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People were not happy about this "traditional" teaching.
By Isaac Serna-Diez
Last updated on Apr 11, 2024
A mother has received a lot of backlash after posting a video on TikTok showing her daughter doing several things around the house to take care of her father. The video, posted by Sammie Head, was reposted several times on multiple accounts and gained a lot of traction from political commentators.
The mother claimed that she was ‘training her daughters to be homemakers’ to prepare for marriage.
“When our girls are old enough we start training them to be homemakers,” reads the first bit of text in the video, showing what appears to be the eldest daughter bringing her father food at their dining room table while her younger sister watches on.
The next shot shows her washing dishes at the sink, where she’s standing atop a step ladder and receiving dishes from her father to continue washing.
“This means they start cleaning up after their father,” reads the next text. “This way they know what is expected of them when they get married.”
While the father rests back on his reclining chair in their living room, the eldest daughter walks in to grab the shoes he laid on the ground just moments ago in order to go put them away.
“They are expected to do it happily and graciously,” Head continues writing in the video. “We are simply training them for their future husbands.”
The last piece of the video shows the husband shaving in front of the bathroom mirror over the sink, followed by the eldest daughter cleaning the inside of the sink with paper towels.
“We know not everyone agrees with this but that’s ok,” Head writes at the end of the video. “Their future husband will thank us.”
Head’s TikTok account seems to be full of parodies and this video itself is a form of satire, mocking those who follow “traditional” marriage roles and promote the “tradwife” lifestyle.
However, many people took the video very seriously, criticizing the mom for apparently encouraging her daughters to serve men.
“Disgusting,” read the top comment on TikTok. “I as a woman am not put on this earth to look after a man.”
When it was reposted to Twitter, none of the hashtags that revealed the video was a joke on the original video (such as #momhumor and #momjoke) made the transfer, so people were very critical of the mother.
“Grooming girls to live in service of fragile men is a tradition that deserves to go extinct,” read one of the tweets that reposted the video.
“Imagine caring more about some imaginary future husband than your own daughters,” someone replied.
Some women even claimed that they had been raised to actually behave like this — calling the video “triggering” of the memories that the video brought back up.
Despite the fact that this particular video was satire, there's nothing inherently wrong with choosing to follow traditional gender roles.
While many may call women who choose to live these more traditional lifestyles anti-feminist, ultimately, the feminist movement aims to give women the choice to pursue the lifestyle they believe works best for them, their relationships and their families. Forcing someone to pursue a career when they'd rather be at home, or vice versa, is what's truly anti-feminist.
Instead, as a society we must learn to respect the choices people make, so long as they're respectful of others.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.