Heaven is a Trad Dad

M y husband earns more than me. A lot more. I am, of course, extremely fortunate to be in such a position and am extremely grateful, especially when a large bill arrives on the doormat. So what, I hear you say. And you’re right – this is hardly a newsflash. According to the Office for National Statistics, the majority of couples in this country operate at a persistent gender pay gap in which the wife earns less than their husband.

When we had our first child, the door to economic parity slammed shut behind me and has never opened since

In our highly gendered arrangement, my husband – a ‘Trad Dad’– does the earning, and I do the ‘home-making’ or, as one woman puts it: ‘He brings the bacon home, and I fry it up.’ Trad Dad is a term coined by Bill Maher, the American comedian and host of the Real Time show. It is an accompanying term to the hugely popular and contentious tradwifery.

Theo Hobson wrote recently in this magazine about his wife earning more than him – and how he has found it a challenge. My situation is the opposite, which is less unusual. I have never expected gender equity and frankly it works very well. Where I live, in rural Oxfordshire, it is also the widespread social norm that the men do the breadwinning and the women look after the house and children. At my daughter’s school, it is predominantly women at the gates leaning into all sorts of well-worn stereotypes about gender and money. As a model of domestic functionality and marital harmony, it’s brilliantly simple. It also happens to be the patriarchal model that has persisted for thousands of years. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just wipe it down and polish it, which is what we do.