On TradGrandma
“Our grandmothers were happier than women today.”
Last week, a follower sent me a post by Catholic homemaking influencer Adele Collins. Collins can be seen kneading bread in the brief video, which included the words, “Our grandmothers were happier than women today.” In the video caption, she bemoaned the “labor saving devices and the contraceptives and the daycare and the gadgets for the kids and the microwave dinners” that are part of modern life today, and said that our grandmothers were happier “PROBABLY while wearing a dress” than “the average modern woman after the sexual revolution.”
She then chose to speak on behalf of these grandmothers, asking “What wisdom could we receive from these women…?” This included not to “run around with a man if you’re not married to him,” and choosing a husband who will “protect you and your children” and “provide for you” and “keep you entertained” with his “rugged good looks.” She also said to have fun, friends, and hobbies, and to “look classy” and “put on lipstick.”
Her response received hundreds of comments, many of them critical, noting that life has improved for women in many ways and that our grandmothers endured many hardships we thankfully do not experience today. Eventually, Collins hid all of the comments to the post, removed the ability to comment, and edited her post’s caption to note that “their lives were objectively harder in most imaginable ways” but that they were “STILL happier.”
One can note a few things about this post. First, Collins lives a lavish lifestyle in many ways with a large home in Virginia. While she brands herself as a homemaker, she also derives income from her social media accounts. Instagram accounts with up to 10,000 followers can earn an average of $1400 per month, and Collins has more than 46,000 followers. She likely makes, at minimum, $17,000 annually from her Instagram account alone. So, as a “non-working woman,” she still earns about 40% of what the average working woman makes today. (In 2022, the earnings of the average female worker was around $41,0000.) This does not include any income she may make from her other social media accounts, or her professional relationship with Ascension Press or other organizations.
Second, Collins gives us an opportunity to examine some of the problems prevalent in much Catholic discourse today, and in social media discourse generally. We ought to be careful about broad generalized statements about the past, such as “our grandmothers were happier than we are” or “the Church was better back when…” or “society was better in the year…” When statements like these are made, it’s important to ask:
For whom?
In what ways?
History is complicated. So generalized historical statements tend to evidence a lack of historical awareness. When we see such statements, it’s important to complicate the narrative. Collins’s statement, unfortunately (and probably unintentionally), dismisses and demeans the experiences of many women, women like my grandmother.
When my white grandmother married my Indian grandfather in the 1960s, their marriage was a crime in more than a dozen US states, including the state that Collins lives in, Virginia. If my grandmother were living in Collins’s house when she got married, she could have been sent to prison. In the “good old days” of genteel living that Collins harkens back to, racism was a fundamental part of US marriage law. As a couple, my grandparents were barred from entering certain businesses. When my grandfather purchased his first home as a new professor in Lubbock, Texas, a member of his department insisted on meeting with the seller, because he knew that a white man should be present to ensure my grandfather wasn’t getting ripped off. In that time period, which some think of as a “golden age” for American Catholicism, my grandmother’s parish priest refused to marry my grandparents because my grandfather was a Hindu, even though my grandfather agreed that they would raise their children Catholic.
Only a small-minded view would, knowing all that, unqualifiedly say, “Our grandmothers were happier than women today.”
Many women in the past may have been happier in many ways. But it takes a lack of historical awareness, as well as a care for only certain kinds of women (wealthy, white, married to white men, etc.) to just say, “The world is worse for women today.”
I am very proud of my grandmother. In a time when few women did, she pursued her Masters degree. She pushed back against the mores and social expectations of her day to marry this kind little brown man from India. She pushed against the expectations of her Church leaders and raised her Catholic family, with a supportive Hindu husband who got on his knees and prayed Catholic prayers with his children before bedtime. She eventually did choose to give up her nursing career and become a homemaker. But she never stopped being herself, this feisty woman who would say about parish priests she didn’t like, “I outlasted the last one, and I’ll outlast this one.” I have no doubt that she’d be very proud of how far we have come for women today.
It’s also important to note that, while Collins seems to bemoan timesaving devices and the anxieties of modernity, her post is facilitated by the most timesaving and anxiety-inducing device in the history of the world: the smartphone. Indeed, for her to be more like “our grandmothers” in this space would be to, rather than running social media pages, manage a printed newsletter that she sends in the mail to her followers. Instead, she contributes to ongoing engagement via the device that is a cornerstone of what is distinct about life in the world today.
None of this is meant to shame Collins or influencers like her. But it does underscore the need to complicate the narrative, to look beyond the little worlds we occupy, to see the experiences of people very different from ourselves, and to speak with greater awareness in the future. And, I believe, we should also take accountability for the words we’ve spoke. I am personally angry because of how Collins’s post dismisses (even if unintentionally) many people that this country has had to work so hard to lift out of oppression. Collins writes a history that doesn’t include them. Collins unwittingly contributes to the marginalization they experienced in their time with this present erasure. And she financially profits off of this erasure, while my grandmother never claimed a dollar for her work as a homemaker.
Maybe Collins has cultivated her particular way of life because she has seen other lifestyles result in harm for others, and she wants something different for herself. But the problem arises in her tendency—common to all of us—to take her choices as the choices that all women should make, and then to read history through the lens of how she wants to live her life today. It’s fair for her to make these choices for her lifestyle, but the problem arises in the fact that she doesn’t create spaces for the experiences of other women, including the actual historical experiences of many women. She presents a small myopic view that creates a very small world for womanhood.
But her perspective is facilitated by her lack of historical awareness. As others pushed back on her post in the comments, she would respond with repeated broad generalized historical statements, referencing a narrative that collapsed history into a tidy story. This collapsing is what results in that simplified narrative, which is an ideology. What makes an ideology distinct is that it is a simplified narrative or perspective that answers all questions and other experiences by reference to itself, in ways that dismiss other realities. An education in history is helpful, in part, because it pushes against our natural tendency to operate under ideology.
But I am thankful for Collins’s post in some ways. Many have shared with me their own perspectives and response to Collins’s post, as well as the stories of their grandmothers. It’s my honor to share some of them here, especially since Collins has removed all responses to her post. Please note that many of these include stories of violence, including sexual violence, and some include stories of death, including death by suicide. Some have been lightly edited for clarity…
“My grandmother lived in a country (Italy) where if they were raped it would have been considered a crime against 'morality' not against their person and their rapist would be pardoned and free from charge if he married them (Italy, until 1989). And that's only one example.”
“My grandmother wasn't invited to my parents' wedding because she didn't want them to get married. My mom is white, and my dad is from South Africa. My grandmother had a 6th grade education, that's why she stayed home. I have a Master's and I stay at home, because it is too expensive to find childcare for my surprise NFP baby. We all have our struggles. Why are we trying to be happier than people who are dead? Why don't we try to be happy as ourselves?
I think there might be a generational gap in our stories, because my mom sounds a lot like your grandma. She is a nurse and a doctor, planned to be a medical missionary before she met my father, paid off her student loans by working on a reservation, and then quit to homeschool her 8 children. That's what she wanted, and what she wanted changed with her life, and isn't that flexibility what happiness actually is?”
“So much of this reel/caption is off-putting, but for some reason the 'rugged good looks' line is really bothering me. Like, something about the assumption of a certain body type and appearance inherently belonging to virtue??? Idk. Major ick.
And I know it's because I'm a fat short (still white) woman who sucks at housekeeping. But I'm so fricking tired of these tall skinny white women telling us how perfect their lives are *because holiness* while they knead bread in their immaculate kitchens.”
“Neither of my grandmothers baked bread from scratch LOL.
They both embraced midcentury convenience foods to save time and effort. Just look at the recipes in any vintage church cookbook - it wasn't all homstead sourdough. As a historian I respect and admire all the home cooking skills that past generations used to feed their families. But I also know they faced incredible suffering.
Children died of diseases like polio and scarlet fever. The Great Depression took some families to the brink of starvation, and after that came wartime rationing. Idealizing the past is a white privilege, and even then it's not realistic.
African-American food historians embrace both sides of the story. Soul food is a comforting tradition, but it's also 'how we got over.' Grandmothers used their culinary skills to make do and overcome adversity.
“My maternal grandmother died at 39 with 9 kids between the ages of 16 and 3 after having become a widow the year before. She was not put in a hospice home and not allowed to see her children before she died because she had some kind of degenerative disease.
My paternal grandmother was abandoned by my grandfather when she was pregnant with my dad (baby number 7). She had to work and leave my dad at a convent where the nuns would only pay attention to him if he cried when he was hungry.”
“Yeah her post was high key cringe. It made me, a jeans wearing, full time working mom, feel like I'm somehow doing this woman thing wrong and that's just not true.”
“Tangentially related, this reminds me of a story my grandmother told me recently. We're from an ethnically diverse city in Massachusetts and she said that when she was a kid everyone attended the parish that corresponded with their ethnic background (Italians went to the Italian parish, Irish to the Irish parish, Portuguese to the Portuguese, etc.) which makes sense because it's probably where they felt belonging/community.
But when you went to confession the priest would ask you what neighborhood you were from and if you were at the 'wrong' parish, he would refuse absolution and tell you to go to your parish. This impacted her directly because her and her mother were Irish but her father was Portuguese. They lived in a Portuguese neighborhood which meant their Irish parish was several blocks aware whereas the Portuguese parish was close by.
As an act of resistance she would go to Mass there anyway which was quite bold at the time. I'm so proud of her and enjoy hearing these stories.
Actually, I have to edit one part that I got mixed up though. 😂When she went to confession the priests would regularly ask parishioners what neighborhood they lived in and whether or not they went to Mass at the 'wrong' parish then they would have to confess that as a sin if they did 😵💫”
“I notice these influencer accounts are mostly young mothers. Which means their grandmothers were not actually living the life they are proclaiming is amazing. /// Their actual grandmothers were more likely part of the revolution to make this country more welcoming.
I'm almost 50 and my happiest grandmother was the one who founda way to share her gifts (using Catholic speak). She showed me the power of using your voice and your skills to help others (and she taught me all about computers.)
Also. The Harvard study on happiness showed what really matters is the relationships we foster in life, not whether we knead our bread. (Granted that study focuesed on men, but I think its results hold for grandmothers as well.)”
“Like these kind of videos are nothing new and have been around since the internet started (ladies against feminism was a whole thing like I could do a Ted talk on all this) but a lot of these things cultivate an interest in history that makes them think they actually know things, when they haven't ever done a peer reviewed research project. It's a weird brand of pseudo history. There's quite a few traditional homeschoolish ppl who come to college in history and arts and pretty much all come out with 'wow it's actually more complicated also the majority of women actually were always working anyway hmmmm'. Which is why the trads rail against academia partly lol. Ppl who actually care about history know it's complicated. Ppl who just care about furthering an agenda make up history.”
“Our grandmas were the rebels. Mine divorced her cheating husband and raised their four young kids alone. She flooded her own basement to stop him from selling the house out from under her, and in the end she managed to get the house in her name alone. She worked full time and had a gay best friend ('the best because they will help you fix things but never expect sex!') She was Catholic her whole life and received Eucharist without apology. I don't believe her divorce was ever annulled.”
“My Jewish grandma married my grandpa at 22, who came out as a gay man in the 70s when my dad was 9. She remarried a man who was unfaithful. She battled mental illness and even homelessness. She was a brilliant comic and writer but lacked a lot of privielge and support. My Catholic grandmother was the daughter of a Russian immigrant mom, had an alcoholic father who died in bed with another woman when my grandma was a tween. She got pregnant with my mom at 15 in 1955 and was forced to marry the man who impregnated her, who ended up becoming a child abusing Satanist and yet the church wouldn't grant her an annulment til the 1970s. She was witty and had tremendous grit and overcame so much in life, but also didn't get the white picket fence life that apparently this woman's grandma had. I think I'm much happier than either of my grandmas with my enby partner, working as a creative freelancer, going to therapy, and daily discerning my own unique vocation rather than following a script.
My Russian great grandma was one of 13 and had lost several siblings to Polio when there was no vaccine and Scarlet fever. Generatonal trauma is a real thing but maybe this woman's family was just generationally unscathed? And she can't see that that's privilege? It's not just about money but also the adversity of home life (ACES score) people grow up with. Holiness isn't about making your life immaculate, without adversity, it's about finding strength and hope and gentleness in the midst of it and having the serentity to accpet what you can't change, the courage to change what you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Everyone who thinks differently is living in a bubble of privilege and denial.”
“She commented something about how she doesn't trust studies about historical happiness... but then she keeps defending these studies? Get out of here. So inconsistent.
And also, my grandmas both lived wildly different life. Maternal grandma had 8 kids with almost zero timesaving devices, and while she's in good condition at 85, you can tell in photos that it aged her prematurely. Paternal grandma had my dad at like age 18/19, so experienced this wave of feminism tha tthe creator is railing against. Grandma had multiple bad husbands who she was *allowed* to divorce. She didn't have the societal pressure to place my dad for adoption, even though it was a scandal in their tiny Midwestern (mostly) Methodist down that she was an unwed mother. She was able to become a nurse, divorce her shitty husbands who tried to frame her for tax evasion, and finally meet and married her now husband, who she's been married to for like 20 years.
I don't think that I'm happier than my grandmas are/were, but I don't think I'm unhappier either. Happiness can't really be measured, and I think that society plays a role in how you're 'allowed' to feel. How often do we hear things like ' you should be upset about____?' Doesn't that influence how you feel?”
“My paternal grandmother underwent multiple rounds of electro-shock therapy that left her a shell of a person. My maternal grandmother spent the first half of her adult life as a Stepford wife and the second hafl being mad as hell. I do not want what they had and they would not want it for me. Damn this idea straight to hell.”
“Bret Devereaux is an ancity Roman historian. Technically a military historian, his thesis was actually on Roman textiles - odd until you recall that all Roman soldiers were, in fact, clothed. Well, those clothes came from somewhere. The value he provides to this conversation is his deep knowledge of labor practices in an agrarian society. Much of the 'traditional' division of labor was not so much a values decision as an inherent necessity born from (1) the fact that pregnant-and-nursing mothers are less effective farmers than not-pregnatn-and-nursing men, and (2) until the industrial revolution, the significant majority of people survived by barely scraping enough food out of the ground to survive, which meant that there was no room for 'idle hands' andso women really needed to be working full time, which meant they needed to be doing tasks that could be done while prengant-and-nursing. /// On his Twitter, he describes his high level view of the 'Trad Wife' movement - that it completely misses the actual historical labor structures and reasons for those labor structures. It's really incorehent to describe a lifestyle as 'Traditional' when the lifestyle does not really match the actualities of historical life. THere is no tradition there.
Compare to something like the 'Traditional Latin Mass' (which I personally cannot abide but plenty of people love) where we have good records on actualy celebration of the mass in the past so we can (and I think do? Idk) accurately and faithfully perform the same actions taken historically during celebration of the mass.
The TLM is 'traditional' because the actions are the same as 'tradition'/history. (I guess I don't actually know this, but I am pretty sure/??) Trad wife lifestyle is not traditional, because the actions are not the same as 'tradition'/history.
I'd also recommend his blog (https://acoup.blog/) - A collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, and in particular, his pieces on making bread and making clothing.
“One of my great-grandmothers was a genocide survivor. Another kicked out her husband who was a gambling addict and raised her two kids as a single mom for many years (👏👏👏). I am only here because of their strength but I'm also sure I'm much happier than both of them on different fronts because neither would speak of their past in any detail because it was too much.”
“My grandmother lived her whole life married to an abusive, terrible husband. She deserved so much better. May she rest in peace.”
“There's a fascinating book called 'The Once and Future Sex' about women's roles in medieval society and I highly recommend for anyone looking for more information about the disconnect between what is actually 'traditional' and what was just made up in the 1950s.”
“What I find funniest about these types of videos/posts is that the real evil these women are rebelling against is not so much modernity but late-stage capitalism which has made dual income households almost wholly nencessary to sustain a family (hence her likely monetized social media platform as a SAHM) and which has isolated us into nuclear families who don't know our neighbors and don't have time to drive to the grocery store much less grow our own food. But you will never hear a Trad Wife say a single negative thing about capitalism (or the nuclear family!)”
“My one grandma married my grandpa when they were 5 months pregnant with twins and my other grandma divorced my grandpa when my dad was two and she raised her 3 kids alone... both of them had harder times than I did.”
“My first-gen Italian grandmother dropped out of school in her teens, went to work and had to hide money from her father who expected all her earnings, hated her father, never spoke about her childhood (who knows what traumas she endured), and constantly talked about wanting to die. My grandfather was so gentle and worshipped her and did absoltely everything for her. I loved her, her cooking and the way she dressed and the woman she was, but I would never trade my life for what she had. “
“The book 'Empire of Pain' is a great history of this [how our grandmothers were drugged] leading up to the current opioid crisis. /// It's not focusing on women necessarily but on the corrupt family responsible for irresponsibly marketing all these drugs (Valium ('Mother's little helper') AND OxyContin later!)”
“I think that, intended or not, the purpose of these provocative trad takes is to solidify the hold the mindset has on newish or wavering adherents. They think they should be listening to these influencers and any doubts they have are erased when they see the reactions these whacky opinions generate among the normal people who are suddenly in the comments and outraged.”
“My Italian grandmother told me a story of getting kicked out of Mass in Philadelphia for bringing a Black neighborhood friend to church with her.”
“Can I also add (as a professional historian and trained archivist in the south) white women in VA where that woman lives who were upper middle class definitely were not the ones making bread from scratch in the 1930s-1960s. Their not well paid Black housekeeper and/or nanny was. Those women had plenty of time for community because women of color were doing their housework. It is rarely talked about but it is all over oral histories and other documents of the time - they all had ‘help’ on hand. (Also I work full time as an archivist because I believe I have been fully called to share my gifts for preserving the real past in a country that continues to struggle with recognizing it.) I’m a mom to two amazing little girls and I want so much more for them in life than making bread from scratch. (My grandmas are two wonderful happy women and they happily bought bread at the local bakery 😂)”
“I don’t even recall how I came across her account but it made this 40 year old gay pissed and I too had to comment! 😂
These folks follow an all too familiar formula… stoking the fire on complex issues and offering easy solutions… conveniently prepackaged by entities like Ascension Press. It shapes their algorithms, and they monetize it. Polarization is sexy… nuance and depth, not so much.”
“It was more like Mad Men + Little House on the Prairie… sexist and exhausting, according to my Nunni, who was in an arranged marriage after her own brothers broke off her engagement to the love of her life… in America! She immigrated from Italy as a child.”
“This whole ‘TradGrandma’ (lol) discussion brings up an interesting paradox I think both trad Catholics and progressives struggle with: trying to find a simple ideology to attack to explain ‘unhappiness.’ There might be some value in encouraging women AND MEN to rethink how they prioritize their lives and time. I have a lot of friends who can be condescending and judgy in the opposite way to the point that considering being a SAHM is looked down upon, so I imagine this is an overreaction to the overreaction 😵💫.
Her point (though laced in privilege and I disagree with her approach) is that freedom from adversity doesn’t make us happy, holiness does (and somehow it also looks perfect and includes better sex and a handsome husband lol). I think we’d all be better off if we could hold space for both, that there might be some ‘traditional’ things we’ve let go that would make SOME people happier to embrace again.
At the same time, the answer is to improve our current structures, not go back in time to an idealized past.
I’d also add it makes sense to have a visceral reaction to the way the post minimized the injustices of the past and current systems and again puts the blame on individual women. I had the same reaction, I’m just trying to check myself on why certain things bring up these feelings in me and see if there’s something internal I can learn about myself when reacting to things.”
“My Grandmother contracted polio when she was 18 and was paralyzed from the waist down. She then went on to get married, have a dozen pregnancies that resulted in many miscarriages (after being told she couldn’t get pregnant), and raised 5 living children all while in a wheelchair before ADA compliance (like ramps and handicap bathroom stalls were a thing). My mom remembers their family having so much anxiety if they were in public and her mom needed to go to the bathroom because it was so difficult and a production to even do the simplest task. My Grandpa was a police officer who worked odd hours but was Mr Mom whenever he was home. He completely went against the ‘traditional’ gender norms. Doing laundry, cooking dinner, shopping when he could. This reel really bothered me in all the ways people have brought up. So out of touch. The thing that speaks most loudly to me is that she’s making money while cosplaying a SAHM who doesn’t work.”
“I’m not familiar with the studies she’s referencing, so I can’t comment on them specifically, but every time I see someone share info about how people were happier in some mythologized past time, I think… there are a lot of reasons why people today might be less happy than a couple decades ago! And they don’t have to do with feminism! Skyrocketing economic inequality, increased financial insecurity, lack of labor protections, the fact that a middle-class lifestyle is becoming out of reach for more and more people (and of course there are people who were always kept from reaching it). Also the fact that parents in our society have so little support, many people who want children feel like they can’t have them because of economic insecurity or lack or resources… the list goes on. I also appreciate and agree with everything that has been shared about the fallacy of ‘golden ages’ and the myriad barriers to happiness for our grandmothers!”
“It’s cosplaying ‘poor’.
Someone else brought up a point I wasn’t seeing, which is that wealthy white women had the time for leisure and ‘happiness’ because poor women of color were working in their homes. Did those women not also deserve to be caretakers of their home and children?”
“I’m single woman who is also in a place of (relative) financial privilege. And also, if/when I ever get married and have kids, I have no desire to be a sahm because I would go crazy without grownup work and interaction, but also, I’d want my family to be able to be financially secure in a way I and most of my friends weren’t growing up with stay at home moms.”
“One of the things that bothers me about this topic isn’t that she is really happy in choosing this life (and it’s obviously a choice for her). Aside from the misleading way she describes herself as a SAHM even though she clearly has monetized her account, but so many families aren’t living with this as a choice. 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. This isn’t a ‘give up your Starbucks’ kind of choice for many of us. $100/month isn’t the deciding factor. For those of us who are single parents, families with disabilities, living in parts of the country with fewer economic opportunities, etc. there isn’t a choice.”
“What’s wild is that having a massive platform in a social media space takes work. These influencers act like their videos are effortless and just happen, but they are constantly setting up camera angles, dressing their kids up just so, and generally working SO HARD to perpetuate the myth of the effortlessness of their lifestyle. Not to mention the research into analytics and trends it takes to maintain relevance within instagram’s ever changing algorithm.”
“That reel had me all worked up all day yesterday!!! Stupid but true! I can’t tell you how cathartic it is to see you and your followers cover it!!! I even had my 96 year old grandmother over tonight and asked her about how ‘happy’ her mother was. Hard hard lives!! I want to know who provided the ‘happy’ interviews in the first place. Had to be a very select privileged few!”
“My dad was raised in the 1960s in North Carolina in a middle class family, and even they had a Black nanny who took care of the three kids when my dad was a baby until all three kids were school aged. And my grandparents weren’t even that well off… probably right on the line between middle and upper class.
Also, I want to point out more generally that this account is brushing over the reality in the rural south back then in more than one way. My family all comes from rural Eastern NC, and I’ve often noticed that my family history is completely different than a lot of my friends who come from, say, the northeast or even the Midwest. My grandparents on both sides were the first to finish high school and they pulled themselves up to the middle class by sher force of will (which was something you used to be able to do) (for context on where these people fall in time, I’ll turn 25 this year)
But, for example- one of my great grandmothers was a poor girl who was basically tricked by a richer man to become his mistress as a teenager, gave him 3 children, and then he abandoned her to marry a proper woman and she later married a very sweet man who accepted her children as his own, but she was, until the day she died, by all accounts very cruel and didn’t trust anyone.
Her daughter, my grandmother, married a man who got her into the middle class by reason of his union electrician job (despite also coming from abject poverty) and they did well enough for themselves financially that she never had to work and they also had help… but she never knew what to do with her children (which wasn’t her fault, there wasn’t anyone to help her) and the generational trauma of all that has only continued.
Meanwhile, my great grandparents on my mother’s side were good religious people, very proper and respected, but also poorer than dirt. My grandfather’s parents survived by his dad basically just doing whatever job he could get until they finally got enough money to buy a farm in the Black neighborhood, but they were always extremely poor- they raised 6 kids in a 2 bedroom house. By all accounts his mother was sweet and generous and kind and also extremely anxious all the time and couldn’t let herself stop working for fear that they would loose it all.
But even after all of that, and his family having fought to be middle class and send all their kids to college (despite neither of my grandfather’s parents having a scrap of a high school education) my grandfather was still considered ‘too poor’ (they had more colorful words for it, mostly mocking his accent) for my grandmother’s family… he got his PhD and ended up solidly upper middle class and my grandmother’s family still didn’t like him because he was ‘too rural’
my grandmother, meanwhile, taught kindergarten for years once her two children were in school, and was, in many ways, the proper and sweet housewife everyone thinks of from the 50s and 60s… but her grandchildren all have talked among ourselves about the fact that she basically has to still care for my grandfather like a child—and yes, she’s happy to do it, but he’s been waited on by all the women in his life and can’t really take care of himself anymore either.
That long rant to say — I think a lot of people forget that the 50s and 60s were only idealic for a small group of people… depending on your ethnicity, how rural you were, and how poor your family was. And once you were rich enough to not have to constantly worry about being homeless, you quickly approached the level of being able to have help of your own (who were all underpaid and overworked and under appreciated)
Sure, I would love to live in a world like my grandparents where a college education or a union job could get you from abject poverty to the upper middle class, but I also really like living in a world where, for example, I can openly be a lesbian and where at least some progress on racial equality is happening.”
“My paternal grandmother had ten children. Four of them died, one set of twins and two individual children. She had six more children who survived four individual children and one more set of twins. She went slightly insane after her husband left her and went back to his first wife and family in Bahrain. She was left a single mother of six kids and raised them in poverty. If the chickens didn’t lay eggs, my father and his siblings didn’t eat.
My maternal grandmother wanted to go to craft school, but her parents were too poor. She married my grandfather and worked as a charlady cleaning rich people’s houses whilst my mother played in their gardens.
I am definitely happier than those two children.”
“Please tell my grandmother Maria she had a housekeeper and never had to bake bread or ferment vegetables to feed her seven living children. I can’t tell you how much I loathe these caricatures of white people. Most of us have only ever had just enough to get by from one generation to the next. 400 years of being white in America: I’m the first to go to college, make the most money, have no inheritance, and none of my family owns their home.”
In response to the above, I shared the following: “IMO this is a very fair perspective. And the previous post was focused on a subset of white women in VA at the time. It’s important to remember that the experiences of white women varied, just as the experiences of all women varied. And also, race is still important. It’s important that many experiences and opportunities available to white women were illegal for BIPOC women.
Another person responded to the above as well:
“Yes. I just want to acknowledge this person’s perspective as REAL. White family of Eastern European immigrants (my great grandparents immigrated) on both sides who came over early 1900s. My grandparents were dirt poor, working from teenage years with little rest until they were retired (or died). My grandfather worked himself to death by being a full time police officer and farmer in a small New England town. Were they happy? As far as I know, yes. Because they were grateful for what they did have. And they worked hard so their children could achieve what they could not, and me in my turn. But in no way were their lives easier or did they wish to go back to the good old days when they had nothing, wondering where there food was coming from, if men would assault them on their 2 mile walk home from school (yup).”
And the stories and thoughts from others continued…
“My Polish grandma (Busia!) and her sister ran a dress shop. They’d often travel to New York to find the latest fashions to bring back to Ohio. My grandma on my dad’s side worked at NASA and also raised 7 kids. So… they were bosses, not tradwifes.”
“My grandmother told a story of when she was a small child. Her and her friend walked to their local Catholic Church to light a candle and pray for a friend who was sick.
A nun found them, these CHILDREN who were praying and what did she notice? That these girls were there without head coverings. She yelled at them, put bulletins on top of their heads and shooed them from the Church.
Not everything was perfect about life, much less the Church back then. People put on rose colored glasses about how perfect it was - I suggest they speak to their grandparents if they were Catholic for any length of time back then and find out what it was REALLY like.”
“She blames the lack of happiness today just on feminism with the conclusion that obviously we shouldn’t have had feminism because ‘feminism promised women would be happier and they’re clearly not’ which is obviously an extremely flawed conclusion. And as someone who isn’t particularly happy, and whose grandmothers very likely would have rated higher on the happiness scale than I do, I still argue with my whole body that feminism was a net good even if we still have problems today.”
“This whole conversation really strikes a chord with me. I have been fighting to find a home within the parish we belong to because the Catholic mom’s group certainly has an unconscious bias towards this 1950’s idealization of family life and womanhood. I have gotten into an online debate with the woman who sells any parish Catholic mom’s group material in my Archdiocese about how there is no ideal time and that the 50’s has their own evils to fight. There was so much privilege in her argument, that even when I pointed it out to her she completely dismissed. I know I am not alone in feeling like this but it is always good to actually see that I am not alone in this.”
“My paternal grandmother had 11 children, essentially back to back. My grandfather ran a business, she stayed at home and shuttled the kids back and forth between school and parochial league sports games (I have no idea how they put all those kids through Catholic school, but they did). She was *not* at home baking bread from scratch, and she needed all the time savers and convenience she could get!
They lived in the same house until my grandfather passed in 2013, and they had a good life together, but it wasn’t easy. I think she was relieved to spend her last ten years (she just passed in October) living in a sweet little house with her TV and relative peace and quiet.
My grandma was a devoted Catholic who prayed the rosary every day, and definitely thought we should all have access to birth control and education. She and my grandpa were so proud of my science degrees.”
Someone asked me the following question: “Are you thinking racism is the problem with her video? It’s weird to me too. All of these weird videos just tell me how sheltered these women are. I often wonder how many non-Catholic people they know and talk to. Like an echo chamber. Anyway. I said something to her right away because the video made me upset and I wanted to share my perspective with her that it wasn’t all butterflies and rainbows for everyone.”
I responded: “I don’t think it’s necessarily racism behind it, though I think it enables racism. It’s more an ideology involving an idealized view of the 1950s with certain gender roles.”
“HISTORY IS MESSY!!!! All of this made me think of a book I read in my History of the American West class in college - Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel. It’s about all of the hardships (mostly white) women faced going West during the Manifest Destiny/Gold Rush era, 1841-1867 in this book’s case. I feel like tradwives think that if they went back in time they’d be living their best Little House on the Prairie lives, looking out over an untouched wide open landscape, feeding chickens, and baking bread while their children play in the field out back. In reality, Schlissel’s book talks about how many women were forced to go West because their husbands and fathers wanted to, separating them from their existing support systems back East, often forever. On the way there, they buried their family members who’d just died of cholera or dysentery in shallow graves on the side of the road.
They gave birth in wagons and only had a day to recover before they had to get moving again. They trekked through pouring rain, extreme winds, and hail. Their diaries made it clear that it wasn’t all bad, but it sure as hell wasn’t sunshine and roses. And homesteader life on the plains was LONELY and HARD—floods, fires, tornadoes, droughts, blizzards, and plagues of insects were frequent. And again, these are mostly white people’s experiences—during the same times, Indigenous women were being killed or starved or forced from their homelands in mass, Black women were being enslaved and then trying to build lives for themselves and their families after the Civil War, etc etc.
I do love escapism as much as the next person. Do I daydream about going to live in a remote cabin to escape this dumpster fire we call the present sometimes? Sure. But would I ever give up the rights and privileges that I enjoy in the year of our Lord 2024, thanks to the sacrifices of all those women who came before me, to go back to the mid-1800s? Hell no. And I like to imagine that all of those women in the past who went through so much would be amazed by everything women can do nowadays. Maybe a little scandalized at first, but amazed and hopefully very proud.”
“I don’t really follow the rules but I think I’d be left out of these spaces as well because the 1950s had my interracial relationship illegal.”
“This is just a compilation of thoughts I’ve had discussing this stuff with my husband and continuing to read other people’s contributions:
I think what I’m distilling this down to is what happens when things that were once viewed as necessary become or appear unnecessary.
One of the things that I find fascinating is the change in attitude towards science. I think of it a lot in relation to vaccines (although formula vs breastfeeding is also an interesting example). But you know, 70 years ago, vaccines were a miracle. And I’m sure there were skeptics but on the whole, everyone’s getting them, everyone is marveling and thankful for the ability to avoid these dreadful diseases.
Fast forward to the 90s, 2000s, etc. kids aren’t dying of measles so the appearance of necessity is gone (bc people notoriously think if you stop having problems you can discontinue the thing preventing the problem). And now that the NECESSITY is ‘gone’ and it appears optional, you opt out if you don’t like it.
On the other hand, we have things that have become optional but are ATTRACTIVE. For women like in that reel, it’s the ‘homesteading,’ the making bread by hand, the handsewing, the knitting, the ‘tradwife’ lifestyle.
Being a tradwife is a CHOICE. It’s something they OPT INTO because they LIKE IT. It’s not necessary, it’s essentially a life-encompassing hobby.
And, ostensibly, at least, they enjoy it. But the problem is (along with the issues around race and class) that they turn around and present THEIR HOBBY (their life-encompassing and expensive hobby) as a necessity, and couch it in the language of gender, which is going to hook all these people very caught up in the culture war hysteria about gender.
Which is ridiculous. Because (and this is the distilled thought I promised before I started ranting for like three messages lol), because all they really did was pick a lifestyle that appealed to them.”
“And besides the unacknowledged financial privilege on these influencer accounts, the ableism. The privilege of the overall health to do this stuff physically/mentally/emotionally is not acknowledged.
And thanks again for hosting these conversations. I’ve really enjoyed learning about so many people and their experiences. This has been a great thread for me.”
“I also asked her how she defined happiness, and then when I went back to see if my question was answered, comments were turned off.
The other question I asked was how she got to the conclusion that feminism promised happiness. IMO feminism promises equality and rights and the alleviation of suffering in some respects, but it isn’t a promise of happiness.”
At this point, I invited people to also just share stories about their grandmothers…
“This is a hard one for me; I don’t have a very close relationship with either of my grandmothers, although they are both still living. My dad’s mom grew up a Scandinavian farm girl in Minnesota; probably pretty close to the kind of life tradwife influencers THINK they are imitating. She was a gardener, and maintaining her heritage is still very important to her. But she also worked out of the home as a nurse, and I think raised my dad and his brothers with a very strong sense of ‘making do’ and not wasting things.
My maternal grandmother I know better and my relationship is more complicated. I adored her as a little girl, but I also know now that being a stay at home mom who liked things ‘just so’ didn’t stop her from being abusive to her children.
And today my three strongest memories of her are: yes, sitting on her lap as a little girl, but then also her telling me I’d look better in my Easter dress if I sucked in my stomach, and her cutting short a visit and leaving my mom alone while my dad was out of town because I, in a fit of depressed teenage angst, told her to shut up.
So. Idk. I don’t hate my maternal grandmother, and I’ve repaired my relationship with her. But I did learn a long time ago that she’s not a safe person when you have big feelings, and that doing everything ‘right’: being crunchy, breastfeeding, homeschooling, stay at home momming, keeping her kids always clean and well dressed (she didn’t like my dad showing up to date my mom in jeans), taking the family to Mass every Sunday, didn’t make her a perfect person who couldn’t hurt people.
And idk. I wish I had better stories but these are also the stories I have.”
“Her caption put me over the edge. She lives in a bubble and further proves it by waving around her Harvard degree when challenged. My maternal grandmother had 10 children, several with asthma, no running water or electricity (if there was electricity, it wasn’t reliable) all while living under a dictatorship. She almost couldn’t immigrate to the US because she was illiterate and over 50 years old by the time my dad and grandfather were able to fix the mess of documents to even apply. I might ask my mom what she thinks of this ridiculous idea. My grandmother cared for so many of us well but was not very warm and sometimes pretty mean. I learned to swear in Spanish copying her. I think my grandmother coped within the situation dealt to her but whatever the case I hate these takes because it doesn’t allow for us to understand people fully and in their complexities. As a kid, I had a hard time being with my grandmother. Now, I wish we could have a drink together and hear her perspective.”
“Wow I’m so glad your followers brought this to you. I saw her post and had a lengthy discussion with my husband about it. My maternal grandmother was likely suffering from severe mental illness. No one talks about it. Ever. She was very ill and their lives revolved around that. She couldn’t get help at that time period. Thank God my grandfather is such an upstanding person because he supported her and loved her unconditionally. But she certainly wasn’t happier. Add that to the fact that my grandparents adopted a black child and my great-grandfather disowned them over it. My mom was assaulted by a family priest who frequented their home and no one did anything about it. Happier? I’d say not. My paternal grandmother didn’t know how to manage and they spent their first 10 years of marriage living with her in-laws, raising 4 kids with 4 adults. THey had no money for food and my grandfather had war ptsd.”
“When my maternal grandparents met — they met because my grandfather needed someone to type-up his term paper for him. He hired a cute girl who worked in the university library to type-up his paper. He asked her out. She said ‘no.’ He kept bringing her more work (more papers to type) and he hung around to talk to her, get to know her… More than ONE YEAR passed by before she allowed him to take her out on a first date (a date that only occurred because he had been actively listening to her over the course of that entire year, he knew she didn’t have dinner waiting for her at home when her shift at work finished that night, and when he offered to take her out for a cheeseburger on his dime that night — how could she refuse??).
Both my maternal grandparents were born in the 1940s. My grandmother was raised on a farm with a professor of agriculture for a father. She was a high-achieving A+ college student working multiple jobs who had blind trust in doctors and persons in positions of power.
My grandfather? He was raised a city boy in a high-society family in a major metropolitan city. He was a B- average student (at best) with comedic chops and street smarts.
They made for a great match. However, his family didn’t approve of him marrying outside of high society. And her family had six other kids and was just grateful to not have a 7th mouth to feed anymore. So — they certainly married ‘for love,’ even if coming from ‘less than perfect’ families.
And—true fact—my grandfather was born with a health condition that impacted his quality of life and ability to hold down a 9-to-5 type of job. (Gig work on a project basis was more his speed). So my maternal Grandmother was the breadwinner for their family since before women being breadwinners was ‘trendy.’ She and my maternal Grandfather came to this decision because it was what worked for them—my Grandfather’s health was frail, he was capable of being the SAHP, and he worked side gigs as his health permitted him. But for all intents and purposes: he was a SAHD. And my Grandma worked full-time AND got a hot meal on the table for dinner every night. I’m not entirely sure ‘how’ she did it. But she did.
Over the course of my lifetime I’ve found it interesting that my mom and uncle (the aforementioned couple’s children) were more endeared to their stay-at-home-parent than the bread-winning parent. They still loved both! But they were both more emotionally attached to their dad — apparently their dad was more capable of empathy in the face of pain and difficulties than their mother was.
After all—my grandfather experienced a lot of physical pain given his life-long medical condition and my grandmother found school ‘easy,’ in her own upbringing, so she didn’t have a lot of empathy any time her own children struggled in their academics. My grandmother also found it challenging to believe that not all teachers are good/ethical/moral teachers as she had blind trust in ‘the establishment.’ Thus, when her kids (my mom & uncle) ran into being in classrooms with less than decent people who were employed to be teachers, she didn’t parent them from a place of assuming the best of her children. She assumed the best of the teachers-in-question first.
So my Grandfather was definitely considered the parent my mom and uncle would want to approach if they had a hope of being believed when it came to struggles in academia.”
“My grandmother had an abusive husband. For years she medicated the pain, encouraged by the family doctor who knowingly prescribed highly addictive sedatives. Finally, she divorced her husband, the first woman to do so in their neighborhood. She went back to school and found a job and worked her ass off. She never attended a Catholic Church again. I admire her deeply.
I often think that a church that had no compassion for my grandmother is one that the rest of us have no business with.
She was an active and beloved member of her Presbyterian church. They never shamed her for her past.”
“My paternal grandmother was forced to drop out of college (she was getting a degree in STEM) when she married my grandfather right before he deployed to fight in WWII. She was a stay-at-home mom until well into her 50’s when her youngest child was in high school, and even then only had part-time jobs, but she volunteered a lot in the community. When I am feeling I am wasting my life or not good enough because *I* am a stay-at-home mom, my dad (her 4th child out of 5) reminds me about how valuable she was and how no one looks back on her life as ‘wasted’ or thinks it was a shame she was taking care of the kids and volunteering vs making extra $$ for a fancier house or whatever.
My maternal grandmother was married to an alcoholic who abused her and their kids for 19 years until he finally stopped supporting the family, at which time she finally felt like she was justified in leaving. (She had had to marry him in the first place b/c unwed pregnancy.)
And then my husband’s grandmothers loved through WWII… in POLAND. ANd then lived through Communism working factory jobs.
No thanks. I am immensely privileged in comparison.
Even though my own (American) grandmothers’ families of origin were both middle class and quite well off, and there were still bad societal pressures on them (unwed pregnancy = forced to marry to cover up the shame even though the man is abusive; can’t finish degree/live at college if you’re married).
*and white
In the 50s, my paternal grandmother also lost full term twins at birth due to doctors incompetence. No one in the family talks about them and I don’t even know if they were given names. I have triplets and I can’t imagine the sorrow of losing two babies at once. (Mine were predicted to die, thank God they are alive and well, but those months of stress and anticipation were beyond horrible.)”
“This reel is so incredibly narrow minded. However it’s important to know we only know how happy our grandmothers were based upon what they tell us or express. If I was 20 I would naively agree with her. Now that I’m pushing 40… all the family secrets start creeping out. I *thought* my grandmothers were these rays of sunshine that were the ideal moms growing up. My parents fed into that narrative (likely to protect the truth). Now as an adult and know more it’s horrifying (yet fascinating… I could write a book about each of them)”
“My paternal grandmother grew up dirt poor - her mom ‘went crazy’ and left them for a number of years and her dad raised 7 kids alone- well, really the younger ones raised the older ones. I’d say they were all considered ‘wyt’. My maternal grandmother was a farm wife and first generation American, as was my grandfather. He died and they lost the farm in the 80s when family farmers were going under. My grandmother eventually went back to nursing school and was the oldest person in her class. She worked when most of her friends were retired and she was killed by a drunk driver as she was heading to work to take care of the elderly priests in the priest care home in our diocese. Neither of them had easy lives, but I still think that the glamorization of the trad wife lifestyle is rooted in racism, even though there are plenty of white people that didn’t have that life either.”
“My maternal grandmother was the youngest of 10 and grew up in Port Arthur TX. She met my grandfather when he was stationed there after WWII. She was Catholic and he was not and they were married in the rectory. They moved for his job and she had my aunt and then my dad. She was a stay at home mom at the time. When her kids went to school she went through nursing school. One of her favorite hobbies was sewing. When Vatican 2 came around she helped bring up the hems of the sisters’ habits at the school where my dad and aunt attended. She was a wonderful cook and seamstress. Unfortunately, she had Alzheimer’s and had to be placed in a nursing home when I was 12. Her Catholic nurse wouldn’t let her attend mass because she mumbled to herself and the priest said it was disruptive. That was the first time I ever knew there were injustices in the Church.”
“My grandma was forced to stop teaching when she was pregnant (even though she was married) because the school didn’t want kids to see a pregnant woman. She sounds very proud when she tells me how years later the teacher’s union got the school to pay for all the time she could have been teaching!
‘My one grandma was addicted to drugs and left her abusive husband to bounce between equally bad relationships the rest of her life. My other grandma had a teen pregnancy with a philandering man.’ - my husband’s contribution
You can go to my Instagram highlights for “TradGrandma” for more of these.