> I know that the story isn't new: college grades move to large cities for jobs and exciting opportunities, but these friends are young! Plus, we are witnessing our siblings who are about to leave college balk at the idea of paying rent in large cities (NYC, SF, Chicago, Austin, et al) and are looking more fondly at smaller, more affordable cities.
I've had much a similar experience, moving to a smaller town after university. Since my role allows me to work mostly remotely there's no reason to bother paying crazy rent in the city rather than occasionally commuting as necessary. There is a decent cohort of other people here in the same boat so I'm not just surrounded by older folk and its nice being closer to nature if I ever want to get out of town for a while.
It’s an incredible testament to our normalization of the contemporary American Way that “buying a home in a small city” is considered traditional.
I’m about the same age as you, and I have friends who have done the same thing. But I don’t thing they would consider what they’re doing “traditional” in remotely the same sense as the tradwife phenomenon uses the term.
That's a fair point. Perhaps the actual salient piece of what I wrote is that a very large percentage of my girl friends are doing an about-face and looking to get married, have kids, and be a homemaker. A much much larger percentage than the folks I know just a few years older (26-29)
Past that, more and more of them are looking to marry sooner rather than later, which I believe bucks the current trend.
I know that the story isn't new: college grades move to large cities for jobs and exciting opportunities, but these friends are young! Plus, we are witnessing our siblings who are about to leave college balk at the idea of paying rent in large cities (NYC, SF, Chicago, Austin, et al) and are looking more fondly at smaller, more affordable cities.
Relative to the article, I know tons of girls who are cooling to the idea of 'girlbossing,'[0] and are instead become more interested in raising a family/being a homemaker.
Anecdotal this, of course.
[0] I don't mean this in a derogatory sense. Just had lots of girl friends in college who were determined to enter the corporate workforce and become leadership/executives/etc and used the term. Most of them are now starting families (at 25!)