This story was published in Volume 1, Issue 2
By: Bella Benson
Tatum Yada starts her day with the sweet smell of her and her husband’s coffee brewing. A typical morning begins with making breakfast for her family then swiftly cleaning up before spending time with her newborn daughter.
There is a little corner of the internet where it is eternally 1955. The bread is homemade, the hair is curled and the daily issue is what new homemade recipe is being cooked up for dinner. But beneath that curated Instagram square, there’s a community of women who share their lives as stay-at-home mothers under the hashtag “trad wife.”
The hashtag first emerged on TikTok around 2020 and has now evolved into more than 10,000 posts. It refers to women assuming traditional gender roles such as being a caretaker, tending to the home, cooking, cleaning and allowing their husbands to be the sole breadwinner.
The trend was popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic when quarantine mandates spurred on home activities like 10-minute recipes that can feed four. It seemed some women felt burnt out on the hustle culture and enjoyed the slow pace of home life.
Large monetized creators like Nara Smith affirmed that notion, sharing her everyday life of motherhood and tending to her ex-Tumblr heartthrob husband. Many of the videos in the trend are visually appealing and paired with soft background music or narration, making them easy to watch and helping drive the trend’s continued popularity.
Despite using the popular hashtag, Yada more refers to herself as a stay-at-home mother instead of a trad wife.
“I don’t think I’ve heard the term ‘trad wife’ outside of social media. I think social media created that term,” she said.
After leaving her job and moving from California to Oklahoma, Yada began posting content featuring daily life with her husband and newborn daughter. Her call to be a stay-at-home mom stemmed from her childhood. It was difficult for her and her siblings to have a mother at work all the time, so she wanted to offer a different childhood for her daughter.
“In this day and age, it takes a lot of trust in your partner for you not to work and stay home and take care of the house and kids,” she said. “We both have expectations of each other: He goes to work to make our money, I stay at home to take care of the house. My husband and I are a team.”
She also said social media became a fun and creative outlet for her, facilitating connections with other new mothers.
An emergence of simpler times
When scrolling through the hashtag, the trend seems to encapsulate a type of nostalgia. A yearning for a simpler time, when the food was fresh and the world didn’t seem to be in such a panic.
In contemporary America, the financial stress of buying and owning a home has burdened many young couples. Housing prices have steadily risen with a 1.8% year-over-year increase in the market according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index.
“The trad wife phenomenon is popular on TikTok and Instagram because a lot of it is this comforting nostalgia for a life that the people watching have never lived,” said Lorraine Bayard de Volo, a gender studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“I also think that it is totally romanticized and we don’t see a lot of the behind-the-scenes or days of living that lifestyle,” Yada said, reiterating the same sentiment.
The hashtag immerses social media users into the sense that young women everywhere are logging out of LinkedIn and logging into domestic bliss. Is corporate America really seeming like a big “No thank you!” to young women everywhere?
The popularity of the trad wife trend raises an important question: Are young women truly turning away from higher education and careers? Taking a step away from the “For You Page” and on to a college campus can answer that question pretty quickly.
Women are now dominating the classroom, making up 57% of undergraduate students across the country, according to the Education Data Initiative. The number of women going to college has doubled in the last 20 years and is expected to keep growing.
The normalization of women going to college and entering the workforce started in the late 20th century. The increased access to birth control allowed women to prioritize education over homelife.
“Once you get educated, it makes sense that more educated women would want to have similar jobs as the men that they had been going to college with,” Bayard de Volo said.
The feminist movement advocated for women to have the right to choose their own paths, whether that meant family life, career or both.
“I think what most people misunderstand is that we choose this,” Yada said.
With her ability to stay home, she gets to be with her daughter 24/7, giving her everything she’s ever wanted as a mother.
The freedom to choose one’s future allows social media users to explore different lifestyles and opportunities. TikTok’s platform observes both family life and hustle culture.
“You shouldn’t be disadvantaged in college because you’re a woman. You shouldn’t be denigrated or looked down on because you’ve chosen to stay home with your kids,” Bayard de Volo said.
