Most ''Trad Men and Women'' here have a strictly romanticized American interpretation of the term 'traditional' (which is based on a kind of post-war family ideal) which only existed for an extremally narrow amount of time and very differently to the way they imagined.

  • ''A Man could support a household on one wage, now we have to have 2 wages'. While this is technically true, what the implication suggests is actually kind of backwards. What people forget is that running a household in the 40s, 50s, and 60s was significantly more labour intensive than it is now, and the quality of life was overall much lower than it is now. Unless the family could afford staff or nannies, it was a requirement that one person stayed home and managed the household, otherwise life would grind to a holt. As technology became more widespread reducing the labour time it required to run a household and the purchasing power of wages increase it made more economic sense for women to enter the workforce. If you truly wanted too, you could life like a family in the 40s or 50s on an medians mans wage (50K), but it would lead to quite a reduction in the quality of life (life expectancy, infant mortality, educational opportunity and attainment etc. ). For example, In the 1940s (post war US) one mans wage could not afford complete indoor plumbing, hot piped water, bathing facilities, or toilet in approximately half of US homes (keep in mind the US was the wealthiest country on earth at this time). r/ badeconomics has much more detailed posts on this topic from an economic perspective.
  • What traditional living actually looks like... traditional means you meet a woman's family (usually the father) before ever doing anything like dating or a relationship. Her family has to approve of you before you begin dating. In other traditional arrangements, both families consult each other for dating and courtship before you even meet. In the past, traditional commonly meant the woman (and the man) would be a virgin and was expected to remain a virgin until marriage. That part is rarer today, but still the rule (on paper) in some cultures. In more traditional arrangements you lived with your entire extended family under one roof, in a tight nit community with other families. Yes your wife was meant to be subservient to you, but that also meant you had to be subservient to your father and your church or anyone else which has higher status to you.
  • ''Men work and provide while women don't'' Women pretty much worked for the entirety of human history except for upper class women. The whole ''women sit at home while men work'' is just a sugar-baby-esk reductive fantasy of 21st century larpers. The best overview of this issue is provided in "The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum 2nd Edition" by Robert Kelly. From this source and others, I would endorse the general view that in equatorial regions, where plant productivity is higher, women tend to produce 50%-80% of more the calories consumed, while within mid and high latitudes, where plant productivity is lower, men's food production tends to increase.  In general women provide the majority of calories, through foraging and ad hoc gardening of root veg. However, the men tended to provide calorie dense high prestige foods like meat and honey, and when they did that was a big deal, but it was infrequent.