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It always amuses me when some folks who are into hyper-traditional marriages claim that progressives are out to destroy them or that we’re somehow offended by their existence.
Folks, I don't know how else to tell you this: we don't give a damn how you decide to proceed with married life. You're grown adults. As long as you both enthusiastically consent, we don't care what you do.
If you both want to build and decorate your home to early Eisenhower America specifications, with only the husband working while the wife stays home in heels, a polka dot dress, and an apron, and you both gleefully seek to live out your Lucy & Ricardo fantasy life, go for it!
If your ultimate dream is finding a spouse whose conservative views on marriage and family would make the ghost of Phyllis Schlafly pay a midnight visit to warn that maybe you’re going too far, enjoy! Go chase your happiness. If you both want that life, no one else’s opinion matters.
It ain't none of my business. I couldn't care less.
The problem comes when you need everyone around you--not just friends, not just family, but every person in the country--to personally validate, and seek emulating, your home life.
The problem is when your entire personality revolves around aggressively proselytizing your marriage and family structure to everyone else, and should anyone decline, they immediately become an enemy of America and Sweet Baby Jesus and all that is good.
J.D. Vance is really not that much of an outlier. There are millions of conservative men in this country who clearly can't stand the thought of marriages that look very different from theirs, let alone the concept of any grown woman living her best independent life.
Or the fact that these men are so deeply threatened by husbands who stay at home and take care of the kids and don’t anticipate any longterm consequences to their sense of masculinity should they pick up a broom and dustpan occasionally.
Then there’s the whole TradWife phenomenon, in which all these women who post TikToks claiming to solely desire having a godly submissive role in their marriage inexplicably need all other women to want exactly the same thing.
I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve never met a confident person whose worldview precariously hinges on the outlook of every stranger they meet.
The weirdness isn’t the part where two adults enthusiastically agree to a life together that happens to work best for them but isn’t my cup of tea; it’s when they become obsessed with weighing every other marriage against theirs that it gets very weird.
I don't think I've ever given two seconds to wondering about consenting adults in a hyper-traditional marriage. If that's what they want, great! Why would I care?
But when you turn your hyper-traditional marriage into a relentless PR campaign and political movement for which the obvious end goal is to exercise some degree of control over the marriages of others, we're gonna think that's pretty damn weird.
Because it is.
As the next Vice President of the United States so eloquently says it: Just mind your own damn business.
I hope this helps.
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