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Want a Tradwife? You’ll Have to be a Tradhusband, Or Not

Want a Tradwife? You’ll Have to be a Tradhusband, Or Not

Last updated on: July 1, 2026 at 10:16 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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Want a Tradwife? You’ll Have to be a Tradhusband, Or Not 2026-07-01T22:16:00-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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an old farm wagon, rather like the one in "Little House on the Prairie"

image via Pixabay

I’ve been thinking about Tradwives again.

It’s been a miserable, hot week, and I’m cranky. Most of the month of June had temperatures that were below average, so I was out at the lake beach with Adrienne and Jimmy’s boy, weeding and fussing over the garden, hiking in the woods. I’d say it was the best June of my life. But for the last day or two, Ohio has been at the epicenter of a horrendous heat dome with heat indices in the three digits. It’s so humid, the air is like soup. And it’s supposed to go on that way until the Fourth of July. It’s eighty degrees inside the house because we have no central air and our window air conditioners can’t take it. I’m roasting just sitting in the living room. Going to the bathroom, were there’s no air conditioner at all, is hellish. I can’t possibly go outdoors until night, and even then it’s miserable. I can’t stand being cooped up and overheated in the house. It has made me awfully cranky.

I was so cross that I mouthed off about tradwives on that-which-was-once-Twitter, now called X, and instantly went viral. I never go viral on Xitter for saying important things, only asinine things. I tweeted “I want a TRADITIONAL wife who cooks, cleans, sews, tends the whole farm, homeschools with a classical curriculum so she’d better speak Greek, and knows how to raise a barn. I have no traditionally masculine skills and can’t chop wood or do basic home repairs.” and instantly I became famous. The bon mot has been liked and shared more than just about anything I’ve ever written. I wish I could get a royalty check for it. A few commentators under my tweet were gross men who wanted to shame nasty feminists for not wanting women to be servants anymore, but most of the people seemed to like it. They’ve all met men like that. The double standard for women, particularly in Christian circles, is ridiculous. But I didn’t think the tweet deserved any more though than that.

Besides being cranky on social media, there’s nothing to do in this heat wave except watch television. I have gone back to watching the interminable Little House on the Prairie series from the 70s and 80s, with sweet Melissa Gilbert as Laura. That 1970s television pacing is pleasantly soporific.

This is the part where I’m supposed to say that I hate “Little House on the Prairie,” but in fact, I like it.

Yes, the show is ludicrous. The buildings are clearly all built from particle board. The flowers in the boxes outside the particle board farmhouse are fake ones from the craft store. All the boys have floppy 70s haircuts, and all the girls and women are decked out in machine-sewn polyester dresses. When Mary goes to the doctor to get her spectacles, Doc tests her eyes on a phoropter from the 1970s. In the episode where the whole town comes down with typhus, the rats carrying the flea infestation are sweet domesticated rats that were clearly bought at the pet shop. In the Christmas episode, you can see green summer trees in the background, in December, in what’s supposed to be Minnesota. There are two episodes back to back that left me especially puzzled: in the first, Pa makes a prosthetic shoe to help a little disabled girl learn to run, and she immediately wins a softball game without any physical therapy at all. In the one immediately after, Laura gets bitten by a raccoon and has to be quarantined for rabies. I found myself screaming at the screen “You invented orthotics, Pa! Go invent vaccines before it’s too late!”

Yet, I found myself enjoying the series more than a little. It’s heartwarming and well acted. I like how kind the people are to each other. I love how the girls enjoy going to school and struggling over the McGuffey Reader. I enjoy watching nasty Nellie Oleson get her comeuppance again and again and again, and learn nothing. And, yes, the relationship between Ma and Pa and the children is adorable. They are generous and selfless to a fault, just like a family ought to be. It’s sweet.

Yes, Michael Landon as Pa is ridiculously good looking. I keep joking that he must get up before dawn and spend hours waxing his chest, shaving, sitting under the tanning lamp, and styling his curls before heading out to work on the farm. When he pats a fretting Ma on the shoulder and says “now don’t you worry,” I get weak in the knees.

And yes, Ma is the one who does most of the work. The burden of the work always does fall on the wife of the family, just as it usually does today. She has to do all the household chores, and also runs the farm whenever Pa is off having an outlandish adventure. She is the vicious stereotype of a tradwife through and through. Still, it would almost be worth the misery of being a Ma Ingalls if you had a Pa Ingalls to make things work out for you.

And of course, before anybody tries to rain on my parade, I fully realize the show is a work of fiction, based on prettied up children’s books Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote that were based on her childhood but not completely accurate. Laura’s actual life was much, much harder and less cheery. I wouldn’t be a real pioneer for all the pretty farms and pretty husbands in the world. But it’s fun to pretend that this happy fantasy is real.

That’s when it struck me: Ma is a vicious stereotype of a tradwife. But that’s okay, because Pa is her equal: a tradhusband. And nobody who publicly thirsts after a tradwife ever wants to be a tradhusband. The people who expect their wives to be that capable and attractive never live up to their end of the bargain in any way. There was my tweet again. It struck a nerve because it’s true.

I’ve decided to invent a new rule: you have to be a tradhusband to get a tradwife.

You don’t get a Caroline Ingalls unless you, yourself, are a Charles Ingalls. And I am not in any way speaking about the actual historical figure by that name. I’m only speaking of the figure as portrayed by Michael Landon. I’m looking at every gentleman reading this. You don’t get a capable, resourceful, beautiful and modest yet fetching tradwife unless you, yourself, are equally pornographic. That’s the rule now.

You want your wife to keep the house neat and tidy for you while you’re at work? No problem. Build her a shiny particle board house with your own two hands while she and the children sleep in the Conestoga wagon.

You want her to serve you a nutritious home cooked organic meal with all the trimmings, served right in the cast iron skillet? Great! Go shoot a deer for her to butcher and cook. It’s the very least you can do.

You want her to fuss and worry about the children and their schooling all day instead of having a career of her own? Fine. Tend the farm from dawn to dusk so you can sell your wheat crop, and work afternoons at the mill for extra money. When the wheat crop fails, you’ll have to walk all around Minnesota doing odd jobs to make ends meet. If a villain or the town drunk tries to make trouble for the family, go out there and defend them with your fists while your wife watches from the doorway. And remember: when you come home exhausted after a long day’s work, you’re not allowed to be cranky with her. Give her that gentle yet rugged smile, pat her on the shoulder, and say “now don’t you worry.” Practice that line in front of a mirror. Say it like Michael Landon. And then somehow poop the money she needs so she won’t have to worry.

You’ll need some self tanner and a perm as well.

Of course, if you were really that wonderful of a man, you wouldn’t expect your wife to be your servant. You’d treat her as your partner, a fellow human being. And then we wouldn’t need tradwives or tradhusbands; we could just be human beings.

Maybe after it stops being so miserable outside, I’ll feel more like a human myself.

When that happens, I’ll have something serious and worth your time to say again.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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