Home Sweet Home, Or A Step Back? Exploring The Rise Of The "TradWife" Movement
Imagine — assuming you don't remember — being a woman living in the 1950s. Back then, married ladies were supposed to be housewives and little else. They weren’t supposed to have a career; instead, they looked after the house, cooked for their husband, and raised the children. Large portions of contemporary society regard this kind of lifestyle as a largely thankless one, and yet, some modern-day women crave it. Meet the “tradwives.”
Tradwives
A "tradwife" — or “traditional wife” — is a modern-day woman who seeks to embrace a life of domesticity. She loves her house and she loves her husband, and she 100 percent believes in traditional gender roles.
A good tradwife is expected to be submissive to her husband and let him make all the decisions about the family, which is where a lot of the controversy over the lifestyle comes from.
There’s also a certain aesthetic associated with the movement. Trad wives tend to love old-fashioned dresses, homemade food and clean, tidy rooms — which just so happen to be things that look fantastic on Instagram.
Many a person has become attracted to the tradwife movement simply by how appealing the photographs make it look. In truth, of course, it’s about a lot more than pretty clothes
Alena Kate Pettitt
One of the first tradwives was a woman called Alena Kate Pettitt, and she spoke at length about her choices to the New Yorker in 2024. The modern life of a woman, she said, simply wasn’t what she wanted.
“If you put me in a time machine back to the fifties, I’d have it made,” she told the magazine. “Everyone wouldn’t be asking me when I’m going back to work.”
Royal influence
Pettitt was influenced by, among other things, the British royal family. “I have always been interested in etiquette and as a young girl used to dream of marrying Prince William — sad but true,” she told The Mitford Society in a 2017 interview.
“My mother used to subscribe to Tatler, likewise she was enamored with Princess Diana, and so her influence in addition to my childhood dream was enough to start a lifelong fascination with the peerage.”