The Inhumanity of Trad Wife Life

Every wife will be a trad wife in the American Reich

I recently shared the chronic fatigue of the trad wife life and how I eventually developed a complex trauma response triggered by performance expectations at the end of the day. Specifically, it’s around 3 pm, around the time when I could really use a nap after an intense workload.

My body remembers when it was dangerous for me to stop production so close to the time when “daddy’s home,” even years later when I’m safe. I still feel out of time and a flicker of anxiety at 3 pm each day; this is what it means to carry trauma in my body, to randomly feel out of breath. As long as I carry younger me within me, I will remember these feelings; I don’t expect to get over them.

At the pumpkin patch with baby number four, a week postpartum.

Many former fundies chimed in on social media of how they could relate to the fatigue and autoimmune symptom pile-up as we strove to live like the stylized women the men said they wanted. We all know women who died young, got cancer young, who languish in bed too exhausted to hold up their heads. Sick and tired. Tired and sick. It’s a cycle that follows us into recovery. No matter how hard we tried, we could never quite be enough.

Missing from the situation and my piece is what a tired human woman partnered with another adult (supposedly equally yolked) might reasonably expect: relief.

“Daddy’s home” meant an accounting and possible consequences for the children and I. It did not mean now there’d be help or a passing of the baton. He expected (and was taught to expect by church elders and authors) to be served. I would continue serving (with a smile, please.) And if I couldn’t or wouldn’t do that, there had better be a good explanation or otherwise I was “in trouble.” Hell to pay, so to speak. I still flinch when I hear a belt pulled through the loops, the jangle of the loose buckle.

We imagined this would be as sweet as June Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver or as industrious as Caroline Ingalls on Little House in the Prairie. In reality, we were so exhausted our bones ached. So tired our eyes burned from sleep deprivation and exhaustion. We’d taught ourselves to smile through terror to stay safe.