The first time I saw a Trad Wife video on TikTok, I thought it was satire. There was no way this woman who was dressed up in 50’s housewife cosplay and advocating for financial dependency on men was for real. Unfortunately, while parody videos have been made in response to the trad wife movement, this one in particular was authentic.
In the video titled How to be a Traditional Housewife Part 1, Estee advocates maintaining appearance, keeping oneself “presentable,” and “embracing ultra-traditional gender” roles in your marriage. The video boasts a whopping 50k likes and over 700k views. Her audience appeared receptive to her rhetoric, and many comments encouraged her opinions. I couldn’t help but wonder if her husband, the “head of the household” and “primary breadwinner, ” allows her to keep any of the earnings from her high-performing videos.
While she is one of the platform’s more popular trad wife creators, Estee is not alone in producing trad wife content. The hashtag #tradwife currently sits at 360 million views on the platform. The page is filled with a variety of creators advocating for this lifestyle, with critiques of the movement sprinkled into the hashtag as well.
The divisive nature of the traditional wife movement, the reinforcement of various oppressive structures, and the economic risks these ideals place on women give us a lot to unpack.
The Divisive Nature of the Trad Wife
One of the more insidious features I’ve observed in the trad wife discourse is the lack of understanding of the work that feminism has done for women. Among the increasingly bad takes from trad wife apologists is the idea that feminism “ruined” everything. The reason being that now women have to work. This idea is not only false but also erases the experience of women of color.
The lifestyle of being a stay-at-home wife has historically been almost exclusively accessible to rich white women. In Women, Race, and Class, political activist Angela Davis explains the different experiences Black women have had regarding housework and wage labor.
“While they have seldom been “just housewives,” they have always done their housework. They have thus carried the double burden of wage labor and housework—a double burden which always demands that working women possess the persevering powers of Sisyphus”
Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis
The trad wife beef with modern feminism completely disregards the experience of women of color. In criticizing modern feminism for making them work, white women fail to acknowledge the work that women of color have put toward gender equality while directly benefiting from it.
It’s incredibly convenient for white trad wives to ideologically abandon feminist ideals and resort back to “traditional” ways of living without acknowledging that their freedom to make that decision was earned largely as a result of the work of women of color. They also fail to acknowledge the incredible privilege required to partake in the trad wife lifestyle.
The Trad Wife Lifestyle as an Alleviation for Capitalism
The trad wife argument that feminism has ruined women’s lifestyles is perhaps also a manifestation of the general dissatisfaction with a cutthroat capitalist system. In this case, the blame for hustle culture and girl bossing has been misplaced on feminism.
While the trad wife advocates for a family structure that is not attainable for many people of various socioeconomic backgrounds in our current economic state, it offers, at the very least, a daydream for those wishing to escape the capitalist hellscape they find themselves in.
What makes this traditional lifestyle appealing to so many is that it falsely promises to alleviate them from the burden of surviving late-stage capitalism. But this is a pipedream for most and has the potential to place women in a situation of no economic autonomy.
On paper, staying home all day, making baked goods, and playing with the kids while a man performs labor might sound appealing to some. But this is unpaid labor, and advocating for women to put themselves in a vulnerable financial relation to a man is a problematic message to be sending.
Advocating for Unpaid Labor
Women spend, on average, about 4.5 hours per day on unpaid labor, according to a report by The Organization for Economic Co-Operation. The discrepancy in the amount of unpaid labor men provide results in the average woman performing around 638 more hours per year of domestic unpaid work. When these numbers are calculated with the national minimum wage, it’s clear that women are missing out on a minimum of $9,900 in wages as a result of carrying the majority burden of housework. But the inequality doesn’t end there.
It’s also important to factor in the potential career development and work history that women are missing out on as a result of their domestic labor. In providing the majority of household and childcare labor, women allow their spouse to advance their careers and increase their earning potential. This support provided by women goes uncompensated and often unacknowledged.
We must understand that when we advocate for women to become trad wives, we are also advocating for them to provide unlimited unpaid labor and sacrifice their career development.
Trad wife ideals are extremely harmful messages to be sending to young girls who, at the time, may not be thinking about the contingencies of divorce but could find themselves alone without savings, work history, or career experience.
Traditional marriages foster a situation where a man has absolute financial autonomy, and as a result, the woman is highly motivated to stay in the marriage no matter what.
Closing Thoughts
There’s a lot wrong with the messages being propped up by the trad wife trend. The idyllic cosplaying of a soft life perpetuates restrictive and outdated gender roles while undermining the work that feminists have accomplished.
The rhetoric placed forward by trad wives has the potential to encourage women into further economic oppression and dangerous financial power dynamics with their spouses.
The appeal of the trad wife lifestyle seems to lie primarily in its promise to provide a haven from capitalism. This solution is only a band-aid to the problem and could result in even more oppression if the partnership were to be unsuccessful.
Taking this as an opportunity to scrutinize capitalism further, what critical flaws within the system have women flocking back to housewife culture? What does a world without the struggles of capitalism look like? Does the appeal of the trad wife lifestyle still exist outside the realm of late-stage capitalism? These are questions worth exploring.
Everyone is entitled to pursue the lifestyle they choose. That being said, trad wife influencers have a great responsibility for the implications of their rhetoric on young, impressionable viewers.
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