I can’t recall when I first heard about the current “tradwife” movement. It certainly wasn’t on TikTok or YouTube—where the movement is trending—because I don’t follow “influencers” on those platforms (I don’t even have a TikTok account). I get nearly all of my news and cultural commentary through podcasts, so my introduction to tradwifery likely came through a monologue from Allie Beth Stuckey, Andrew Klavan, or some other commentator with THOUGHTS.
What I do remember is my initial reaction to the term: “tradwife” must mean “traditional wife,” I mused; I guess they’re talking about ME! After all, I am in a very traditional marriage. Luke is the breadwinner while I stay home with the kids. While we are equal partners in our marriage, I willingly submit to his leadership and defer to his decision-making when necessary. We also follow traditional roles around the home, with me handling the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and laundry while Luke manages our finances, takes care of car stuff and house projects, and maintains the yard. I’ve never powered up our lawnmower; he’s never prepared dinner. It doesn’t get too much more “traditional” than that!
But then I learned more about current culture’s understanding of a “tradwife.” The realm of the tradwife, as the term is being used today, is a social media-based subculture of women who embrace 1950s-style gender roles. The trend, popular among Gen Z and millenials, focuses on extreme domesticity by showcasing women acting as full-time homemakers, cooking from scratch, submitting to their husbands’ leadership, and exhibiting an aesthetic and curated life that rejects modern feminist career focus in favor of domestic bliss.
In other words, today’s social media tradwife is living out many of the same practices and ideals that I value as an “old school traditional wife” (<—–my own term, but I think it fits). We both identify as homemakers and submit to our husbands’ leadership. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen (although my cooking is admittedly less “from scratch” than it could be—I still haven’t gotten on board with the sourdough trend, and in a funny reversal of roles, Luke is the one who has taken up canning!). The tradwife and I are both disillusioned by the modern iteration of feminism, and our focus is on our families and not our careers (more on that later). We value domesticity and take pride in making our houses feel like home. The tradwives and I all happen to be millenials who are living differently than a vast majority of other women our age.
But this is where the similarities end. Unlike the internet famous tradwives, I can be found most days in leggings and a messy bun, not high heels and pearls. I’m not embodying a camera-ready aesthetic, nor am I attempting to market my lifestyle to millions of followers. In other words, I’m just a mom and a wife quietly living out my days as keeper of our home, while internet tradwives (as far as I can ascertain) are mostly cosplaying, shrewdly crafting a fantasy for others to envy and enjoy.
I have to admit that I completely understand the allure. Most women today are trying to do all the things; I can imagine that maintaining a home while also working full time and keeping children alive is exceedingly stressful. The tradwife, with her reduced workload and calmer home life, has a pretty sweet deal; add in fancy clothes and a pristine kitchen, and it’s the stuff that home/mom/wife dreams are made of. This explains why the tradwife influencers have garnered such a massive following. But what about the influencers themselves? Are their lives really as perfect as they seem? And why are they so interested in sharing their “perfect” lives with the world?
I can’t claim to know the motives of every online tradwife, but I suspect that in many instances money comes into play. There are millions of dollars to be made in the influencer space, and that sort of money would be difficult to turn down—especially if all that’s needed is to turn the camera on and showcase their “real life.” But is it really that easy? Anyone who has ever posted a photo or filmed a reel knows that it isn’t; in fact, I think it’s safe to assume that the big-name tradwives dominating the internet have much more of a “career” than your average nine-to-fiver. In other words, they are pedaling a career-free lifestyle while embodying the opposite. The hypocrisy is tough to stomach.
As I mentioned, I don’t personally follow any tradwives online so I have not been directly touched by their content. As someone sitting on the sidelines of the movement, I can acknowledge the good that has stemmed from the tradwife trend. The internet tradwives are drawing attention to a type of lifestyle that many falsely assumed was a thing of the past. They’ve made homemaking and stay-at-home-mothering and healthy wifely submission cool again; those are all things I can totally get behind!
I worry, though, that those who have become enamored by the tradwife lifestyle as it’s portrayed online aren’t getting the full picture. They’re not seeing the sacrifices that go into living on one income in today’s challenging economic landscape, or the fatigue that comes along with being at home with the children all day long, or the impossibility of deep-cleaning the floorboards in 1950s dress. Their pristine depiction of home and family life puts a lot of pressure on us “regular moms” who aren’t able to manage the spotless home and the gourmet meals, the flawless children and the impeccable outfits. Please don’t misunderstand me, I LOVE my own version of being a traditional homemaker, but it isn’t always easy, and if I were allowing the online tradwives to set my standard for “making it” as a homemaker, I would constantly feel like I was coming up short; I’d likely throw in the towel on the whole thing and immediately begin hunting for jobs.
I know from experience that being a traditional wife is about so much more than living out a fantasy; it’s about loving my children and caring for my husband and tending to our home—even when I don’t look too great doing it. I submit to my husband, not because it plays well for the algorithm, but out of love for my Heavenly Father whose relationship with the Church is mirrored in our marital dynamic (Ephesians 5:22-25). I care for my children because they are image bearers worthy of love and in need of healthy instruction and, as their mother, I have been commissioned with this task (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). I tend to my home because all work is valuable when done unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23).
I want to stop right here to make a few clarifications: I do not think that being a stay-at-home wife and mom is the only way to live out these callings. There is not one right way to set up a household or manage a family and a home (although I would are argue that there ARE many “wrong” ways—but that’s a post for another day). I do not believe that there is a Biblical mandate against women working outside the home, and I know that staying home is not feasible or desirable for many (most?) families. I also realize that there is nothing inherently better or “holier” about a traditional division of labor; it’s what was modeled for both Luke and me in our families of origin, and we always knew this was how we hoped things would play out in our own home. I do think there is something to be said for aligning marital and household roles with our biological wiring as men and women, but other families seem to be having great success with doing things differently, and I love that for them. I also love the way that WE do things in OUR home and am grateful that Luke feels the same.
Getting back to the topic at hand: what can we take away from the Tradwife Trend? One important takeaway, for me at least, is that it is important to understand our terms. “Tradwife” and “conservative” and “homemaker” can mean different things to different people, and we need to have a clear understanding of the subject at hand before we begin engaging in substantial conversations or aligning with movements. These things are much more complicated than they appear.
Takeaway number two is that it is important to know the “why” of a movement, and to recognize that the motivations of a trend’s propagators are likely different from those swept up in the mirroring of it. I wish there was more transparency around the tradwife phenomenon, which would help to clarify the influencers’ motivating factors and would make it easier for their followers to determine whether or not these influencers’ lives and values are ones worth emulating.
And finally, I want us to keep in mind that whatever we do and however we choose to live out our family lives, we are to do it all for the glory of God and NOT man. Ultimately, the Lord is the only audience that matters, whether our lives are of the traditional variety or something else altogether.
Though I clearly take issue with many aspects of tradwifery, I’m grateful for the conversations it is jumpstarting around home life, traditional values, and the blessings of mothering and homemaking. My prayer is that the many who are drawn towards this movement will be able to parse out the showmanship from the values, letting go of the superficiality while hanging onto the goodness that can be found in a God-honoring traditional home.
