Estee Williams is a 25-year-old woman who lives in Virginia and appears to be devoted to dressing and styling herself like the second coming of Marilyn Monroe. Even though she's been married for about five minutes (she dropped out of college to marry in January 2023), she's one of the many younger women on Instagram and TikTok happily doling out marriage advice and lifestyle tips as a "tradwife."
Although we generally try to ignore marital advice from people whose marriages are newer than most of the condiments in our fridge, we need to talk about this whole tradwife thing. For those who aren't familiar with the movement, the basic gist is that tradwives are women — mostly white, mostly Christian, mostly Gen Z or younger millennials — who are advocating for a return to a model of marriage that centers on ultra-traditional marriage roles.
The husband should work outside the home, and the wife should be a happy homemaker who cooks, cleans, and cares for the kids, all while looking like an old-school pinup girl. For Williams, the tradwife's job is to "make the home his sanctuary."
Tradwives value traditional gender roles over personal freedom.
Our general belief is that there are plenty of ways to have a happy marriage. In a marriage between consenting adults, they get to decide what works for them. So, why are we raising a concern about the promotion of the tradwife lifestyle? Simple: Many think it can be dangerous for women.
One of the recurring themes from tradwife influencers is that they value maintaining traditional gender roles over ensuring that each partner has both personal and economic freedom. Williams has explained that, out of deference for her husband, she never goes to the gym alone, doesn't have male friends, and asks her husband for permission before spending money. She told the Today show that asking permission is "a respectful thing" and said, "I am happy to do it and he’s happy to usually grant it."
Other tradwives have posted about their own rules, including that women shouldn't drive or have jobs outside the home. Although they claim that they find fulfillment in voluntarily giving up their personal autonomy, we can't help but think about how vulnerable these women are.
Tradwives are economically vulnerable.
The truth that tradwives don't seem to want to admit is that sometimes marriages don't work out or sometimes they end unexpectedly because of the death of a spouse. It's hard not to wonder what career or income options a tradwife will have in the event that her husband can't or won't provide for her anymore. This is especially true for those who dropped out of college like Estee Williams or who have never had a job outside the home.
Tradwives frequently point to the 1950s as a "simpler time" where marriages worked and divorces were less common. Although research has shown that divorce rates were lower in the 1950s, the reality is that this isn't evidence that marriages were better or healthier or that wives were happier. It's actually a reflection of the fact that women had fewer legal protections and were more likely to stay in abusive relationships because they didn't have the economic ability to leave.
Unfortunately, this is the model the tradwives are setting themselves up for. As one TikTok user noted in the comments on a tradwife video, "Yeah I did ALL this for my husband. Stay home mom for 12 years. He was cheating on me all over the place, now I’m trying to figure out how 2 pay bills."
The desire to live in the 1950s ignores the reality of that decade.
To put it bluntly, tradwives are obsessed with the 1950s but don't seem to be doing much critical thinking about what those years were actually like. Part of the obsession with that time period is the aesthetic, and we can understand that part. A great A-line dress or a skirt with a cardigan set can be super cute. We'll admit it — we were also totally into the fashion on the show Mad Men back in the day!
The idea of the 1950s as a "simpler time" and the ideal time for women, however, ignores the reality that this time period was actually pretty grim for many people. Those years were the peak time for the use of barbiturates (the so-called "mommy's little helper" drug) with millions of women prescribed these drugs to help cope with everyday life. It also was a time when there was still legal segregation in parts of the country, bans on interracial marriage in many states, prosecution of homosexual activity, and laws that made it impossible for women to have credit cards in their own name or open a bank account.
When tradwives glorify this decade, they are glorifying a time that was actually pretty terrible for a lot of people. On a related note, when tradwives like Estee Williams also cosplay as Marilyn Monroe, we can't help put wonder if they actually understand how unhappy Marilyn's life actually was.
The tradwife backlash has begun.
As videos about tradwife life have become more popular on TikTok, some users find them inspirational and some find them morally questionable. As one TikToker remarked in the comments of one of Estee Williams's videos describing her marriage rules, "I was in a trad relationship and it became controlling and he ended up hitting me, it’s starts off like this."
There are even some TikTokers such as Madison, who posts under the handle @thereservedwife, who used to identify as tradwives but are now pulling away from the movement because of "the extremists." Some of the more hard-core tradwives and husbands have posted content supporting white supremacy and even the acceptability of marital rape (because wives should be submitting to their husbands, of course).
We say keep the cute dresses but leave behind any ideology that means women have less freedom, choice, and economic stability than their grandmothers did!
