Alena Kate Pettitt quit her job, gave up her career, and decided to dedicate herself to being a full-time housewife and even set up an academy to teach other women how to do the same. The Darling Academy’s offerings teach women how to display good manners and etiquette as well as how to “submit to” the men in their lives and “spoil their husbands like it’s 1959.” Yikes.
- Once she got married and had a baby boy, Pettitt’s life kinda stopped. She and her family settled in the Cotswolds in England and Pettitt became a “#TradWife,” a woman who’s “happy to submit to, keep house, and spoil [her] husband.” The Darling Academy is her way of extending those values to other women who want to follow in her footsteps, not that I imagine there are that many.
- She doesn’t really care about being independent or having her own life. In fact, as Pettitt told the BBC, all this women’s liberation stuff really isn’t something she’s comfortable with or wants any part in. “The culture [in the 1990s] was anything but what I enjoyed and it definitely made me feel like an outsider,” she recalled. “It was all kind of, let’s fight the boys and go out and be independent and break glass ceilings. But I just felt like I was born to be a mother and a wife. What I really related to were the old shows of the 1950s and ’60s.”
- The Darling Academy actually has an impressive following. At the time of writing, the Instagram account for The Darling Academy has more than 14,000 followers, showing just how many women are interested in fulfilling traditional gender roles.
- So what does being a traditional housewife entail? Exactly what you think it does. For instance, Pettitt always makes sure her husband comes home to a hot meal after works and all the food she buys is purchased out of a monthly “allowance” he gives her. In addition to cooking, she spends her days cleaning, drinking tea, and doing laundry. Sounds like a blast, right?
- At the end of the day, perhaps The Darling Academy isn’t a bad thing. After all, the whole point of feminism was to allow women the right to choose their own destiny. If this is what Pettitt and other women choose, who are we to judge? The point is that women should never sacrifice their happiness for the sake of a man or anyone else, for that matter, and these women seem pretty happy with what they’re doing, so perhaps more power to them!
