I very much enjoyed Lucy Knight’s article (My month in the tradwife world: ‘I can’t pretend I’m not enjoying myself at all’, 15 April). As a boomer with children and grandchildren, I have no trouble appreciating the very poor hand the young people of today have been dealt and the reason that gingham, herb gardens and sourdough are a comforting fantasy. However, I think it is high time to draw readers’ attention to Sue Kaufman’s very funny and terrifyingly relevant Diary of a Mad Housewife to warn of the dangers of the tradwife ideal.
I would also like to put on record, since my generation is constantly reviled, that when we marched to Aldermaston, campaigned against the death penalty and the incarceration of homosexuals, demanded equal rights (abortion, mortgage without a male backer, etc) and pay for women, tried to persuade the world about ecological issues and the need for recycling (I vividly remember having a rubbish bin tipped over my head by an angry eco-sceptic), demonstrated again, this time against the Vietnam war and later the Iraq war, and are now being arrested for objecting to genocide, we were not trying to create a world in which the young needed to take refuge in tradwife fantasies, from a dismal present and hopeless future. It is regrettable that we failed, but we tried.
Caroline Stone
Seville, Spain
