9 Married Women Stereotypes We Need To Leave Behind

At the same time these stereotypes continue to pervade our modern mindset, marriage rates have decreased to historically low numbers. Popular culture, specifically modern media which chooses how to portray married women and is predominantly consumed by young, impressionable women, portrays marriage and commitment as obsolete fixtures of a bygone, patriarchal era. The dysfunctional characters of Sex and the City or Girls are now the metric for how meaningless sexual encounters with awful men are seen as the blueprint, not marriage. 

Marriage as an institution seems to be on a consistent downturn, yet men and women continue to marry, and it’s still a dream and a goal for a large number of women out there. With that in mind, it’s time to examine nine married women stereotypes we need to leave behind.

The Codependent Wife

Think of that couple you know who’s been together through high school, college, post-grad, and is now married. While some of us are single or have just gotten out of relationships, they’ve stuck together longer than your favorite plant has been alive. Sure, their commitment might seem out of place for people who are so young, but that doesn’t necessarily make the wife codependent. We also tend to see our friends who are frequently in dating relationships as codependent, and that likely won’t change if they decide to get married. Maybe they really want to settle down with one person instead of playing the dating pool – but their decision to forgo everyone else for just one man isn’t indicative of a larger emotional or attachment issue at play. Wanting commitment and wanting marriage and a husband doesn’t mean you are codependent. It just means you’re human.

The Bossy Wife

We all have that one woman we think of when the subject of having a high-maintenance, nagging, or controlling wife comes up. But what some would see as bossy, others might see as assertive or decisive. A relationship where both parties suffer from a lack of decisiveness or agency is a relationship that’s stagnant. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter who’s making the decision, just that a decision is made. Most wives also know that women are largely responsible for the emotional labor that goes into a relationship, i.e., organizing dates or appointments, planning meals and budgeting, getting kids to school or setting up their play dates. Without that work and decision-making, it won’t get done, and if the wife is really a nag, it’s the husband’s responsibility to address that with her, and no one else’s. 

The Gold Digger

Arguably one of the best aspects of getting married and joining forces with another person is that you now have a boost of income. For many women, their husband’s income means they can stay home full-time and employment isn’t needed. But if the guy makes way above average or if they choose to spend their money in more materialistic ways, she’s automatically a gold digger. Designer handbags and lush vacations strewn all over Instagram couldn’t possibly mean she loves this guy – she must be in it for the money. 

Not only is this likely inaccurate, especially if you don’t know the couple very well, but it’s also pretty offensive. Not only are you telling the woman that she’s not intelligent or discerning enough to find a man she really cares for, but you’re telling the man that all he brings to the relationship is his job or his wealth. This might be the plot of Book Tok’s most popular pick of the month, but most of us know that that isn't how it works IRL.  

The Trophy Wife

Look at any couple where the woman is more attractive than the man, and there’s no way she could actually be in love with him. She must be a trophy wife! But we already know that it’s a lot easier for women to be attracted to a man’s character, his intellect, his sense of humor, and who he is as a person overall. Looks are nice to have, sure, but they’re not the dealbreaker we think they are. Couples where the wife is more attractive than the husband are shown to be happier than couples where both individuals are of equal attractiveness, which should change our entire perspective on this stereotype.

The Young Religious Wife

The current average age for women who get married is 30, meaning that it’s common to view couples who marry far, far younger than that as religious zealots. Couples who may wait to have sex until marriage are few and far between these days, but they still exist, and yes, sex may be a factor in their decision to get married young. The dominant thought is that if a woman is straight out of high school or in her early twenties and tying the knot, she can’t wait to have sex. But most people would probably suggest she forgo her convictions and have sex anyway than get married. The truth of the matter is, anyone who waits for marriage shouldn’t be virgin-shamed about their personal choices. And, more importantly, someone else’s sex life is no one else’s business.

The Boring Wife

Since wives are constantly chained to the stove, only single girls can be fun, exciting, adventurous, and spontaneous. Or so we think. The truth is, marriage is the biggest adventure you’ll ever undertake, and you can still do everything you did before – only you have an extra person with you. The idea that marriage somehow destroys your independence and steals your youth is an outright lie. You can still have fun with friends, still take trips and vacations, still have hobbies and pastimes separate from your spouse, still stay out late and party if you want to, only you have someone else besides yourself to consider. Why have fun alone when you can share that excitement with someone else?

The Sexually Unfulfilled Wife

We’re told that pretty much the only way to be sexually fulfilled as women is to have as much sex with as many people as possible. But one survey found that married couples enjoy being married more than dating, and not only that, they have more fulfilling and enjoyable sex than single people do. This might sound crazy to some, but sex with someone you deeply care about and are committed to is fantastic. The sexually unfulfilled stereotype seems to date back to the post-war era, when the majority of women were homemakers and before sexual liberation and the third-wave feminist movement took hold. But having seen the ravages of feminism and what hookup culture has instilled in us, it’s time to bust this myth and assert a fundamental, if controversial to some, opinion: Married sex is great, actually.

The Baby Crazy Wife

Being called “baby crazy” might sound like a compliment to some young, married moms. But its implications – which usually amount to having no say in getting pregnant or being constantly subjected to your husband’s libido – are extremely offensive. Not every baby is unplanned or unexpected, even if they’re close in age, and assuming that a woman is misinformed about birth control if she chooses to have several in quick succession is, at heart, misogynistic. If women can be anything we want and we choose to be wives and mothers, that’s our right, and no amount of antinatalist, anti-woman, allegedly feminist criticisms should sway us from that desire.

The Career-Obsessed Wife

If you’re a wife, and particularly a mom, you’re more or less damned if you do, damned if you don’t when it comes to having a career. If you’re a stay-at-home mom and a homemaker, you don’t realistically contribute anything (of financial value, at least) to your household, and if you’re employed, you’re traumatizing your children by having childcare or not being at home. In an ideal world, every woman who wants to stay home would be able to. 

But unfortunately, that’s not the way the world works. A woman loving the career she’s in or, heaven forbid, making more money than her husband, doesn’t mean she’s career-obsessed and it doesn’t mean she never wants kids. It doesn’t mean that she’s hurtling towards “the wall” faster than other women, and it doesn’t make her less feminine to enjoy working. Women are entirely capable of being complex, multi-faceted human beings, and putting them in boxes they don’t thrive in only serves to dash our own expectations of them, not theirs.

Closing Thoughts

Our culture has a lot of opinions on married women, most of them wrong. We’ve likely seen all of these stereotypes before, and maybe others have even thought them about us. Some stereotypes being true doesn’t make them applicable to all women everywhere, and when it comes to something as important as marriage, it’s up to us women who are married or seeking marriage to dispel these problematic standards once and for all.

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