I think I had heard the term “tradwife” before but hadn’t paid it much attention until recently when I happened to see some content (see example above) on social media and took a “deep dive” straight to the bottom of the swimming pool where I broke my neck and died a quick and painless death so I didn’t need to read any further.

Wikipedia defines a “tradwife” (short for “traditional wife” or “traditional housewife”) as follows:

“typically refers to a woman who believes in and practices traditional gender roles and marriage. Some may choose to take on a homemaker role within their marriage or give up their career to focus instead on meeting their family’s needs in the home… Online searches for the term “tradwife” began to gain popularity in mid-2018 and reached high levels in the early 2020s. The traditional homemaker aesthetic has since spread throughout the internet, in part through social media, where women extol the virtues of behaving as an ideal woman.”

I’m not sure where to begin here, as the first college graduate in my family, whose lesbian aunt gave her a subscription to MS. Magazine at 12, when Wikipedia uses phrases like “extolling the virtues of behaving as an ideal woman.”

As feminists, we believe that it is a woman’s choice to do what she wants. Right? If a woman wants to stay at home to raise her children, that’s great. It should be noted that this ability is a privilege is not available to every woman, so there are some socioeconomic problems when women shame other working women.

Jessica Grose for The New York Times writes:

The whole discussion can be a trap because the content itself is meant to be a heightened provocation – some tradwife video creators post what they call provocative opinions and then say they get so much hate because they’re housewives. But they rely on this dissonance to generate more engagement (which leads to more clicks and more money).

These posts portray feminists as haters who oppose their true nature, and pit career women against women who don’t work for money. The reality is that stay-at-home moms and working moms are often the same people at different stages of life, and that content creation is a paid job: My favorite example of this is Tradwife, who offers a $5,900 course on how to become a tradwife.

Growing up as a Gen Xer in an era when television commercials told us, “I can bring home the bacon, fry it in a skillet, and never let you forget you’re a man,” I often felt like we were being fooled by extreme feminists. It seemed like we didn’t want to have full-time careers or be full-time housewives, we should somehow figure out how to do both.. While raising my four children, journalism was a way for me to work from home as much as possible, but for 30 years I felt like I couldn’t quite nail either role. The bacon was always undercooked or overcooked: thanks, bra burners, and thank goodness for microwave bacon.

Who is the “Tradwife” movement for? Is it for jaded women who are tired of trying to have it all and who take refuge in Pinterest boards, aesthetically pleasing country-style barn backdrops for professional family photos, and countless cake recipes with winners at county fairs? It’s for misogynistic men, you fool. It’s as simple as Christian nationalist brainwashing (again, I recommend the documentary Bad Faith to learn the story of the cult-like stranglehold this pseudo-religious political regime has over our nation).

In the JustGrose noted that Mary Harrington recently profiled Lauren Southern, a former right-wing influencer who left her husband and now calls her ultra-traditional marriage abusive. Harrington also spoke to another former traditional wife who said that “the men who choose to join these communities themselves are often ‘opinionated, antisocial, unpleasant and very, very misogynistic.'” The GOP, with its stance against bodily autonomy, has become known simply as the “misogynistic” party, and JD Vance has made countless comments supporting this “traditional” lifestyle.

I have nothing but respect for women who stay home to raise their children: my four have never seen the inside of a daycare, so I don’t judge women who want to perfectly organize cleaning products and prepare glorious home-cooked meals. I happened to be pretty bad at housekeeping; nothing that happened in my house was Tik-Tok-worthy. But when I look at the “Tradwife” content: I think loosely edited videos of over-decorated baby rooms and gluten-free banana bread that openly pillory working women are absolute bullshit. And the Catholics wear veil to church? What now?

The New Yorker The article “The Rise and Fall of TradWife” offers an interesting perspective on the more innocent beginnings of the “movement” that started out less political, then became more political, and whose “founders” eventually became overwhelmed by the movement’s impossible demands and rejected the movement’s core ideas.

If you’re happy being at home and raising your kids, that’s fine. You don’t need to go online and make short films aimed at other women who don’t make that choice. Women who work hard in careers they’re proud of (some maybe, God help us, childless cat ladies by choice) go around making overproduced music videos of days in their lives and shame you for trying to The Handmaid’s Tale like a fun day at the spa? They don’t. Every day I find new reasons to be ashamed of living in a country where women believe they have the right to make decisions for other women – whether in the bedroom, the kitchen, or the womb. Didn’t the GOP once make it a point to keep the government out of people’s personal affairs? What happened to that? And now they want to get in my kitchen?