What is a Trad Wife? The Rise of The Homestead Influencer – And Its Dark Side
As influencers presenting an idealised view of traditional family life continue to dominate social media, where does our fascination with the backbreaking labour of times gone by come from – and is it all as it seems?
It was during Covid that many households discovered the joys of banana bread and sourdough starter – when filling the seemingly endless hours of enforced family time was a challenge, and the shop shelves were depressingly bare, it suddenly made sense to be pouring half a day into creating from-scratch baked goods on the regular.
No stranger to the kitchen myself, having paid my dues with years working on a food magazine, I happily threw myself into kneading scones (lightly, or they’ll come out rubbery) and mixing sticky ginger cake with the kids. But once life returned to its chaotic normal and supply chains settled down, the necessity for a constant stream of traybakes emanating from the kitchen not only became obsolete – it became an impossibility. Honestly, who has the time to lovingly spread ceramic baking beans in a pie crust when you’ve got gymnastics lessons and footy to dash out to?
But a quaint curiosity did seem to hang over from the Covid fever-dream that was a fascination with home baking and home schooling: the rise of the Tradwife influencer.
What is a Trad Wife? The Rise of The Homestead Influencer
Homesteading, homemaking, cottagecore living… Call it what you will, the Tradwife influencer is, in essence, a stay-at-home mum who prioritises from-scratch cookery and crafts in a dreamy, olde-worlde aesthetic. It’s improbably easy to get sucked into this quaint content – the mixing bowls, the pregnant bumps, the crocheted hairnets, the rolling pins and the rapidly multiplying children who appear underfoot. They fulfil the fantasy that forms around the modern-day working mum’s guilt – no more tears at drop-off time, no more rushed takeaway dinners when you have to work late, and instead a fulfilling family life of togetherness and warm cinnamon rolls.
“Who has the time to lovingly spread ceramic baking beans in a pie crust when you have gymnastic lessons and footy to dash out to?”
But there’s a darker side to the Tradwife trend, too – after all, anyone who’s watched Utah-based Hannah Neeleman of Instagram’s Ballerina Farm waft in front of her pea-green Aga has surely wondered how a simple country wife and mother of eight could afford such an extravagantly-priced (a minimum of Dhs74,000) and fuel-guzzling stove. Well, here’s the answer – her father-in-law, Dan Neeleman, is the founder and former CEO of JetBlue airline and worth a reported US$400 million. That herd of organic cattle kept for fresh milk doesn’t seem like such an overindulgence now, right?
Of course, what’s implicit in the Tradwife lifestyle is the existence of a large paycheck – from a largely invisible husband – to maintain this ever-increasing family. After all, boiling parmesan cheese rinds for stock and picking your own lemons will only go so far to funding your sepia-tinged housewife fantasy. So where does that leave women? If the worst should happen and the marriage breaks down, it leaves them with no career, no savings and very little identity outside their role as mother.
Of course, I am all for stay-at-home mums and the very important role they play. I’ve done it myself and it truly is far more difficult than any workplace environment I’ve had – and I’ve done a bit of everything. But we must keep it all in perspective, especially from a financial standpoint.
Modern conveniences exist for a reason – we have been freed from the yoke of traditional labour that kept out mothers and grandmothers out of the workforce and tied to the home in the first place. Have you ever scrubbed a whole house on your hands and knees? Hand-washed an entire load of laundry? Times have changed – thank heavens – and I, for one, am in no hurry to go back. Even if I did have a multi-millionaire husband like so many of these barefoot domestic goddesses, I’d have to keep working.
Because if Covid taught me anything, there is such a thing as too much time at home with the kids. When I’m a stimulated and useful member of society, I’m a better mum and wife too. Tradwife? No thanks. I may be able to make my own dough and tomato sauce from scratch, but tonight the pizza will come in a warm cardboard box. And the freedom it brings will taste so sweet.
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s Junior Spring 2024 issue