Not even Cher can turn back time...

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https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/27/health/tradwife-lifestyle-women-mental-health-wellness/index.html


Sporting retro ’50s hairstyles and cinched aprons, “tradwife” influencers have taken over a pocket of the internet.

These traditional wives who showcase 30-second videos of homemade sourdough bread content, and other glimpses into the making of a perfect home, are no ordinary stay-at-home moms. They steadfastly believe in traditional gender roles. That means staying devoted to housework and taking care of the children — and being subservient to their working husbands.

Enitza Templeton of Littleton, Colorado, embodied the tradwife lifestyle for 10 years. At 4 a.m., she would start making bread and begin prep for the day’s meals — always from scratch. The mother of four would do all of the household chores, while her husband focused solely on breadwinning.

Now, after escaping a life that was “miserable” and “unfulfilling,” Templeton shares her story with her social media following and podcast listeners — to help other women who find themselves in similar situations and want a new life.

“Social media can make everything look really pretty, because it’s a 30-second clip, but 30 seconds out of 10 years really omits a lot of the ugliness in those relationships,” she said.

Templeton, now 41, said she was raised as an evangelical Christian, believing that a husband had authority over his wife. But today, she is a divorced single mom by choice and advocates for women who wish to break free from a relationship dynamic that all too easily can create an extreme power imbalance.

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I continue to support the missionary position.

elderolddog Wrote:
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> I continue to support the missionary position.

So you're alway on the bottom? lol

I favor a firm foundation.

I figured you would prefer doggy style.

I just like the lights out, so I can fall asleep . . .

“Social media can make everything look really pretty..."

I think people who feel compelled to broadcast every aspect of their life will eventually suffer a burnout.

What if "burn out" is the goal?

When I was in my early teens, I borrowed my future sister-in-law's book, "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan. I wore out that copy, reading it over and over. As Wiki puts it, "Friedan used the book to challenge the widely shared belief that 'fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949—the housewife-mother.'" I feel like I was in a bridge generation. My Greatest Generation mom struggled with the housewife role, and my sister-in-law was among the first generation to enter the workforce in large numbers. There is nothing wrong with women who stay at home, but IMO it needs to be by choice, and may be for only a certain amount of time. Forcing women into that role is not a good thing. I can say definitively that it hurt my mom.

Reading that book and others also started my freedom journey from both the Roman Catholic church, and eventually religion altogether. I was no longer willing to see myself as a second-class citizen. I reasoned (back in my believing youth) that birth control along with reproductive choice were gifts from a loving God to the women of the Earth. I was not ever willing for a religion to put me down, or not listen to me, ever again.

I agree.

My Mother had a nursing degree out of the University of Utah, and she should have stayed in the workforce. She was one determined individual!

She hated to cook, and ran the household as a drill Sargent, she taught her children how to deal with life, and we are all powerfully independent and tough as nails because of it. But all her children knew that she would have been far more fulfilled being a head nurse, medical administrator, or something similar.

...was because I figured that I wouldn't be able to support a wife and family with the visual disability and my limited job options because of that.

Yes. I knew of some blind people who were successful (Stevie Wonder, Ronnie Milsap) but the majority of blind people statistically were living on fixed incomes, and there was no way in hell that you could afford to raise a family on Social Security Disability Income.

I'm not using the above to put down my disability as much as to say that requiring a one-size-fits-all approach that all men become breadwinners to support their large families and all women become baby factories and stay-at-home moms is both ludacrous and psychologically destructive. I think that we would have a better and more inclusive society if both partners in boy-girl relationships were more willing to share each other's roles and responsibilities.