Internet memes and Social media trends come and go, but few have had the consistently polarizing holding power of the tradwife.
The term, which has garnered significant social media traction in recent months, is shorthand for "traditional wife" and most broadly refers to a woman who practices conventional gender roles within a relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, however, the trend has manifested through popular content creators who've gained large followings by showing off their lives as homemakers, from their elaborate homemade meals to their 1950s-inspired wardrobes.
In July 2024, Hannah Neeleman, known to her over 9 million Instagram followers as @ballerinafarm, was featured by U.K.'s The Sunday Times, giving the outlet an in-depth glimpse of her day-to-day existence as a mother of eight on the family’s Utah farm. The piece garnered the attention of both fans and critics of the often controversial tradwife lifestyle, particularly with Neeleman saying she doesn’t associate herself with the term — despite the internet deciding she’s one of the biggest tradwife influencers.
"We are traditional in the sense that it’s a man and a woman," the content creator said of her dynamic with her husband, Daniel. "We have children, but I do feel like we’re paving a lot of paths that haven’t been paved before. So for me to have the label of a traditional woman,”" she added, "I don’t know if I identify with that."
While the term has been around since at least 2018, it continues to change, polarize viewers, stir controversy, raise questions and sometimes serve as comfort content for those who really, genuinely, just want to know how to make something from scratch.
Despite the term being generally understood as a woman who advocates for conventional gender norms in a relationship, there isn't a single concrete definition. At its core, the most fundamental aspects of a tradwife are domesticity and upholding the traditional roles of homemaker (for women) and breadwinner (for men).
However, the lens with which one defines "traditional" gender roles also differs in this context, with some analysts pointing towards the trend explicitly exercising mid-20th century, Mad Men-esque norms, and others noting influencers like Neeleman performing more 19th century homestead wife vibes.
Regardless of what time period the content is "supposed" to mimic, the essence is generally unmistakable from one tradwife to another. Researcher Mariel Cooksey defined "tradwifery" in 2021 as "a movement that’s part aesthetic and part ideology, encouraging women to embrace supposedly feminine characteristics like chastity and submissiveness, and trade feminist empowerment for a patriarchal vision of gender norms," per the Political Research Associates, a social justice and research strategy firm.
One of the movement's biggest participants, Estee Williams, who boasts over 300,000 followers on both TikTok and Instagram, defined the term in 2022 as a "woman who prefers to take a traditional or ultra-traditional role in marriage, including beliefs that a woman’s place is in the home."