Idealism or exploitation? The online ‘tradwives’ doing everything to please their husbands

A beautiful 22-year-old in a sequinned slip dress is zesting citrus, crushing spices and explaining in a sexy whisper how her husband was craving Coca-Cola, so she is making it for him from scratch.

Opera music is playing, which seems apt as Nara Smith – a so-called tradwife influencer and mother of three – appears red-carpet ready.

With 9.4 million TikTok followers, Smith is among a wave of young “traditional wives” whose portrayal of a marriage ideal that includes submitting to and serving husbands is polarising discussions of the contemporary role of women, including in Australia.

Viral content from creators such as Smith, Australia’s Jasmine Dinis and Utah’s Hannah Neeleman – a promising ballerina-turned mother of eight who in 2023 won the Mrs America pageant, 12 days post-partum – is dominating social media discussion of gender roles.

It’s also prompting warnings from former “tradwives” who say women are being placed at risk of poverty later in life.

The reach of what some people claim are retrograde ideals and others hail as empowering, is impressive: Neeleman has a combined 17 million followers on Instagram and TikTok.

The one-time Juilliard School ballet student works on the family farm, home-schools the children and has no nannies. It is a load her city-raised husband – whose father owns an airline – has said leaves Neeleman “so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week”.

The resurgence and influence of a domestic fetish knocking around the internet for years is fascinating researchers such as Dr Emily van der Nagel, a social media lecturer at Monash University.

When van der Nagel played Smith’s home-made Coca-Cola video to students last week, some said they suspected they were being “trolled”.

“[Smith] is really having a moment; in class we were watching her TikTok … and the video was met with very confused looks by students,” van der Nagel said.

“They raised critiques in terms of who’s paying for this – they were just thinking, ‘This doesn’t represent any of my life at all.’

“In the [research] literature, there’s this whole angle around the tradwife emphasising femininity over feminism, and suggesting freedom is to be found in submission and essentially in a dominant, patriarchal kind of vibe.”

Dinis, an Australian self-proclaimed tradwife, triggered global headlines for an Instagram post stating she was raising her daughter, now in pre-school, to serve her future family and depend financially on her husband, rather than focusing on study and work.

In February, Dinis again attracted attention by posting that real men don’t want women with successful careers; they want one “who can bring value into the home by the work of her hands”.

Dinis did not respond to approaches by this masthead to her on Instagram and on her website, but she is one of many whose philosophies on women’s roles are consistent with a stated religious faith.

Some researchers suggest far-right or standard conservative political influences underpin parts of what many high-profile tradwives refer to as a “movement”, and their popularity represents a backlash against gender equality and women’s reproductive rights.

Dr Kristy Campion, of Charles Sturt University, said although there were tradwives on the left and in the organics movement, the emphasis on female submission among conservative tradwives risked leaving women vulnerable if divorced.

Women who say they have been left with precarious security – including American Jennie Gage and Australian former tradwife Meredyth Willits – have been speaking publicly about the risks to women’s long-term economic security.

“There are people leaving the movement, typically it’s because of divorce and they’re left with nothing,” said Campion, who has researched far-right influence in parts of tradwifery.

“It’s pretty horrible, but it’s not surprising; they’re part of a worldview where they are valued for their compliance and if they stop complying, there’s lots of resistance.”

Campion believes part of the popularity of the lifestyles being promoted is that they offer an idea of refuge in tough times.

“I’m sure what these tradwife influencers are doing is trying to give a sense of comfort in a deeply troubling and very volatile political time; if your feed is full of hospital bombings [in Gaza] and all kind of atrocities, it’s such escapism,” she said.

Psychologist Sahra O’Doherty says women who adopt a mindset of servitude risk subjugation.Credit: Edwina Pickles

“Sometimes this rush back to so-called traditional values, but actually just patriarchal values, represents a flight to comfort.”

Psychologist Sahra O’Doherty said while women who chose to stay at home with children usually do so as a career break and because it was the most feasible financial option for a household, those who chose to identify as tradwives were more likely to be adopting “a mindset of servitude and deprioritisation of yourself, even a subjugation”.

Consumers of tradwife content were realising there were strong contradictions between portraying a serene, simple life, while needing to incessantly document it for income and, in some cases, relying on family wealth, she said. But without family wealth the lifestyle would be impossible, she said.

“The tradwife trend has absolutely romanticised this notion of staying at home, baking bread and looking after kids as though this is an easier option, and for some people, sure it might be when you have the means, the privilege,” said O’Doherty, who is president of the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc.

“A lot of these tradwives are making tens of thousands of dollars per video: they’re saying they’re advocating for this stay-at-home tradwife life, when actually they’re getting paid for advertising this life that isn’t realistic for the majority of people.

“It feels like a reaction to the overwhelming pressure of having to work, and, coming out of the COVID pandemic, feeling like you want to get back to an idealistic dream of a simple lifestyle, when this time didn’t actually ever exist – it wasn’t pleasant in the reality for women living in the ’40s, ′50s and ’60s.”

Culture commentators such as Associate Professor Lauren Rosewarne, of the University of Melbourne, said online tradwives were unlikely to have large-scale, real-world influence despite some huge followings.

“To me, it looks like a zillion other very gendered ‘movements’, where a niche in the market is found and exploited for personal profit,” Rosewarne said.

“A group of women have discovered that there is a market for their very conservative, as related to gender roles and sometimes also politics, content … they have found a way to make money.

“Like a lot of trends on social media, we get an oversized sense of the importance of things like tradwives based on the number of clicks that individual videos get and the extent of fame/infamy that certain creators get.”

Having read plenty of opinion on the trend, Allie King, a 25-year-old producer at the Sydney-based women’s opinion website Missing Perspectives, tends to agree.

Even though much of Gen Z “were coming of age in a time of instability and constant upheaval”, and some may find the appeal of being consensually adored by a partner and provided with stability and routine as the ultimate escapist fantasy, she thinks the impact of tradwives is exaggerated.

“Within my friendship group, the most we discuss tradwives is when someone will cook something and we will say, ‘OK, Naracore’ [referring to Nara Smith] ironically,” King said.

“Tradwives are not something we look at with any aspirations, nor do we look down on them, it is fairly neutral.”

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