There is a Trad Wife trend going on social media. I didn’t know it was a trend, albeit, I did see video shorts labeled as such filtering through my YouTube feed. It’s difficult for me to parse YouTube algorithms. I get dating advice, too, but I’ve never actually searched for such channels because I’ve been married for almost thirty years. Maybe dating advice is also on trend? Or maybe my actual searches add up to Trad Wife and dating advice? I primarily listen to Catholic and Protestant apologetics videos. Secondarily, I watch accordion tutorials and music videos. Thirdly, I still watch food budgeting and recipe videos, even though I’m at a point in my life where I do little cooking. Occasionally, I click on a video because it sounds intriguing or like a trainwreck I can’t turn away from. The Trad Wife trend might fall into “trainwreck.”
I learned this hashtag was a trend when one of the Protestant apologetics creators, Allie Beth Stuckey, made a video on it. My take on what I had seen was that it was based off of a lot of naivety. In one or two cases, there seemed to be a cosplay, sexual kink aspect to it, in which the wife primps like Marilyn Monroe and pretends to be a traditional wife, something which Marilyn Monroe was not. A sex kitten Hollywood starlet is not what any normal person would call a trad wife leading a trad life, though there perhaps is a parallel to the way in which she was owned and controlled by immoral men and the way in which these trad females wish to be owned and controlled by, hopefully, moral men.
Hopefully. I tend to make no theological arguments regarding marriage dynamics. We have no intact traditional culture; therefore, traditional Christian marriage roles end up being acted out artificially in our times. The most successful marriages I have witnessed in my years in very conservative Christian circles (I was a homeschool parent for years) were egalitarian marriages. The least successful I have witnessed were philosophically patriarchal with much talk about female submission and male leadership. The results have been so catastrophic in some cases that the children have left the faith altogether for agnostic or even deviant lifestyles. As someone who is a lifelong observer who doesn’t prefer to join movements, what I have witnessed is a sign that we’re doing “trad marriage” wrong, or maybe putting all our eggs in a one- or two-verse Scriptural basket without much thought to the examples put forth in the rest of the Bible.
I will add a caveat in here that, although complementarianism was a term invented by Baptists, the concept is held by the Catholic church, as well. There is no doubt that men and women are different in nature and that society requires both to function. But I do not see the hard and fast rules in Scripture that moderns preach. I see women such as Rebecca and Abigail defying their husband’s authority and unwittingly siding with God’s position. I use the term “unwittingly,” but I don’t really know this; maybe Rebecca’s deception was based off a God-given conviction that Jacob was the son God had chosen. That brings me to another point: God defies human wisdom and hierarchies regularly by raising up second-born sons. Getting back to Abigail and her siding with David instead of her husband at a time when no one yet knew he would be king — that man she sided with was a youngest sibling with many brothers ahead of him in the hierarchy. He was not even the second son! It is obvious, no matter what words you want to use to convince me otherwise, that God doesn’t think much of human hierarchies, and that includes women being on a rung below men. Go read the Old Testament, and you will find other examples of this phenomenon.
Modern-day marriage is a mess. Traditionally, people were married when they were too young* to really consider the consequences of being stuck with someone who might very well become loathsome after twenty or forty or even sixty years of marriage. But, thankfully, there was rarely a way out of the prison they’d placed themselves in. Yes, of course, there are stories of men divorcing their wives (historically, it didn’t generally work the other way around) or of men having their wives committed to asylums when their wives became annoying and asylums were a thing. Otherwise, though, the best hope was that a married couple would end up loving each other more as the years passed. I don’t think this was ever common, though. Am I being cynical? Maybe a little. Nowadays, I’m not even certain I would recommend people marry young because of the ease at which divorce is available. It’s probably better to wait until you aren’t a fool and know yourself a little better, so that you can marry someone you enjoy being around instead of filing for divorce once you’ve realized what a fool you were. I see so many divorces and subsequent remarriages where the husbands and wives are much more mentally balanced with partners chosen at mature ages. I even see this in my job. The Catholic church does try to prevent them by restricting annulments and remarriages, but they still happen all the time. The drawback, of course, is people aren’t even bothering to get married nowadays due to the fact that it’s a sham. Consequently, our reproduction rates have plummeted. None of this is good, despite those who are happier in second marriages.
Are men and women supposed to be happy together and to fulfill each other? To love and cherish each other? I would say yes, if this were a perfect world. It’s not, and, sadly, fulfillment is unlikely to happen. For traditional marriage to work, therefore, divorce must be made more difficult. Misery and long-suffering must be taught as good for the soul. God as our true soul fulfillment must also be instilled in us as Christian people. We have largely walked away from God as a culture. For that reason, I should be cheering for a trend such as #tradwife or #tradmarriage. But I can’t. I can’t find it in me to cheer for a binary worldview in which it’s believed that women need only love and men only respect. Love without respect is pity. Respect without love is a business relationship. I can’t cheer for that, not after seeing this type of marriage come apart at the seams and the children destroyed through it. Without an intact traditional culture, in which men and women have resources to aid them through loveless marriages, such as the old folks giving loving advice and friends offering hugs, this trend is simply not going to work. When one or the other partner realizes the raw deal they were dealt, they will go file for that easy divorce.
Is true love possible? Sure, but it’s a lot of work. I tend to view my parents as soulmates who just happened to find each other. Whether that’s true or an ideal is not up to me to say. However, when I review all that they’ve gone through together, how much they’ve sacrificed for each other, and how much they’ve compromised, I believe it was their intention to love each other, and so they loved as a vocation. They are still loving each other. By the way, they are one of the most egalitarian couples I’ve ever known. Over fifty years and still going. My parents give me hope that people can if they try, no matter what label they slap on. Living requires action rather than philosophy.
*Yes, I’m aware that people didn’t always historically have the luxury of choosing a spouse. This was especially the case for upper crust and royals who wanted to keep wealth and land in small circles of influence. But generally, if an average boy and girl favored each other, they could be married upon approval from their families.
Jill Domschot 