barefoot and pregnant

barefoot and pregnant adjective: kept at home to perform the traditional duties expected of women.

Adjective

barefoot and pregnant (not comparable)

(derogatory) Kept at home to perform the traditional duties expected of women.
- "The only way to keep a woman happy," he said, "is to keep her barefoot and pregnant."1958, Joseph H Peck, All about men
- Ms. Frank finds it a strange, if not a perverse coincidence that, after all these centuries of Jewish history, just when Jewish women are demanding greater and more meaningful participation in Jewish religious and communal life, certain segments of the Jewish community are loudly hitting the old...1994, Steven Bayme, Gladys Rosen, The Jewish family and Jewish continuity

I was to stay the ol' barefoot and pregnant wife.2007, Edward M Tauber, Jim Smoke, Finding the Right One After Divorce:
"He wanted me barefoot and pregnant," she said.2007, Greg J Duncan, Aletha C Huston, Thomas S Weisner, Higher ground: New Hope for the working poor and their children:

What does barefoot and pregnant mean?: Barefoot and pregnant means kept at home to perform the traditional duties expected of women.
How do you use barefoot and pregnant in a sentence?: I was to stay the ol' barefoot and pregnant wife.
What part of speech is barefoot and pregnant?: Barefoot and pregnant is an adjective.

Adapted from Wiktionary: barefoot and pregnant (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “barefoot and pregnant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barefoot_and_pregnant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.