The Gift of Time, Gap Year, and Trad Wives

PLUS: In Defense of Women, Fork in the Road, Monkeys

Dec 19, 2024

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Trad Wives—Explained

I recently stumbled upon the cultural phenomenon known as “trad wives.” For the uninitiated, “trad wives” is short for traditional wives, and the term is often used to label female social media influencers who capture their lives as stay-at-home moms, domestic chefs, homesteaders and homemakers. With over 20 million followers1, the quintessential face of today’s trad wife movement is Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm. Her content features making pasta from scratch, milking sheep, entertaining eight kids without screens, giving birth at home, and prepping for pageants less than two weeks post-partum. And, by doing so, she’s pissed off some women who argue that “constantly selling this idyllic, romanticized version of motherhood that is wildly impossible for the vast majority of people feels sort of like a form of gaslighting.”

A typical trad wife video (Source)

Another critic of Hannah’s includes writer Megan Agnew of The Times, who published a profile in July portraying Hannah as “the cowering victim of a tyrannical husband,”2 and described the trad wife lifestyle as a “hammer blow for feminism.” Hannah responded to the article, saying:

A couple of weeks ago, we had a reporter come into our home to learn more about our family and business. We thought the interview went really well... We were taken back, however, when we saw the printed article, which shocked us and shocked the world by being an attack on our family and my marriage—portraying me as oppressed, with my husband being the culprit. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Nothing we said in the interview implied this conclusion, which leads me to believe the angle taken was predetermined… We are co-parents, co-CEOs, co-diaper changers, kitchen cleaners, and decision-makers.

The controversy surrounding Hannah Neeleman and The Times only catapulted Ballerina Farm’s visibility (as they say, there’s no such thing as bad PR), leading to dozens of Substack essays on “trad wives” and coverage in major publications including Forbes, Vanity Fair, and, most recently, The New York Times.

II.

In Defense of Women

For this next idea, I originally set out to steelman an argument in support of the domestic lifestyle that some women have chosen. After all, I know plenty of women who’ve decided to step back from their professional lives—either temporarily or permanently—to spend more time at home with their children. As far as I’m aware, they don’t regret it. Even bestselling author and queer activist Glennon Doyle once fit the mold of a “trad wife,” staying home as a mom and Sunday School teacher while blogging about “her life as a progressive Christian raising three children.”3

In my early twenties, I viewed stay-at-home moms as incompetent, privileged, and, well, conservative. I would’ve likely agreed with Megan Agnew’s description of an oppressed Hannah Neeleman. I would’ve likely agreed with Naomi Fry of the Critics at Large podcast who felt a strong “hate reaction” to the trad wife videos circulating on social media. And I would’ve likely agreed with Anne Helen Petersen who told Trevor Noah, “They [traditional wives] really believe that woman should have no power, that woman should not be educated; they really believe this... their larger goal is control over woman’s lives and their bodies.”

Back then, I often declared that I wanted a stay-at-home husband so that I could climb the corporate ladder, be the breadwinner, wear the pants. And I dated lousy men who would gladly fill that role.

But my views have changed.

I’ve changed.

But not in the direction you might think.

I’m not here to tell you that my inner pendulum has swung from radical feminist to dogmatic traditionalist on this issue. Rather, the ideological friction I’ve encountered on both extremes has stilled it. In other words, I’m in the middle. I support women who remain child-free by choice and travel the world, build badass businesses, and create a life they love. I also support women who start traditional families and bake bread, homeschool, and create a life they love. But I don’t support women who put down other women just because they made a different choice.

“Comparison is the thief of joy” is a phrase often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, though its exact origin remains uncertain.4 (It wouldn’t surprise me if it was first said by a woman.) We know that comparing ourselves to others makes us bitter, depressed, and miserable. And we’re quick to forget that no woman has it easy; no woman has it “made”; no woman has it all figured out. Not the glamorous Childless Cat Lady who had the most successful stadium tour in human history; not the gorgeous OnlyFans model who slept with 100 men in one day; not the gracious VP of the U.S. who led a spirited Presidential campaign and accepted a defeat; not the glorious homesteading mother of eight who married a wealthy man and built a Ballerina Farm.

We see people not as they are, but as we are. And many of us are insecure, envious, prejudiced. Especially when we spend too much time on social media, scrolling through the picturesque bits of another’s life. If Ballerina Farm’s posts are intentional gaslighting, then so are your best friend’s posts of her fabulous vacation in Venice and her flawless wedding in Hawaii and her fun girl’s night out. Social media profiles are not real life; real life is hard and filled with difficult choices and even more difficult consequences for those choices. But who are we to say that someone else’s choice is the wrong one?

Brianna Wu recently said of the trans movement:

There’s a message you can give people, which is: ‘Look, this is my body, my life. I’m going to take this medication, I will accept the responsibility myself, just let me go make my own choices.’ People are on board with that. They’re not on board with: ‘We’re going to announce our pronouns when we meet each other, and if you screw that up, you’re going to be socially ostracized.’
There’s just this entire culture that’s gone with the trans movement that seems crazy to me—a trans woman. Until that changes, we’re going to keep losing ground.

Until women stop ostracizing other women for the choices they make and the responsibilities they take, the feminist movement will keep losing ground, too.

III.

The Gap Year

At the ripe age of 22, I finished my bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences, took the MCAT, and applied to med school. I had some time to kill before I heard back about my application, so I drove my Jeep Grand Cherokee across the country, sold it, and used the money I’d saved from my part-time waitressing job to book a one-way flight to Hawaii with just a backpack. There, I worked at a hostel, exchanging about 16 hours of leisurely labor each week for free accommodations. I’d teach myself to surf, pick up under-the-table shifts at a happenin’ bar, and meet travelers from all across the globe.

Among those I met were two German friends, just a couple years younger than me. One was named “Mads,” which I thought was peculiar. During a tour to one of the film locations for Jurassic Park, I’d learned that Mads and Friend were taking a “gap year” between high school and what they called “Uni.” Their parents funded their travels, but they were frugal, staying in $10-$30 hostels and cooking meals in communal kitchens. They’d already traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia before arriving in Hawaii, and the next adventure on their docket was a road trip across the continental U.S.

Growing up in dog-eat-dog America, I’d never heard of a gap year prior to Mads and Friend. According to the nonprofit Gap Year Association, a gap year is defined as “a semester or year of experiential learning, typically taken after high school and prior to career or post-secondary education, in order to deepen one’s practical, professional, and personal awareness.” While some people engage in backpack tourism during their gap year, others work internships, volunteer, learn a trade, participate in cultural exchanges, pursue art, or play sports. During their gap year, Mads and Friend had only one job: figure out what course of study they wanted to pursue when they returned home. Mads was torn between business and economics. Friend was leaning towards psychology.

All the while, I was working at a hostel in Hawaii in a subconscious effort to derail the trajectory I was on. Could it be that, unbeknownst to me, I was engaging in a gap year (or, in my case, a gap semester) myself? I once passed out after getting my finger pricked… How would I survive a medical residency? I went straight from high school to college and pursued a degree my parents wanted. It wasn’t until I’d already graduated when I realized it wasn’t the right path for me.

IV.

Fork in the Road

Many people swing into action only to make things worse. They’re not coming from love, they’re coming from negative feelings. They’re coming from guilt, anger, hate; from a sense of injustice or whatever. You’ve got to make sure of your “being” before you swing into action. You have to make sure of who you are before you act.
Anthony De Mello, Awareness

At one point or another, I think most people find themselves headed down a path that’s not right for them. But when they reach this point—the fork in the road—what should they do?

Well, I’ll tell you what not to do: sell your car and hop on a plane to Hawaii.

Sure, it worked out for me. But I was young and had a lot of life ahead of me to figure out how I would turn my life around. And, thankfully, I did. I wouldn’t make such rash decisions now that I’ve matured a bit. Instead, I’d recommend you pop a squat under the fork—just as the Buddha sat down under the Bodhi Tree—and reflect deeply on what you really want out of your life. Perhaps you’ll be perched there, under the fork, for a week. Maybe a month. Or maybe you’ll be at that fork for a full gap year.

And what will you do while at the fork? Well, you could do as the Buddha did and meditate for 49 days… or you could read about things that interest you, build new relationships, learn a skill, pursue a creative venture, volunteer, and/or spend time with your family. Just as gap years give students a break from their studies to figure out what they want to do with their lives, they give adults a break from their adulting to figure out what they want to do with their lives. Recounting a gap year he took in his mid-twenties, Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, said:

If you are in the position between jobs where you can take a year off, I highly recommend it. I think it was one of the two or three best career things I ever did... I read many dozens of textbooks, I learned about fields that I had been interested in—nuclear engineering, AI, synthetic biology, investing—I started doing all this random stuff, and, out of all of it, almost all of it didn’t work out. But, the seeds were planted for things that worked in deep ways later.

The problem with the term “gap year,” especially for the hustlers and grinders out there, is that it implies taking a “gap” out of your life. Sounds awful, right? But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather than taking a year out of your life, a gap year should serve as a turning point. It can help put you on the right trajectory.

V.

Monkeys

An idea on “success” from Anthony De Mello:

Later we’ll talk about fear of disease and death, but ordinarily you’re worried about what’s going to happen to your career. A small-time businessman, fifty-five years old, is sipping beer at a bar somewhere and he’s saying, “Well, look at my classmates, they’ve really made it.” The idiot! What does he mean, “They made it”? They’ve got their names in the newspaper. Do you call that making it? One is president of the corporation; the other has become the Chief Justice; somebody else has become this or that. Monkeys, all of them.
Who determines what it means to be a success? This stupid society! The main preoccupation of society is to keep society sick! And the sooner you realize that, the better. Sick, every one of them. They are loony, they’re crazy. You became president of the lunatic asylum and you’re proud of it even though it means nothing. Being president of a corporation has nothing to do with being a success in life. Having a lot of money has nothing to do with being a success in life. You’re a success in life when you wake up! Then you don’t have to apologize to anyone, you don’t have to explain anything to anyone, you don’t give a damn what anybody thinks about you or what anybody says about you. You have no worries; you’re happy. That’s what I call being a success.
Anthony De Mello, Awareness

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5 Big Ideas by Jen Hitze