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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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The reason the industry wants to recruit women is because they want to spend less money on paying workers, so that they (the owners) can make more money. We really need to stop trusting business owners when they say there is a shortage of workers. A true shortage means that the owner no longer owns a mansion.

if you want a reasonable standard of living

I bet half of men would accept living a poorer lifestyle if it meant coming home from work to a sweet and stress-free woman who made delicious food with cheap healthy ingredients and beautified the whole house and wants to listen to how their day went. For such a wife, men would be happy with one pair of clothes and taking buses and living in a shack. Many men would give up all their luxuries for this singular luxury. What square footage, expensive watch, or number of baubles could ever compensate for a stressful partner who nags because both have to work and there are domestic duties that need to be done and everyone is exhausted and you have to order microplastic slop because no one was trained to cook or has time to cook? Hard to imagine more harm done to standard of living than this. Didn't we learn anything from Shrek? Or Rousseau?

But it takes two to tango, and it's not all down to "if only women weren't so uppity, problem solved"

You’ve got about a century to find the solution before the native Irish population is dropped to below 20%, ie you have lost the game of life. The most practical solution (because anyone can do it) is to form patriarchal microcultures where women are excommunicated for certain lines of work while commended to train in the traditional feminine arts. Then you can once again go back to the norm of happy families and SAHMs. You can share wealth from the wealthiest to the poorest members in this community, as was tradition in Christian Ireland for many-a-century. Then you just add some community rituals and you have yourself a functioning above-TFR community forever. The gypsies do this and they are dominating Europe’s TFR scene; the Irish travelers do it and have above 2 TFR. The alternative is to persuade the elites to care about their nation, which seems… delusional.

I bet half of men would accept living a poorer lifestyle if it meant coming home from work to a sweet and stress-free woman who made delicious food with cheap healthy ingredients and beautified the whole house and wants to listen to how their day went.

I bet many women would accept a poorer and more boring lifestyle if it meant a handsome, kind-natured and faithful husband who was good around the house and yard, knew how to repair everything (and did it without being asked) and who devoted themselves fully to providing for and looking after their family (and not drinking or being abusive or cheating).

The reality of traditional marriage, of course, was that many husbands were not honorable or good around the house or happy being providers, many wives were not sweet or good cooks or great mothers. Advocating for traditional marriage is still reasonable, perhaps even desirable, but a simple fantasy it is not.

Why did you add in 'handsome' when the op said nothing about the woman's looks?

For men it’s usually implied when they talk about women in this way, they’re not envisioning an ugly tradwife.

Critically, the vision assumes a society where no prime-age women are overweight, rather than respectable working class communities in 21st century America where they all are. Most white men think the 20th percentile normal weight woman is hotter than the 80th percentile fatty.

As far as I can see, in real patriarchal societies where food is plentiful, most women start gaining weight immediately after the wedding and are blubberbeasts by middle age.

Ozempic?

I think the tradwife vision assumes that one of the skills that would be taught in these "I can't believe it's not finishing school" less-academic women's institutions would be healthy eating. But Ozempic solves the problem withe less effort.

If the problem was a lack of skill to engage in healthy eating, surely the gain of weight would not correlate so neatly with marriage (in plentiful-food patriarchal societies). It's not like being unmarried shields you from weight gain due to unhealthy food all by itself.

Uh, this is senoritas just not eating enough when they're still trying to land a husband. Not 'healthy' food, which isn't going to be a big selling point for a potential husband anyways(no, your tradwife fantasy doesn't entail coming home to a nice kale salad either). Of course they stop the crash dieting when the mission is accomplished- nobody likes it.