A long, long time ago (actually, maybe just as far back as 1950-1959) in a galaxy far, far away (actually mostly just the United States), humanity engaged in a very “traditional” style of relationship (that today, we sometimes call “trad” for short, even though this was not humanity’s tradition before 1950 or after 1959). During this brief time period, it wasn’t really the relationship itself that was traditional so much as the socially-understood gender roles the man and woman each undertook.
The man was to labor outside of the home to earn income sufficient to support himself, his wife, and their children. The woman was to labor inside of the home raising their children, maintaining the cleanliness of the home, and performing household tasks such as food preparation and laundry. Though the woman was not financially compensated for this work, her labor frequently saved money through thrifty purchases of food and clothing, maintenance of clothes and household objects that may otherwise have required replacement or third-party repairs, supplementing family meals with her herb garden or conventional garden, and so on. Not to mention hiring a third party to perform childcare or homemaking tasks would be a significant expense that was avoided by the woman doing these things.
This “traditional” set of gender roles came with a certain social contract. An understanding of mutual respect where the man and woman appreciated each other’s roles and were good to each other, which was supposed to result in a lot of affectionate behavior and sex. That’s not how things actually panned out. That’s just how everybody pretended things were panning out. The actual situation was more like an average woman who was financially dependent on an average man having sex she was lukewarm about to keep the marital wheels greased, while the man silently carried all of the stress of providing for the family on his shoulders because verbally expressing any concerns or stresses about that would just worry the wife about something that was his role and not hers.
I’m not saying the “traditional” life was a bad time for humanity. It might even be better than modern times. But at its core, this lifestyle was still a set of rules like any other. For the people living it, this lifestyle was not glamorous. It was just work. But today, in recognition of how non-glamorous and work-filled our current lifestyles are, we like to look back at the “trad” life with rose-colored glasses and glamorize — almost fetishize — the good ol’ days.
Look no further than your nearest internet connection and we see countless kids born in 2002 who genuinely believe 1950 was the golden age of humanity.
Never mind that this supposed “trad” lifestyle was primarily limited to upper middle class and wealthier families who benefited from the end of a war that vaulted the western first world out of a depression, and that life still sucked back then for a lot of people. And never mind that this was an extremely brief period of time (maybe 1950-1959). No, the consensus of today’s internet children is that modern times suck for everybody while those good ol’ golden-age days were better for everyone because they are what was “traditional” for humans. (For like one decade because of a war and recovering economy, and only for wealthier people, and mostly just one country.)
So yes, the modern take on the “traditional” lifestyle tends to over-glamorize this style of family and relationship — almost fetishize it really. And as the economy has progressively worsened over the decades, we’ve entered the era of the internet fetishizing the sundress-mom.
According to the internet in 2025, the ideal “trad” family includes a handsome Dad with a very successful career, therefore Mom doesn’t have to work. They live in a large and immaculate home with a huge yard and have a sizeable brood of well-dressed, well-groomed children, who all pose in church clothes for internet pictures in their gigantic yard, or in front of their beautiful kitchen or fireplace, captioning every photo with a tagline that goes something like “What kind of woman could choose working over this?!” or maybe “Real men figure out how to make this happen for their wives!!”
Judging by Mom’s spotless dress, perfect hair and makeup, and fresh manicure, it doesn’t look like she’s up at 3:AM to milk the cows and pick tomatoes for breakfast. Judging by Dad’s impressive beard and broad-shouldered physique, it doesn’t look like he just slogged through the door at 8:PM after a 12-hour shift in the factory.
No, that “trad” mom sleeps until 9:30, then wakes up and tends her herb garden and bakes a bread for her book club tonight.
And that “trad” dad has the kind of job where he “manages accounts” for a few hours a week and makes a million dollars a year while playing catch with the kids on the lawn.
The modern version of trad is really just fetishizing being rich. So rich that Mom doesn’t have to work, and maybe even so rich that Dad’s job isn’t too bad either, and all anybody has to do with their abundant spare time is stay fit and pose in sundresses and church clothes for internet pictures, while declaring that any family with a working wife whose babies go to day care has harmfully deviated from what is “traditional” by being just like every other human (except for rich white people in the United States from 1950-1959).
But the economy is getting worse - globally - so despite the enormous gains of feminism the the long, hard battles to become financially independent laborers, women don’t want to work any more. So there’s a push to return to the “traditional” life of Mom not working.
But it’s 2025. We have mansions and air conditioning and grocery stores and cell phones. So Mom’s not going to wake up at 3:AM to do farm work like some kind of peasant - that’s not traditional! (It actually kinda is…) Dad’s just going to have to be a little bit richer than what’s traditional so Mom can buy organic groceries from the store, send the big kids to a fancy private school, and hover and co-sleep and breastfeed the babies until they’re 4.9 years old because the internet says that’s important. Plus you don’t have to get a real job if you’re busy doing that.
There’s a catch, though. It’s 2025. We don’t do social contracts any more.
In 2025, we expect Dad to labor, serve, and sacrifice to provide for his wife and children, not because he is compensated with love, sex, and respect, but merely because it is his duty, and he would not be a “real man” if he failed to do this. His only reward for this sacrifice is the self-satisfaction of knowing he has done his duty, and maybe thinking God might be pleased if he’s religions.
The idea that after doing this duty, his wife ought to treat him a certain way, have sex with him with some degree of frequency, defer to him in various ways? That’s all optional - she’ll do some of that sometimes, but if and only if and when and only when she feels like it. He is not to overtly expect any of that because “real men” do not expect any kind of reward for doing what is their duty.
We at The Red Pill actually already have a name for this lifestyle, before it was given the catchy name “trad”: Blue Pill.
Dad laboring, serving, and sacrificing to give his wife a lavish lifestyle, all with the hope she will voluntarily choose to treat him well, have sex with him, defer to him in certain ways, and maintain his home in certain ways — essentially hoping that he can buy this lifestyle from her with money and good behavior, as he stoically and silently labors hoping to be noticed and respected? That’s a gigantic covert contract.
And when Dad speaks up and says, “Gee, it sure would be nice to be respected for this thing”, he is denigrated for failing to be a “real man” who does his duty expecting no reward, and accepting any voluntary tidbits his fetish of a wife chooses to throw in his general direction.
Yes, fetish. Dad’s “reward” is the fetish. He gets to be married to a sundress-mom. Who looks good in pictures. The sundress-mom is the trad fetish.
If Mom ever divorces Dad (so traditional!), she will announce it loudly and proudly to the internet, their church, and all of their friends and relatives, couched in very carefully-selected, pleasant-sounding language, while Dad loses everything.
Because when Dad works and makes lots and lots of money, while Mom doesn’t work, that is the worst possible divorce scenario for Dad.
In most jurisdictions, Mom pretty much automatically gets the house, primary custody of the kids, 70% of the savings and investment accounts, and the maximum allowable amount of child support and alimony. After all, Mom gave up all of her earning potential to be Dad’s housewife and child caretaker, so it’s only fair for Dad to take care of Mom financially. And because Dad’s so rich that Mom never had to work, the amount Mom gets from the divorce is staggeringly impressive. Plus, each month, Mom makes enough from Dad to not have to get a real job. She can get a nothing job, like being a middle-aged realtor or makeup/tupperware saleswoman, or maybe an internet influencer.
A working wife (which is actually pretty “traditional” for non-rich families, though the types of jobs women work have changed over the years) actually has skin in the game. Like Dad, and like most real people, she labors, misses her family during the day, can’t get to all of the things she’d like to get done around the house, has to make decisions — sacrifices, triage her life, figure out what she’s willing to give up or do suboptimally.
Though despite having some skin in the game, working women don’t actually appreciate Dad and all that he does thanks to their personal understanding of what it entails. Instead, the mentality is more like “So what? You work and bring home money? Women do that too. What else you got?”
What Dad’s got in that situation is a better divorce outcome. And if Dad’s like most people and is not fabulously wealthy and able to support a non-working woman, there’s not as much there to incentivize that divorce. Even after the fact, Mom will still probably have to keep working.
There’s something to be said about being normal. You might even call living a normal life our modern tradition.
