You might have already heard about the ‘trads.’

But if you didn’t, I don’t blame you.

They are a relatively new political subculture, composed of mainly white, young, religious or spiritual conservative people who engage in bizarre worship of the past. And specifically, the times before women were allowed to have bank accounts and opinions and other crazy things.

But lately, it seems like the ‘I wish we could go back to the 1950s when everything was simpler’ crowd is getting worryingly bigger. Because over the last couple of weeks alone, I’ve seen at least a dozen anti-feminist 1950s housewife fetish videos similar to this one.

And they all imply a very similar thing.

Namely, that women have been ‘scammed’ by feminism because before it liberated us, we apparently ‘had it all’: well-kept homes, a husband and children, nightly home-cooked meals, and all the other wonderful trappings of suburban bliss.

Of course.

I’d also think this way if I had never picked up a history book in my life. Or got my history lessons from American sitcoms.

But what was it really like to be a housewife in the 1950s?

And why do so many people claim they had much better lives than modern women while simultaneously blaming feminism for our situation today?

What being a ‘good housewife’ used to entail

You’d think that for all the talk on how ‘natural’ female submissiveness is, there should be no need for any guidelines for women on how to fulfil their duties.

But looking at the number of ‘good housewife’ manuals, guides, books, brochures, instruction videos and short films published in the last century, it seems like it’s not as ‘natural’ of a role as some would like us to believe.

By the mid-1950s in America, most women were even taking classes that trained them for lives located safely within the ‘feminine’ sphere, known as the ‘Home Economics’ classes.

But of course, they only presented one version of healthy womanhood: submissive, obedient and spent in constant servitude to others. Because, as one article published in the Journal of Home Economics in 1953 states: ‘all girls were made for a life of housewifery.’

How lovely.

Here are some of those ‘good housewife’ guidelines from a 1950s Home Economics textbook intended for high school girls:

Be happy to see him. Greet him with a warm smile and be glad he is home.

Don’t greet him with problems or complaints.

Don’t complain if he is late for dinner.

Speak in a low, soft, soothing and pleasant voice.

Listen to him. You may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time.

Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or to other places of entertainment.

The Goal: Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

And here is some more advice from an article titled, ‘Before I Hire Your Husband, I Want to Meet You’ published by a Good Housekeeping magazine in 1956:

A good wife is friendly.

A good wife doesn’t complain.

A good wife’s primary interest is her husband, her home and her children.

Right.

So, in short, a ‘good housewife’ is expected to be a Stepford-like, robotic creature who never complains, always puts the needs and wants of her husband above her own and makes sure that their home is some idyllic place where problems and complaints simply don’t exist.

Oh, and did I mention she never complains?

But if you think being at your husband’s beck and call 24/7 is horrible enough, well, buckle up. Because this is just the tip of the iceberg of what the 1950s were truly like for women.

Women in the 1950’s hardly ‘had it all’

The 1950s in the West might be remembered as an era of ideal homes and perfect housewives, but it’s also a decade that marked the beginning of a momentous social change — the rise of the working wife and mother.

In 1953, thirty per cent of American housewives worked part or full-time, and by 1957, 22 million had full-time employment — most of them while being married at the same time.

A similar situation took place in the UK as well.

Sure, many middle and upper-class white women didn’t work, but that wasn’t the reality that all women shared — particularly black, working class, immigrant and disabled ones.

Black women in America, for instance, were forced by economic necessity to work outside the home. And they were often tasked with assisting rich white women in their homes and essentially doing the ‘good housewife’ job for them.

But even those who were ‘lucky’ enough not to have to work didn’t exactly have easy lives.

Housewives in the 1950s, 1960s and to a lesser extent,1970s frequently struggled with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, ‘housewife psychosis’ and overall dissatisfaction caused by their seemingly picture-perfect lives.

That’s what Betty Friedan identified as the ‘problem that has no name’ in her groundbreaking 1963 book The Feminine Mystique.

Not surprisingly, to numb their anxiety and deal with their deep unhappiness, many housewives resorted to ‘mothers’ little helpers’ — basically tranquillisers. By the end of 1956, 1 in 20 Americans were taking Miltown — later replaced by Valium in the 1970s — or similar tranquilliser, and by 1957 the number of prescriptions written for these drugs totalled 35 million.

And the majority of those who took them were women since it was primarily advertised to help with ‘women’s troubles.’

Some housewives also tried to ‘cure’ themselves with excessive alcohol consumption or the use of methamphetamines. And yes, the latter was still legal back then, and it was even advertised to women as a treatment for obesity, depression and fatigue.

Still, husbands who weren’t entirely happy with their wives, particularly those who were too ‘hysterical’ or ‘mouthy’ or suffered from post-partum depression, could always commit them to mental hospitals and have them lobotomised.

By 1952, an estimated 50 000 patients in the US and Canada had been lobotomised. The majority of them were women.

In addition to that, husbands could also legally rape their wives — since marital rape wasn’t made illegal until later that century — and, more often than not, got away with other physical abuse.

Because although wife beating was made illegal in the US in 1920, law enforcement continued to view violence within the home as a ‘family matter.’ Some advertisements actually brightly depicted men spanking their wives for transgressions such as ‘making a bad cup of coffee.’

Besides, domestic violence wasn’t even legally recognised until 1973 in the US and 1976 in the UK.

And until 1974 in the US and 1975 in the UK, women also couldn’t get loans, apply for a credit card, or rent and buy property in their own name without a man present.

But hey, they must have had such ‘blissful’ and ‘fulfilling’ lives, right?

No, it’s not feminism that makes us miserable today

You need to be a special kind of oblivious to claim that the average 1950s housewife who took a plethora of pills to stay somewhat sane because she had no other choice than to do all the cooking and cleaning and childcare and obey her possibly abusive husband without question had a better life than the average woman in the West today.

Not to mention that women who weren’t white and at least middle-class couldn’t even have this ‘blissful’ lifestyle, so many people — including women — are dreaming of today.

Yet here we are.

And I think a big reason why we’re seeing this reactionary, anti-feminist backlash and obsession with white womanhood circa the 1950s is not only because of a lack of historical knowledge but also because of a fundamental misunderstanding — intentional or not — of both feminism and capitalism.

Let me explain.

In the 1960s, many women understood — thanks to the second wave of feminism — that they could choose between staying home and working. And some did. But even as more and more women entered the workplace, we were still largely expected to do all of the domestic work — the so-called ‘second shift.’

Because we’re women. Because that’s ‘our duty.’ And because we’re supposed to be these ‘domestic’ creatures, even though that idea was a very short-lived, middle-class only one.

But today, that’s still the situation.

As a result, many of us are understandably frustrated. And tired. And suddenly, the idea of going ‘against feminism’, which we think it’s the root of all our problems and being a stay-at-home wife straight out of a 1950s catalogue doesn’t seem that bad, does it?

Nope.

But the problem is, the idea that housewives back then had happy, blissful lives is so ahistorical it’s laughable. And it’s not feminism that we should be angry with and blame all our problems on here. Feminism — the real kind, and not its white, ‘girlboss’ Buzzfeed version — doesn’t advocate for women to work themselves to death at home and in the workplace.

But you know what else does?

Capitalism.

Because the feminist movement has always been, first and foremost, about women’s liberation. And about having a choice. To have a career. Or not. To be a stay-at-home mother. Or not. To have kids. Or not.

You know, things that weren’t even up for discussion for women not so long ago. Because we were forced to live one-dimensional lives in servitude to others, even if that was the furthest away from what we truly wanted.

So, no — the real problem here isn’t feminists advocating for insane things such as — *checks notes* — gender equality, but the systems of oppression like capitalism or patriarchy squeezing all of us and making our lives miserable.

Because if we worked fewer hours and actually shared all the resources we have available on this planet instead of allowing the greedy 1% to accumulate most of it for themselves, with both women and men contributing equally to domestic labour, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in today, now would we?

Even the likes of Elon Musk try to encourage people to be more ‘traditional’ and have more children these days.

But unlike all these Internet ‘trads’, he is not concerned that modern-day life makes many people unhappy but that he might run out of workers to exploit at some point in the future.

The thing is, though, we don’t have to choose between maintaining this late-stage capitalism hellhole of life or some type of return to the 1950s.

It’s not an either/or situation.

But sure, if those ‘tradwives’ really want to live out their 1950s housewife fantasy and give up their bank account and credit cards and independence and serve men, they should just go and do that.

No one is stopping them.

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