It appears that the tradwife trend is taking off. Who are tradwives? These are basically women who embrace traditional gender roles in a marriage and this trend appears to be taking off on social media if TikTok and YouTube videos are anything to go by.
Author and co-host of podcast about influencer moms, Under The Influence, Jo Piazza says that a tradwife on social media is a type of influencer who espouses a so-called traditional form of being a wife and mother. She says that they usually stay at home and take are of the children as well as show off their domestic skills. While it’s a good thing that they celebrate a woman’s role at home, the problem is that they also rundown working women and feminist values.
Tradwives: A trend?
Piazza said that when this trend came aboard is not clear but there has been a longing for the nostalgia of tradition as people find it comforting with a world that is currently so uncertain and disastrous in many ways.
What do people value about this old fashioned dynamics
Alana Petit who owns the website, The Darling Academy who is a self-proclaimed tradwife says that tradwives are not subservient.
“Though a traditional housewife may submit to her husband, she is not considered of lesser importance to him, or allow herself to be in a position that threatens her rights… A traditional housewife chooses her husband based on his ability to care for people, provide for their children, and most importantly upon his integrity and values.”
In a BBC interview she said that her role is “submitting to and spoiling her husband like it’s 1959.”
Good or bad trend?
The trend offers polarizing opinions. Mariel Cooksey who is a religion, politics and conflict MA graduate defines tradewifery as “encouraging women to embrace supposedly feminine characteristics like chastity and submissiveness, and trade feminist empowerment for a patriarchal vision of gender norms… and accepting that women shouldn’t work, shouldn’t have the right to vote and should fully submit to their husbands and their faith to live a happy life of homemaking.”
This also explains why the trend-receives a lot of brickbats online.
Balance
Piazza says that while working in the home is real and deserves recognition it needs to be balanced out.
“A woman choosing to focus her energy on her home and her children is powerful. A woman submitted to her husband and letting him take agency over her entire life is a dangerous throwback.”
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The photo above is from Wikipedia