If you’re not already familiar with this toxic subculture, here’s a heads-up. The following very apt description is from someone in my online circles, who gave me permission to use it without attribution:
The “trad wife” movement is deeply rooted in misogyny. It is a regressive movement that aims to dial back women’s rights.
This is just a small part of a larger movement to dial back the rights of all marginalized peoples. The “trad wife” movement is primarily aimed at white women. It offers a position of relative power within the established white supremacist and patriarchal hierarchy as help meets and brood mares to men. Not an equal, but a highly valued servant.
There is a link here with the crunchy mom to right wing pipeline. There is a lot of emphasis on “the natural way” and focus on women as primarily mothers and nurturers. These women have blogs and tiktok accounts that make it all look beautiful and wholesome. The projection of an image of a simpler time can be very appealing. It’s a slippery slope.
There is no room given in this definition of womanhood for independence, career, innovation, free thought, leadership, autonomy or true power. We are all the lesser for that.
Worse still, white women in these marriages become complicit in the furthering of bigotry and discrimination by bolstering and profiting from the established power structures.
This is dangerous stuff cloaked in a thin layer of homemade bread and wooden toys propaganda.
Further reading:
• Mothers for Germany: A look at the ideal woman in Nazi propaganda (graduate thesis by Karin Lynn Brashler).