I read this line in an article recently:
“My mother was what would now be called, in some quarters, a “trad wife” — in other words, a domestic slave, unpaid sex worker, child-bearer, and social bauble.”
Excuse me while I roll my eyes at the dramatization.
I’m a mom who’s worked out of the house, worked from home, and was a stay-at-home mom for some time. They’ve all had their upsides and downsides.
But being a stay-at-home mom and trad (traditional) wife has the most benefits for everyone. Here are 5 major reasons why.
You get to eat home cooked meals.
When both spouses work outside the house, the last thing either wants to do when they get home is cook a robust, healthy meal. They become reliant on takeout, convenience foods and ultra-processed foods. And that has some deleterious effects…like obesity.
As of 2020, more than 74% of adults in the United States were considered to be overweight or obese. And 20% of kids in America are also overweight.
Eating out of the house is also bad for your personal finances. Food delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats make almost $30 billion (with a “b”!) in the United States each year.
77% of Americans have some form of debt, with about 35% of that debt going to discretionary spending which includes eating out. On this personal finance show, I’ve seen people putting their DoorDash orders on Klarna so they can pay their burrito off in four easy installments.
If you had one person in the home cooking meals, you would save on fat, calories, salt, sugar, and dollars. This video, “Why Nobody Was Fat in 1970s America — The Whole Truth,” breaks down what happened from the 1970s until now with American diet.
One of the biggest factors the video points out is that mom was in the home to cook wholesome meals. And, as this commenter pointed out, there wasn’t a lot of snacking in between meals.
Home cooked meals are more satiating, so there’s no need to snack as much. This reduces calories and your food budget.
You can plan for dinners together.
Now that we’ve established the benefits of having home cooked meals, we can talk about all the benefits of families eating together. According to this article from Harvard Graduate of Education, in 2020, only about 30% of families ate dinner together.
Which is a shame because family dinners can help kids and teenagers feel happier and more stable.
“Teenagers rank family dinner pretty high on their list of things they like to do, and 80% of teenagers say that family dinner is the time of the day they’re most likely to talk to their parents.”
“Then the mental health benefits are just incredible. Regular family dinners are associated with lower rates of depression, and anxiety, and substance abuse, and eating disorders, and tobacco use, and early teenage pregnancy, and higher rates of resilience and higher self esteem.”
And it gets even better…
“There have been more than 20 years of dozens of studies that document that family dinners are great for the body, the physical health, the brains and academic performance, and the spirit or the mental health, and in terms nutrition, cardiovascular health is better in teens, there’s lower fat and sugar and salt in home cooked meals even if you don’t try that hard, there’s more fruit, and fiber, and vegetables, and protein in home cooked meals, and lower calories. Kids who grow up having family dinners, when they’re on their own tend to eat more healthily and to have lower rates of obesity.”
This is another major benefit to being a “trad” wife because it’s easier to plan meals around your family’s schedules so you can make sure that everyone is able to come to the table most nights.
But even if both parents are working, it’s so beneficial to take time to cook meals and sit down together.
You can meal plan ahead of time, then prep those meals on a less busy day so the cooking is quick and easy when you get home from work.
Everyone’s health — mental and physical — will benefit.
You get to skip daycare hell.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but daycare is expensive. When my kids were little, we paid more for daycare than our mortgage.
There are people out there who protest about having more affordable childcare, but I would love to know how this will be possible? The people who work there are already overworked on a tiny salary.
Last year, I applied for a position at the daycare near me, and it was $18 per hour. That’s high compared to a lot of places.
If workers get paid any less, you’ll end up with the drudges of society caring for your kids. (And by my experience working in elementary schools, we’re not too far from that…)
Daycares already have a very hard time keeping people on that job because it’s physically and mentally demanding.
I encourage you to explore the Childcare Workers subreddit to see what’s really going on in these schools. Posts like this are common:
I was offered the job at the daycare immediately (because they always need people, which should scare you a bit), but told the director I needed to think about it. I read through this sub and decided not to do it because I knew it would be a miserable experience.
As a parent, I hated dropping my kids off at daycare. It’s a stressful event for everyone involved. It doesn’t help that one of the workers that was taking care of my daughter was high as a kite sometimes. But that’s another story for another day…
That’s why, when I was laid off from the last corporate job I had, I turned myself into a stay-at-home mom. It hurt financially, but I knew in the long-run, it was the best decision I could make.
I understand it’s not always easy to do. It wasn’t for us, and I regretted it every time the bills were due. But now I’m so happy we made it work.
You get to help with homework when it’s not a massive mental drain.
Can you imagine coming home from a long day of work, tired as hell, trying to get dinner ready and doing all the things that need to be done, and then your kid comes to you asking for homework help?
I don’t know how your kids are, but my son hated homework. It caused so much stress and fights that my daughter drew this picture of us:
So dealing with that after a long day of work when there’s no time or ability to think straight is daunting. Dad’s tired. Mom’s tired. The kids are tired. This is a recipe for disaster.
Being a “domestic slave” solves this problem. The kids come home from school early enough to enjoy a snack and some downtime. Then they can tackle homework before dinner.
Everyone is much happier this way.
You’ll fight with your spouse less.
This might be a controversial take in 2026, but men and women are built differently. The majority of fights I see between spouses is due to each of them trying to push the other one into a role that doesn’t fit them.
For instance, because both parents work outside of the home, they “should” split up housework. But men and women think differently when it comes to housework.
Men (generally speaking, of course) don’t care about their environment being neat and tidy like women do. So they don’t “see” the messes around them as much.
Meanwhile, we see every inch of it and then get upset that they don’t. So we nag and nag because we want them to care, but they just get annoyed at our nagging. We’re trying to force them to care about something they don’t care about. It’s not in their nature to care.
At the same time, I don’t care that much about cars, and my husband does. So he helps manage everything that needs to be done with those. It’s a team effort, and we lean on each other’s strengths to make it work.
Working women definitely get the short end of the stick because we’re the ones the schools call to pick up the kids when they’ve just puked all over the cafeteria floor.
And I wanted to be that person because, as a mom, I need to nurture my kids. It’s in my nature. If my husband picked them up, I would just be worried the entire time and wouldn’t be able to work anyway. It’s a instinctual pull to be there with them.
That’s why it’s so much easier to be a “child-bearer” and “domestic slave” than to balance the competing roles of being a good mom/wife and a good worker.
The women who judge so harshly don’t understand that it’s a fulfilling role. And when everyone in the house is satisfied playing the role that is specific to their strengths, everything is much more peaceful.
Final thoughts
You don’t have to be a trad wife if it doesn’t suit your personality. My mom hated the idea of such a role, doesn’t like kids, and couldn’t wait to work so she could get out of the house. (Gee, thanks mom. I feel so warm and fuzzy…) But at least be open to other people’s desires.
And also realize that being a traditional wife doesn’t mean you have to spend all day mopping the floors and bringing your husband his fuzzy slippers when he gets home from work.
We have brains and creativity running through our bones and we need an outlet for that. I fully support doing something on the side like volunteering, getting a part-time job, or running a side hustle.
And if you do want to be a trad wife, wear that role proudly. And maybe, just maybe, we can convince other women to not be so abusive toward us.
They think our husbands treat us as “unpaid sex workers” and slaves. My husband has never (and would never) tell me what to do. We work together as a team. It’s other women who inflict the most suffering on us.
And that’s pretty diabolical.