Why Tradwife Content Feels Dangerous (Key Moment w/ Dr. Rosy Blunstone)

Is being a tradwife really just about baking bread, homemaking and traditional femininity, or is there something deeper going on?

This clip is an except from E181 of the Thinking Mind Podcast.

In this episode, Dr Alex is joined by Dr Rosy Blunstone to explore the psychology of the tradwife phenomenon: why tradwife content has become so popular online, what it offers women psychologically, and why it may also be more complicated (and less traditional) than it first appears.

This conversation examines whether tradwife culture is a harmless aesthetic, a genuine lifestyle choice, a reaction against burnout and modern feminism, or a romanticised fantasy shaped by influencer culture.

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist in-training. Dr. Blunstone is a registrar psychiatrist and psychotherapist working in North London.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And this also leads us to what I think is the fundamental hypocrisy at the heart of the trad wife phenomenon. So at least if you look at the girl boss phenomenon, it's totally congruent. They're saying, you know, go out, work hard, hustle, building build a career, be super independent, and that is indeed what they're doing. So there's there there's not a huge amount of hypocrisy there. With the trad wife thing, the people who are at the forefront of this movement are not staying at home doing, not having a career. They have these very vast, complicated, fully fledged social media and mainstream now media careers.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

One kind of side tangent on this point. So we gave a talk at the sixth form last week, Rosie and I did. Rosie talked to the girls, I talked to the guys. And one of the questions that we were asked was about social media. And my where I land on social media is you should treat social media as a video game. So social media is very cleverly designed to make us feel like it's reality. Like even this podcast, when we're making this podcast, what we're trying to create is this sense of an organic, fluid conversation, which to a large degree it is, but you guys aren't seeing the camera, you guys aren't seeing the lights, you're not seeing the editing, you're not seeing the post-production. So it is a performance of sorts, we can't get away from that. Social media, especially, so you're seeing, if you look at a trad wife real, you're seeing someone baking bread from scratch. You're not seeing the lights, you're not seeing the team, you're not seeing the expensive cameras. Social media is a video game, it is a representation of reality, it is not reality. So the fundamental hypocrisy at the core of this is the people at the top are very sophisticated business women.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

And and I even though I think you'd be surprised how many people could be taken in by that and and and kind of skim over that core hypocrisy, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah, agreed. And I think it's so important to acknowledge that because certainly I know Ballerina Farm is from a huge amount of wealth, as is her husband, and obviously coming with from uh with influencer culture is endorsements and being given lots of things, gifts and PR opportunities that the average person just doesn't have. One at the Ballerina Farm has, I think, nine children. The reality that you're going to be baking bread if you don't have a really clear infrastructure and childcare support with nine children is completely unrealistic. But is it the unrealistic aspect of what they're selling that is so appealing to us all? I mean, is that is that what's drawing us in? It's not real life because we can see real life, and real life's a bit dull sometimes. So just make it interesting and nicely lit and beautifully posed for us, and then we lose ourselves in that romanticism of the everyday in a way that we know every day is not particularly romantic and it's difficult and it's hard. And is there just something really nice in pretending that that's real when we all know it's not really real?

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'd like to get into that soon when we talk about the the more the dark side of engaging with this stuff. But one thing I thought of as I was listening to you was maybe a second layer of hypocrisy. So the first layer is the women behind this are all you know, they're all boss babes.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

They are and they're all and they're and I think they might be married to boss babes. Like I don't some of them certainly are it's boss babes all the way down, so that's layer one.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Layer two is I guess Chadwiffery is kind of a luxury lifestyle. Yes, for real, absolutely for the rich and affluent.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I was interested in as well is it's a Western phenomenon. Um, that again, I think we have to be mindful about where is this coming from and and and why so. But it absolutely is a luxury. The way in which this is being set up, that you could sustain a lifestyle in which the traditional gender roles are um adhered to. So you're as a woman, you're staying at home and you're cooking and you're looking after the children and you're raising them and looking after the house on a single income is unattainable for most people. It's not it's not the reality, and can only be possible when you have the financial backing that some of these people have and have achieved through their influence. I I get that it's the two are linked. Um, but it is not possible for a lot of people to just detach from life and their and work in this way and have children.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Now, when we discussed the the manosphere and looks maxing, we said, you know, there's there's ways, there's there's definitely healthier versions of it. So with the manosphere and looks maxing, it might be getting into personal fitness, yeah, learning social skills, things like that, even just learning about yourself psychologically, learning about men and women, you know, that stuff's useful. And then there's a less healthy side, which we discussed on those podcasts. And I guess it's the same with with the trad wife thing, you know, it might be just an idea of maybe I do need to make some alterations to my life, maybe cut back a little bit on work if I can. Maybe do some things I enjoy, and maybe I really enjoy some aspects of childcare, maybe I do really enjoy some aspects of keeping a beautiful home. And that seems pretty fine. I think you said some of your friends who watch this stuff, that's kind of I guess you could call this the aesthetic layer. They're engaging with more the aesthetic layer of this in a milder way. What do you think are some of the darker aspects of engaging with this stuff?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

I think inevitably anything that is selling you something that is not real is a bit dark. Um, because it set it can set you up on a the whole nature of social media is usually based around a comparison culture. The idea of how do I, what do I have versus what does that person have. And when it's not an even playing field, this is not fair. Those people do not have the same setup as you. I think that can absolutely lead people to be feeling much more um unhappy with their life, unhappy with their setup, and perhaps even making choices that are not particularly healthy for them. But I do think as well, there's also something about this move away from acceptance of where are we in our lives as a society, and what could we do to be changing things for better if it's not working for us. I don't think burying our heads in the sand and looking with rose-tinted glasses back to with nostalgia to it, it's not real this this time in the past. That's not how things were. And I don't think that's particularly healthy as a society or as an individual. I think we should be looking at things as they are and saying if this isn't working for us, I think we should be trying to find solutions and answers rather than looking back. And I also think it makes people very vulnerable to simplistic messaging that can key into unmet needs, particularly perhaps politically unmet needs, um, that that can be very dark. And so I think there are dark aspects of this that we have to be mindful of.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

One aspect I was really worried about is to what extent is this phenomenon encouraging dependency in women, dependency on men, in a way that, you know, as you point out, is quite regressive. I like to use movies and TV shows to illustrate psychological things, and I guess the best example for this would be something like Betty Draper and Mad Men. Have you watched Mad Men?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

No, but I I know I should.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

How could you? Watch Mad Men, it's really good. So Mad Men obviously is about a family in the 1950s, and what you see is something which you commonly hear talked about back then is housewives by themselves raising kids often in the suburbs where they didn't have access to a close community were incredibly lonely, incredibly dissatisfied with their lives, and totally financially dependent on their husbands. Funnily enough, we think, you know, rationally we might think human beings are going to resist that, that we have a drive towards autonomy, and I think human beings largely do have a drive towards autonomy. But I do think when the world gets too much, both for men and for women, and again, you do see this politically, we have an unconscious desire to give up control. I think this is the psychology behind authoritarian strongmen. Specific names don't need to be mentioned here, but you'd be surprised how much, especially in groups and under the sway of a group mentality, an individual can give up their autonomy because god, the world just feels like too much. And again, I need to-there's too many choices, and I need to give up the burden of my autonomy in favor of being dependent on someone else who's gonna handle all of that. And I would worry, especially for younger women, that it's encouraging that kind of dependency and that voluntarily giving up of autonomy in a kind of in a way that in a weird mirror image of the way incels give up their autonomy. Yeah, so it's so incels give up their autonomy by their they're saying it's not my choice that I don't get to have sexual relationships, it's because women are too aspirational. That's just putting it charitably, that's the most charitable interpretation. So they're giving their auto they're giving up their agency and autonomy to improve their own lives. And this is kind of similar where women are saying, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna hand over the reins to someone else.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Yeah, and and and we saw a bit a bit of it in the manosphere um conversation as well, this idea that women are inferior and that uh there's uh a way in which men should be optimizing themselves to but that women are sort of seeking this ultimate man, and we we've seen it in in different guises. This just it feels healthier because it's packaged differently, maybe. Uh it's more wholesomely packaged, but that's all which makes it even more dangerous, in a way. Is it yeah, is it different size of the same coin? And is it really also playing into the vulnerability of the people who are accessing it? So we know that these influences are not who they say they are in terms of their backgrounds and the infrastructure that's around them. But what about the vulnerabilities of the people who are keying into this? And what are they giving up to be a part of this community? That's something that when we don't really know. We we know there are people who are not giving up anything because they just enjoy watching people baking bread and find that very relaxing. But there is a question, just as in the same way we spoke about with looks maxing and the manosphere, that there will be people for whom this is answering some questions and providing some guidance that they are giving something else up. And and and and perhaps what they're giving up is the opportunity to work this stuff out for themselves, which is really what life's all about, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Or or even to work something out with your partner. Like part of being in a marriage or a long-term relationship is that negotiation where we figure out things together rather than you know, my husband handles the finances, I have no idea what's going on financially, I handle the kitchen, and my husband can't make a boiled egg, to use a very like cliche example.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Yeah, and there's a safety in that. We have to find roles and we know where we fit. And actually, you you said yourself, is there an argument that we should be having these sorts of conversations much younger or earlier in relationships? Because as you get older, these things pop up and it can be a bit harder to deal with, especially once you've got kids and a career, etc. So, yeah, absolutely. These are probably conversations you should be having with your partner, with your friends, with your community, with yourself. And it but if you're not having them, and instead you're following somebody who's telling you, well, I'll just tell you how to live your life, and it could be as beautiful as mine, because look how beautiful my life is, that's not real. And so then what?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yes, I I actually really I do feel that I've grown more worried about it as I've researched it and talked about it with you. Because I had like, you know, I I almost felt, you know, is this something we should be worried about when we were first discussing it? And the more I learn and think about it and hear your thoughts, the more I feel like I'm learning in real time. Yeah, this is kind of insidious.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Yeah, and it's also I think the the way in which we are perpetually being sold different ways in which to optimise and to be to to be better, um, our lives should be better, and this is how you can do it. And it's just selling all the time. And I I I struggle to feel that that isn't something that we should be much more alert to. Because as I say, I don't think that looking at pretty pictures of someone's house or them baking bread, that in itself I'm not worried about, but it's more about the the sort of the underlying message of if you're not happy with your life, these are different ways in which you can be optimizing. And it feels like a spectrum between looks maxing and follow follow this algorithm by which you can be a better version of yourself, or follow the trad wife version um um algorithm, and and where in that is the what's good, what do you want? You know, who do you want to be? Like that's that's the bit are we all just do we all just end up as weird followers and camps and uh and that then the individuality is gone, um and the opportunity to learn and evolve.