Trad Wives and The Rules for Christian Motherhood

For two decades I lived in a community of trad wives. Many of us had graduated from the IV League college in town and chose to live in the area afterward. Ours was a tight group of Christians, persuaded that the local church was worthy of our time, money and talents. When I was a student, these women and their families became family for me; they welcomed me for dinners and holidays, provided respite from dorm life, the often soul-crushing stress of rigorous academics and the internal pressure to succeed. Their love and support continued for many years after.

They talked me off many a ledge after boyfriend breakups, grieved with me when my father died and provided advice when I bought big-ticket items like cars and condos. They also gave me a front row seat into Christian marriage and family life. This was important because my own parents’ marriage had been very unhappy and I still bore the scars from growing up in a hostile, sad home. I learned that marriage could be good, childhood happy and home life nurturing.

I was single during that whole era, marrying at the very end of it, and today, my own marriage is rich and healthy in part because of the things I internalized during that time.

However.

There were unwritten rules that all women should marry, have as many children as possible and homeschool them. Few saw the value of a different way. What if a woman never married? How would she support herself? During that time, I worked in full-time ministry (one of few approved jobs for women), and I earned very little money. No one encouraged me to make more, to develop more skills, to go to graduate school, hone in on my unique abilities and ensure financial stability.

In that community, careers for women and daycare for kids were pejoratives; a woman’s place was in the home, baking bread and pies, teaching kids and helping their husbands fulfill their dreams. 

I was an anomaly: I didn’t meet the right guy until my late thirties, and as a gifted speaker, I could confidently captivate a room. I read secular literature, talked about racism and squirmed around political conservatism. I didn’t like crafts or baby showers and I wore short skirts and fitted clothes. I had finally realized that pastel flower prints looked horrible on me and I felt no need to cloak my body in a maxidress. 

After I left that place, I met so many accomplished women who had careers AND happy homes. They were doctors, business owners, lawyers, public school teachers, CEOs, and college professors. To help with child rearing, some hired nannies and others had grandparents living with them. Still others sent their kids to daycare. I often wondered then and I wonder now why God would give women the abilities to solve complex math problems, make scientific contributions, digest weighty legal texts and deliver fascinating lectures if he never intended for them to use those gifts to better the world. 

These women love their kids and their kids can roll with the punches, pivot when plans change, help cook and clean and feel supported even when their parents do not attend daytime school events. In the home of two working parents, it is impossible to perfectly curate children’s lives, and the children have a strength and maturity about them because of it.

There is also a racial component to this. Staying at home has historically only been possible for white women. Even blue-collar white men could afford modest homes, cars and retirement. They had skilled jobs and earned decent money. Black men were largely denied the opportunities to learn skills and earn enough money to be the sole providers in their homes. Black women had to work and now most Black women want to work. They are the most educated demographic in the country and they are kicking ass in many arenas. 

So many Black women can see poverty right on their tail in their rearview mirrors and they know that education is the way to never experience it again. What is more, they know that education is the way to protect their children from ever experiencing it at all, and so they make intense sacrifices making sure their children go to college and, in many cases, go to college debt-free.

How ludicrous to believe that there is only one way to be a good mother. 

After working twenty years, I married and had kids in my forties. And I decided to stay home. My husband, Marvin, and I watched every penny but could afford to live on his salary alone. I had waited a long time for this, and I wanted to suck the marrow out of motherhood. I wanted to go on bike rides with my boys and take them to museums, and I didn’t have the bandwidth to stuff things like this around the edges of my life. Raising small children and going through menopause at the same time is formidable, but that was my life. I wrote books to stave off brain atrophy and now I adjunct teach at two universities. 

I really wouldn’t change a thing about staying home during my children’s younger years.

One of my favorite books is The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. I literally shouted Yes! when they discussed the harm done to kids by too much protecting. Safetyism, as they call it, hurts kids. Bubble wrapping them so that they never hear uncomfortable ideas or experience the outdoors on their own stunts them and sets them up for failure. To become strong, thoughtful adults, they have to be exposed to a diversity of thought, and they have to learn the confidence that comes from figuring things out on their own, whether it be taking a bus by themselves in the city, or riding a bike by themselves in the country.

I think that the conservative trad wife culture rejects physical safetyism but feeds emotional safetyism. It allows for kids to climb trees, explore the woods, ice skate on frozen ponds, and bike ride alone through neighborhoods. It limits screens and seeks to return to simpler times with fewer things. I see tremendous merit in this. It is possible for kids to have this much freedom because mothers are at home to keep track of how long Johnny has been out and if he should be coming home right about now. Johnny has liberty to explore because mom is keeping an eye out. Not only that, other trad moms are keeping an eye out, too. 

My husband, who grew up in Jamaica, muses that if he misbehaved in school, by the time he got home, his mother already knew about it. Mothers worked, but they worked all different shifts and there were enough mothers and grandmothers around who would carry the news that Marvin got into a fight and so he bravely walked through the door knowing that unpleasant consequences were waiting.

That used to be true in this country, too. There were enough eyes on the streets that no one dare mess with a kid because someone would see it and intervene. 

Now the streets are ghost towns. Most parents work. Grandparents live in other states. Kids are instructed to stay inside when they get home from school because inside is safer than outside where no one is watching. And when kids are inside by themselves for hours, they become addicted to screens. 

Here is where I disagree with Lukianoff and Haidt. They propose that the switch from kids playing outside to gaming inside was driven by two high profile cases of child abduction in the 1970s and 80s. I’m sure that terrified parents then as it does now. But I think the largest driver of the move from outside to inside was the dissipation of the village, the absence of eyes, the disappearance of vigilant adults keeping guard at the window.

The kids in trad wife culture go outside more but they are cocooned in other ways: specifically emotionally and intellectually. They learn young that there is only one legitimate way to vote, to think, to eat, to live. One valid denomination and worship style. One way to parent, to educate, to spend money. They consume only Christian books (written by white people), Christian music (written and sung by white people), Christian news and podcasts (delivered by white people), Christian education and Christian college (if college at all). 

It is an ethnocentric world where other cultural expressions are legitimized only in so far as they adopt white, Christian, conservative cultural values. As they leave home, some of these children find nuance, some turn their backs on the whole thing, and others cancel those who don’t walk lockstep in agreement with them.

Truth be told, cancel culture exists just as virulently on the Left. Liberal kids often have little regard for people with religious convictions or who question transgender women in women's sports or who believe that objective truth exists. Many liberal and conservative parents do a lousy job teaching their kids to respect difference and acknowledge truth and falsehood wherever it dwells.

I want to close with three final thoughts:

1. What about the men? I’ve been focused on mothers, but I do not for one second believe that parenting children is mostly a mother’s job. I believe that mothers and fathers should co-parent equally. For some that will mean taking turns going to graduate school or alternating who stays home with a sick kid. For others it will mean mom or dad staying home for years because the couple decides together that they want to forgo daycare. I would think that choice relies in part on who has greater earning power. My husband has greater earning power than I do and that has always been a factor in deciding who would stay home. Yet, he took care of bath time and bedtime, taught our boys how to ride their bikes and climb trees, helped them with homework and built stuff with them in the basement. He is a fantastic parent.

2. The village is gone. Many years ago I asked a Ghanaian friend, “What is the biggest difference you see in American family life versus Ghanaian family life?” And she responded, “American parents are so much more exhausted.” She said that in Ghana, extended family members are more involved in children’s lives. An aunt picks up a child from school, feeds her and makes sure she does her homework. Middle class families hire someone to clean, do laundry and iron. (This is not just for the wealthy.) In America, mom and dad do it ALL. We have no village. 

3. We have no village yet America is expensive. Salaries have not kept pace with the cost of living and so for most the whole trad wife thing is a moot point. Both parents have to work just to pay the rent or mortgage and health care. In other words, American life supports neither a parent staying at home nor both parents working. Both are fraught with dizzying complexity.

It is perplexing to me why those who worry about the decreasing birthrate don’t recognize this complexity and seek creative ways to alleviate it - without pushing women into one mold. Children are beautiful and worth having, not for everyone, but for many. I look forward to the day when our culture makes it easier instead of harder to choose to have them.