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Thanks, yes, it's a happy way to be. (Also props for preserving the formatting in the quote.)
Right, yes, I see your point now. One of the great, uh, anti-innovations of trad life is that women aren't competing with men for status. They certainly wish to display their worth before marriage, which is why mine has a degree, but after that she gets to check out of the status wars except in that we're functioning as a unit and rise together. The whole concept of women competing with men is toxic and imo a losing game for all involved.
Disagree with the first part and will break it down into a few subsections.
Modern education is generally garbage and homeschooling is king. Exceedingly difficult to accomplish without one stay at home parent. Men are almost always better-suited to earn, so it makes sense for this to be the woman.
Modern childcare is also about as bad as it is unaffordable. Especially if you have multiple small children. My wife takes the kids to the park, does projects with them, reads, etc. This is vastly better than sitting in front of a TV all day eating processed snacks, which seems to be the norm in daycares.
For food, you can pick any two of 'healthy, delicious, both people have jobs'. I'd like to put 'affordable' in there but we spend >$2k/month on expensive hippy foods so I'm really not one to talk. But for example as I type this she's bringing me water, making tea the way I like, and then will make a green smoothie for both of us. I could pay for the latter two, but they wouldn't be as good and they'd probably be shockingly expensive if there are even comparable options out there.
Maintaining a household doesn't take anywhere near as much labor as it used to but this just enables maintaining much higher standards of cleanliness and pleasantness. Especially when we add in the gardening, animals, etc. Again all this could be outsourced but probably would cost a great deal for much less impressive results.
In summary, there's a whole level of lifestyle available with a non-working wife that simply can't be attained any other way. This lifestyle is high-status. When women living this way are concerned about status, they're comparing themselves to their counterparts, not to men. Who's house is better put-together? Whose kids are excelling? What do meals and family time look like? Much healthier.
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