Is the trad wife dream ending in divorce? - The Sunday Story
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Across the Deep South, women raised to believe marriage was their destiny are now walking out, challenging the religious, cultural and political pressures that have shaped their lives. Meanwhile, the booming 'trad wife' movement, championed by conservative powerhouses like the late Trump supporter Charlie Kirk, is attracting a whole new generation of young women to embrace home and hearth and marry young. So, why are more marriages ending in divorce in the deep south than they are across liberal America? Could it mean the trad wife tradition will end in divorce?
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Guest: Louise Callaghan, US correspondent, The Sunday Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Dave Creasey.
Read more: Meet the Deep South divorcees escaping life as trad wives
Clips: NBC, esteecwilliams.
Photo: Corey Arnold, The Times Magazine.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Sunday. |
| 0:05.8 | I'm Manvine Rano. |
| 0:11.1 | Across America and across social media, young women are being sold an image of what they should want in life. |
| 0:23.4 | And it's changed. |
| 0:25.4 | Gone is the independent career woman. |
| 0:28.0 | Now, it's all about the trad wife. |
| 0:32.1 | Have you heard the term trad wife? |
| 0:33.8 | It's short for traditional wife, |
| 0:35.3 | a woman who stays home, cooks, cleans, |
| 0:37.4 | and even openly says they are submissive to their husband. |
| 0:43.6 | It's a movement that's been bolstered by MAGA and some of its most vocal supporters, like the late Charlie Kirk, who would travel around universities telling young women that nothing was as |
| 0:56.3 | important as finding a husband and fast. |
| 1:00.5 | Young ladies need to be willing to submit to a godly man when you meet one. |
| 1:06.0 | And if you're not willing to do that, then you've got to pray about that. |
| 1:09.8 | Because a lot of young men in the dating |
| 1:12.0 | pool say, I don't want to be bossed around all the time. The hypertoxic feminism is very |
| 1:17.4 | off-putting to young men. But in the deep south, where the Tradwife movement isn't a passing fad, but a belief system that never went away. |
| 1:32.0 | Divorce rates are now rising, and more and more women are questioning their way of life. |
| 1:39.0 | Hundreds of girls around the block are the same exact story. |
| 1:42.0 | This is an epidemic in your generation. |
| 1:45.0 | You need to get out. |
| 1:49.3 | Why are more marriages ending in divorce in the deep south |
... |
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