Social media right now is an ocean of would-be propaganda for traditional heterosexual marriage. There are “tradwives,” who cosplay submissive housewives on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. They overlap with “family vloggers,” typically conservative Christians with large families who chronicle their daily lives online. The world of Christian right content online is far more interested in the maintenance and promotion of the patriarchal nuclear family than, say, the life of Jesus Christ, who died as one of those “childless cat ladies” Vance hates so much. Billionaire Peter Thiel has even funded a woman’s magazine, meant to compete with Vogue or Cosmopolitan, that positions extremely conservative marriage as the only true path for women’s lives.
I think there’s a huge difference between “traditional heterosexual marriage” and what folks like my brother and sister in law have where they’re just married, heterosexual, monogamous, and planning on having kids. “Traditional” carries a lot of weight because it’s a value assigning word with extra baggage. It implies things like that he’s in charge and the breadwinner, and it implies that there’s added value to their relationship because of all that.