What are Tradwives and should we be worried?
About the life of the (modern) traditional housewife and why the ultra-conservatives in the U.S. are gratefully promoting this trend.
Dear Readers,
The modern woman is a homemaker! At least that’s how the so-called tradwives see it. These are women who exemplify an ultra-conservative role model and propagate this on social media.
It means that the woman stays at home and looks after the children, while the man is the provider and earns the big bucks. Everything always looks effortless and aesthetically pleasing. The house is spotless, the hair is done, the food is on the table. A perfect life - one could almost think. But how real are the tradwives? And is there a political trend behind them?
The “Biblical Submission”
To gain a better understanding of the topic, I spoke to Viktoria Rösch, who conducted research at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences on topics including “The Women of the Far Right. Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization.” The expert explains:
“The Tradwife stages herself in social media as completely flawless and becomes the symbol of a gender relationship in which everything has its clear order.”
On Instagram and TikTok, tradwives in pastel-colored dresses bake cakes for their husbands and take casseroles out of the oven. This content is also attractive to certain men who want a woman who submits of her own free will: “It sparks desire in some men. The desire for such a woman is oftentimes expressed in the comment section on social media,” says Rösch.
One of the best-known tradwives is Estee Williams, who has 117.000 followers on Instagram. In Williams’ case, there is also a religious/evangelical component.
The tradwife-influencer explains on her account: “Tradwives encourage Biblical Submission because the Bible speaks of this (…). Ephesians makes it clear that a man does have responsibility for leadership in his home. But again, it’s only as a leader that his wife submits to him — not as a tyrant or her superior. The umbrella of authority has Christ at the top, followed by the husband, then the wife and the children and this ‘umbrella’ protects the family unit from satan.”
Should we be worried?
Basically, you could simply ignore this trend - like so many other silly trends on social media. And you could also say: let people live the way they want to live.
But the tradwives are just the tip of the iceberg. Certain movements in the U.S. are gaining traction that only want to allow and promote a very specific version of a “perfect” family. These movements, some of which are far-right, propagate a world in which control is to be exercised over women and women’s bodies. Since Donald Trump was re-elected U.S. President, these movements will have an open ear in the White House.
For example, the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 propagates a radical and religiously fundamentalist view of the family. On page 481 of the 900-page document it states that it wants to promote a marriage and family based on the “Bible”. No coincidence, says Rösch:
“Gender relations are one of the central 'battlegrounds' in current political debates. It is a global issue that unites right-wing populist and extreme right-wing groups and actors. It is no coincidence that some of the tradwives have openly supported Trump.”
And in some U.S. states there is a creeping and now quite visible rollback of women’s rights, which is already leaving its mark, especially when it comes to abortion. Studies show that the infant mortality rate in the USA has risen significantly in the months following the Dobbs decision (abortion ban).
In addition, conservative politicians in states such as Texas and Louisiana repeatedly tried to change divorce laws through proposed legislation, pushing for a law to be rolled back that allows divorce to be filed without having to prove spousal misconduct.
Are Tradwives the real breadwinners of the family?
Finally, a contradiction. On the one hand, it is not really clear how many of the tradwives live their lives exactly as they portray them on social media. Nowadays, there is certainly a lot of money to be made from this content. But it is also clear that they are a certain “role model” for a lifestyle that is more regression than progress.
But while the social media ladies promote a life where the husband goes to work and the wife stays at home, the successful Instagram accounts are in fact small businesses. This means that in some cases, the very “traditional” wife will earn more via social media than the provider husband who goes to the office every day.
And that is actually... quite modern.