My Earnest Warning to Trad Wives

And what it means for economic policy

Preface: My Bias Here

I am deeply biased when it comes to the discussion of trad wives, but not for the reasons you’d think. I have three kids, a PhD in a male-dominated field, and a career that currently comprises my own business (Keds), a nonprofit enterprise and eponymous podcast (Optimist Economy), and an opinion column (Bloomberg). Surely the opposite of staying at home is having as many jobs as kids.

But my bias really comes from my mother, who was a family law attorney for 45 years and brokered some part of the end of hundreds of marriages, often representing or advocating on behalf of children.

When I think of trad wives, my bias is: divorce hits them very hard.

Even the most pro-marriage advocates estimate that 40% of marriages will end in divorce (a fact they celebrate because it used to be closer to 50%). Being the “right kind of mom” or the “right kind of wife” is not some kind of inoculation that prevents the demise of a marriage. Divorce happens, even to trad wives.

So this is a letter to trad wives to consider what that means.

And as a spoiler, the conclusion here is not “don’t be a trad wife” or “moms need to work.” Y’all, do what you want and what you can with what you have. I have no place telling people how to family. It’s not about their choices, it’s about their economic security.

1. Consider The Risk Facing Nonworking Spouses

2. Consider The Harsh Reality Facing Single Moms

3. And Act Accordingly

Consider The Risk Facing Nonworking Spouses

Family law is different in every state, and the application of that law is different in most courtrooms and in most cases. But there are certain bedrock principles: marriage was a partnership, children need looking after once the partnership ends, and parents are not absolved of responsibility for their children simply because the marriage ended. In practical terms, marital property is typically split 50-50 and custody of children comes with monetary support. It all comes down to how the decree is negotiated, but these are at least the starting points, or guiding principles.

Not a bedrock principle: That a working spouse should pay money to keep a soon-to-be-ex spouse not working.

To start, not all states include an entitlement to spousal support (also called alimony or spousal maintenance). Even if a state does have spousal support, it can have limits on how long payments are sent (say, shorter in duration than the marriage), in what circumstances they are awarded, and how much they are for. Some states say explicitly that spousal support is for necessities, not lifestyle, others say spousal support can go to training or education costs only. In some places there are requirements that the spouse seeking support must find work. In some places support won’t be awarded if the spouse seeking support had an affair or some other impropriety.

In the end, getting a judge to enable a nonworking spouse to remain fully financially dependent on their partner even after the marriage ends is a tough ask.

My mother would counsel women that if they wanted spousal support, they needed to stop unnecessary personal care and dress modestly in the courtroom. Women may dream of the revenge dress a la Princess Di, but a well-manicured, well-coifed woman with botox, filler, and expensive clothes will not garner much sympathy from a judge she’s trying to convince to award her enough money to keep her from having to get a job.

My mother would also say that many nonworking spouses think, wrongly, a female judge will help their case. But it’s hard to convince a woman successful enough in her career to be on the bench that an otherwise capable woman shouldn’t have to work if she doesn’t want to, or frankly that kids are better off if their mother is at home. If that judge is herself a mother, that case for generous spousal support rests on convincing the judge her own choices were harmful to her children.

And then there’s all kinds of cascading disappointments from there. Like retaining ownership of the primary home, for example, doesn’t necessarily come with money for the mortgage, utilities, or property taxes. Or that child support has caps in most states and the richer you were in marriage, the higher likelihood that child support caps out below your previous lifestyle.

It’s cruel, to think that staying at home with children was the right thing to do, only to find that it doesn’t get you that far in divorce. But even if a judge doesn’t order a nonworking spouse to get a job, they’ll probably need one anyway.

And this is what makes me recoil in the face of the trad wife trend. It’s advocating for women to put themselves in an incredibly precarious economic position. Totally financially dependent on your husband during marriage translates to an abrupt shove into financial independence if he (or you) even decide to end the marriage.

Consider the Harsh Reality Facing Single Moms

It’s one thing to be totally financially dependent on a husband, it’s another to do it in a country

1) whose categorical disapproval of nonworking people in general and nonworking single moms in particular has led to a gross underinvestment in families and

2) whose labor market isn’t always a welcoming place.

Think back to 1996 when cash welfare was ended. This country kicked 10 million single moms off welfare and shoved them into work, without requiring work to have paid sick days or paid family leave, without investing to make childcare affordable or available for working mothers. And not only did the US do this without blinking, it has largely remained committed to the notion that the greatest risk of any public program is that it may result in a single mom working less.

As a relief during the pandemic, the Biden Administration expanded the Child Tax Credit so that it went to all children in the US. It created a universal basic income for children, a backstop against deprivation and an investment in their economic security. Millions of children were lifted from poverty. Yet, the push to make the expansion permanent failed because conservatives were worried some moms wouldn’t work as a result.

Having been married to a man for a time doesn’t absolve women of the torrent of judgement single moms face. A nonworking mom might see her mothering as necessary, as noble, as what her children need, as something she was lauded for, as something that was held up as a model. But as soon as her husband leaves her, none of that matters because none of that is valued. She’s either a worker or she’s lazy, there’s no in between.

Many divorced women do return to work, but that has challenges of its own. Resume gaps—the years spent out of the labor market—can be a hindrance to getting a job, a decent salary, or both. In technical terms, a woman’s human capital has assumed to be devalued from lack of use. It’s incredibly harsh, but employers do not value parenting skills so time with children is basically treated like labor market atrophy.

(^yes, this is the key plot motivator for the book and tv series Younger, in which a divorced and now single mom has such a hard time finding a job as a 40-year-old she pretends to be 26.)

And sadly, getting a job in the US is far from a guarantee of quality or dignity. Keep in mind, the US has gone 17 years without raising the minimum wage, has almost zero regulation of shifts or scheduling, does not guarantee access to paid sick days, and has little enforcement for things like making sure your employer actually pays you instead of stealing your wages. It’s a lot easier to sit on the side lines and lament that ‘no one wants to work’ or blithely say ‘anyone who wants to work can get a job’ but low-wage work in a labor market with little regulation can be cruel.

And Act Accordingly

No one thinks that their marriage will be the one to end, that they’ll be the couple that breaks up, that they’ll be the mom whose child support barely covers the mortgage and food and is forced to go back to work at a significant pay and title cut.

But to be fair, I also don’t think that when I get in my car it’ll crash, or that when it rains my house roof will cave in, or that when I ride a bike I’ll fall and break a leg. I don’t expect the worst, but I also don’t ignore it as a possibility. This is the nature of risk: it’s not just about what I expect to happen, but what could happen. I can’t erase risk so I mitigate it and insure it. I drive the speed limit, I trim the trees, I wear a helmet and of course have car insurance, home owners insurance, and health insurance.

Being a trad wife has an economic risk. It’s a risk that all married people face: that your economic situation in the event of divorce is worse. However, trad wives are especially at risk, not because their marriages are any weaker but because the economic consequences can be so severe and the change in situation so dramatic.

So mitigate and insure.

On an individual level, it’s certainly an argument for getting a prenuptial agreement to build some protection in from the beginning. (I think it’s only time before enterprising lawyers set up a booth at these trad wife conferences and meet ups advertising their services, if they haven’t already). But those aren’t free and of course, require the soon-to-be-husband’s permission.

On some fundamental level, though, the only way to deal with the economic risks that come with being a trad wife is to change how our economy treats children, mothers, and workers.

The logical conclusion is that trad wives should be fierce advocates for whatever reduces the cost to parents for raising children: universal child eligibility for Medicaid, universal child care, universal child cash benefit, universal school meals. They should also be advocates for labor market rules that acknowledge that many workers are parents, like paid sick days, paid family leave, and shift regulation.

I’m sure for some of you, this conclusion is less cold logic and more heroic leap. After all, we’re all trained by the culture war, we’ve been taught that trad wives sit on the opposite side of working moms, and by extension, trad wives oppose whatever working moms want and need and vice versa.

But if you were to ask me, admittedly biased economist, if trad wives are economically secure, I would say emphatically that they are not. Stable ground counts for little in our economy; security is a matter of your backup much more so than your current status. There’s a reason there’s not a companion trad exwife trend, or trad nonwife trend—they don’t exist.

Advocating for single moms and for better workplace policy, it’s advocating for an unlucky version of yourself.