Trad wife life vs current job market
Trad wife life vs current job market
Why you might not want to look for a man in finance
Hello!
Thank you for joining me, I’m so glad you’re here.
Apologies for the short break last week - I made the decision to take a break as it was the end of an incredibly busy week. I also had promised I’d create a website for our estate, which was a task I kept putting off. I spent most of last Sunday wrangling with the new WordPress, which seems to be much more clunky and with worse UX than I remember it to be the last time I built a WP site.
Now I’m sat with my tea, and my newly-purchased TK Maxx Autumn candle (I don’t care that it’s August), and I’m ready to unload my brain once more.
Last time, I was writing about the broken social contract that has made gen z have a quarter life crisis.
I wanted to build on that today by discussing the whole “gen z don’t want to work” thing in relation to trad wives.
To start - I don’t think that gen z don’t want to work. I think it’s more that gen z don’t want to work within the rules that we have all been following.
Why should they stay loyal when they can get more money and better opportunities elsewhere? Why should they stay silent when management isn’t people-driven? Why should they stick with jobs that don’t serve the life they want to lead, when there are better options elsewhere?
Well…on that last point, we’re currently in a job market where there aren’t better options elsewhere. We’re in a market where it takes months, and 100s of applications to get a job, and people are having to manage their expectations just to survive.
So if a young employee is sat thinking…is this what I worked so hard for? The uni degree, the internships, the good grades…for this? Then they’re going to want to look for survival elsewhere.
This isn’t an entirely gen z notion. I’ve just finished reading the brilliant
’s book Can’t Even [World of Books], which explores the millennial existence. She discusses how we were told to go to uni and work hard and our lives would be OK…but they’re not, and we as a generation just suck it up and put up with it, to our mental detriment.The difference with gen z is that they see all this, and act out in rebellion.
Enter trad wives.
Now, I have discussed these before, but as a quick refresh: there is a growing trend on social media of content around stay at home mums, mostly in the US, who focus on making nutritious food from scratch, and other traditional “female” tasks, being a “good” mother and wife. The content creators quite often have strong religious backgrounds.
One of the reasons why this content is so popular is because young professional women are starting to think…well hang on…work sucks, but if I can marry rich, and live a life like this, that would be OK, right?
I have to admit that in my 20s I too thought like this. I was in a period of my life where I didn’t know what I wanted to do in my career, and I was working as a PA to Japanese directors - a role I am absolutely not suited to, but got the job due to my Japanese language skills. I was also dating a very well off guy, who worked in finance.
I thought to myself - well, why am I trying so hard here in a career that isn’t loving me back? If I just marry him, and have his kids, I’m set for life!
The reality was that I knew deep down that I don’t want children. So that wouldn’t have been a fun time. But also, he had mentioned that as his very rich dad would pay for our wedding, it would have to be Catholic, when neither of us were even religious.
It wouldn’t have been the easy life by any means, and would have been one where a lot of my autonomy would have gone, due to those with the power of money being in control.
Though I was devastated when we broke up, I feel sad for alternate-universe Charlotte who followed that path. I made a whole load of mistakes in my career around that time, but it’s made me who I am today and I wouldn’t change anything.
In case you missed it, the “song of the summer” has been a remix of audio from a woman saying that she was looking for a man in finance - in order to live a life like the one that was ahead of me back then. It was a massive trend that has only just died down.
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So, back to trad wives.
There’s been a big uproar in the last week or so, around a content creator called Ballerina Farm, real name Hannah Nealeman.
Hannah was a ballerina, studying at Julliard, when she met her future husband Daniel, who comes from a wealthy family. Long story short - she gives up her dancing dreams to marry him, have loads of kids and live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.
The first time I became aware of Hannah was about two weeks ago, when I saw a TikTok of her opening a birthday present from her husband. As she opens it, she keeps repeating that she hopes it’s plane tickets to Greece. We can hear behind the camera that Daniel is excited about this present, so excitement builds up.
When she finally opens the present, it turns out it’s an apron with little pockets for eggs. Hannah’s disappointment is evident in her voice, but she does a little dance to show her appreciation.
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Shortly after I saw this video, an interview in The Times with Hannah and Daniel was published. I didn’t read the original because it’s behind a paywall and Murdoch’s shenanigans don’t need my financial backing. But you can easily find overviews in other places, like this article from the LA Times.
From what I can gather, the general gist of it is that Hannah leads a sad life, Daniel speaks for her, and she doesn’t have a whole lot of autonomy in her life.
It’s sparked honestly hundreds, if not thousands of discussions online about trad wives, the merit of them, the downsides, whether they are feminist or whether them being able to choose this for themselves is the more feminist route.
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It’s enough to make those young women sat outside Goldman Sachs offices with their Tinder radius set to 1 mile think again.
There is of course nothing wrong at all with being a stay at home mum, and living a more traditional family life. I think where it gets sticky is when, as I considered when I was younger, it’s an active lifestyle choice when a career seems to be difficult. I don’t know what I’d do if I were starting my career now; I fell into recruitment and love it a lot, but there are so few opportunities to fall into things with the number of experienced people out of work right now.
Here’s a good TikTok overview of the full Ballerina Farm story, if you’d like to read more.
I think this is one part of the puzzle of gen z figuring out what the new rules of life are, and I’m excited to see what’s next.
Last time, I also gave you some content ideas - and since then I’ve found AMAZING examples of these ideas in action that I’d like to share with you.
For the “on a deeper” level trend, where I said it would be great to focus on job roles, a content creator has made a brilliant example of how she feels working in HR. I mean, sure, she does say that the deeper level is that you get to know the drama…but the thought was there!
Next up is the Chappell Roan cut, which has been excellently used by the Uni of Hull to promote their clearing:
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Lastly, I explained the “Paging Dr Beat” trend, and while this isn’t work outfits, I think this chap deserves an honourable mention:
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A second honourable mention of a guy in IT doing the trend.
There are some EXCELLENT people jumping on trends, and this all goes to show the benefits of being in an org that allows their marketing and employer brand departments freedom to connect with their audience.
Links
TikTok
I really appreciated the honesty of this student talking about experiencing resits at Oxford. A lot of content will be around how great it is being at Oxford Uni, so I would imagine this adds to a more informed view of the pros and cons.
Got a bit teared up at this TikTok from the Uni of Kent, with a graduating student passing their former self on the stairs. I’m just a bit soppy like that.
If you think that gen z are annoyingly empowered, wait until you meet gen alpha.
I liked this post from my friend Kyle the Education Marketer about how students are using virtual content as well as in-person visits. When I saw this post, I actually thought back to when I bought my home. I put my offer in in the January, but wasn’t able to move until June because the seller was a tool, and I spent a lot of time in those months poring over the photos on the listing looking at each room and imagining myself there. I can absolutely see how, if I were a student today, I’d visit in person and then spend hours virtually exploring the campus, picturing myself there.
While I spoke about skills-based-hiring a few weeks ago, shifting to skills interviews opens up a massive gap where companies can take advantage of free labour from candidates. We must ensure stuff like this is kept to a minimum.
I got the chance to hear Mark Brooker, head of TA at BT, speak at RecFest this year and was blown away by how progressive their diversity strategy is. During the talk, he gave us a sneak previous of this amazing apprentice video - it’s brilliant!
Absolutely LOVE that the Uni of Warwick are using Reddit as part of their marketing strategy. If Reddit is completely new to you, here is my rundown I wrote last year:
Finally, here’s a link I’ve had saved for a while. I’m proud to say that Tanvi is a young woman my team recruited a few years ago - she’s an exceptional and thoughtful writer. About a month back she shared a really insightful post about the pressures her generation face in the modern workforce. If you click on anything today, make it this.
I hope you have a great week ahead!
Until next week,
Charlotte