Those of us in the climbing world are really confused about the term “trad wife.”
According to google, “a trad wife (traditional wife) is a woman who embraces traditional gender roles, focusing on homemaking, childcare, and pleasing her husband, often rejecting modern feminism for a lifestyle centered on domesticity, cooking, and cleaning, promoted heavily on social media platforms.”
This doesn’t make much sense to us. We thought a trad wife was someone that put the rope up for their partner who is a way weaker climber.
Nobody has ever used the term “trad husband” in climbing. But they do use the term “trad dad.”
A trad dad is a dad that takes their kids climbing. The kids grow up around climbing. And stereotypically, he’s a trad climber.
But what is often missed in the conversation about trad dads is that the mom is almost always there too. And in many cases, she’s the climber pushing to get the kids out. So the question becomes, why don’t we use the term “trad mom…?
I think it’s time to normalize the term trad mom, the same way we’ve normalized trad dad in the climbing world…
–Jason D. Martin