A Right-Wing Influencer Tried to Be a Tradwife. It Almost Broke Her.

[reACTIONary]

NYT, no paywall https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/opinion/lauren-southern-tradwife-maga.html?unlocked_article_code=1.d08.o2AL.7xZ1ixOR4-v-&smid=url-share

.... But being an antifeminist, it turns out, is no shield against abusive male power. Southern’s new self-published memoir, “This Is Not Real Life,” is the story of conservative ideology colliding with reality. It’s made headlines for her claim that Andrew Tate, an unrepentant online misogynist accused of human trafficking, sexually assaulted her in Romania in 2018. (Tate has denied this.) The book is particularly revealing, though, for its depiction of Southern’s painful attempts to contort herself into an archetypical tradwife, an effort that left her almost suicidal. Her story should be a cautionary tale for the young women who aspire to the domestic life she once evangelized for.....

..... But in reality, she wrote, her life was “hell.” She’d moved with her husband from Canada, where she’d grown up, to his native Australia, where she lived in near-total isolation. Her husband treated her with growing contempt, which she responded to by trying to be an even better wife. “I threw myself tenfold into trying to be the perfect partner: cooking, cleaning, putting on dresses and high heels to welcome him home,” she wrote. But it didn’t work; she said her husband berated her, stayed out until late at night and constantly threatened to divorce her if she didn’t obey him....

..... Southern’s book is not an attempt at liberal redemption. Though she claims she’s lost interest in politics, she doesn’t renounce the ugly nativist views that helped her build her audience. She doesn’t apologize for, say, trying to block a boat that rescued drowning migrants in the Mediterranean. But while she’s not a particularly sympathetic figure, that might make her criticism of trad culture more credible, because it’s hard to see a professional motive in a book that’s likely to annoy every political faction.

[AZJonnie]

1. I'm sorry to point it out to today's women who are keen on the tradwife ideal and lifestyle

but the way that the dude turned out to be in this story? That IS the man who yearns to be a 'tradhusband' in this day and age. Hell even in the actual days of the traditional husband, this is how a whole hell of a lot of them were. The 'pool' is only going to be worse now because there's a lot less societal pressure for men to be husbands with a family than there was in the 20th century.

If you want to be a tradwife, my advice would be do NOT advertise it, do not look for a man who 'wants a tradwife', and your chances of actually ending up happy will almost certainly improve.