Tradwives: yes or no?

For a long time I simply couldn't understand — why would a modern woman want this?

There's a thing in medicine called referred pain. Anyone who's been to an osteopath knows it. Your shoulder aches, but the cause is in your pelvis. Your lower back nags, but the culprit is your jaw. The problem sits in one place, and what reacts is whatever has started taking on the load and over-compensating.

Coontz argues that we're now in the grip of a nostalgia for the years between 1950 and 1970. Back then the economics were remarkably kind: wages rose far faster than inflation, growth reached those at the bottom more than the rich, and there was none of today's skew where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

At the same time there was a cult of the "perfect family," in which the perfect, happy wife tended an idyllic home with two idyllic children. What it ignored was the reality underneath — one where women's depression flourished and antidepressant use began to climb (anyone curious can revisit The Hours, the 2002 film with Julianne Moore).

And now — when the world is unpredictable, when the economy lurches from crisis to crisis, when wars break out one after another — we start longing for those "golden family days." That's the referred pain. We can't recreate the economic conditions, but we can recreate the "perfect families," and we sincerely believe it will make us happy.

Treating the lower back, when the cause is a clenched jaw

The real danger lies in the discourse itself — as long as women prop up the tradwife ideal, the manosphere has something to lean on. Two halves of a single bargain: women are sold submission, men are sold dominance. It only works if both swallow the bait.

And here's where it gets interesting. Coontz points to a range of studies showing that the very closeness and the very peace everyone so desperately wants grow not out of hierarchy but out of equal, mutual relationships.

Where two people negotiate and share the load, rather than dealing out roles from an old script, both are far happier with their lives:

• Couples like this have sex more often (Gager et al., 2009)
• They're more satisfied with their sex lives (Carlson et al., 2016), and with life in general
• And the perception of fairness matters more than an objective 50/50 split (Smith et al., 2026) — what counts is the conversation and the agreement, not blind obedience to a principle
• Where the housework is divided unfairly, both partners are dissatisfied with the relationship (Frisco et al., 2003). Unhappy wife, unhappy life — and how.

Both the scientific research and the literary masterpieces say the same thing: peace and closeness can't be bought like an aesthetic or won like a hierarchy — however desperately we lack them in this mad, chaotic modern world.

Stability, peace and closeness can only be built — slowly, unglamorously, without any breathless reverence, between two people who look at each other as equals.