By Karen Yang
Governance & Society
Behind the flowy era dresses and freshly baked bread, the trad wife movement is much more complex than a simple desire to return to the 1950s. Appearing on TikTok and Instagram, “trad wives” are a range of women who show off their “slow way[s] of life,” as Elle reporter Anne Helen Petersen, who underwent her own trad wife experiment, calls it. These lives often involve cooking, cleaning, and managing the home while their husbands are at work. However, behind these rosy images is a generation of women who want to assert their autonomy in an increasingly economically and politically turbulent world. As such, the trad wife movement’s true cause is our current economic and political state of stress, where women, without any other options financially, have turned to marriage and the home as a means of stability.
For one, in our post-Covid economy of hyperinflation, there are legitimate reasons for women to turn to this simpler life. “In a period of economic anxieties, tremendous job demands, and lack of family support, people are beginning to think that maybe there’s an in between way I can do this,” says Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families. “[The trad wife life] becomes a middle way.”
Likewise, women have increasingly felt a cognitive dissonance between their intention to work and the realities of the world — as a result, they frame the trad wife movement as their intentional choice to step away. Coontz agrees: “It's hard to say, ‘Well, I wanted to do all of this, but I failed. I couldn't do it. I'm gonna be miserable.’ You resolve it by saying ‘Well, it turns out I've chosen to do that.’” In other words, this idea of becoming a trad wife is made appealing by portraying it as a powerful assertion of autonomy in the face of the downgrading economy. After all, it’s much easier to frame forced decisions as choices rather than to point out the flaws present in the system. “That causes you to have conflict in the political realm, or to have conflict with your husband. Sometimes the most comfortable thing to do is to acquiesce to it, and pretend that it's not a problem,” Cootnz says.
As such, the trad wife movement is not necessarily born out of the ultra right conservative movement — but instead, out of a desire to genuinely survive in today’s stressful world.
However, that doesn’t make the trad wife movement completely guilt free – calls to return to the 1950s miss reality: for one, “we’ve never been just a pure, male dominated working society; the male breadwinner family was a 20th century invention,” Coontz says. It’s also notable that many trad wives have rights that they did not have back in the 1950s only as a result of the feminist movement.
Coontz also points out the ugly side of the 1950s. “Domestic violence was much, much higher in the 1950s than it is today. Child abuse was not even recognized as a problem… All these rose colored glasses that people have about the 1950s are inaccurate.”
Despite these inaccuracies, the trad wife life ideas have been appealing to extreme alt-right conservationists, who have capitalized on the movement. One such “trad wife,” Estee Williams, deemed the “Face of the TradWives movement” was recently interviewed by Michael Knowles, reporter at the Daily Wire. Throughout the interview, Williams never directly espouses any extreme views of her own: she doesn’t need to as Knowles equates Williams to Phillis Schafly, his “favorite conservative hero” and killer of the Equal Rights Act. As such, it’s too late for the trad wife movement – far right groups have already decided to use them as a means of espousing hateful rhetoric.
Like many other societal movements, the trad wife life did not spring out of left field. Instead, people of all backgrounds turn towards this phenomenon due to their everyday circumstances. Thus, if one can be swayed into this movement, one can be reasoned out of it through education and understanding.
Specifically, more education is needed surrounding the true reality of life in the 1950s or other decades these women are aspiring towards. “Not everybody who is attracted by it knows what was beneath that. And if they did, they'd probably be shocked,” Cootnz says. Utilizing social media to educate the reality of being a tradwife – the sources and amount of income required to sustain such a lifestyle, the all too common dependence on one’s partner – would instead be valuable in breaking these incorrect and harmful perceptions.
We have to also create better economic support infrastructure, emphasizing communal action and support for women. For example, we might pass more legislation empowering women to run for office, such as Bill H.3579, which allows candidates to utilize funds for childcare. “We emphasize individual efforts – this nonsense idea that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” Cootnz says. “If people can't do what they originally wanted, or what they dreamed about, they think it's their fault,” which may lead to the trad wife belief.
This is all easier said than done. But we must strike a balance, come together, and utilize education and conversation – what does it mean economically and politically to be a trad wife? What are the true reasons propelling you to make this choice? – to inform our everyday decisions and keep in mind the larger infrastructure at work and play.