If I could, I would through the “tradwife” label in the garbage. And we just wouldn’t use it anymore and we wouldn’t talk about it anymore, and we’d talk about more important things.
It’s a divisive term. Either it’s used as a derogatory label, or it’s used as a label of pride, and in both cases, people are saying that one way of living is better than another. It’s also a label that is ill-defined and it ends up labeling good behavior as problematic.
Care work is something that is really important and something I have passionate about. Caring for children, caring for the elderly, caring for those who deal with disability, caring for each other. Care work is often unpaid, and when we do pay for care work, we don’t pay enough. If you think of teachers, daycare workers, nursing assistants, and many, many more, they are often overworked and not paid very much for the work that they do. It’s often a labor of love, which is a weird of way of saying that they aren’t properly compensated.
But a huge amount of care work is simply not paid for. Mothers and fathers take care of their children. And then those children grow up and have to take care of their mothers and fathers too. Families are primarily about caring for each other, but care work is not limited to families: we care for neighbors and friends and those who don’t have family.
Since we are accustomed to valuing things with money, the lack of payment usually means that we don’t value care work. There are other ways to value things besides money, and I’m not going to argue here we need to start paying for all the care work that is going on. But I do think it needs to be valued.
Unpaid care work is not a part of GDP and how we measure the value being produced in a country. And it’s not often a part of policy discussions. There are real problems with certain structures of our society and how it relates to care. For example, if you need to care for a sick child, but you have a job, they can just fire you if you miss too many days. They don’t need to give you time off. Many are stuck in this situation where they have to work in order to get money to care for people they love, but they can’t care for people properly because they have to work. Some have good, stable family support that makes it possible, but sometimes that falls apart.
Care work often falls to women, but it is not and should not be limited to women. Everyone can be involved in care, and we need all sorts of people to care for each other. But we need to start valuing it better and protecting and enabling those who spend most of their time caring for others.
Caring for others is not a selfish, leisurely endeavor. It adds value to society in absolutely essential ways. We cannot function without all the unpaid care work that is being done. But it also not the only valuable work that is being done either. We need people in all different spheres of life.
When we label mothers as “tradwives,” we’re not entering into a helpful conversation. There should be no split between “traditional” and “modern” values. There are simply the values of existing, of being human. We’re often really just valuing the same things, even if we do it in slightly different ways. Those values are pluralistic and they are complicated, so sometimes it’s difficult to figure out how to make them work with our circumstances.
- We value education and learning.
- We value family and care work.
- We value contributing to society in a worthwhile career.
- We value the hard work that people put in at home and in their job.
- We value treating people with respect.
- We value peace.
Sometimes people make choices that we don’t agree with. Sometimes they make stupid decisions. We all do. But more often they are simply choosing to focus on different values in different ways. We all have to figure out how to make our lives work, and it’s all going to be slightly different, and it’s never going to be perfect.
- Some people are going to be full-time caregivers, doing unpaid work in order to help those they love.
- Some people are going to balance work and home and try to figure out how to make money and how to care at the same time.
- Some people are going to spend more time working than on caregiving.
We can respect all of those decisions, instead of criticizing them, either outright or subtly.
I recently heard a mother at a social event being asked who was taking care of her children while she was away, and then further asked who was raising her children while she was working. That is microaggression. Mothers and fathers work really hard to try to balance everything, and we don’t need to challenge them and the decisions they have made.
We need to spend less time criticizing others and more time supporting others. We can recognize the plurality of circumstances that exist. I know it’s fun to get all snarky and to gossip and to explain how people are living their life wrong. But it’s not helpful!
We need to do real work to help support caregivers. And this isn’t done over social media, in entering into endless critical conversations on who is right and who is wrong. Instead, we should do two things:
First, we should make sure we are helping, supporting, and caring for our neighbors, our friends, and our family. Sometimes we need to have a real conversation with a friend. Sometimes we need to provide babysitting and meals. Sometimes we need to give encouragement and advice. This should be done with people who we know and love.
Second, we should work on better policies for caregivers. Some caregivers have jobs and careers. Some caregivers stay at home. All caregivers need support and can’t do it alone. I don’t know exactly what those policies need to look like, but they need to lend support to a wide variety of circumstances.
Heather Hoyt 