“Trad Life” Is a Spectrum, Not a Straitjacket

By Andrea Mew

Growing up, I didn’t realize how good I had it. As the product of a two-parent household where my father was the breadwinner and my mother stayed at home to take care of three daughters, I felt confined — nay, strangled — by the very thought that my adult life would look anything similar. Why would I want to be subservient to a man? I was thirsty for financial freedom and an “out” from suburbia, so each poke my SAHM gave me to “get a good education,” I took seriously.

But as I did my time in undergrad, took on internships, multiple part-time jobs, and rushed headfirst into my career before I even graduated, I had to swallow the tender feelings bubbling up: none of it fulfilled my soul.

Look, we’re all shaped by the environment we were raised in, and because my biggest female role model growing up was my mom, who cooked, cleaned, and carted her daughters from dance competitions to violin recitals, I didn’t realize until much later on in my young adult life how her “trad” role had an influence on me.

Lately, the “tradwife” movement, which advocates for a revival of traditional homemaking, stirs up seemingly endless bitter discourse from both sides. Those in the staunch trad camp wrongfully criticize working women who feel empowered by an identity outside of motherhood. But those in the feminist camp bemoan women like Ballerina Farm, whose idyllic portrayal of “trad life” is far from realistic for a vast majority of American women.

However, “trad life” isn’t a straitjacket, it’s a spectrum — and a beautifully unique human concept spanning global cultures, at that.

It doesn’t matter where you look — all major media says that young women are frightened in Trump’s America. They hurriedly share resources on how to covertly acquire hormonal birth control (even though President Trump is an advocate for contraception) and where to get an abortion. To many of them, marriage and motherhood would be the end of their lives as they know it.

And I hear them. Once a woman has a child, some aspects of her life will never be the same. But let’s get one thing very clear. Modern women won't be "doomed" to traditional roles under the Trump administration. If anything, we are posed to have more flexibility than ever before to decide how traditional or career-focused we want to be.

Thanks to choice-forward economic policies, women today can move along a “sliding scale” of tradition rather than being forced into an all-or-nothing approach on both sides. After Trump’s election, The Kit writer Leanne Delap warned that the administration’s vision aims to “dial back the clock to a time when everyone could afford a house, a car and a beer on the back deck at the end of a workday,” but that this vision includes "sending women back to the 1950s, too, serving their menfolk, with no control over their own bodies."

Similarly, Gregory J. Wallace in The Hill argued that we’d be subject to “a vision of alpha males protecting — in other words, dominating — women.”

True, right-of-center men are more likely to lean unapologetically into stereotypically masculine behavior, but the real problem isn’t the so-called patriarchy pushing us back to the 1950s; it’s the rigid, zero-sum framing of what it means to be a female conservative.

A century ago, women had no choice but to be homemakers. Today, we can be CEOs, full-time moms, or anything in between. But when you scroll through comments from disgruntled internet users about “tradwife” momfluencer Hannah Nielman (also known as Ballerina Farm), for instance, people accuse her husband of forcing her into that role. They bemoan how “trad” sex roles are imposed on women as if they’d never actually choose to stay at home.

The reality? I could ask any number of my moderately to definitely “trad” friends, and they feel the homemaking desire deep in their bones. Young women today are disillusioned by the hustle and bustle of a 9-to-5 office job, and actually find many elements of traditional domesticity attractive.

This spectrum isn’t possible without smart economic policies. Policies like expanding parental leave, increasing child tax credits, and promoting workplace flexibility empower women to decide just how “trad” they want to be. America boasts 12 million women-owned businesses that benefit from lower tax burdens and reduced regulations. Business owners — male or female — can then re-invest their savings into hiring sprees, bonuses, and even adding new benefits for their employees like paid leave.

After the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect, Sprouts Farmers Market invested its savings into expanding maternity leave; Lowes was able to expand not only maternity benefits but also paternity leave, too; and Unum was able to create a new paid parental leave program.

Tax cuts don’t just “benefit the rich,” however, as that legislation gave average American families earning $75,000 a tax cut of $1,500. Those with children benefitted from a doubling of the Child Tax Credit — in other words, 40 million families saw their Child Tax Credit rise from $1,000 to $2,000. With more money in the bank, parents can better afford child care — a necessity for many families to survive.

Innovative tech offerings like Instacart or AI-powered storytelling apps like Lumi by Pampers can ease the burden of parenthood, sure. But instead of asking “How do we get women to do less at home?” or “How can we automate homemaking?”, we should be asking “How do we make all options more viable?” If society truly values choice, why is the “wrong” choice (embracing family life) looked down upon?

Sure, there are now widespread returns to in-office jobs. I sympathize with women who don’t know how they’ll return to the office when they got used to a flexible at-home environment. But not all remote jobs are doomed. Many jobs will remain flexible, and so long as our government protects the rights of freelancers, there are countless independent contracting opportunities for women who want to blend career and homemaking without sacrificing one for the other.

Ultimately, the problem isn’t women being forced into tradition at the hands of “megalomaniacs” — it's that mainstream feminism, or whatever traces the now-defunct ideology left on our culture, hasn’t caught up to the new reality of balance. Instead of forcing “fairness” by making women behave like men, we should be asking how to better support family structures that allow both partners to thrive however they see fit.

Women aren’t “doomed” to traditional roles, and even if we do inadvertently take on a bit more of “trad life” if we do choose to become mothers, the role of a part-time or full-time homemaker is a blessing, not a curse. We’re freer now than ever before, but that freedom means the right to move any which way along the tradition-career spectrum and not to be shamed out of domesticity altogether.

I’m so grateful I was raised by a SAHM. I enjoy working and want to figure out a way to get both the bread and the baby. And I’ll fight for the right for any trad-aspiring woman to bake her sourdough bread, drive her minivan, and cook for her hardworking husband if that tickles her fancy. If you’re bothered by that? Maybe you’ve been mixing up equality and equity all along. The future of feminism shouldn't be about forcing women into the failed girlbossery of yesteryear; it needs to be about ensuring all options are on the table.

Andrea Mew is the Managing Editor at IW Features and a contributing writer for Evie Magazine, where her beat spans women's health and wellness, fashion, pop culture, and more. In all respects of life, Andrea abides by her passions for freedom, femininity, and facts.