I want to hate tradwives, but don't.

Motherhood today is not normal.

Anyone who regularly scrolls Instagram or TikTok will recognise the term ‘tradwives’, or women who embrace traditional values of homemaking or ‘homesteading’, as they love to call it. Imagine a stereotypical American woman of the 1950s — perfectly coiffed hair (usually blonde) and impeccable make-up, full dresses with lace aprons and manicured hands deep in flour — then add a sprinkle of Christian conservatism and a load of influencer equipment — and ta-da! — you’ve got your modern-day ‘tradwife’. Famous examples include Hannah Neeleman (aka Ballerina Farm) and Estee Williams. Now, if I’m honest (and I always am) every feminist bone in my body wants to hate these women; however, the truth is that I don’t.

It’s easy to be triggered by the content these ‘tradwives’ are posting because the lifestyle they promote is simply inaccessible to most of us. Indeed, nearly all of them are stay-at-home mothers, meaning that their immaculate households are run on one salary, which is near-impossible in today’s economy (actually, Ballerina Farm came under fire recently as it was exposed that she has generational wealth behind her). In reality, most stay-at-home moms are running on little energy and sleep, trying to keep up with the totality of childcare, which includes chauffeuring kids to multiple activities, so it’s unrealistic, for example, to expect many of them to handmake their kids’ cereal every morning. As moms, we’re already under so much pressure, constantly berating ourselves for being less than perfect. Aren’t all these ‘tradwives’ just making it worse by setting unrealistic expectations for us to live by?

The truth is that, like every trend, this increased interest in traditional gender roles is symptomatic of our times and points to a much bigger issue than simply yearning for our own vegetable patch and a time when we didn’t rock up to the school gates looking like Adam Sandler (definitely my case). Here’s where I think the real problem lies: motherhood today is not normal.

Over Easter, a friend of mine was telling me how one of her Malaysian colleagues is hiring a specialised nanny to help take care of all the household chores so that she can simply rest and focus on her new baby during the first month. This is the norm, she tells me, in Malaysia. Similarly, in the Netherlands, women are entitled to a maternity nurse (‘Kraamzorg’) for eight days after giving birth covered by basic health insurance. She comes every day, either full- or part-time, to offer advice, help with breastfeeding and even assist with general household chores. Eight days may not be long, but at least, it shows some understanding of a new mother’s need to rest and recover. I never gave the postnatal process in the UK much thought when I was pregnant with both of my children, but looking back, I think that it failed me and other mothers. In most of the Western world, we are told to get back on our feet and resume a semi-normal life pretty much straight after giving birth. You can’t help but feel that if men had to undergo 10 cm dilations and push out babies, postnatal care would be amped up ASAP. However, for women, pretty much straight after becoming mothers, we are taught by the system to put ourselves second, not complain and just keep going.

Nevertheless, the issue isn’t just with postpartum care. Most girls of my generation were fed the idea of ‘the village’, only to grow up and realise that we’re largely on our own. Of course, many of us have left our home countries to raise families abroad, which has made this harder. However, it also comes down to modern society, which is fast-paced and dominated by to-do lists. Everyone has become so busy with their own lives that there is little time to extend help to others. In general, we’re also more socially isolated, rendering it more difficult to form trustworthy relationships with others around us. Similarly, it’s rare to find children playing in their neighbourhoods nowadays, as ‘life’ has predominantly been moved indoors. This means that children need to be almost constantly supervised by their parents, leaving less space to fulfil individual needs or wants.

‘No woman has ever had to do as much, on her own, as the modern mother. We don’t have the same family structure or the same neighborhood structure anymore…It’s really hard, and every woman needs to give herself a break.’

- American Pediatrician Dr. Harvey Karp, as cited in ‘The mental load of motherhood’

Actually, a strange phenomenon seems to have replaced the communal concept of ‘the village’: that of the toxic family. Increasingly, it feels like we’re trapped in a toxic family dynamic where everyone keeps judging every little choice we make under the guise of asking ‘well-intended’ questions: ‘How long are you staying off work; are you going to breastfeed; what kinds of snacks are you giving your kids; what activities are they enrolled in?’ Believe me — mothers are already constantly questioning themselves; the last thing they need is more guilt-tripping. Not to mention that in a social and economic climate where young family budgets are more and more stretched, this seems particularly detrimental. When does inquisitiveness transpire into interrogation, and when does pride in your children’s accomplishments become competition?

Today, more women are in the workforce than ever before, but the reality is that we still take care of most household tasks. A 2023 report from the Pew Research Center showed that even in ‘egalitarian marriages’ (where husbands and wives each contribute roughly half of the couple's combined earnings) and ones where the wife is the primary breadwinner, women still spend ‘more than double the amount of time on housework than their husbands (4.6 hours per week for women vs. 1.9 hours per week for men), and almost two hours more per week on caregiving, including tending to children’.

‘The only marriage type where husbands devote more time to caregiving than their wives is one in which the wife is the sole breadwinner. In those marriages, wives and husbands spend roughly the same amount of time per week on household chores.’ - as cited by the Pew Research Center

Similarly, according to the data collected, husbands in egalitarian marriages spend approximately 3.5 hours more per week on leisure activities than wives do, and this increases in marriages where wives are the primary earners. This makes the message we are constantly fed that to be a ‘good mom’ we need to prioritise self-care seemingly unattainable. How can we do that if we’re now working part- or full-time (thus, commuting more in most instances), and simultaneously, doing the bulk of the work at home and childcare (including absorbing most of the responsibility for our children’s education)? It’s not just mom guilt; it’s a persistent perception that domestic and child-related duties are feminine.

Since traditional views around gender roles within opposite-sex couples largely persist, women are now overstretched. Whereas in the 1950s, women were focused on one domain (the household), they are now made to juggle two realms as if neither of them overlapped. As the saying goes, ‘work like you don’t have children and raise children like you don’t work’. If you’re lucky, you have help, but even with that, it’s still overwhelming. Society accepted to give us more options on paper but not in practice; the necessary shift in thinking just hasn’t kept up with the pace of female ambition.

Finally, I can’t end this article without mentioning social media. Mothering today comes with unprecedented exposure to varied information and advice around parenting. Arguably, there always were self-help books, but if reading them caused angst, then the solution was easy: don’t buy them. However, with social media, you are inescapably subjected to videos of moms showing off their parenting strategies or ‘experts’ warning against all the dangers you are subjecting your children to. As mothers (and arguably, women), we are already very vulnerable to comparison, so it’s no surprise that this information overload is causing high levels of envy and anxiety, as reported in a 2022 study published in Computers of Human Behavior, ‘Comparisons to picture-perfect motherhood: How Instagram's idealized portrayals of motherhood affect new mothers' well-being’. Social platforms incessantly feed us unrealistic portrayals of motherhood and toxic advice on what it means to be a ‘good mother’, leaving many to feel shame and often resentment for feeling that they don’t meet those standards, or may not always view motherhood in a positive light, as highlighted in a 2022 BBC article, ‘The mums who are ambivalent about motherhood’.

In short, while I want to hate all these ‘tradwife’ influencers, I admit that most of my hatred stems from bitterness and envy of their seemingly ideal, simplified lives. However, the danger with these influencers is that they suggest that the way to ‘fix’ today’s motherhood is through regression, or returning to traditional gender roles, rather than continuing to push for progress and demand more even-handed standards within and outside the home. Not to mention that, particularly in the US, they have gained huge support from extreme right-wing groups, namely white supremacists, who relish the idea of wives submitting to their husbands and raising more white ‘tradbabies’. Importantly, such ‘tradwife’ representations discourage other women, who may not have such an idealised experience of motherhood, from expressing their realities, left to bear even more shame and guilt. According to Kate Borsato, a therapist in British Columbia, Canada, ‘if a mother is open about her feelings, she is likely to feel less alone and self-critical’, but if she is silenced, ‘that can lead to darker places, like depression’ (as cited in the BBC article). Thankfully, counteracting the ‘tradwives’ are influencers who are opting to show more authentic portrayals of motherhood, such as Louise Boyce (aka Mama’s Still Got It), Jane Dowden (aka Mum and a Mic), Carla Freeman, and Stateside, Libby Ward (aka Diary of an Honest Mom). We all love our children, but the standards of modern motherhood are impossible to uphold. Instead of competing against each other or propagating this idea that there’s only one version of a ‘good mother’, why don’t we share our stories and collaborate to promote a more honest and inclusive portrayal of motherhood? Let’s replace shaming with sharing and use our voices for the next generations of mothers.

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