You know that merchant’s wifeThis “traditional wife”, who has become an important figure on social networks. These influencers tell stories about their ideal lives as peaceful housewives, who are completely devoted to their husbands and children. In this content that sparked strong reactions online, between admiration in some people and irritation in others, there was one character who remained absent: the husband.
This is what was noted by Vox media, which tried to understand if “trading husband“, “traditional couples”, exist today, or at least, if they had a similar influence on social networks, with a focus on the United States. In content shared by merchant’s wifepartners are often sidelined. A thoughtful and thoughtful figure, meant to prove that a traditional wedding can be beautiful, but never attention-grabbing.
This was the case with the Neeleman couple: while Hannah, an icon of the movement merchant’s wifehas more than 10 million subscribers on Instagram, her husband, Daniel, son of JetBlue’s founder, has just over 650,000. For Vox, there is no doubt: in the world trading lifetraditional wives are in the spotlight, while traditional husbands remain in the shadows.
The figure of the old-fashioned husband, who brings home the money alone, works hard, and is often absent, has been around for a long time, especially in the world of cinema, but this time seems to have passed. For Pamela Aronson, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, interviewed by Vox, “Men’s role as the main breadwinner has long been in decline”.
New characters appear
The model of the husband being the sole breadwinner of the household has been questioned by economic turmoil, the difficulty of working, and the gradual disappearance of physical professions, which were once idealized as manly and concrete professions. It is enough to call into question certain patriarchal privileges that have long been considered the husband’s prerogative.
If you look closely, the traditional male figure does not provide much inspiration. At least, their enthusiasm and charm is much less in comparison merchant’s wife. The attention economy favors a “manosphere” discourse, embodied by provocative and masculine figures such as Andrew Tate. Messages of domination, rage and conquest, perfectly adapted to social networks, are more attractive to young men than the ordered family life of Charles Ingalls.
Are there really any husbands who are traditionally influential? According to Vox, the traditional husband figure, a simple and thoughtful worker, is struggling to emerge. But something more modern is starting to emerge: influencer dads.
These men share daily household life, such as changing diapers, cooking for the children, taking care of the house, and increasingly experience success. These “modern fathers” embody the form of compromise that the younger generation, at least Americans, are looking for: a caring, loving, present-day man, without the hierarchical rigidity of traditional patriarchs, Vox concludes.
