An essay about the new cult of domesticity, psychological longing, and the quiet exhaustion of the modern woman
On a social media platform, a young woman smiles into a soft afternoon sun.
She wears a floral dress, her hair styled into a flawless bun, holding freshly baked bread. Behind her: a white-painted house, a kitchen full of order, children in linen dresses. The caption reads:
"Feminine energy. Family. Faith."
Hundred thousand likes. Millions of followers.
What at first glance seems like harmless nostalgia is part of a phenomenon that has been spreading rapidly for several years: the "Trad Wife" trend. Young women, especially in the USA, portray themselves as the embodiment of traditional femininity, devoted, domestic, religious, entirely in the service of family and husband. They reject feminism, promote submission as a virtue, and the return to the "natural" role of women.
But behind the soft aesthetics of pastel tones and kitchen idyll lies a social dynamic that is both old and new: a mixture of psychological overload, cultural longing, and ideological staging.
The aesthetics of return
The "Trad Wife" is not a simple housewife. She is a content concept.
Her life is condensed into aesthetic clips: baking bread, breastfeeding children, gardening, accompanied by nostalgic music. These images evoke the ideal of a time when everything seemed "clear": the woman at home, the man as provider, the family as a fixed order.
But this harmony is a digital construction. The Trad-Wife universe operates according to the same rules as any other social media sphere: attention, algorithm, monetization. It sells a vision that appeals emotionally precisely because it contrasts with the exhausted reality of many women.
Psychologically, this aesthetic fulfills a deep-seated longing. For peace. For meaning. For a clear place in a complex world. For a life that does not constantly demand self-optimization.
Overload and regression
The sociologist Arlie Hochschild already described in the 1980s in The Second Shift how women, despite formal equality, take on a "second shift" of invisible work: children, household, emotional care. Little has changed about that.
According to recent studies by the American Psychological Association (2022), women report chronic exhaustion, mental overload, and identity conflicts between work and family significantly more often.
In this climate, the temptation grows to give up responsibility, to long for a clear, old order. The psychoanalyst Karen Horney already called this a "regressive coping" in 1937: when the world overwhelms, we flee into submission to find security.
The "Trad Wife" is thus less a symbol of regression than a symptom of exhaustion.
She embodies a psychological reaction to the constant noise of modernity: to the pressure for self-realization, productivity, individual perfection.
The economy of submission
The idyll also has a material side. Many Trad-Wife influencers earn money with cookbooks, online courses, advertising for fashion or household goods. The lifestyle becomes a brand. Female self-sacrifice is professionalized as "feminine empowerment."
Here the circle closes between capitalism and patriarchy: the woman becomes a projection surface of moral purity, but also the perfect consumer. She produces content, sells products, maintains the myth of selflessness, and is rewarded for it with clicks and sponsorships.
Sociologist Eva Illouz writes in Why Love Hurts that romantic ideals in modern societies serve as compensation for economic insecurity. The "Trad Wife" offers exactly that: emotional stability in an unstable system. But she does so by giving up control, to the man, to the family, to tradition.
The double deception
The tragic thing is: the modern "Trad Wife" is often not a traditional housewife at all.
She is a housewife plus entrepreneur, trapped in an even harsher cycle of work, self-marketing, and self-sacrifice. She breastfeeds a child while editing the next reel; she bakes bread, but the bread is content. Her kitchen is a studio, her family a brand. Many of these women do not work ten or twelve, but up to twenty hours a day – mother by day, influencer, manager, accountant by night. Some have six, seven, eight children and at the same time the pressure to contribute financially or even secure the family income through their online presence.
This is not a retreat into the past, but a doubling of performance pressure.
In the supposedly traditional role lies a modern paradox: women who surrender to the old order to find peace and in doing so fall into an even more brutal form of self-exhaustion. This no longer only concerns the USA. In Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, a scene of women is also growing who are crushed between homeschooling, content production, and family logistics, driven by the same performance imperative they actually wanted to leave behind.
Ideological backgrounds
Behind the hashtags lies more than mere nostalgia. Several analyses, including Rebecca Lewis’ study "Alternative Influence Network" (2018), show how right-wing and religious-fundamentalist movements deliberately use female influencers to normalize conservative values.
These women appear as "authentic" and "apolitical," yet spread subtle messages: the rejection of feminism, distrust of equality, the idealization of male authority. In the comment sections, lifestyle and ideology blur, gentle images become a gateway for political regression.
Thus, the woman's body becomes a symbolic field of cultural control: between longing and discipline, between idealization and exhaustion.
Power, money, and the beautiful face of ideology
Behind the shiny surface of these families often lies an economic and symbolic hierarchy. The men – whether actually wealthy or only strategically staged as such – control the brand. They make the decisions, negotiate with sponsors, manage the income. The woman is the image, the living advertising figure, the emotional capital. Even where wealth is limited, the patriarchal order is performatively maintained: He leads, she embodies.
Not infrequently, money also flows from conservative networks or think tanks that specifically support these families. Their goal: to package traditional role models in a modern way and thus sneak ideological values into the mainstream through lifestyle content. This turns the private family idyll into a political project, a perfectly filtered facade that disguises itself as a personal choice but is actually part of a larger system that re-legitimizes old power structures.
The longing for simplicity
But why does this appeal to so many women, even those who see themselves as independent?
Because the freedom of modernity is exhausting.
Because equality in neoliberal societies rarely means less pressure, but more: career, family, perfection, self-love.
Sociologist Jennifer Petriglieri (INSEAD) found in her study of working couples (Couples That Work, 2019) that women, despite academic success, more often withdraw from work once children arrive. Not out of compulsion, but out of exhaustion, because structures that truly enable equality are missing.
The Trad Wife lifestyle offers an apparently gentle counterimage here: deceleration, meaning, family. But this "freedom from freedom" is deceptive. It promises peace at the cost of self-determination.
The dilemma of the modern woman
It would be too simple to condemn the "Trad Wives." Many of them are simply looking for a lifestyle that allows security. For something that breaks the restlessness of the neoliberal self.
But the price is high. The romanticization of subordination obscures the structural causes of female exhaustion. It individualizes a societal problem and sells conformity as a solution.
In truth, one could say, many of these women are not "traditional" but desperately modern: They respond to the burnout of equality with an aesthetic return to the past.
The algorithmic amplification
Social media plays a central role in this. The social media algorithm rewards emotionally charged content, whether admiration or outrage. A video that evokes polarizing feelings is shared, commented on, and recommended more often.
This creates an echo chamber where women, who initially only look for recipes or family vlogs, are gradually confronted with ideologically charged content.
The boundaries between "How to Bake Sourdough Bread" and "Why Feminism Makes Women Unhappy" are blurring.
The trend is growing not despite, but because of the digital logic. What begins as harmless aesthetics can narrow into a psychological tunnel where self-sacrifice appears as healing.
The price of idyll
Many Trad Wives report, less often publicly, chronic fatigue, isolation, depression. Their bodies are exhausted, their financial dependence great. The everyday life that appears "natural" online is in truth a full-time job without breaks, without recognition, without security.
The British writer Katrine Marçal sums it up like this:
"The woman supported by the man is a myth. In truth, she works unpaid and is romanticized for it."
This romanticization is the core of the danger: it turns structural inequality into an aesthetic choice.
For a new definition of calm
The success of the Trad Wife trend shows that many women today miss something other than equality: meaning, community, relief. The problem is not that someone wants to be a housewife. The problem is that this choice is often not a real choice, but an escape from overwhelm, sold as a virtue. What we need is not a step backward, but new forms of calm that do not require submission. Genuine care policies. Flexible work. Communal childcare. Male responsibility. In short: a society where the longing for meaning does not have to end in self-sacrifice.
Lack of orientation after the pandemic
Since the pandemic, many people have experienced a deep sense of insecurity—economically, socially, existentially. The years of isolation and instability have intensified the desire for clarity, structure, and belonging. In such times, when orientation is lacking, simple answers and rigid role models become more attractive.
This explains why movements like the “Trad Wife” trend, but also right-wing populist and fundamentalist currents, have gained new followers after the pandemic: They offer order where there is chaos and turn fear into ideology.
Loneliness as a breeding ground
Perhaps the deeper reason for all this lies in a culture of growing loneliness. Our society is increasingly breaking down into atomized existences, each person fighting alone for meaning, belonging, and support. This emotional emptiness is the ideal breeding ground for movements that promise closeness and order. But the “Trad Wife” ideology offers no real community, only a performance of it. It replaces bonding with performance, solidarity with branding.
The answer to loneliness must not lie in a return to subordination, but in political and social structures that enable genuine connection: social support, mental health care, education, partnership on equal terms. We need awareness, education, research, not the exploitation of young women who become symbols of a false salvation on Social Media.
Because the platforms that spread these images millions of times are not neutral. They thrive on emotional dependency and they will remain one of the greatest threats to our mental health as long as we leave them unregulated.
The dream of the perfect housewife who bakes bread and fulfills herself in the shadow of a strong man is seductive because it promises order. But order without freedom is stagnation.
Perhaps the true way out of exhaustion is not to return to the 1950s, but finally to complete equality, which is based not on self-sacrifice but on shared responsibility.
In the end, it is not about whether a woman stands in the kitchen, raises children, or pursues a career. It is about her being able to decide for herself, without manipulation, without pressure, without idealization. If a woman stays at home with conviction, she deserves respect. If she does not want children, likewise. Feminism was never the obligation to work for pay, but the possibility to lead a life not determined by the expectations of others.
The crucial thing is that they do not lose themselves in the process, that they stay healthy, do not sacrifice their bodies, and do not allow themselves to be made a symbol of foreign agendas. Emancipation does not mean doing everything, but doing what is right for oneself without having to justify it.
The future of women does not lie in retreating to the kitchen. Rather, it lies in the freedom to stand where they truly want to be, without turning it into an ideology.
Bibliography:
American Psychological Association. (2022). Social media use and women’s mental health: A meta-analysis of emotional impact. APA Press.
Hochschild, A. R. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home. Viking.
Horney, K. (1937). The neurotic personality of our time. W. W. Norton.
Illouz, E. (2011). Why love hurts: A sociological explanation. Suhrkamp.
Lewis, R. (2018). Alternative influence: Broadcasting the reactionary right on YouTube. Data & Society Research Institute.
Marçal, K. (2015). Who cooked Adam Smith’s dinner? A story about women and economics. Pegasus Books.
Petriglieri, J. (2019). Couples that work: How dual-career couples can thrive in love and work. Harvard Business Review Press.
Pew Research Center. (2023). Women, work and family in the post-pandemic era. Pew Research.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism. PublicAffairs.
