Sundresses and rugged self-sufficiency: ‘tradwives’ tout a conservative American past ... that didn’t exist

Reminds me of a Micheal Moore video. He got MAGoos of various ages and asked them 'When was America 'Great' and when did it start to go wrong?"

The people born in 1940 thought the problem started around 1965; the ones born in 1960 thought it was around 1985; the ones born in 1980 thought it was 2005...

Days after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, Vance tweeted: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”

Does it just not enter into these fucknuts' heads that it doesn't matter what a woman does with her life, as long as she is the one making the choice to do it?

Dammit. Don't ruin sundresses.

It's republi-cosplay

I ain't been out anywhere damn near long enough for them to now try to make sundresses some kinda symbol of patriarchal domesticity cult bullshit. I'm trans, I'm out, and if the sun's out too, I'm wearing a sundress. Goddammit.

Homesteading I could take or leave lol

Trad* is such a stupid term.

The USA was never great, unless you consider the mass enslavement and genocide of people to be its crowning achievement, which sadly many do, and that is what the Nazi/Fascist/Republican Party means when they say, "Make America Great Again."

Wishful thinking of some at least 'king of my own castle'?

I think it has to do with the working class; a majority is struggling to live paycheck to paycheck even with both parents having an income. Yes, some remember their parents or grandparents (wathcing families on television) would only have to work 40 hours a week in a single-income home, and that was enough for the family to have a comfortable life.

They were being paid a living wage.

Now the working class continues to struggle while the owner class's profits hit an all-time high.

This article seems to just be fearmongering for the new status quo agenda (the new PR name is Project 2025), while only calling out "far-right" and not the duopoly that is enabling the struggles of the working class.

These are just more articles that help keep diving for the working class without addressing the real systematic problems our society is facing.

Tradwives first began trending online in 2020, when people were looking to wring excitement and comfort out of the smallest household tasks. Although there’s no single definition of “tradwife” – and many female influencers who’ve been decorated with the label don’t use it or even reject it – you know the tradwife when you see her. She is probably baking sourdough in an immaculate outfit, has a gaggle of kids (or wants them), and suggests – either silently or very loudly, like Williams – that life is better when women adhere to “traditional” gender roles and perfect at-home domesticity and nurturing.

Tradwives portray a fundamentally conservative and individual solution to that societal failure: retreat not only into the home, but also into history. Using the iconography of an idealized past, they evoke the economic and emotional fantasy that families, and especially women, can opt out of the complexity of modern society. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could choose to live on one income? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could choose to stay home and raise children, rather than be forced into it because childcare is so damn expensive?

But 19th-century homesteading, the source of so much inspiration for both tradwives and the GOP – was not a private endeavor undertaken by hardy men and their supportive wives. It was the result of the huge government subsidy program known as the Homestead Act. The 1950s, another conservative inspiration, were also shaped by government subsidies for housing and education – as well as a post-second world war movement to pressure women out of the workforce – that briefly made it economically possible for vast numbers of white American women to live as housewives. (These subsidies were nowhere near as available to people of color.)

The social and economic conditions that made the nuclear family structure so dominant in the 1950s were also exceedingly unique. Except for this post-war period, it has been far from traditional for US families to be made up of a breadwinner husband, a wife who stays home to do unpaid cooking and cleaning as well as 2.5 kids who get to enjoy an extended childhood.

Many so-called tradwives do openly work for money – often through home-based small businesses, influencing or a combination of the two, such as selling courses on how to be a stay-at-home influencer. Like all influencers, their product is their own lifestyle.

Tradwifery is not a monolith, and some of the most popular women who have been labeled “tradwives” by the internet don’t talk about politics or gender roles. But social media algorithms and chatter can co-opt them into conservative projects about femininity and families that these women may not personally support.

After I watched several Williams videos on YouTube, the platform started serving me ads for the Alliance Defending Freedom, the powerhouse Christian law firm that masterminded the overturning of Roe and continues to chip away at abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. In May, Media Matters for America found that watching tradwife content on TikTok led its “For You” Page to be flooded with far-right conspiracy theory content “within an afternoon”.

Despite the tradwives’ popularity, it’s not financially feasible for many women to quit their jobs. It’s not even clear that women want to. Almost 80% of women between the ages of 25 and 54 are now part of the US workforce.