The Second Shift by Professor Arlie Hochschild was published in 1989 and my mother couldn’t put it down. It was about the “second shift” that working mothers were expected to put in after their day jobs – cooking, bathtime and any number of other domestic tasks. Men were not expected to put in this overtime. Fair? No.
My mother was an enthusiastic stay-at-home wife in an era that celebrated working mothers as the vanguard of true feminism. The Second Shift confirmed all her fears about the difficulties of combining work and family. At 85 she is still happily married to my dad and has no regrets.
So while everyone pokes fun at the “tradwife” – Traditional Wife – trend on social media, through accounts of those such as Estee Williams or Hannah Neeleman, I don’t consider them to be a laughing stock. In fact, I think that a resurgence in popularity of staying at home as a wife and mother is totally unsurprising. I’m neither a trad wife, nor consider myself a “working mother”. My main job is the care of my house and my family: writing is a side hustle. The influence of my mother means I feel pretty much at peace with this.
Tradwives are not to be confused with “yummy mummies”, which was a faintly derogatory term for mothers who had blow-dries and the occasional manicure. The essence of the tradwife is not “yummy” but “wholesome”. It’s not about looking hot, it’s about putting family and home before everything else. Having said that, the aesthetic is also over the top, with ruffles and gingham, endless baking and genuine deference to their husbands.
Some accounts are huge – Hannah Neelman has 9 million followers on Instagram and Emily Mariko has 3.3 million. But there are also thousands of watered-down copycats, women who aren’t religious or planning to have six children. The raging popularity of it – the homespun stuff, the dreaminess, the lack of chaos and hustle – does make me think that we are witnessing something of a vibe shift.
Since the emancipation of women and their entry into and partial dominance of the workplace, all that we can reliably conclude is this – combining work and motherhood is not easy. In some cases, it is impossible. To make it work you have to get lucky with a partner whose living standards and ideas of partnership and harmony chime with yours, you also have to get lucky with your workplace. There is a childcare crisis. Corporate structures are not created with families in mind. It’s a real problem.
Not much has changed since the publication of The Second Shift. Working mothers work all the time both in the office and at home. They tend to do the cooking, holiday organising, medical appointments and the other bajillion tiny bits of life admin, which explode outwards like a bomb in a paper factory when you start a family.
Figures from the Gender Equality Index show that about 91 per cent of women with children spend at least an hour per day on housework, compared with 30 per cent of men with children. And it’s not because men are all bastards and need to be sent to Soviet-style re-education camps, it’s just the way it is in most families.
This inequality is no secret. No young woman entering the workplace can possibly believe that when she chooses to have children, it will be easy. And so some of them just want out: the tradwife life looks to some like a big, red eject button. And, it’s 2024, women no longer have to hand all their assets to their husbands and the crime of marital rape exists – it kind of looks like it’s safe to get back in the water.
People like to point to the sinister far-right, anti-feminist origins of the tradwife movement but while that is where it might have started, it has been hijacked by non-threatening suburbanites.
I wonder if it’s a coincidence that the current crop of young women who are tradwife-curious – 28 years old or so – are the children of women who are now about 60, who would have been giving it their all at work and at home during the 90s. Did they see how hard it was for their mothers and think: No Way? Maybe. But rather than just sort of slip silently into the space between the oven and the fridge they see that they can choose to make a career and a virtue of it.
It’s no surprise to me that this started in America. Corporate life in the States is so much more hardcore than it is in the UK and the labour laws are unforgiving. There are also huge Christian and Christian-adjacent communities – such as Mormons – where tradwife values are already hard at work. But things that start in America eventually trickle down to the UK and with quality, affordable childcare a dream, economics is increasingly taking choice out of the hands of women who want to have children.
Helen Lewis, the writer and broadcaster and author of Difficult Women, thinks we shouldn’t overstate the influence of tradwives. “It’s the gingham and broderie anglaise aesthetic that’s popular, not the reality of surrendering your economic independence,” she says. “And I agree that it’s an appealing fantasy when you’re flat out juggling a job and kids. The fantasy is a man who treats you like a princess. History suggests the reality is more often a man who treats you like a servant.”
And there’s the rub. Just as making life function as a working mother requires a certain standard of care from a partner, making life function as a tradwife also requires fair behaviour, ie. not treating you like a servant and recognising the economic value to being at home full-time.
The whole world collapsed on the shoulders of Kansas City Chiefs “kicker” Harrison Butker when he said in an address to a University that his wife Isabelle found her true purpose once she was married with children, but those who defended him pointed out he burst into tears when he talked about how great he thought she was. Ignoring everything else he said, that is the level of respect you do require if you’re going to stay at home. Not everyone gets it.
Lottie Leefe runs the Dura Society and in her role as a “divorce doula” she supports women going through a split. I asked her what her number one piece of advice would be to a woman actively seeking the trad wife life. “Don’t marry an arsehole,” she says. Amen.