used to be a teacher so I don't really feel like I'm giving up I'd rather vacuum floors and

00:34:24.880 clean toilets at home than be a teacher any day wow like I just feel like it's such a short time

00:34:33.520 And I and like if you feel shame for that, like if you're confident and working, like you said, you love to work, like you're confident in working, then don't feel shame for that.

00:34:43.360 I don't think I think, you know, if you're confident in your choices, you shouldn't feel shame.

00:34:48.940 But for me, it was just like a short period of time.

00:34:52.900 I don't I don't stay at home.

00:34:55.020 You know, I'm not otherwise unemployed because I personally love vacuuming and cleaning toilets.

00:35:01.900 I do those things because that's taking care of my family. And that, you know, there isn't any other work in the world that's going to be as meaningful or fulfilling or, you know, any other form of employment isn't really, it just doesn't hold the same weight as creating and nourishing and sustaining and forming human beings.

00:35:30.600 like that that's just bigger than anything else in the world so when it comes to the submission

00:35:37.360 aspect would you say that you guys submit to your husbands that they're in charge the latin roots of

00:35:44.700 the word submission is to support the mission and so and and the mission of our marriage is our

00:35:52.520 family i liked how you talked about how a lot of these trad wife accounts are kind of like the

00:36:01.180 magazines of our generation um you know they are they are performative they're like pro wrestling

00:36:09.640 we know it's fake but it's nice it's nice to look at and imagine a world where you know i could just

00:36:20.340 be taken care of by a man and frolic in my linen dress in the garden and you know nurse my baby

00:36:27.360 in a field you know it's it's nice to look at um we know that there's obviously some things behind

00:36:35.220 the scenes that might not be included and no one's life on instagram is a reality but we don't think

00:36:43.340 it's like dangerous content for anyone to be seeing like i think there's much more i guess

00:36:52.400 worse things online that i'd want my daughter seeing than that for sure there are i i turned 0.99

00:36:59.860 on tiktok and i saw a massive vagina getting bikini waxed the other day yeah i didn't need 0.99

00:37:08.800 to see it i just didn't need to see it up close yeah i mean tick tock is wild so you know we do 0.98

00:37:17.920 know that some of these tropes are just i guess like we said content but i think like it is kind

00:37:25.320 of genius of them to be monetizing not making money and i also told some of them do kind of

00:37:34.040 know what they're doing um in terms of stoking stoking the internet flames who wouldn't want

00:37:43.040 to be a tread wife wouldn't want to be like i said in the field frolicking taking care of your

00:37:49.500 children i i spend a lot of time in the woods running around the field barefoot actually 0.99

00:37:54.140 fucking sucks um ticks ticks okay uh but would i like to lay out a beanbag chair and maybe 0.96

00:38:03.940 read all day yes and have my adorable chubby baby crawling all over me when they're not all 1.00

00:38:12.160 throwing tantrums yes um but i do think they idealize i i think it looks a lot very idealized

00:38:23.040 is is my biggest issue taking out the parts of motherhood that are hard but i also agree with

00:38:28.460 you that the other side of the spectrum has made motherhood seem terrible and like the worst thing

00:38:33.640 you could ever do which is why there's so many millennial women saying i don't want to have a

00:38:37.120 baby that looks like you've made it seem like it sucks so that's why it was just kind of refreshing

00:38:42.760 for me i guess to see the type of content that's like be you know telling moms the good parts of

00:38:51.880 motherhood and the good parts of marriage but like i said we don't always i guess have to be

00:38:58.200 one or the other but i guess the radical moms union like if it came down to like who we want

00:39:02.760 back, I guess it'd be the Tradwives. And that's all we've got for today. I learned a lot. So much. 0.98

00:39:15.680 So much about how these social media companies are pitting women against each other and how that

00:39:21.500 does not have to be the case. We can learn a lot from each other. We can learn a lot if we don't

00:39:27.260 just fight back and forth in the comments section. If we listen to each other. If we realize that so

00:39:32.740 many of us are facing many of the same problems. We are. The system is broken, social media is

00:39:39.960 broken, and the way that we treat mothers in this world is broken. I think we can all agree on that.

00:39:46.540 Go forth. Have a good week. Take some time for yourself. Do what you need to do to be happy.

00:39:53.240 Because that's different for all of us. It's different for all of us,

00:39:55.720 and it changes every damn day. Sending you all of the love. 0.70

00:40:02.740 under the influence is produced by me joe piazza written by me and hosted by me i do all of the

00:40:14.440 things i am a one woman show i am a goddamn wizard as always you can get more things bonus content

00:40:22.860 transcripts at over the influence my sub stack and if you love this show please leave us a review 0.79

00:40:30.380 and share it with your friends because it actually does help a lot. It really does.

00:40:34.400 And I'm going to do it again. Lee's pre-order The Sicilian Inheritance

00:40:38.540 because it's the best damn thing I've ever written. All right. Bye, guys. 0.97

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - November 09, 2023

Are Trad Wives Happier Than You？

Episode Stats

Transcript