Funding for “To the Contrary,” provided by: This week, on “To the Contrary,” I would actually say a lot of it.

I would classify as just straight up propaganda, anti-feminist propaganda.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to “To the Contrary,” a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Trad wives, it's the trend that has gone viral recently where people glorify a traditional lifestyle for women as homemakers.

These aren't just stay at home moms, but women who are part of a subculture online romanticizing what they see as the traditional role for women.

But these viral trends don't reflect reality, where women are increasingly independent.

Financial, educational and lifestyle data show women are earning, managing finances and choosing autonomy over traditional roles.

With us today to discuss this is Amanda Marcotte, a columnist who has written about this topic for so long.

Welcome to you, Amanda.

Thanks for having me.

It's good to have you.

So tell me, what is a trad wife and how does it comport with what you see online about it?

So trad wives are these social media influencers who perform being submissive housewives with either like a 1950s aesthetic or often even a 19th century aesthetic.

They often present themselves as really living this like conservative, Christian, submissive housewife role.

But I think it's important to understand that they are mostly social media influencers selling a fantasy.

In reality, women are living more independently than they ever have before.

Like almost half of American women aren't even married.

Women, the gender gap is still there, but it's closing in.

When women are married, 45% of them are either the breadwinner or make as much money as their husbands.

Women control or share control of household finances in 90% of marriages.

That's not what life is like.

Women work outside of the home, and even if they stay at home, they aren't trad wives, which is this whole, like this whole allure of this, this totally submissive woman who just lives to serve her husband and children.

And I think that even I know some stay at home housewives, and they are not that.

Interesting.

Does, would you say that maybe there are more trad wives in rural areas of the country, and more independent women in the cities, and I don't know about the suburbs.

Is there a geographical divide on this?

I again, I really don't think it's, its a, t's an online trend and it's about projecting this fantasy of like this, this romanticized fantasy of the past and saying that this is possible.

But I kind of would put it in the same category as I do like extreme workout videos or dieting videos or a lot of the ephemera you see on social media where it's presented as real.

But if you dig even an inch deeper, it doesn't actually seem like people are living this way.

And I would point out that the trad wives that you see on social media are also not housewives.

They are social media influencers.

They are professionals.

They get dressed up for the camera.

They perform this role, and they make money doing it.

So they're actually content creators.

They're not housewives.

So would you say that, that's very interesting, is somebody funding this movement or are some groups or people from other countries or people in the United States funding all these videos?

Well.

It's not a singular kind of movement.

I think what you see is a lot of people recognize that there are very popular accounts that are trad wifey, for lack of a better term, and they make a lot of money doing it.

Some of them have different kinds of revenue streams.

And so I think you're seeing some people kind of self-elect to try to do it themselves.

Some of them succeed.

Some fail depends on how good they are at creating the content.

Right.

And it really, it's kind of a disparate sort of group.

Like you see some people like Ballerina Farm, Hannah Neeleman at Ballerina Farm, like her husband is independently wealthy.

He's the heir to the JetBlue fortune.

And he bought this like ranch in, I do believe, Utah.

And they put this content online kind of to advertise like the food and other goods that they sell through their store.

So it really isn't as much a, and then there's other ones that make most of their money off of YouTube ad revenue, Instagram ad revenue, TikTok, things like that.

So it kind of really depends on what they're doing.

But this is a trend that started in around 2016.

So it's not exactly new.

So are you you're saying that offline, you know, women, young women, particularly at home, may be watching this are just not buying it?

I think it's a number of things.

And we have to understand that people engage with online content in complex ways, like, there are a lot of people who watch these videos because they enjoy the fantasy of it.

They enjoy the idea of just being like a bucolic housewife who their entire life is milking cows and making bread, and it's kind of like a nice break from modern life.

And it's kind of the same as, like, reading a “Little House on the Prairie” book or watching a documentary.

You know, it's not real, it's just an escape.

And I think there are a lot of it's not discussed very often, but there are a lot of male viewers of these kind of this content, too.

Some.

You know about what percentage of viewers?

No way to know, TikTok keeps a like a real lid on this.

But you can tell that some of these videos are meant for male viewers because they're very sexual.

Okay.

Yeah, I would, I was just going to say when you said, you know, they try to generate audiences, I would say, and I'm sorry this is the case, but we all know it to be true.

All they have to do is take off as much of their clothing as they feel comfortable doing, and they'll generate an audience, but it won't be other women for the most part.

What I would say is, when it comes to social media, I would warn people to always be skeptical.

What's in your feed, you don't know where it's coming from.

And just because people say they're real people, well, everyone's a real person.

Like, you don't know what's going on behind the camera.

And in fact, you know, that's really obvious with a lot of trad wife content, because you will watch it and you'll see no, to sort of create this like illusion of living in the past, you'll see no technology, right?

You'll see no phones or televisions or computers.

And yet they must be recording it on a phone and uploading it on a computer.

After it's edited on a computer.

So that stuff is in their house.

So I, I just on the whole, I would recommend people approach this material very skeptically.

Okay.

And have you talked to young women about their reaction to it or asked them to watch it and see what they think.

Not specifically that, but I did an interview.

I did a series a few months ago where I talked to a lot of YouTube creators who are ex-evangelicals, who have engaged with this content and are trying to blow the whistle on it, really, because they recognize it as religious propaganda, and they want people to understand that it's not true.

This isn't actually what living as a conservative Christian housewife is actually like.

You know, and I think that, again, it's very complicated.

You can see in the comment sections of any trad wife video that like, some people are like, this is stupid and some people are like, this is a fun fantasy, and some people really believe this is true.

So it's kind of a mix.

And it's not just women, it's men who are watching as well.

It's very interesting because it seems to me, with all the disinformation that's out there online, I mean, a lot of, especially Americans get fooled by it, but it's not working this time?

It is sometimes, that's on some people.

You know, I would say, like the most famous trad wife online is Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm and then you have Nara Smith who has her own account.

And they have millions of followers.

And it's clear that some people watching it haven't really thought very deeply at least about the fantasy.

They're just kind of engaging it without thinking, is this real?

Is it?

What am I not seeing?

But again, you definitely see a lot of people saying, this is ridiculous and nobody actually lives this way.

I had not even heard of the concept, quite frankly, until we set up the interview with you.

And I find it fascinating having grown up, you know, a decade or two after, Betty Friedan wrote, “The Feminine Mystique,” which was full of information about all these suburban housewives, many of whom had gotten educations and then got married, as they did in the 50s and stayed home.

And they just had this I think she described it as a common malaise, because they felt they were being boxed in and they wanted to get out there and live in the real world, whether it be with their kids or whatever else.

Or in a job or in a career.

And this move seems to say, wait a minute.

We've, this movement rather seems to say, wait a minute.

We've been there, we've done that.

It's gone away for a long time, and it's worth revisiting.

There's definitely American actors who've put a lot of money into this.

I, I would actually say a lot of it I would classify as just straight up propaganda, anti-feminist propaganda.

Peter Thiel has this, has funded this magazine called “Evie” that really does promote a lot of trad wife kind of concepts.

And they put Hannah Neeleman on their cover recently.

And they lambast birth control and say that modern life, where women work and date and things like that is, is not serving women well, that it's making us unhappy.

It's all lies, it's all propaganda.

But there's definitely a concentrated effort to use this kind of material to lure women into thinking that the 1950s housewife style was not like Betty Friedan described.

And, you know, and that's an elitist.

Even my bringing up the book is an elitist example because obviously it was mainly the college educated suburban women she was talking about, whom she was also talking to.

So, yeah.

Well, I grew up working class myself.

Both of my grandmothers, however, were housewives in the 1950s and 60s.

And the women had much to have a choice.

Other than that, no.

They did not have much of a choice.

My one of my grandmothers was very explicitly forbidden to work.

And yeah, I think that I saw with my own eyes as a kid, like the next generation, their kids, my mother and other women like it.

Just reject that.

I don't know that they would have called themselves feminists, but they worked and they weren't going to stay home.

It was too miserable of an existence.

What do you see as the main problem with the trad wife subculture?

Two well, it's two things.

I mean, I'm alarmed that we seem to be deluged with anti-feminist propaganda that is so well produced and can be very alluring to a lot of people, there's no doubt about it.

And both, again, both men and women, it's not.

If anything, I think men are probably more easily brought into this because they aren't as engaged in this debate over whether or not, you know, you should have a job outside the home.

But I also think that I'm alarmed by the way that social media in general has managed to overcome a lot of people's natural skepticism of stuff like people look at things online and because the camera's like right in someone's face, they believe it's real.

Like people are skeptical of reality TV shows when they're on TV.

They understand that's fake.

They understand that those might be real people, but it's edited.

It's scripted.

What you're seeing is not the whole story, but somehow on social media, there's this tendency to think even when something is super well edited, super well produced, very expensive, it just is real.

And it and I really would like people to practice more skepticism and say, what am I not seeing when I look at somebody's Instagram account?

What's behind the camera?

I have often thought, as someone who learned how to edit video digitally, that everybody should take a course in it just so they can go to the movies and see what's real and what isn't, or to go on TikTok and have a better idea, certainly, of what's real and what isn't, because I, I don't watch movies the way I did as a kid.

I don't watch anything on TV, on streaming as I did when I was a kid, because I know too much about backgrounds and, you know, putting somebody who's really standing in front of a chair and a microphone, you know, putting a picture of Mount Everest behind them, or video of Mount Everest and all of a sudden theyre, they're there.

But it's much easier to spot if you've been trained.

What do you think about that?

I think that's true.

And I would love to see, like, public schools teach kids like, weirdly, it would almost be better if public schools would have like classes in editing videos for online content, both because kids are going to be doing it anyway.

And also, yeah, it would be nice if people, kids especially engage with social media, recognizing that there's like slick videos they see are not real.

Those are those are people using editing software.

And what impact do you think?

The trad wife trend is having, if any, on gender roles?

It is creating a lot of confusion, if anything, like because a lot of people believe it's real on some level.

I think there is now a lot of discourse online where people think that truth like that there is a traditional lifestyles are coming back, that women really are doing this, that this is a menu, this is a possibility, that it might even be fun.

And all those things just simply aren't true.

And I think particularly considering that we're seeing a lot of other like real social trends such as, men and women aren't getting married as often, women are not wanting to date men as often.

And it's kind of getting worse because I think a lot of men are absorbing this content online that says, oh, women are okay with traditional gender roles.

Women actually want to be submissive and then they get out in the real world, and that's not the case.

And that's causing conflicts that are becoming ever more irresolvable because just trying to date, there's this humming background of propaganda that is turning men and women against each other.

Well, you do mention that, there may be foreign entities behind some of this.

Please tell me what you think about that possibility.

Not on the funding side, I don't think, but it is really important to understand that one of the main, if not the main driver of the trad wife trend is TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company and is tight with the Chinese government.

And right now, the U.S. government is basically trying to force TikTok to sell to an American owner or be banned from, you know, American platforms.

And a huge part of the reason is that they believe that the Chinese government is using the platform to manipulate Americans.

And one way that they would be manipulating Americans is driving culture, where the same kind of culture war that was so impactful on the last election, the kind that is turning men and women against each other and trad wife content does that it so, you know, maybe it's a coincidence, but I think we should be very mindful about what is being put in our feeds by a company that is so tight with the Chinese government.

That's very interesting.

Now, in your research, tell me about the most significant piece of data you came across.

I think that I was really impressed by how much women have really gained so much economically independence, despite the fact that the gender pay gap continues.

Women graduate at college, graduate college at much higher rates than men.

I think under 35 women are ten percentage points more likely to have a college degree than men.

Now, and nearly half of married households, women are either equal partners to the finances or the main breadwinner.

Single women are more likely to own their own homes than single men.

You really can see in the data this like evidence that women have decided that they're the masters of their own economic fates.

They're not sitting around waiting for a man to come take care of them.

They take care of themselves now and a man is nice if that works out.

But they don't need a man anymore.

Is that good for women or not?

Of course it's good for women.

I mean, I, you know, I, I'm old enough to remember generations of women in my family before that were much more economically dependent on men.

And it was not to their benefit.

Like you have to rely on a man to be benevolent.

And what if he's not?

Like, it's very difficult to live that way.

It's so much nicer if you feel like I think relationships are happier, if both people feel like they're free to leave, if they need to, because like, being trapped isn't really being in the relationship, is it?

Well, it's some kind of relationship, but not a, not a positive one.

I think I read recently that about 20% of Americans are never getting married.

Is that true?

I believe that, yeah.

I think, you know, I'm I'm not sharing my age.

A lady never tells, but I've never been married.

I've been with the same guy for.

I can't even tell you how long, but we haven't gotten married.

And I think that's becoming more and more common.

And some people just don't really want to partner off.

Why do you think it's becoming more popular?

You know, for my generation, I think a lot of it was that we were raised by a lot of people that were getting divorced.

And so we are a little bit more careful about making marriages where that you want to be sure before you dive in.

For people younger, I think it's often that it's just not, not quite working out.

They want to get married maybe one day, but like, they haven't met the right person.

I think for unfortunately, we are seeing the situation with millennials and now Gen Z where women's expectations of what marriage should be and men's expectations are diverging and women want equal partnerships, whereas I think a lot of men are still stuck in this idea that, like the point of having a wife is somebody who's kind of subservient to you.

And, and there's no reason for women to accept that.

So they're just not.

Which generation do you think that started with?

Well, I think that's always been true, that men feel this way.

I think.

Let us, you know, in in fairness, let us say some men or many men because, you know, not all men, certainly, or.

Fewer men.

Over time, I think the polling data is pretty clear that every generation of men has less expectations of women being like second in a marriage to them.

But I think what has really, genuinely changed is that women just don't need to settle anymore.

And so they don't.

And I you, we really saw that diverge in the with the millennials and with Gen Z.

It's, it's even bigger, where women are just like, no, I'm just not going to get married unless it's the right guy.

Do you think that it's going to be more accepted?

I mean, the trad wife role in the Trump, in the Trump era, in the second Trump administration.

I think we're going to see a lot more money put into trad wife propaganda.

I think that we're going to see because it's not working.

You would think that, like, people like Peter Thiel would go back to the drawing board and say, well, it's not working.

Let's try something different.

But I think there's a lot of frustration.

We saw that with JD Vance during the campaign and all that stuff he was saying about accusing unmarried women of being childless, cat ladies and other cruel things that he said.

You're seeing a lot of frustration from certain conservative quarters about women's attitudes about this.

And so I think there will be a lot of investment in trying to trick women into thinking being a submissive housewife is not so bad.

It might even be fun.

I'm just skeptical that women are going to buy it because there's just so many steps between being like a normal, modern woman with a job and a life to becoming a housewife that lives like that, where you're going to see the red flags at every step of the way and you're going to bolt.

But sometimes I think in this country when, you know, particular groups, religious, political, what have you, throw enough of unrealistic portrayals of certain aspects of American life online, on stream, etc.

that after a while it sticks.

It's one reason that I'm really glad that the situation online is very complicated, because you see a lot of trad wife propaganda, but you also see a lot of people fighting back on TikTok.

It's really very common.

They call it stitching where somebody will pull someone else's, somebodys video, and then they will impose their own commentary on it.

And so there will be, a trad wife will put up a video and then right afterwards it'll be 15 feminists come in and go, this is nonsense.

So it is much more of a dialogue in a lot of ways than it is just a passive propaganda effort, like people are talking back to it.

All right.

Thank you so much for this.

It's been very enlightening.

And thank you, Amanda Marcotte of Salon, for your incredible research and knowledge of this topic.

That's it for this edition of “To the Contrary.” Keep the conversation going on our social media platforms X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Reach out to us @tothecontrary and visit our website, the address on the screen and whether you agree or think to the contrary, see you next time.

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