Lauren Southern is making the rounds on the blog and podcast circuit discussing her divorce. Her story is being held up by many as a warning about the dangers of so-called “trad marriage.” Mary Harrington, for example, suggests that Southern’s story shows how “socially conservative talking-points can lead women into danger.”
The real danger revealed by Southern’s sad story is that the political Right is not immune to identity politics. Southern may have called herself traditional and aspired to a “traditional marriage,” but evidence suggests hers was not that. Traditional marriage is a great benefit to women—and men—whatever may be the regrettable experiences of online personalities.
Who Is Lauren Southern?
The 29-year-old Canadian earned a reputation as a firebrand of the alt-right posting edgy YouTube content and pulling stunts like blocking search-and-rescue boats in the Mediterranean Sea as part of an effort to curb illegal immigration to Europe. Southern ran as a Libertarian candidate. She is perhaps best known for her criticism of feminism.
In 2019, a friend alerted me to the news that the provocateur was retiring from public life to pursue marriage and family life. For a woman in her 20s to step away from public life in order to pursue marriage and motherhood was countercultural, to say the least.
Not knowing who Southern was, my reaction was a positive one. Being an online personality spouting “conservative” values would seem to necessitate “walking the walk” at a certain point. This might mean living with a recognition of the fact that marriage is for the benefit of children, and that children do best being cared for primarily by their mothers in the early years. It is difficult (arguably not impossible) to be a present wife and mother while also maintaining full speed in a hard-charging career.
The Dark Side of “TradLife”
According to Southern, all was smoke and mirrors. It’s important to note that, even in the case of influencers with an audience of fans, there are still two sides of the story. To date, the public has not been privy to her husband’s experience of the breakdown of the marriage. Indeed, the very identity of her husband has remained a secret. Southern tells harrowing stories of reheating dinner countless times while waiting for her husband to come home late, being belittled, and being locked out of her home when her husband drove off in a fit of emotion. Those are probably real and upsetting experiences.
Southern has stated in interviews that many of the “tradlife” influencers in her social circles live a double life, posting happy family photos online while being victimized in real life. In this telling, women are presented as in danger, and men (often implicitly) are the aggressors in this narrative.
However, the public has no way of knowing why Southern’s husband behaved the way he allegedly did. What does seem apparent, however, is that the dysfunction the couple experienced is not a product of traditional marriage. Emotionally immature people lacking good examples struggle to build healthy long-term relationships. Screening romantic partners based on superficial “trad” criteria is not a reliable way to build a good life with someone.
“Tradlife” is not the direct cause of their suffering. Living by scripts and checklists does not compensate for an underdeveloped interior life, a state that is exacerbated by lying to the world on social media.
What is the Alternative?
The most traditional wedding I have ever been to did not include many of the “trad” signals. There was no assertion that the wife would be quitting public life. The groom did not demand a show of fealty to his superiority. The word “body count” was, thank God, not mentioned once.
No, what made the wedding traditional was the presence of genuine tradition: handing down a way of life from one generation to the next. The wedding vows were exchanged in a church that grandparents and great-grandparents of both spouses had contributed to building and decorating. Coming into the reception, guests were greeted by the wedding portraits of all four sets of grandparents. As if that was not enough, the father of the bride choked up when he shared in a toast that he had not seen such a beautiful bride since the day 30 years before when his wife was the one getting married.
At that wedding, there was a strong sense of peace and assurance. The families of the bride and groom came from the same traditions and shared the same values. The young couple had received an understanding of what it is to be a husband and a wife. Not through checklists and lectures but through living examples; the living examples were people who attended the wedding and supported them in their newly made vows.
Of course, all this tradition and good examples do not inoculate the couple against suffering and divorce, but there was at least a sense that they really knew what they were getting into. What if, like many people, you do not have a coherent faith tradition or your parents are divorced? What then? It is still possible to find examples. The catch is: they have to be in real life over a long horizon to be a reliable guide. Online influencers, who are allegedly all secretly divorced and just putting on a show of happy family life in order to get paid, will not offer sound advice and the support needed to navigate the storms of life.
In addition to real life married couples living joyful lives, there are several good books with pointers for women in their twenties trying to make a genuinely traditional marriage. Suzanne Venker’s “The Alpha Female’s Guide to Love and Marriage” is a great start. Laura Schlessinger’s “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands” will give you something to think about. And Laura Doyle’s “The Empowered Wife” offers sound principles for lifelong married love.
Traditional marriage is not the problem. It carries risks, but the rewards continue to be well worth it when approached with sound judgment and real-life examples to guide us.
