What ‘tradhusbands’ get wrong about being a man

Dipping my toe in the battle over masculinity.

Dec 12, 2024

I don’t give much attention in this newsletter to “manfluencers,” popular men on social media promoting a return to so-called “traditional” gender roles. But I just couldn’t pass this one up.

Multiple people have sent me this clip of Dewayne Noel, a gray-bearded, pipe-smoking actual cowboy whose YouTube channel has more than 1.3 million subscribers.

I’ve seen Noel’s clips before and get the sense he’s probably a decent guy. He doesn’t seem like an Andrew Tate, a cartoon version of “traditional masculinity” spewing unapologetically misogynistic hate. His videos cover practical stuff like what to feed horses, but mostly he shares his philosophies for life. Like how to build to courage and why you shouldn’t be the loudest man in the room.

When I hear his grizzled voice, I can feel my inner 15-year-old sit up straight like when I first saw Denzel Washington in the movie Training Day (2001). This man has lived through a lot, my inner teen senses. He’s got wisdom that seems really important. I should listen.

But a closer listen reveals problems with Noel’s teachings.

He’s got very particular opinions about gender. He thinks that “womanhood” is about “tenderness” and “compassion.” That women don’t want “soft, femininized boys who are looking to replace their mother.” That “there’s no such thing as a trans woman.”

This might sound like just “normal,” American, mainstream stuff. But these are very much opinions. They’re a certain way of thinking about how humans should live. Not how we actually live or want to live, but how we should live.

No matter the scientific evidence and history saying otherwise, Noel thinks we should live in isolated, heterosexual, nuclear families (he is married with seven children). He thinks men should be leaders of the household, while women handle the bulk of the housework and child care. Again, because women are naturally meant to be more tender and compassionate. And men should should “just deal with [things and] suck it up.”

And—as he says in the clip—he also thinks that the average man shouldn’t go to therapy. That we just need our wife and kids to respect and be grateful for the work we’re doing and the burdens we’re carrying. That we just need our wife to give us “peace and understanding,” because she has a “beautiful house,” she never “worries about there being grocery money,” and she has a car with a full gas tank. Because, as men, we “provide this and this and this” (as he says later in the full interview).

The problem is that’s outdated advice. Or “old school,” as Noel puts it.

The average American family has changed over the past 50 years. The majority of marriages today have both people working full-time jobs. Only 23 percent of heterosexual marriages have the husband as the sole provider. Around 30 percent of U.S. adults are neither married, living with a partner, nor engaged in a committed relationship.

This is not only because more women are working outside the home, but also because it’s become nearly impossible for a family to survive on one income. Despite productivity steadily rising since the 1970s, typical workers’ pay has barely budged. Since 2000, housing costs have gone up 65 percent. Energy prices continue to outpace the rise of inflation. As billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos get richer than ever, more and more working families are struggling to make ends meet.

Noel is giving advice that no longer works for the vast majority of men. And I’d argue that what he’s selling—so-called “traditional” gender roles—never worked for most people anyway.

What we think of as the “traditional” nuclear family with a male breadwinner and female homemaker isn’t actually traditional at all. The vast majority of human societies have had different, more cooperative forms of family. Both men and women traditionally have worked inside and outside the home. Kids have been raised by parents, grandparents, and other family and community members—“the village.”

It was only in the U.S. and Western Europe in the mid-twentieth century that the male breadwinner nuclear family became the ideal. And it was more an ideal than the reality.

The late writer Barbara Ehrenreich wrote that in the U.S. in the 20^th century “only the most privileged male workers” were able to afford having their wives stay home, “those who [were] members of powerful unions, or of skilled crafts and professions [and] actually earned enough to support a family.” Otherwise, only men who were business owners, corporate executives, or otherwise rich were able to have their wives do unpaid housework and child care at home.

“The idyllic, impeccably groomed stay-at-home mom is an enduring symbol of the 1950s economy,” writes the sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. “It is also a fairy tale ... The few women who did have access to that life were often miserable.”

That’s what’s so funny about “tradwives,” the popular women on social media who, as

Kerala Taylor

writes, “call for a return to an era that sort of existed for some people for a little while about 70 years ago.” They aren’t longing for something actually traditional. They want the simplicity, aesthetic, and protection from the capitalist labor market that only comes with a rich husband. (It’s telling that one of the most popular “tradwife” influencers is married to an heir to a commercial airline fortune and is worth an estimated $400 million.)

In the same way, Noel is promoting a return to a golden age that actually wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

For the women who stayed home, they were dependent on their husband who had economic power over them. For the kids, they were also under the powerful thumb of their father, while also losing out on being raised by a cooperative networks of adults—“the village.” For trans and queer folks, they were forced to hide their true selves to be in heteronormative relationships to survive.

And for men, being the sole breadwinner offered relative power over the family but also carried burdens, as Noel calls them. Even for men who didn’t make enough money to support the entire family, there was (and still exists today) an immense pressure to be the “provider.” A man’s masculinity was tied to his ability to provide. Come up short in anyway, and you were less of a man. “Soft.” Feminine. Worthless.

Which brings me to therapy. These men of the last century also faced pressure not to talk about any of that. That would be complaining and, again, “soft” and feminine. Being vulnerable was not seen as the strong and courageous thing it actually is. It was seen as being like a woman, meaning not worth much in capitalist society.

That’s where these opinions about “traditional” gender roles come from. A very particular time and place; more of an ideal than the reality.

But all humans, regardless of gender, require connection.

Despite what became the ideal for a brief time about 70 years ago, we are a social species. And to connect, we need to be vulnerable with each other. We need to expose the soft, unprotected parts of ourselves so that we can be valued and loved.

Of course, I’m going to say that men should go to therapy. That’s my opinion. I’m a therapist who works with men. But I really believe it. Going to therapy has transformed and improved my life more than anything else.

I still struggle with the occasional bout of anxiety and depression, just as any human does. But being able to talk about these things—my burdens—with other people has made them way less heavy to carry. Being vulnerable with my therapist helped me be vulnerable with my partner. Being vulnerable with my partner helped me be vulnerable with my friends. Now I don’t feel so alone in the inevitable struggles the come with being a human.

I’m so grateful for that. Both of my grandfathers died angry and mean to me and the other people who were trying to help them. I was too young at the time to see that they were suffering under the meanness. They had carried heavy burdens. I imagine, like Noel, they wanted us to respect what they’d carried and be grateful for it. I wish they had gotten a little vulnerable and told us what they were carrying.

Now, a question for the comments below (or email me at jeremy@mohler.coach): What do you think about what Noel said?