Twenty-five-year-old Grace has a unique passion: cooking healthy meals for her husband. From making biscuits and gravy to baking crescent braids, she loves it all.
Grace and her husband met six years ago when she was just 19. It was love at first sight. Today, the couple reside in their Pennsylvania home with their toddler daughter. A passionate homemaker, Grace enjoys cleaning and taking care of her daughter—and doing lots of cooking.
The young wife and mother believes her husband, who has an intense job with long hours, deserves to be fed well.
The sign above her stove proudly reads, “I Love to Feed the Patriarchy.”
“Since COVID, people, especially women, started to change their views on the home,” she said. “I have seen it shift to more and more women embracing traditional values and that includes in their marriages.
‘He Deserves a Good Meal While Working Hard for Us’
Grace cooks regularly, and, to stay frugal, she plans her shops according to sales. Often, she wakes up early specifically to prepare breakfast for her husband.
The young mom of one lives by the age-old concept of serving her family as a caregiver. She says her husband “deserves a good meal” for working hard for the family.
“I center the meals around a protein and build from there with a carb, vegetables, etc.,” she said, using the example of roast chicken with mashed potatoes, green beans, and homemade buttered rolls. “It’s nothing fancy and probably very rustic cooking, but it’s whole-food focused and filling.”
Her husband is always grateful.
“He is appreciative and after meals gives me a kiss and thanks me for cooking,” she said, adding that these exchanges have helped to strengthen their marriage.
“We both understand that neither job is harder than the other, they are hard in their own ways,“ she said. ”We don’t play a ‘tit for tat’ game, and we express appreciation for each other daily.”
“It usually is a mixed bag of reactions, many of which are positive, while others are angry or shocked,” she said.
While some criticized her for being “a slave” for taking care of her husband, there were also others who appreciated and recognized her traditional lifestyle.
Honoring a Traditional Lifestyle
Cooking isn’t the only thing that Grace does for her family. Other chores are equally important, she says, and must be attended to daily. She keeps a list of “non-negotiables” that she gets done every day: one load of laundry, running the dishwasher, and at least three chores.On a certain level, the young homemaker was always aware that she wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. In her sophomore year of college, however, that desire really kicked in.
She got engaged in March 2019 but put off her wedding until May 2021 because she wanted to complete her bachelor’s degree first. She was studying speech pathology and audiology but began to realize it wasn’t the path she wanted to pursue in the long run. She knew, due to the nature of the profession, that she would soon be overworked and feel burnt out.
“I knew that down the road, I didn’t want to complete a master’s degree and clinical fellowship and wait all those extra years to get married and start a family,” she said.
The young woman shared that she’s also faced pushback from others for adhering to her traditional lifestyle.
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A passionate believer in supporting all homemakers—even those who may be single or still students—Grace says she wants people to do what’s best for their family. To women who want to follow in her footsteps but are afraid of backlash, she has some candid advice.
“At some point, you have to live your life for you,“ she said, ”and not in fear of what others may say or think.”
For her, the choice to stay home has been much more appealing than a career. Serving her husband and child has produced sweet memories, and the joy of witnessing her child’s first milestones as a stay-at-home mom has made the challenges all worth it.
“I would never want to miss those moments for the world,” she said.
