February 25, 2025 • 17 mins
A few years ago, commentators and analysts often raised the idea of a ‘youthquake’ - young, first-time voters coming in and shaking up the political landscape.
It was after events like the School Strikes 4 Climate showed the power of youth mobilising around a common goal.
Yet those youthquakes never happened – at least, not for left-leaning politicians.
Instead, there’s been a shift to more conservative views among our youngest voters – and a yearning for the quote ‘good old days’ has seen trends like ‘trad wives’ and a ‘return to traditional family values’ skyrocket online.
It’s all while a recent UK survey found that 52 percent of 13- to 27-year-olds believe their country would be better with a “strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections”.
Today on The Front Page, to discuss what’s shaping the youth of today, we’re joined by AUT University senior lecturer in Communication Studies, Christina Vogels.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Ethan Sills
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Yielder.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. A few
years ago, commentators and analysts often raised the idea of
a youth quake, young first time voters coming in and
shaking up the political landscape. It was after things like
school strikes for climate showed the power of youth mobilizing
(00:30):
around a common goal. Yet those youth quakes never actually happened,
at least not for left leaning politicians. Instead, there's been
a shift to more conservative views amongst our youngest voters,
and a yearning for the quote good old days has
seen trends like tradwives and a return to traditional values
skyrocket online. It's all while a recent UK survey found
(00:54):
that fifty two percent of thirteen to twenty seven year
olds believe their country would be better with a strong
leader who does not have to bother with Parliament and elections. Today,
on the Front Page to discuss what's shaping the youth
of today, we're joined by aut senior lecturer and Communication
studies Christina Vogels. Christina, I'm just going to throw some
(01:19):
stats your way. Recent polling done for Channel four in
the UK has found fifty two percent of gen Z
believe the UK would be better if the leader did
not bother with parliament and elections, forty seven percent believed
the way society is organized must be radically changed through revolution,
(01:40):
and a third believed the country would be better with
the army in charge now. According to a Harvard Youth
poll as well, the US's youngest voters, those aged eighteen
to twenty four, say that they're more conservative than the cohort.
That's just a bit older, so millennials, and that's a
new trend towards young men more likely to be conservative
(02:02):
than liberal. Now, do these numbers surprise you at all,
because when I think of the words you'd typically use
with gen Z, pro authoritarian, I don't think is one
of them.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I'm not surprised, but I am alarmed. I must admit
I'm not surprised because there has been this shift to
a more far right ideology through the Western world. And
you know, people are talking about America being this post
democratic state at the moment, So we are seeing a
very very quick shift to this far right. And it
(02:35):
is concerning that our young people, and I mean gen Z,
I suppose they were born from nineteen ninety seven to
twenty twelve. So you know, what we're seeing is a
lot of young men in their early twenties taking on
these more kind of conservative views. The issue is that
we've got these teenagers coming up behind them who are
(02:56):
trying to make sense of what it's going to be
like to be an adult for then those are the
ones that we need to really look at in terms
of why they are feeling this way.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
What do you think is shaping these views in youth?
Is this kind of radicalization happening online? Do you think.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I've done some work on young women and this growing
trend towards the conservative and the far right, and it
matches what's happening with young men. So if we look
at young men in the rise of you know, Jordan
Peterson and these social media influencers who are promoting this
return to some kind of quote unquote real masculinity. By
(03:37):
the way, this is not a new thing. This happens
in waves across history. So we last had a men's
liberation movement in the nineteen eighties where it was really
popular this idea of returning to a conservative masculinity identity.
What we are seeing at the moment is also it
been complemented by a rise in young women taking on
(04:01):
conservative gender roles, and we see this particularly through the
traad wife movement, which dovetails Worth, the far right woman's movement,
and simply this is a return to this ultra state
of femininity which is completely subservient to men, as well
as promoting white male privilege. It's an alarming trend at
(04:26):
the moment.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I can't tell you how deeply I detest the idea
that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, that's the best
way to conceptualize it, and that the appropriate way to
view history is the domination, the endless domination of women
by men over the course of the last several thousands
of years, and that any attempt by young men to
(04:52):
manifest any ambition or competence is equivalent to power, and
all they're doing is taking their place in the pathle
logical culture. All of that, to me is it's one
sided to start with, but I think it's appalling beyond description.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, that Channel four survey I mentioned before, it's also
found that forty five percent of male respondents agreed with
the idea that we have gone too far or so
far in promoting women's equality that we're actually discriminating against men.
They listed the likes of Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson
as trusted figures. Now, you mentioned the term trad wife,
(05:36):
and that's been trending since about twenty twenty. Hey, that's
a traditional wife who stays at home while the man
goes to work. You see them online making bread from
scratch and doting over their kids. I mean, what's going
on here, Christina? Why are we seeing this traditional lifestyle
coming back?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Do you think? I think there are a range of reasons,
but I keep on coming back to this idea of
onto life logical security. A very famous sociologist called Anthony
Giddons first coined this term a few decades ago, and
what he said was that when time is uncertain, when
life seems to be confusing or problematic, like it is today,
(06:16):
we think about all the things that people are trying
to deal with globally. You know, we've got climate emergency,
we've got a post democratic Trump America, we've got the
digital world, which seems to be almost going into a
post digital world with artificial intelligence. People are feeling a
great sense of unease, which means that they want to
(06:36):
return to an ontological security, which is a fancy word
for a stable identity. We see this with people entering cults.
I recently listened to a podcast about why cults are
so desirable to people, and they use this term again
about ontological security, having a secure base or identity. I
(06:57):
think for young men, who particularly are in that white
male grouping, life seems quite uncertain.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Scholars talk about the crisis of white masculinity because of
the rise of things like Civil Rights movement, Black Lives Matter,
Meet two campaigns, you know. So white men are feeling
like their identity is in crisis. So they want to
return to a stable identity. And there is nothing more stable,
really than this idea of again this quote unquote real masculinity.
(07:31):
And we're seeing it with a young woman. Now. Young
woman also are feeling the effects of a very uncertain world.
And so I wonder if part of this return to
a tread wife identity or the promotion of trad wife
lifestyles is going back to this idea of a simple
life you talked about, you know, the idea of baking
bread and mend and clothes and tending to children. This
(07:52):
is a very confined and simple identity for women to hold,
and in a way I can see why it makes sense.
You know, I'm a single mum, I work full time.
On any given day, my identity changes, my sense of
selfhood changes, and you know, we talk about this idea
of the juggle of motherhood in the modern world. So
(08:15):
I think what's happening for tradwives is that people that
are supporting them online is this kind of nostalgic sense
of simplicity. The problem is is when it dovetails with
this complete subservience to men and this giving over of
things like decision making, financial security, or a right to
(08:37):
choose what to do with one's life. And this is
what we're seeing with so many tradwives as well, and
they are almost promoting a joy of doing this, of
giving over their lives to their husbands, which is so worrying.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I guess going back or we bet here, but hippies
in the free love movement they were born as a
response to that post war conservatism. Is what's happening here
in any way, a response I suppose to Gen X
and millennials becoming more liberal over the last twenty five
to thirty years. I'm thinking that things like the Black
Lives Matter, Me Too, etc. Has the pendulum swung?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
That is a good question, and I think the pendulum
always swings. That's the first thing. You know, we cannot
just say that life was better one hundred years ago
for women. It comes in waves. So we can see
through history. Even if we go back to the late
eighteen hundreds, with the first wave of the woman's movement,
we saw this time of great promotion of women's rights,
(09:44):
but then it became silenced. As we went through into
the nineteen twenties and thirties, and the nineteen forties and fifties,
obviously women's rights were not particularly promoted, and then we
had the sixties and seventies when we get this wave
again into this idea of women's rights. You know, this
pendulum is always swinging. I think what's happening today, and
if we look even five years ago at me too,
(10:07):
we seem to be in a completely different world. I mean,
you've got COVID, the post COVID world, which is still
having an effect. But also you've got far right politics
which have now become incredibly mainstream, which is allowing this
kind of ground swell of ultra conservative ideas and talk
(10:29):
to be more mainstream and social media. So it's always
been there, it's just we've got this fertile ground, if
you like, for people with these conservative views to promote
them online.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I mean, this is the generation, the generation that we're
speaking about that a few years ago Ditch School went
on strikes for climate every other week, it seemed. Is
it still that generation or just not hearing from that
side more?
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I wonder if having this blanket term of gen Z
is almost making it to generalist as well. I mean
I see a shift in the different age groups that
went through COVID for example. You know, at the moment
we've got a whole group of young gen zs who
(11:14):
had a lot of their schooling interrupted by COVID, a
lot more digital use, and then we come in with
that with this far right mainstream idea of life. It
would be really interesting as a research project to actually
look at a couple of samples within that generation to
actually see where they are standing at the moment. I mean,
(11:36):
what we see with social media at the moment as
definitely young men and women in their very very late
teens or early twenties going into that period of adulthood
who are supporting these conservative views. I think where our
focus needs to be is now to talk to our
even younger people a young men and women who are
(11:57):
in high school, and to actually see what they are
thinking about this, so that we can actually get them
to talk as well. The thing about research is that
it often doesn't privilege children's and young people's voices. It
tends to be more adult centric. So we need to
be going into the classrooms and talking to our young people.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
When it comes to tradwives, can you be a trad
wife but also enjoy everything that the women's movement has
done for you? I suppose. I mean back in the fifties,
you know, women couldn't have their own bank accounts, They
couldn't have access to their own money, and that was
their role. Now, though, is there an opportunity to I suppose,
be a tradwife, look after your man, look after the house,
(12:39):
but also be afforded those luxuries I suppose that the
women of the fifties didn't have.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
This is where it gets so incredibly fascinating. So one
of the tradwives that I follow online is Aria Lewis
now she is an ultra trad wife. She promotes that
she is completely subservient to her husband and he gives
her an allowance every single week. She even posts kind
of celebrating when her allowance comes in and what she's
(13:07):
been spending on it. The contradiction is that she herself
is turning herself into an amazing business woman with great
kind of marketing potential as well. She's got her own
merchandise line, and so we're seeing all of these different
ways of being a woman that you're absolutely right. In
the nineteen fifties, a woman would not able to have
(13:29):
kind of been this trad wife as well as have
an industry behind her. But now what we see with
social media is that women are able to do this.
My question is what actually happens to Aria's finances and
they must all go to her husband, I presume. So
again we have a business woman who is afforded that
(13:50):
because of feminism, but then returning to this pre feminist
or pre second wave of feminism way of running household.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
The people with the most opinions on what it means
to be a tradwife are not the people in the
track community, but actually people who are completely opposite and
against what tradwives believe and stand for. They have this limited,
oppressed view of what it means to be tracked, and
they try to put us in this box.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
When we break they're made up stereotypes.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
They say, oh, you honor tidwife, as if they get
to define who we are.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I have never had another.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Tradwife say that I'm not tried because I.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Have a side hustle.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
But I have had many outside the community tell me
that being traditional is not a nineteen fifties cosplay cult
or a little House on the Prairie cosplay cult. Being
traditional is having a set of values that you make
your life decisions from.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
We all do this. It's called having a worldview.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
You mentioned before that this is cyclical. Do you think
in ten years time that tradwives and all this will
just be seen as a trend I suppose, or do
you think these views could be here to stay.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I am hopeful that we will come out of this.
I say that because history tells us that the only
thing that is a concern is what's happening with the
far right movement. Because what we're seeing in America is
a new state of political play, This post democratic America
is something that we haven't seen before in the Western
(15:25):
world in this space, So that in itself is concerning.
So to be able to predict if this wave is
going to, you know, obviously go down and then we
will return to a much more liberal gendered space, I'm
not sure, but history tells us that we have to
come out of this, that we have to then have
the next wave of how we make sense of masculinity
(15:48):
and femininity and.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
How should we go about educating our kids on these
kind of gender roles, the masculine the feminine. Can we
find a way to do that without I suppose ostracizing
one gender or the other.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I think there are two things there. One it is
around having conversations about social media and what people are
seeing on social media. Social media, obviously, in terms of
the trade wife movement has been huge. I mean, some
of these trad wives have got millions and millions of followers, right,
and as we know, what is portrayed on social media
(16:21):
is the idyllic narrative. Right, So, how do we make
young people and I'm talking about school age young people
incredibly literate and critically literate in how they view these
influences okay. I think the other thing is having conversations
with our young people, so school aged children as well,
(16:42):
because like I said before, we don't often have the
opportunity to talk with them, and so researchers really need
to be having that focus on talking with young people
about this. I think it's about getting a sense of
what they're thinking at the moment, instead of as adults
trying to create each location programs to put into schools
without doing that groundwork. You know, what are our young
(17:05):
people thinking. I think that's the key.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Thanks for joining us, Christina.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
(17:36):
tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
Yielder.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. A few
years ago, commentators and analysts often raised the idea of
a youth quake, young first time voters coming in and
shaking up the political landscape. It was after things like
school strikes for climate showed the power of youth mobilizing
(00:30):
around a common goal. Yet those youth quakes never actually happened,
at least not for left leaning politicians. Instead, there's been
a shift to more conservative views amongst our youngest voters,
and a yearning for the quote good old days has
seen trends like tradwives and a return to traditional values
skyrocket online. It's all while a recent UK survey found
(00:54):
that fifty two percent of thirteen to twenty seven year
olds believe their country would be better with a strong
leader who does not have to bother with Parliament and elections. Today,
on the Front Page to discuss what's shaping the youth
of today, we're joined by aut senior lecturer and Communication
studies Christina Vogels. Christina, I'm just going to throw some
(01:19):
stats your way. Recent polling done for Channel four in
the UK has found fifty two percent of gen Z
believe the UK would be better if the leader did
not bother with parliament and elections, forty seven percent believed
the way society is organized must be radically changed through revolution,
(01:40):
and a third believed the country would be better with
the army in charge now. According to a Harvard Youth
poll as well, the US's youngest voters, those aged eighteen
to twenty four, say that they're more conservative than the cohort.
That's just a bit older, so millennials, and that's a
new trend towards young men more likely to be conservative
(02:02):
than liberal. Now, do these numbers surprise you at all,
because when I think of the words you'd typically use
with gen Z, pro authoritarian, I don't think is one
of them.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I'm not surprised, but I am alarmed. I must admit
I'm not surprised because there has been this shift to
a more far right ideology through the Western world. And
you know, people are talking about America being this post
democratic state at the moment, So we are seeing a
very very quick shift to this far right. And it
(02:35):
is concerning that our young people, and I mean gen Z,
I suppose they were born from nineteen ninety seven to
twenty twelve. So you know, what we're seeing is a
lot of young men in their early twenties taking on
these more kind of conservative views. The issue is that
we've got these teenagers coming up behind them who are
(02:56):
trying to make sense of what it's going to be
like to be an adult for then those are the
ones that we need to really look at in terms
of why they are feeling this way.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
What do you think is shaping these views in youth?
Is this kind of radicalization happening online? Do you think.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I've done some work on young women and this growing
trend towards the conservative and the far right, and it
matches what's happening with young men. So if we look
at young men in the rise of you know, Jordan
Peterson and these social media influencers who are promoting this
return to some kind of quote unquote real masculinity. By
(03:37):
the way, this is not a new thing. This happens
in waves across history. So we last had a men's
liberation movement in the nineteen eighties where it was really
popular this idea of returning to a conservative masculinity identity.
What we are seeing at the moment is also it
been complemented by a rise in young women taking on
(04:01):
conservative gender roles, and we see this particularly through the
traad wife movement, which dovetails Worth, the far right woman's movement,
and simply this is a return to this ultra state
of femininity which is completely subservient to men, as well
as promoting white male privilege. It's an alarming trend at
(04:26):
the moment.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I can't tell you how deeply I detest the idea
that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, that's the best
way to conceptualize it, and that the appropriate way to
view history is the domination, the endless domination of women
by men over the course of the last several thousands
of years, and that any attempt by young men to
(04:52):
manifest any ambition or competence is equivalent to power, and
all they're doing is taking their place in the pathle
logical culture. All of that, to me is it's one
sided to start with, but I think it's appalling beyond description.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, that Channel four survey I mentioned before, it's also
found that forty five percent of male respondents agreed with
the idea that we have gone too far or so
far in promoting women's equality that we're actually discriminating against men.
They listed the likes of Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson
as trusted figures. Now, you mentioned the term trad wife,
(05:36):
and that's been trending since about twenty twenty. Hey, that's
a traditional wife who stays at home while the man
goes to work. You see them online making bread from
scratch and doting over their kids. I mean, what's going
on here, Christina? Why are we seeing this traditional lifestyle
coming back?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Do you think? I think there are a range of reasons,
but I keep on coming back to this idea of
onto life logical security. A very famous sociologist called Anthony
Giddons first coined this term a few decades ago, and
what he said was that when time is uncertain, when
life seems to be confusing or problematic, like it is today,
(06:16):
we think about all the things that people are trying
to deal with globally. You know, we've got climate emergency,
we've got a post democratic Trump America, we've got the
digital world, which seems to be almost going into a
post digital world with artificial intelligence. People are feeling a
great sense of unease, which means that they want to
(06:36):
return to an ontological security, which is a fancy word
for a stable identity. We see this with people entering cults.
I recently listened to a podcast about why cults are
so desirable to people, and they use this term again
about ontological security, having a secure base or identity. I
(06:57):
think for young men, who particularly are in that white
male grouping, life seems quite uncertain.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Scholars talk about the crisis of white masculinity because of
the rise of things like Civil Rights movement, Black Lives Matter,
Meet two campaigns, you know. So white men are feeling
like their identity is in crisis. So they want to
return to a stable identity. And there is nothing more stable,
really than this idea of again this quote unquote real masculinity.
(07:31):
And we're seeing it with a young woman. Now. Young
woman also are feeling the effects of a very uncertain world.
And so I wonder if part of this return to
a tread wife identity or the promotion of trad wife
lifestyles is going back to this idea of a simple
life you talked about, you know, the idea of baking
bread and mend and clothes and tending to children. This
(07:52):
is a very confined and simple identity for women to hold,
and in a way I can see why it makes sense.
You know, I'm a single mum, I work full time.
On any given day, my identity changes, my sense of
selfhood changes, and you know, we talk about this idea
of the juggle of motherhood in the modern world. So
(08:15):
I think what's happening for tradwives is that people that
are supporting them online is this kind of nostalgic sense
of simplicity. The problem is is when it dovetails with
this complete subservience to men and this giving over of
things like decision making, financial security, or a right to
(08:37):
choose what to do with one's life. And this is
what we're seeing with so many tradwives as well, and
they are almost promoting a joy of doing this, of
giving over their lives to their husbands, which is so worrying.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I guess going back or we bet here, but hippies
in the free love movement they were born as a
response to that post war conservatism. Is what's happening here
in any way, a response I suppose to Gen X
and millennials becoming more liberal over the last twenty five
to thirty years. I'm thinking that things like the Black
Lives Matter, Me Too, etc. Has the pendulum swung?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
That is a good question, and I think the pendulum
always swings. That's the first thing. You know, we cannot
just say that life was better one hundred years ago
for women. It comes in waves. So we can see
through history. Even if we go back to the late
eighteen hundreds, with the first wave of the woman's movement,
we saw this time of great promotion of women's rights,
(09:44):
but then it became silenced. As we went through into
the nineteen twenties and thirties, and the nineteen forties and fifties,
obviously women's rights were not particularly promoted, and then we
had the sixties and seventies when we get this wave
again into this idea of women's rights. You know, this
pendulum is always swinging. I think what's happening today, and
if we look even five years ago at me too,
(10:07):
we seem to be in a completely different world. I mean,
you've got COVID, the post COVID world, which is still
having an effect. But also you've got far right politics
which have now become incredibly mainstream, which is allowing this
kind of ground swell of ultra conservative ideas and talk
(10:29):
to be more mainstream and social media. So it's always
been there, it's just we've got this fertile ground, if
you like, for people with these conservative views to promote
them online.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I mean, this is the generation, the generation that we're
speaking about that a few years ago Ditch School went
on strikes for climate every other week, it seemed. Is
it still that generation or just not hearing from that
side more?
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I wonder if having this blanket term of gen Z
is almost making it to generalist as well. I mean
I see a shift in the different age groups that
went through COVID for example. You know, at the moment
we've got a whole group of young gen zs who
(11:14):
had a lot of their schooling interrupted by COVID, a
lot more digital use, and then we come in with
that with this far right mainstream idea of life. It
would be really interesting as a research project to actually
look at a couple of samples within that generation to
actually see where they are standing at the moment. I mean,
(11:36):
what we see with social media at the moment as
definitely young men and women in their very very late
teens or early twenties going into that period of adulthood
who are supporting these conservative views. I think where our
focus needs to be is now to talk to our
even younger people a young men and women who are
(11:57):
in high school, and to actually see what they are
thinking about this, so that we can actually get them
to talk as well. The thing about research is that
it often doesn't privilege children's and young people's voices. It
tends to be more adult centric. So we need to
be going into the classrooms and talking to our young people.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
When it comes to tradwives, can you be a trad
wife but also enjoy everything that the women's movement has
done for you? I suppose. I mean back in the fifties,
you know, women couldn't have their own bank accounts, They
couldn't have access to their own money, and that was
their role. Now, though, is there an opportunity to I suppose,
be a tradwife, look after your man, look after the house,
(12:39):
but also be afforded those luxuries I suppose that the
women of the fifties didn't have.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
This is where it gets so incredibly fascinating. So one
of the tradwives that I follow online is Aria Lewis
now she is an ultra trad wife. She promotes that
she is completely subservient to her husband and he gives
her an allowance every single week. She even posts kind
of celebrating when her allowance comes in and what she's
(13:07):
been spending on it. The contradiction is that she herself
is turning herself into an amazing business woman with great
kind of marketing potential as well. She's got her own
merchandise line, and so we're seeing all of these different
ways of being a woman that you're absolutely right. In
the nineteen fifties, a woman would not able to have
(13:29):
kind of been this trad wife as well as have
an industry behind her. But now what we see with
social media is that women are able to do this.
My question is what actually happens to Aria's finances and
they must all go to her husband, I presume. So
again we have a business woman who is afforded that
(13:50):
because of feminism, but then returning to this pre feminist
or pre second wave of feminism way of running household.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
The people with the most opinions on what it means
to be a tradwife are not the people in the
track community, but actually people who are completely opposite and
against what tradwives believe and stand for. They have this limited,
oppressed view of what it means to be tracked, and
they try to put us in this box.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
When we break they're made up stereotypes.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
They say, oh, you honor tidwife, as if they get
to define who we are.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I have never had another.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Tradwife say that I'm not tried because I.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Have a side hustle.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
But I have had many outside the community tell me
that being traditional is not a nineteen fifties cosplay cult
or a little House on the Prairie cosplay cult. Being
traditional is having a set of values that you make
your life decisions from.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
We all do this. It's called having a worldview.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
You mentioned before that this is cyclical. Do you think
in ten years time that tradwives and all this will
just be seen as a trend I suppose, or do
you think these views could be here to stay.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I am hopeful that we will come out of this.
I say that because history tells us that the only
thing that is a concern is what's happening with the
far right movement. Because what we're seeing in America is
a new state of political play, This post democratic America
is something that we haven't seen before in the Western
(15:25):
world in this space, So that in itself is concerning.
So to be able to predict if this wave is
going to, you know, obviously go down and then we
will return to a much more liberal gendered space, I'm
not sure, but history tells us that we have to
come out of this, that we have to then have
the next wave of how we make sense of masculinity
(15:48):
and femininity and.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
How should we go about educating our kids on these
kind of gender roles, the masculine the feminine. Can we
find a way to do that without I suppose ostracizing
one gender or the other.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I think there are two things there. One it is
around having conversations about social media and what people are
seeing on social media. Social media, obviously, in terms of
the trade wife movement has been huge. I mean, some
of these trad wives have got millions and millions of followers, right,
and as we know, what is portrayed on social media
(16:21):
is the idyllic narrative. Right, So, how do we make
young people and I'm talking about school age young people
incredibly literate and critically literate in how they view these
influences okay. I think the other thing is having conversations
with our young people, so school aged children as well,
(16:42):
because like I said before, we don't often have the
opportunity to talk with them, and so researchers really need
to be having that focus on talking with young people
about this. I think it's about getting a sense of
what they're thinking at the moment, instead of as adults
trying to create each location programs to put into schools
without doing that groundwork. You know, what are our young
(17:05):
people thinking. I think that's the key.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Thanks for joining us, Christina.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
(17:36):
tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
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