Abstract
Across a range of platforms, Tradwives curate and commodify traditional heteronormative ideologies and ways of living devoted to faith and family. As time has passed, a group of women rejecting Tradwifery has also evolved, a term we call De-Tradding. Drawing on a wide range of social media content from Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Reddit, alongside traditional media sources such as online interviews, feature articles, and podcasts, we captured a snapshot of the what, why, and how of De-Tradding. We identified that De-Tradding was happening in two different ways. The first, “Rejection of the Trad-label,” involved women living traditional lives characterized by heteropatriarchal gendered roles, but who rejected the Tradwife label and/or brand on grounds of ideology, politics, and faith. The second way, “Rejection of the Trad-life,” included women who exited Tradwifery, largely in response to domestic violence, infidelity, and unequal power arrangements in intimate relationships. De-Tradding is thus both conceptual and material, it is personal and political. Using Feminist Storytelling, we explored the psychological, relational, and sociocultural circumstances through which women “De-Trad,” and in doing so, demonstrated processes of identity transformation, disaffiliation, and boundary (re)negotiation within evolving expressions of online femininities and digital subcultures.
Over the past five years, Tradwives have become prominent right-wing social media influencers. This new online subculture of neo-right-wing women combines social media marketing with uniquely feminine personas and is equally ideological as it is aesthetic (Beck & Lakkala, 2025). Across a range of platforms, Tradwives curate and commodify very traditional heteronormative ideologies and ways of living (McGrath et al., 2025).
We use the term “Tradwife” to refer specifically to women who publicly identify with, or are widely recognized within, the online Tradwife movement. This movement is a branded and aestheticized digital subculture that combines traditional gender ideology with social media content curation to develop monetized identities of influence (Sykes & Hopner, 2024). This definition of Tradwives is different from women who privately hold traditional gender beliefs or practice homemaking outside of social media influencer economies.
Tradwives, as wives and mothers, commit to lives devoted to faith and family (Stotzer & Nelson, 2025). These are highly conservative, religious, or spiritual women who adhere to male leadership and female deference (Sykes & Hopner, 2024). Tradwives hold right-wing belief systems that are characteristically underpinned by the importance of individual liberty, limited government involvement in economic and political systems, heterosexuality, sanctity of unborn life, and the nuclear family (Berlet, 2004). The family unit is believed to build the nation, and the nation becomes the wider and extended family. Taking their offline worlds online, Tradwives have been able to lean into the exponential uptake of social media platforms by millions of people worldwide. Successfully tapping into the rise of influencer culture, Tradwives create content that continues to be attractive and popular.
The ongoing and significant media and academic fascination with Tradwives has resulted in substantial political, psychological, sociological, anthropological, and media analysis (Banet-Weiser & Reinis, 2025; Bower, 2025; Love, 2020; Proctor, 2023; Simpson, 2024; Tebaldi & Baran, 2023). This has included a major focus on the potential sociocultural impact of Tradwives in terms of gender representations, social equality, reproductive rights, political extremism, and social movements—notably feminism (Scott & Day, 2025; Stotzer & Nelson, 2025). There has also been a large focus on race and power through the connection of some Tradwives to the Alt-Right (the most extreme form of right-wing ideology), and inseparable from it—whiteness. Tradwives have been presented in terms of radicalized white domesticity (Proctor, 2023), white neo-fascism (Mattheis, 2021), and white supremacist auxiliaries (Love, 2020). As Tradwives are enmeshed in right-wing ecosystems, they speak to contemporary and important social issues and dynamics. By continuing to explore this online subculture, we can better understand related social debates, challenges, threats, and opportunities.
Although the focus on Tradwives and their place in wider society is highly relevant, examining the Tradwife ecosystem in terms of its function, processes, and evolution is also important. As the Tradwife phenomenon has grown and matured, so have greater nuances, contestations, and tensions that show the complexities of traditional femininities and how these are amplified by social media.
In online worlds, people form groups and communities around shared interests, which often have a certain aesthetic, and increasingly it is the aesthetic itself that draws people to social media. Tradwife content features highly curated and appealing images and video spun around traditional gender roles, making a home, and raising children, all of which are positioned as solutions to the turmoil and pressure created by social forces such as feminism or globalization (Richards et al., 2025). The Tradwife aesthetic articulates a form of cultural nostalgia similar to other aesthetic and lifestyle trends, such as Cottagecore, which focuses on slow living that embraces idyllic rural settings, rustic self-sufficiency, and production by hand.
Online groups and communities are accessed through algorithmic journeys, which organize digital content into systematic flows of information that shape what people are watching and interacting with, both deliberately and by coincidence.
Within this online world of aesthetic circulation and algorithmic encounter, identity labels become objects of interpretation, which invite users to actively position themselves in relation to both the aesthetic produced and the labels offered. We observed women who are living traditional lives in terms of gender roles or who actively promoted heteropatriarchy using social media to firmly reject the Tradwife label and/or brand on grounds of ideology, politics, or faith. The resistance to what seemed like an aligned lifestyle, beliefs, and values system suggests possibilities for inherent political, economic, or religious tensions in understandings of women who live traditional lives. Human beings use schemas to make judgments about what categories/positions people might fit into and how they might relate to that person (Hamilton, 2022). Assuming people to be part of a group that they may not fully or at all identify with can have important implications for constructions of subjectivity. Actively rejecting such labels may reflect a violation of ideological boundaries, an act of class politics and/or resistance to dominant economic and political systems, and/or a reaction to perceptions of a misrecognition of identity (Hornsey, 2008).
A second group of women who build their online brand around rejecting Tradwifery has also evolved. These are women who once self-identified as Tradwives, but now broadcast a rejection of heteropatriarchal relationships and Tradwife life worlds. This exit from Tradwifery appears to have arisen from cognitive and moral re-evaluations of the embodied femininity these women once enacted. Rejection of Tradwifery has been linked to experiences of domestic violence, infidelity, and unequal power arrangements within intimate relationships (Levings, 2024). In platforming this exit, these women have deployed social media as platforms of resistance.
We began researching Tradwives in 2022 (Sykes, 2023; Sykes & Hopner, 2023, 2024), remaining engaged with their content across time. This sustained engagement aligns with what Kozinets (2020) refers to as “prolonged cultural immersion,” which enables sustained observation and deep familiarity of this digital subculture. Such familiarity with Tradwife subculture meanings and norms has allowed us to see changes over time—particularly changes to practices and patterns that appeared enduring rather than temporary. Our empirical examination of social media accounts in which women articulated a rejection of Tradwifery in these two forms was both deductive and inductive: deductive in identifying that a new phenomenon was emerging within Tradwife lifeworlds, and inductive in the empirical examination undertaken to understand how and why.
We employ the term De-Tradding to describe both the rejection of the Tradwife label and its associated branding, and the broader rejection of the Tradwife lifeworld. Drawing on the Cambridge Dictionary definition of the prefix “de”—meaning “opposite” “remove” or “reduce”—the term captures both resistance to, or opposition against, a label or a brand, and the removal of oneself from a particular lifestyle and set of expectations (Cambridge English Dictionary, 2026). De-Tradding is then both conceptual and material, it is personal and political. It may involve the discursive rejection of a label that manifests across social media platforms, but it is also ontological when we consider the serious economic, physical, and psychological consequences, both intimate and social, women can face when they leave traditional heteropatriarchal arrangements.
Tradwives and the Hard Right
First, it is important to introduce the worlds of Tradwives before we can explore any rejection of it. These are women from right-wing communities who curate and commodify right-wing ideologies that can be positioned along a continuum of extremity. There are three commonly used positions: Conservative Right, Alt-Lite (or Dissident Right), and Alt-Right (Berlet, 2004). The Conservative Right is the most hardline expression of conservatism that values and seeks to preserve organized religion, traditional nuclear families, economic freedoms, property rights, the military, and authority of the nation state. Women within these communities are highly committed to faith-based lives generally within fundamentalist Christian movements, and they typically inhabit more of a private world at home as wife and mother (Kerlinger, 2022). Next, Alt-Lite positioning signals a harder right shift on issues such as immigration, religion, and feminism. This position centers a Eurocentric notion of nationhood, preferably Christian Nationalism, based on civic nationalism as opposed to ethno or racial nationalism (Anti-Defamation League [ADL], 2017). Women in this group may be part of public life, such as politicians, journalists, lawyers, and social commentators, who value traditional gender arrangements, largely reject feminism, and see Christianity as entwined with the nation state (Berlet, 2004). The most extreme position—the Alt-Right—is described by white nationalist Richard Spencer as “identity politics for white people” (Ebner, 2021). The Alt-Right is openly xenophobic, racist, anti-feminist, antisemitic, and Islamophobic; it is an ethno-nationalist white supremacist landscape (Ebner, 2021). Alt-Right women may walk a more complicated line between public and private life, but are increasingly giving legitimacy and normalization to particular maternal and demographic symbolisms used to promote racial and cultural notions of national identity or ethno-state nationalism (Campion, 2020). Regardless of which right-wing community Tradwives belong to, we contend that they share belief systems that emphasize individual liberty, restricted state intervention in political life and economic markets, religious practice, nationalism, and most importantly, heteropatriarchy and the family unit.
Tradwives and Ideological Scaffolding
Women living highly traditional lifestyles, like Tradwives, personify the clear cut heteropatriarchal division of public and private worlds. Heteropatriarchy—the social and political privileging of gender/men and sexuality/heterosexuality—varies in intensity across conservative positions (Kelley & Arce-Trigatti, 2021). These various versions generally include men as the head of household and breadwinner, juxtaposed against women as wife and mother. At its most extreme, heteropatriarchy suggests men are superior and hold significant authority over women (Kelley & Arce-Trigatti, 2021). For many Tradwives, this authority is biblically derived. In this instance, religion becomes a “key social institution” for preserving and circulating beliefs about gender that are both heteropatriarchal and hegemonic (Whitnah, 2022, p. 430). In Eurocentric societies, a biblical pattern for everyday life is especially prominent in evangelical Christian denominations and communities (Whitnah, 2022). Gendered hierarchies are reinforced with androcentric and theological interpretations of scripture, which are invoked to legitimize women's submission to male authority (Moder, 2019).
At an everyday level, heteropatriarchy structures divisions of labor and access to financial resources, guides intimate and parenting roles, and shapes family arrangements and dynamics (Okin, 1989). For a Tradwife, this may mean that she is primarily located at home, labor is unpaid and domestic, and access to money is likely filtered through her husband. Core values about the family structure direct the different roles that men and women adopt inside and outside of the home, in the workforce, and wider social life. Traditional ideas of the family have a wider ideological function in structuring social norms, institutions, and legislation (Okin, 1989). The family functions as a fundamental building block of society and operates as a blueprint for morality, discipline, and social order (Dowland, 2015). Society is renewed through the “creation of strong families which [are] essential to national greatness” (Dowland, 2015, p. 2). Prioritizing protection of the family with protection of the nation means that there is political interest to defend positions of pro-life/right-to-life, heterosexuality, biological determinism, as well as traditional gender structures (Dowland, 2015). As a result, a “moral compass” of the nation can be seen as inseparable from protection of the family (Dowland, 2015, p. 8).
Modernity: Tradwives Online
Although women have long lived in traditional roles as wife and mother, the modern Tradwife (an amalgamation of the words traditional and wife) as an online subculture and phenomenon started to gain traction on social media around 2020 (British Broadcasting Corporation Stories [BBC], 2020). Coinciding with the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the online Tradwife subculture came to some prominence in the era of Quiet Quitting (a career-related phenomenon where employees intentionally limit their level of productivity in order to achieve the bare minimum required of the role, without literally quitting their job [Galanis et al., 2023]) and the Great Resignation (the 2021 wave of unusually large voluntary resignations in the United States), as employees re-evaluated their employment in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and a desire to achieve more work–life balance (Michaels, 2024). People were locked down, working remotely, and re-evaluating the meaning and direction of their lives (Formica & Sfodera, 2022). There was a rapid and significant online shift across both people's work and leisure activities in a world that was rapidly digitizing. Social media use increased during the pandemic and continues today with an estimated 5.24 billion or 64% of the world's population using social media in 2024 (Delogu et al., 2025).
Gaining increasing social media profile and mainstream attention, Tradwives as right-wing social media influencers aesthetically package and digitize traditional gender ideologies in a way that “… reframes domestic femininity as both aspirational and contemporary” (Vaughan & Lane, 2025, p. 72). This reframing through a steady stream of highly popular social media content celebrates and values women as stay-at-home wives and mothers (Whitehead & Perry, 2019). A world of escapism is offered, which feels like a step back in time. This return to the past is carefully stylized to project a calm, secure, meaningful, and ordained future—a future made possible through affirming a patriarchal social order. This world has clear appeal, as thousands to millions of people are regularly viewing, liking, and following Tradwife influencers across multiple social media platforms (Sykes & Hopner, 2024).
There is ongoing discussion as to what differentiates a user of social media and an influencer, but there is broad consensus that influencers share an ability to articulate a captivating visual story created through aesthetically attractive and potentially monetized content (Duffy & Hund, 2019). There is further evidence that physical attractiveness, thought leadership, unique online identity, and the trustworthiness of messaging is linked to influencer success (Farivar & Wang, 2022). Generally, social media influencers are categorized in terms of the size, scope, and significance of their online reach. This “reach” is quantified through the Like Follower Ratio (Kim & Xu, 2019), which suggests that the number of likes on posts/comments are usually aligned to the number of followers an influencer has. This ratio distinguishes between nano influencers (less than 10,000), micro influencers (more than 10,000), and macro/celebrity influencers (more than 100,000) (Nizri, 2022). Social media is fast becoming the optimum way to achieve successful brand marketing with influencers now estimated to deliver 11 times greater return on investment than usual types of advertising (Kirkpatrick, 2016).
Tradwives employ four prevalent forms of social media to disseminate and commodify ideology and to increase audience numbers. Networking platforms such as X and Facebook create connection and community with followers. Visual content is mostly distributed through image-centric and sharing platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Forums focused on engaged social discussion such as Reddit provide a platform for the sharing of news and opinions. Communication channels including Telegram or WhatsApp provide direct channels of communication. The global reach of social media has allowed Tradwives, as social media influencers through a variety of platforms, to challenge both the constructions and realities of modern women, and to present and sell heteropatriarchy through contemporary and dynamic social media content.
Tradwives and the Aestheticization of Heteropatriarchy
The aestheticization of heteropatriarchy as a visual narrative romanticizes domestic femininity through nostalgic imagery. Ideological storytelling promises individual salvation and social renewal. Tradwives create both a sentimental and modern visualization of a traditional script. Women as “… caretakers and homemakers, [are]… recast through a lens of feminine pride, personal choice and even political rebellion” (Vaughan & Lane, 2025, p. 9). Biblical texts and familiar Christological framings as much as Pagan cosmologies are used to construct an ideological aesthetic that is both abstract and embodied through dress, behavior, practices, and rituals in everyday life. The Tradwife aesthetic draws upon historically familiar contexts perceived as socially and morally stable, such as the 1950s or genteel Victorian-era country life. Creating a sense of continuity and timelessness promotes right-wing lifestyles as natural, normal, authentic, fulfilling, and enticing (Vaughan & Lane, 2025).
Sharing some similarity with a Tradwife aesthetic, Cottagecore is both online and offline fantasy-making that is predicated on a desire to retreat from capitalism and nostalgically return to an imagined pre-industrial life and time (Brand, 2021). The idea of escaping to the country to recreate an imagined past is structured around harmony with the land, self-sufficiency, and sustainability; activities such as cooking, baking, knitting, and crafting are centered. All of these practices aestheticize traditional femininity and position it as an empowered and ideological choice (Brand, 2021).
The aestheticization of idyllic rural life through Cottagecore has become a global online movement producing communities of content creators, followers, and watchers (Büsken, 2024). Like the Tradwife name and brand, the Cottagecore hashtag exponentially grew in popularity from 2020 with the emergence of COVID-19, lockdowns, and remote working (Brand, 2021). Cottagecore content increased by 153% in 2020, with a 550% increase in posts and likes on the blogging and social networking site, Tumblr. By 2021, there had been 6.6 billion views of Cottagecore content on TikTok (Brand, 2021). Cottagecore is not necessarily a right-wing space; “Black Cottagecore” and “Cottagecore Lesbian” are examples of online communities offering a Cottagecore aesthetic that is explicitly free from racism, misogyny, and homophobia (Brand, 2021). Women from all walks of life escape to these social media worlds of Tradwives and Cottagecore deliberately, and by coincidence through algorithmic rules and computations primed for “… content that is polished, emotional and easy to consume” (Vaughan & Lane, 2025, p. 18).
Algorithmic Tendrils
Social media algorithms are the invisible infrastructures that determine what users experience online and are the vital life force for social media influencers. Algorithms organize digital content into systematic flows of information by predictively prioritizing content a user is most likely to engage with next (Bucher, 2018). Likes, shares, comments, and watch time are the currencies of algorithmic systems, sustaining engagement and refining ever-evolving models of user preference. This personalization means that users rarely encounter isolated topics or ideas. Instead, engagement with one form of content triggers exposure to adjacent or thematically similar material (Berman & Katona, 2020). Such “curation algorithms” are designed to retain users by continuously serving content that is familiar yet slightly more novel, provocative, or emotionally charged (Ribeiro et al., 2020). This process can guide users along ideological trajectories, moving from benign lifestyle interests toward sometimes more politicized spaces (Munn, 2019).
To date, Tradwife creators have capitalized on curation algorithms by using aesthetically pleasing apolitical content centered around homemaking, family, and faith to promote ideological messages of traditional femininity and heteropatriarchy (Sykes & Hopner, 2024). This is made possible through social media echo-chambers where the algorithmic nature of long-form content and text-based communities (like those on YouTube and Facebook) pull users toward more nuanced versions of already identified viewing patterns. With the rise of TikTok and attention-deficit societies, social media strategies have shifted from creator echo-chambers (algorithms working to keep users focused on a single creator—i.e., watching an hour-long video) to platform ecosystems (algorithms working to keep users engaged on a platform, i.e., the TikTok “For You” homepage).
Increasingly, algorithms optimize immediate engagement through aesthetic recognizability, rather than ideological alignment (Allen et al., 2025). As social media popularity shifts to short-form content platforms like TikTok, users are more likely to experience aesthetically aligned and potentially ideologically distinct content in their personalized feeds. In practice, this means social media feeds are populated by content predicted (by the algorithm) to be compelling and visually legible at a glance (Bucher, 2018). This has led to the mass popularization of polished “aesthetic” content genres; that is, short-form, hyper-stylized videos and imagery that foreground atmosphere, neutral color palettes, camera craft, and aspirational yet attainable lifestyles and interiors. The term “aesthetic” therefore has taken on a new meaning in current vernacular. It is now a social media shorthand for style and beauty: a look, “vibe,” and economy that is recognizable in milliseconds and rewarded by short-form social media algorithms.
Tradwife and Cottagecore creators are highly visible within this aesthetic economy (Büsken, 2024). Posts often emphasize immaculate living and personal appearance, combined with slow-living sequences in warm, cozy light. There is growing evidence that social media algorithms amplify this content to female viewers because of its aesthetic legibility and calming, escapist appeal (Vaughan & Lane, 2025). Although aesthetic discoverability can establish a gateway to more ideologically driven content for some creators and audiences, it is the aesthetic of soothing, cozy, and beautiful visuals that popularizes these creators, not political affiliation or ideological messaging (Allen et al., 2025). Across the political spectrum, algorithms reward content that packages moral, identity, or ideological claims inside what is contemporarily defined as “aesthetic.”
Social media content representing a particular aesthetic about idealized living such as the Tradwife and Cottagecore Aesthetic operate as infrastructure upon which subcultures and online communities develop through followers and watchers. Through active participation and collaboration, communities are constructed around place through shared values and identities, creating boundaries around who belongs and who does not (Gardner, 1991).
Community Membership
Community membership creates labels that describe people and definitions of right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, in-groups and out-groups. Self-labeling links individuals to group membership, which is implicated in constructions of self-concept and personal identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). The labels that we give ourselves, and how others may frame or label us, provides psychological coherence and offers recognition and community. This enables a sense of fit between social classifications and social realities, and in doing so, provides information on structural relationships between groups (Hornsey, 2008).
Online communities operate in many of the same ways as those offline. These communities create enclaves for like-minded people to gather and share knowledge and experience, which relates to the purpose and focus of the community. Membership in communities, especially religious communities, provides social support and security, a sense of belonging and purpose, moral certainty, and traditional gender scripts (Nica, 2020). Over time, communities evolve, consolidate, strengthen, and grow, but they can also fracture and rupture as members raise tensions or exit the group (Plant, 2004). As Tradwives as an online subculture has grown and increased in popularity, so have the normal processes of community making and breaking, as people challenge values and purpose from within or outside of community.
Initially we could see that women who had De-Tradded and exited tradwife life were women from “high cost” fundamentalist versions of religion; or in other words, religions whose regulations on time, social ties, autonomy, behavior, and gender differentiation make both membership and exit costly (Sykes, 2023). These versions tend to be characterized by “absolutism, fanaticism and conformity” (Nica, 2020, p. 2121). Feminist theologians have argued that androcentric interpretations of God and religion, which are common in fundamentalist Christianity, embrace suffering, sacrifice, and submission as expressions of love within marriage. Submission and sacrifice could be seen as unquestioning acts of obedience to God and religion, even under conditions of abuse (Moder, 2019). Such demanding membership and costly exits are made manifest for women who leave Christian fundamentalism socially, materially, and spiritually. The membership of these communities is not only ideological but deeply embedded in identity, and leaving requires a (re)making of identity, creation of new social worlds, and economic independence (Nica, 2020).
Although recent research has examined Tradwives as agents of right-wing ideology and social media influencers (Sykes & Hopner, 2024), considerably less is known about women who disengage from, resist, or reject the Tradwife label and/or brand, and women who have exited the trad-life world. This study explores the psychological and sociocultural circumstances through which women “De-Trad” in a discursive sense by rejecting the Tradwife label, while still embodying traditional womanhood and/or heteropatriarchal relationships. This study also considers how some former Tradwives reject the Trad-life materially through divorce and self-reconstruction. This research situates rejection and disengagement as much more than a political or ideological act; it is a deeply personal negotiation of meaning, agency, and belonging. We had two aims for this research:
To identify and map the different forms or meanings of De-Tradding and, Understand how women reconstruct identity, belonging, and expressions of femininity through the process of and following De-Tradding.
Methodology
We used a Netnographic approach to explore the experiences, presentations, and curations of De-Tradding across social media and related online spaces. Netnography is an ethnographic methodology designed to examine cultures and identities existing within digital technologies (Kozinets, 2019). Digital platforms generate dynamic vocabularies, practices, self-presentations, and forms of connection that shape both online interaction and offline worlds (Kozinets, 2019). Examining how culture and technology intersect on social media therefore provides insight into the expression and circulation of values, identities, social hierarchies, and ways of being.
Importantly, Netnography does not treat online content as unfiltered access to people's internal psychological states. Rather, it examines publicly curated self-presentations as cultural artifacts that both reflect and shape social identity, ideologies, and community belonging (Kozinets, 2019). Taking this approach, our goal was to understand how De-Tradding is publicly narrated, performed, and negotiated across social media platforms rather than to make claims about women's private psychological states or internal experiences.
Netnography enabled us to approach Tradwife and De-Tradding content as publicly curated, shaped by platform architectures, and ideologically layered—while remaining attentive to the fact that these are representative curations of the lives of real women whose online brands are entangled with relational, economic, and at times traumatic lived experiences. This dual orientation—treating social media content as both an example and situated testimony—guided our methodological and analytic decisions throughout.
Prolonged Immersion
The authors have been immersed in the online Tradwife landscape since January 2022 and previously published Netnographic research examining Tradwives as right-wing social media influencers (Sykes & Hopner, 2023, 2024). This extended engagement aligns with Kozinets' (2020) emphasis on prolonged cultural immersion as central to rigorous netnography. Immersion involved sustained, non-participatory following of Tradwife creators, engagement with comment threads, and ongoing awareness of how Tradwife discourse circulated across social media and into mainstream media.
Through this immersion, De-Tradding emerged as a recurring pattern within Tradwife online worlds, particularly as the Tradwife label and brand became increasingly mainstreamed, commodified, and reported on by commentators outside the subculture. During this immersion from 2022 to 2025, hundreds of Tradwife posts, interviews, and accounts dedicated to elements of Tradwifery were encountered. However, for the purpose of this study, we clearly distinguished immersion from the final analytic dataset: Immersion constituted the broader field within which De-Tradding was first identified. The analytic dataset for this study was a bounded subset collected over 6 months from January to June 2025.
As prolonged engagement with Tradwife content likely shaped the authors algorithmic social media feeds, we did not rely solely on personalized platform recommendations. Purposeful searching and cross-platform triangulation helped disrupt algorithmic narrowing by identifying De-Tradding content beyond curated social media feeds and reduced the likelihood that findings reflected algorithmic echo chambers. However, algorithmic curation from prolonged exposure contributed to conceptualizations of De-Tradding. Rather than treating this as a bias to be eliminated, we conceptualized algorithmic mediation (or being “served” content based on past engagement with the platform) as part of the digital research field. Content that was algorithmically “served” during immersion was addressed reflexively and analytically through cross-platform comparison (i.e., are the same narratives being expressed on all social media platforms?), purposeful scouting (i.e., searching for additional content with shared narratives), and triangulation across both influencer-saturated spaces (e.g., Instagram and TikTok) and non-influencer discussion forums (e.g., Reddit). Through this process, De-Tradding was identified as a recurring set of narratives within Tradwife lifeworlds, as well as something identified through algorithmic curations.
Data Collection
Formal data collection for the present study took place between January and June 2025 and was built on insights generated through prolonged immersion. Data was collected unobtrusively from publicly available sources across multiple platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit, personal blogs, podcasts, and traditional media interviews. Platforms were included where De-Tradding narratives were publicly observable and searchable. Closed or private groups (such as restricted Facebook communities) were excluded due to ethical boundaries associated with access requirements.
Data collection involved sustained, non-participatory observation of content, including creator posts, captions, videos, comment threads, and linked media coverage. Platform-native search functions were used on social media sites, while Google searches were employed to locate interviews, feature articles, and podcasts to corroborate identified themes. Traditional media sources were also frequently encountered through social media immersion; for example, when creators shared interviews or public commentary related to their rejection of the Tradwifery.
Search strategies were iterative and adaptive, rather than predefined. Once De-Tradding was conceptually identified, targeted searching was undertaken using emergent key terms, phrases, and hashtags, including but not limited to #tradnottradwife, #notatradwife, biblical femininity, Proverbs 31 woman, and traditional femininity. These terms evolved during immersion and data collection and were commonly adopted by creators to signal alignment with De-Tradding narratives and to enable community-based discovery of related content and creators.
Scouting
Scouting involved identifying women whose publicly available content met at least one of two inclusion criteria. The first was an explicit rejection of the Tradwife label or brand, while continuing to live in traditionally feminine, domestic, or heteropatriarchal arrangements. The second criteria was explicit rejection of the Tradwife lifeworld and narration of exit from Tradwifery, including rejection of associated gender roles, ideologies, or intimate partnerships.
A sustained narrative of De-Tradding was required (i.e., more than a single post or isolated comment) for primary creator accounts to be included in the final dataset. In contrast, Reddit contributors were included selectively to contextualize broader patterns and community alignment. Reddit contributors were not treated as individual case profiles, but as part of collective meaning-making. Exclusion occurred when content lacked explicit engagement with rejection or exit narratives, was purely aesthetic without reflexive commentary, or was private or inaccessible.
Alongside targeted searching using the identified keywords, scouting was iterative and content-driven rather than guided by predetermined categories. Through engagement with posts, comments, and cross-platform narratives, we traced how individual stories of De-Tradding unfolded over time and across media platforms, revealing trajectories of identity change and ongoing negotiations of femininity. In many instances, the strongest insights emerged not from original posts but from comment sections, where women openly discussed experiences of domestic violence, ideological questioning, discomfort, and anxiety surrounding public association with Tradwifery. Through this process, the authors encountered hundreds of posts, accounts, and discussion threads related to De-Tradding.
Identifying the Dataset
The final dataset comprised approximately 24 selected women who demonstrated sustained and explicit engagement with De-Tradding narratives. Most cases were content creators (including Nano, Micro, Mid-Tier, Macro, and Mega Influencers [Morreale, 2025] and bloggers). Non-influencer community contributors were also included from Reddit, a source that functioned differently within the dataset. Reddit threads were analyzed as spaces of two-way communication and collective meaning-making that helped clarify the what, why, and how of De-Tradding. Individual Reddit users were included in the final dataset as illustrative examples from these two-way discussions. Traditional media sources, including interviews, feature articles, and podcasts were used to contextualize digital narratives and triangulate interpretations.
The sample size was determined through analytic saturation (i.e., as analysis progressed, no new narrative patterns or forms of De-Tradding emerged). Selection of which data and how much to include in the final analysis was guided by the manageability of cross-platform collection and the deliberate inclusion of both highly visible influencer figures and less prominent contributors. Limiting the dataset to 24 examples of women who had De-Tradded enabled cross-platform observation without compromising analytic depth.
Given the volume of content produced by many creators over extended periods, it was neither feasible nor analytically necessary to collect all posts. Instead, posts, videos, captions, comments, and interviews explicitly relating to De-Tradding were captured. Content was archived if it articulated engagement with De-Tradding themes (ideological repositioning, identify transformation, and exit narratives). For Reddit, all comments within relevant threads were captured and read; excerpts were selected based on narrative richness, sustained argumentation, and collective resonance, as indicated by engagement and upvotes (i.e., we took samples from the most popular comments). Data were archived using a combination of screenshots and structured documents (i.e., copy from posts transcribed for analysis), supported by a spreadsheet tracking platforms, dates, and contextual notes for each woman.
The influence of branding affiliations and monetization could not always be determined and was treated analytically as an inherent feature of influencer economies rather than a confound. As is common in digital ethnographic research, the authenticity of online self-presentation cannot be independently verified, and the extent to which content reflects commercial intent, personal testimony, or a combination of both cannot be determined. As a way forward analytically, we took an empirical focus on “how, where and when identities and realities were made available on the internet” (Hine, 2000, p. 119). This allowed us to treat the social media content as it was presented as a representative curation of each woman's standpoint and lived experience.
Reflexivity and Positionality
Throughout data collection and analysis, we engaged in reflexive practice and acknowledged our own position as women researchers critically examining gendered ideology and online subculture. Creating this practice ensured consistent reflection of how we were interpreting the social posts. Both authors engaged separately with the final dataset and met regularly to compare interpretations, refine emerging patterns, and resolve any analytic discrepancies. These regular discussions between authors functioned as a form of collaborative journaling, analytic cross-checking, and collective reflexivity, allowing us to process emotional reactions, ensure transparency, and remain committed to foregrounding the women's stories and their meaning. This reflexive process aligns with feminist storytelling approaches that foreground empathy, transparency, and ethical responsibility in the interpretation of women's lived experiences (de Nooijer & Sol Cueva, 2022). It supports accountability and recognition of positionality within the data as a methodological resource that strengthened our interpretation and understanding of the complexities of women's lived experiences, rather than a claim to objectivity.
Ethical Considerations
The study followed ethical guidelines for social media research as outlined by Townsend and Wallace (2016). As participants’ content was publicly available and designed for consumption by strangers, observation was considered ethically permissible. Notwithstanding, we wanted to prioritize participants’ safety and privacy. We were mindful that there is growing political polarization and violence that plays out on social media through trolling and doxxing, and we wish to avoid any women being abused as a result of our research. At the same time, we believe research that explores the gendered arrangements and their meaning in women's lives is important and necessary for us to better understand cultural and social life.
We therefore anonymized usernames, assigned aliases, and paraphrased personally identifying details in the excerpts used, even for women with relatively large followings. We did not reproduce content from private or closed groups. Identities of high-profile creators who had publicly discussed their experiences of “De-Tradding” across multiple media sites were retained, given their deliberate use of visibility to build their platform and raise awareness. A summary of De-Tradders, with pseudonyms and non-pseudonyms, can be seen in Table 1 below.
Summary of De-Tradders.
Methodological Boundary
This study does not claim to provide a representative sample of all women engaging in De-Tradding, nor does it infer private psychological states. Rather, it identifies recurring narrative forms observable within publicly curated social media accounts. The findings illustrate how De-Tradding is articulated and negotiated online.
Analytic Approach
Feminist Story Telling allowed us to approach our analysis in a way that centered the voices, lived experiences, and standpoints of the women in our research. Influenced by hooks (2000), Feminist Story Telling uses stories to heal and as a tool of political voice and disruption that draws on ideas of intersectionality and the politics of language (Anzaldúa, 1987). Feminist Story Telling also incorporates the agency granted in autoethnography (Ellis, 1999), and the imperative for seeing knowledge about women as situated within dynamic and interconnected sociopolitical, economic, and cultural contexts.
Feminist Story Telling can be used descriptively, whereby women write their own story, and it is presented without interpretation as Pelc et al. (2020) do in their research detailing the professional experiences of women psychologists. Feminist Story Telling can also be used analytically, where women's narratives are integrated with the academic literature, such as when storytelling brings geographical scholarship to merge with domestic violence literature (Brickell & Garrett, 2015), highlights the tensions around the history of battered women's movement (Haaken, 2010), or in decolonizing work (Weatherall, 2020). Regardless of a descriptive or interpretative and integrative approach, Feminist Story Telling creates space for sharing life histories, knowledge, and experience in a way that respects the authority of subjectivity (de Nooijer & Sol Cueva, 2022).
In this study, Feminist Story Telling functioned as a form of narrative inquiry, guiding how stories were read, compared, and interpreted in relation to economic, social, and political contexts. Feminist Story Telling treats lived accounts as situated knowledge that reveals a social organization of experience for women. It was a rich, complex, and nuanced approach for us to explore both the resistance to, and the embrace of, heteropatriarchy. Through this approach, we treated the narratives as a site of feminine knowledge production rather than data extraction, and in terms of counter-hegemonic acts when dominant explanations about women's behavior were challenged. We approached the narratives as situated truths.
This study began by observing two distinct forms of De-Tradding, and we sought to understand how and why. Drawing on Anzaldúa's (1987) ideas of intersectionality, we approached these narratives as possible sites of identity making and identity breaking and questioned how the navigation of competing meaning systems can be understood. Following hooks (2000), these narratives were further approached as potential sites of healing through catharsis and in the re-contextualization of experiences. Holding the importance of agency (Ellis, 1999) central to research process meant that competing narratives were understood as organizing and making sense of experience.
Informed by work of Coccia et al. (2024), we adopted “ambivalence as a feminist project” and attempted the “capacity to interpret two apparently opposed entities as equivalent in value, as equally important … and the ability to imagine holding opposed emotions, views, and values” (p. 779). We did this through seeing the complexity of relationships, and by including experiences, roles, and identities that are often dismissed or silenced in academic feminist literature (Coccia et al., 2024). Striking such an approach allowed us to highlight women's voices that had been previously marginalized and silenced within dominant, and at times dangerous patriarchal spaces. This permitted our work to become a tool of consciousness-raising through curations of the women's stories we collected. At the same time, we used a feminist methodology to challenge feminist norms by including the voices of women who actively support patriarchy. In doing so, we were able to explore the complexities and nuances of gender, identity, and resistance; connect personal stories to political trends, economic realities, and religious and moral frameworks; and offer alternative “feminist” positions on choice, autonomy, and patriarchy.
We explored whether adopting ambivalence raises tensions as to whether we have subverted the ethos of this feminist methodology in ways that contest its original intention. However, we believe that the organizing principle and heart of Feminist Story Telling is to center women's stories, testimony, and witness of their experiences, however uncomfortable this may be to dominant feminist understandings of gender hierarchies. By employing Feminist Story Telling, we can resolve our own dilemmas as researchers about how to tell such contrasting stories in ways that faithfully represent the presented realities of the lives of real women whose experiences of a particular lifeworld has brought joy and fulfillment for some, and harrowing suffering and trauma for others. Ambivalence as an analytic tool opens up feminist inquiry that can ask both the researcher and the reader to sit in uncomfortable, disorienting, and even confusing spaces (Coccia et al., 2024). Rather than interrogate the women's narratives for contradictions or evidence of being duped, duplicitous, or complicit in women's subjugation, we honor the stories as told and use the academic literature that explains these narratives from the narrator's point of view. This does not mean that stories cannot be critiqued or critically examined to uncover subjugation or subordination within heteropatriarchal structures; it is that we choose not to do this in places. We leave it to the reader to make sense of the binaries of subjection and liberation, and in doing so we offer that ambivalence “at once emotional and intellectual, offers the chance to reflect on an unresolved and unresolvable plurality” (Coccia et al., 2024, p. 792).
Analytic Process
Analysis followed an inductive and iterative process, moving between individual narratives, cross-case comparison, and existing feminist, psychological, and sociological literature. The 24 accounts were treated as analytic cases through which recurring forms of De-Tradding could be identified and refined. Our analysis consisted of four overlapping stages.
There was Repeated narrative engagement where key posts, captions, videos, comment threads, and media interviews related to De-Tradding were read and re-read to establish familiarity with each women's narrative trajectory and language use. Next, through Cross-case comparison, narratives were compared across accounts and platforms to identify similarities and differences in how women articulated rejection of the Tradwife label, distancing from Tradwife subculture, or exit from Tradwife lifeworlds. This cross-platform comparison involved tracing how a single woman's De-Tradding narrative appeared across multiple digital spaces (e.g., Instagram posts, podcast interviews, and media articles), as well as comparing patterns across different individuals. This allowed identification of recurring narrative forms (e.g., rejections of Tradwife label vs. rejection of Tradwife lifeworld) and refinement of categories through iterative analysis. Attention was paid to how meanings shifted across contexts (i.e., mainstream influencer platforms vs. Reddit discussions and media interviews). By Pattern identification and refinement through iterative comparison, we started identifying recurring narrative patterns. These patterns were refined through continued engagement with the data and checked against new material until analytic saturation was reached; that is, when no substantively new forms of De-Tradding emerged. Lastly, through Theoretical integration, the identified patterns were interpreted through theory and scholarship on gender, ideology, religion, heteropatriarchal relationships, and power. Feminist Story Telling guided interpretation by centering women's accounts while situating them within broader contexts and narratives.
Throughout the analytic process, attention was given not only to what about Tradwifery women rejected, but how rejection was narrated, justified, contested, and emotionally negotiated. This included examining how women positioned themselves in relation to femininity, faith, motherhood, economic and relationship dependence, and autonomy. The findings are presented as a coherent analytic narrative that brings together shared patterns of De-Tradding while preserving the uniqueness of individual stories. Narrative synthesis was used to demonstrate how the two different forms of De-Tradding, “Rejection of the Trad-label” and “Rejection of the Tradwife Life,” were articulated across platforms and life circumstances.
Findings
Rejection of the Trad-Label
The first of these forms—Rejection of the Trad-label—was a contestation around the labeling and defining of women as Tradwives. This rejection occurred in three ways. First, “Trad but not Tradwife” differentiated traditional living from a Tradwife lifeworld on grounds of ideology, politics, commerce, and faith.
Trad but not Tradwife
There is a difference between a stay-at-home parent and a tradwife, and we need to speak up about this in clearer terms because things often get murky. I can do all of the things above, and also reject gender norms and patriarchal, white supremacist, capitalistic systems. THAT, is when staying home, or going to work, or working from home, or whatever way you decide to pursue what you care about, becomes a choice. (Ava; @PersonalBlog, 2024)
It was clear that some women felt that: “There's a very big difference between wanting to live a traditional life and being a tradwife” (Clara; @Instagram, 2024). Leading a traditional life was seen in woman-centered terms as being universal, transcending religion, or even culture in a way that was continuous across time. Throughout literary works and religious texts dating back to Ancient Rome, Greece, and biblical times, women have been inextricably linked to matrimony, maternity, and the domestic sphere. Women were wives, mothers, midwives, and doulas for end-of-life care (Smith, 2008). Traditional practices of womanhood were seen as: …The ancient work of women. It's the responsibilities which women claimed as theirs. This is foundational womanhood: all the affairs of the young & the management of the household & food supply & healing. And mourning. We still do it. We just want a name to sever it from foundational womanhood. Trad is maybe the closest modern term, but it's a weak reflection of actual authentic womanhood & the agency we have always had. (Abigail; @Instagram, 2024)
For others, the distinction between traditional and Tradwife women was the emphasis on religion, specifically Christian fundamentalism: I think it's important to distinguish between internet tradwives, and what some might call traditional Christian wives. So, when I say tradwife, I mean the social media/internet kind, and when I say traditional wife or traditional Christian wife, I mean women who exist or marry into Christian patriarchy sub-cultures. The online tradwife movement feeds off of the Christian patriarchy movement, and not always explicitly. But it's important to note that the two are intimately related; there would be no tradwives without Christian patriarchy's traditional wife. And yet, they are also distinct, because some tradwives might not fit the description of traditional Christian wives. (Beatrice; @Instagram, 2024)
Women who were living traditional lives and who actively resisted framings as tradwives articulated their lifestyles in terms of choice, saying: Tradwife doesn't mean to me the same sort of associated terms and views as it does in America … I just have a genuine interest in caring for my family, cooking, gardening, and a simpler way of life without the associated views of it. (Amanda; @Instagram, 2025)
Amanda further stated, “I align myself more with the term homemaker and homemaking, but in that category, you just automatically get slotted into being a tradwife. My choice [is] to stay at home and care for my kids and garden and cook.”
The choice to stay at home was presented by other women as political. It was, in part, a contestation of neoliberal economic systems perceived as oppressive, and a validation of the unpaid and overlooked domestic labor of childcare. Under these conditions, a traditional lifestyle was firmly positioned as a rejection of capitalism, rather than an embrace of patriarchy, and became an embodiment of social justice. It was explained as follows: Girl bossing, and the whole Lean In movement (if we can call it a movement) embraces capitalism and seeks to essentially align itself with men and the economic and social systems they have built, the values they embrace—wealth, productivity, efficiency, career success. Tradwifery, in some ways, is a rejection of this. Women reject that they need to run themselves ragged by chasing financial gain and what society sees as success. hence tradwives. In some ways, I too rejected those things—except from a very different perspective, and my solution is rooted in very different principles—those of elevating the invisible work of caring for children, those of collective care and equality and justice.
Women appeared cognizant that certain aspects of the “Trad-life” exemplified on social media were pushed by algorithmic patterns and resisted the premise that any particular lifestyle could be attributed to a certain group of women. As noted, “homesteading is for ALL types of people, not just the Uber religious—Tradwife—Conservative side the algorithm likes to push. Farm culture is so much more than the stereotypical narrative we often see.” (Beatrice; @Instagram, 2024)
There were also warnings that algorithms could be problematic for women drawn into tradwife social media content: …They're creating this very gentle, lulling content that pulls you in and makes you think there's nothing wrong with this smiling woman in a beautiful dress with a baby. And then you just watch one after another, and you don't realize that your algorithm is also showing you things that pull you into the ideology, the politics of it. They're not showing you reality or outcomes. (Tia Levings; @Instagram, 2025)
Interestingly, two contemporary and well-known women who are typically cast as tradwives, who have millions of followers, and who have undoubtedly benefitted enormously from algorithmic pattern have also resisted this labeling. Nara Smith constructs herself as a working mother whose work life is anything but traditional. She explains, “You don’t see me getting on a plane, hopping to New York, modelling, coming back—all while I have a newborn—paying bills, filming content, getting my kids dressed.” She further stated, Being put into a certain box, just because people think that I’m slaving away, is so weird to me. I’m a working mom who gets to go about her day in a very different way than [someone with] a normal nine-to-five job would. (Nara Smith; @MediaInterview, 2024)
Nara additionally stated that her social media engagement is about broadcasting things she enjoys in life, rather than ideologically driven: Sometimes my outfits aren’t the most practical, but then again fashion isn’t always practical. That's what I do. I post videos of me cooking for my kids and my husband. It's really not that deep. To me, it's all about just putting what I love out there, and whoever can resonate with that and take something away from it-that's what I want to do. (Nara Smith; @MediaInterview, 2024)
Hannah Neeleman from Ballerina Farm also rejected the Tradwife label and even resisted being depicted as a traditional woman, saying. I don’t necessarily identify with it…because we are traditional in the sense that it's a man and a woman, 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, … I’m kinda like, I don’t know if I identify with that. (Hannah Neeleman; @MediaInterview, 2024)
Hannah firmly identifies as a social media content creator who works to achieve her double objectives of being at home with her children and running a successful business. She outlined: I started social media because I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and I wanted to be there with my kids, because I was a ballerina and I felt like it was constantly taking me away from my family and away from my children. I am so grateful for social media in that sense because it has allowed me to stay home and to be with my kids, but at the same time to create a business and sell our products and be a business woman and write cookbooks and open up markets but still be with my family so that's been a huge blessing. (Hannah Neeleman; @MediaInterview, 2025)
Creating this life was seen as a new and post-traditional model of family, wherein the woman is an equal partner in business and childcare: “I feel like our life is very non-traditional …In some ways, I feel like we are blazing a lot of new paths in our family and our business” (Hannah Neelman; @MediaInterview, 2025).
Both Nara and Hannah appear to have leaned into neoliberal ideas that women can “have it all,” but on their terms, which looks somewhat different from the typical business or career women. Both have built their commitments to traditional wifehood and mothering into highly successful social media businesses, alongside other lucrative interests such as modeling or farming. Both women have taken up the “Family First” script, where women put family ahead of career, but at the same time have portrayed successful management of personal ambition seemingly without any cost to marriage or children. This blending of career and family is presented on their own terms and in their voice.
Similarly, there are communities of women who are ideologically opposed to Tradwives, but who have built their online name and brand around similar aesthetics of stay-at-home motherhood, homemaking, warm color palettes, and cozy living. The second narrative strand “Cottage Coring not Tradwifing” was concerned with the ideological separation of two different communities in online spaces, which often hold similar or even identical aesthetics.
Cottage Coring Not Tradwifing
Beatrix Potter is a perfect example of why it has nothing to do with tradwives. Single mums, fairy queens, witches, and eccentrics. Sign me up for that lifestyle please. Cottagecore isn't conservative, but it is an idealised version of life that some can't separate from the historic reality of the time period most closely associated with it. Yeah, I'd love to live in a small Beatrix Potter-esque cottage and live a simple life, but I also really like indoor plumbing and not dying of Scarlet Fever. Cottagecore isn't about reverting back to the way things were, it's about celebrating the best aspects of that time period/lifestyle. (Sally; @Reddit, 2025)
For some women there was a distinct ideological separation between the Tradwife and Cottagecore brand, which was accounted for on political grounds: “Cottagecore is actually super queer and politically leftist. The tradwife movement tries really hard to appropriate the aesthetics with none of the leftist politics” (Emma; @ Reddit, 2025). Another woman said: I’ve been an enjoyer of the aesthetic since around 2016, I just mostly didn’t want to be associated with the very Quickly Advancing (even at the time) tradwife movement that seemed to be taking over the aesthetic on the platforms I had. I still worry about that, actually. Most of my friend group is queer goth anarchists. (Rachel; @Reddit, 2025)
Rejecting the Trad-label and brand in this way becomes a political maneuver to protect an online space that allowed women on the Left to enjoy and find community in traditionally presented aesthetics that were not always available to them either online or offline.
Other women rejected the Trad-label and brand by depicting the Cottagecore aesthetic as an inclusive template with moral undertones that offered an authenticity that Tradwife content lacked: “I'm a cottagecore person but definitely not a tradwife! The original, accepting, non-conservative aesthetic is still my favourite” (Brittany; @Reddit, 2025). Another woman said: I will say that it's very frustrating that a lot of the simple living/cottagecore content I find on social media is wealthy romanticized tradwife homesteading. I wish I could find more content from people who incorporate the cottagecore aesthetic in a realistic way/in normal lives with adjacent values like sustainability, simplicity, community, individualism, etc. (Kayla; @Reddit, 2025)
This rejection of Tradwife content in favor of Cottagecore introduces a hierarchy around the aesthetics of social media content based on realism and authenticity. Women seen as living “real lives,” which resemble Cottagecore content rather than Tradwife, are portrayed as more legitimate digital storytellers. The relative rareness of these women works to cement their authenticity and reinforces Cottagecore as the original or genuine version of the traditional feminine aesthetic.
At times, it appeared difficult to highlight the differences between the two aesthetics (Cottagecore vs. Tradwife), but even so, women were able to intuitively recognize and then reject the Trad-brand and its ciphers: “Personally, I love cottagecore, but tradwife stuff turns me off and I can sense the difference, but I find it hard to articulate it” (Kimberly; @Reddit, 2025).
Other women positioned the Tradwife name and brand as an imitation of Cottagecore. These women considered that through strategic processes of subversion, Tradwives had replicated the Cottagecore aesthetic to create incomes which fitted within heteronormative gendered arrangements. Rejecting the Trad-label and brand in this way highlighted the very commodification of right-wing ideologies through hijacking popularized aesthetics: Conservative tradwife-y types were always adjacent to cottagecore, just like preppers and ecoanarchists and garden punks. When it grew online as an aesthetic and then community and led to creators and influencers and brands, traditional lifestyles suddenly had a mainstream route to getting monetized. Conservative women found larger community and also an easy, fun way (content creation) to contribute financially to their families, and as a bonus, an avenue to promote their lifestyles to a wider audience. (Sarah; @Reddit, 2025)
These remarks highlight how the age of social media influencer marketing has turned aesthetic labor into ideological labor for some communities. What was once a means of visual self-expression is now a vehicle through which values, politics, identities, and cultures are sold. Tradwives have mastered this economy, commercializing feminine aesthetics by promoting heteropatriarchal ideals as idyllic lifestyles. In contrast, Cottagecore creators use the same visual vocabulary to question the logic of conservatism rather than reproduce it. Cottagecore escapism proposes a quiet and liberal counter-figure to the Tradwife influencer. These are women who inhabit the same aesthetic terrain, but who report refusal of the ideological transactional nature of Tradwife social media content.
Lastly, the “The False Gospel of Tradwife Life” identified the Tradwife label or brand as an ungodly move into worldlines. For some women, this refusal was articulated as a wider rejection of how biblical womanhood was presented through tradwife social media content. Influencer versions of traditional womanhood were described as ungodly and as having lost a spiritual core. The social media popularization of Tradwifery was seen as turning scriptural womanhood into performative “trad” content wrapped in a commodified and branded aesthetic.
The False Gospel of Tradwife Life
There's a lot of talk these days about being a “tradwife”—vintage dresses, home-cooked meals, and staying home with babies. But biblical womanhood is so much more than a mood board or a moment.• It's timeless—not based on trends but rooted in truth.• It's sanctifying—not an oppressive system keeping women down, not glamorous, but glorifying. It's Biblical—not made up by influencers but ordained by God.• It's freeing—not restrictive, but full of peace and purpose.• It's a blessing—even when you feel the weight of the responsibility. This life? It's more than a trend—it's a calling! A delight! A beautiful act of submission to the Father, trusting He knows his design best. (Isabella; @Instagram, 2023)
Rejecting the label of Tradwife by a small group of extremely religious women whose lives could be understood as seemingly exemplifying Tradwifery can be seen as a conscious reaffirming of religious piety and spiritual purity—a recentering of Christology. One woman warned: Don’t let tradwife life influencers sell you an idol of good works. Don’t take the lie that you must live a certain aesthetic to be holier than others. The only holiness you will find is in Christ, not in dresses, baking bread, homeschooling, etc… Set your mind on things above! (Jane; @X, 2025)
There was clear articulation that there was only one foundational identity for Christian women—her relationship with Christ. Heteropatriarchal arrangements such as the Trad-life are normal for these women, but there is a rejection of the self being determined by aesthetic movements or commodified worldliness. As noted, …There is nothing wrong with calling yourself a tradwife, BUT you need to be sure that is not your entire identity. If you are a Christian wife, your identity needs to be in God first. (Mary; @Instagram, 2025)
Constructing one's identity foremost around notions of the Tradwife was at times presented as a clear pathway to sin. If you idolize, find your identity in, or seek first a tradwife life, you are sinning. Repent.…If you feel pressure to live a certain aesthetic to fit in, feel applauded, or to earn a good standing based on your works, maybe the tradwife trend is leading you to sin rather than glorify Him. Unfollow the accounts and stick to following God's Word. Scripture is sufficient. (Jane; @X, 2025)
Although Tradwives demonstrate the ordained performances of women as wife and mother, the possibilities for sin are created through “the online commodification of the self in the name of Christian witness” (Klassen & Lofton, 2013, p. 62). The role of social media in Christian dissemination then raises tensions around maintaining purity in a Christ-centered life. Rejecting the Tradwife label and Trad-brand then becomes a countermeasure that reconciles the authenticity of a woman's godliness.
Rejection of the Trad-Life
Women not only discursively rejected the Trad-brand or labeling, but there was also a rejection of the Tradwife Life. These were women who had formerly self-identified as Tradwives but who now rejected the Tradwife Life. This form of De-Tradding was expressed as a rejection of the Trad-life in response to domestic violence, infidelity, and unequal power arrangements in intimate relationships. This rejection was instigated either voluntarily or involuntary. There were two parts which made up rejecting trad-life. The first of these, “Rejecting Ideology and Reworking Identity,” described how change in belief systems can drive fundamental shifts in women’s psychology, emotions, and material practices.
Rejecting Ideology and Reworking Identity
For some former Tradwives, gender identity and what it means to be a woman, had been intimately embedded in Christian identity (Klassen & Lofton, 2013). Christianity typically casts gender as fixed, heteronormative, and brought to life in hierarchal dyads between men and women (Klassen & Lofton, 2013). Women's bodies were seen as figuratively and literally in the service of men and religion with this being their primary, if not single, purpose of existence as a human being. As such: …You would only do one thing, which is a Christian wife and mother, you didn't need to go to college, you didn't need to have a career. So totally not prepared for the adult world …I married somebody who showed up and said that he was God's will for my life. I was taught not to ever question what a man tells you, and that I was waiting for that. (Tia Leavings; @Youtube, 2024)
Female subjectivity is thus held in a singular and hierarchical position through the authority of men and the arrangement of the nuclear family. The family is an ideological mechanism that naturalizes gender roles and appoints men and women to public or private spheres of life. As detailed: Family government is the basis the patriarchy uses as the model of authority they embrace. Dad leads, mom serves at home, the children obey. Scale that up and package it along with their other messaging that pulls society back in time, and it clarifies further—white men lead, women stay home and make/raise babies, everyone under authority/dominion works and serves. (Tia Levings; @YouTube, 2024)
Ideologically driven and hierarchal arrangements of gender were seen to typically hold women responsible for the success of the relationship and heteropatriarchy more widely. Lauren Southern narrated that previously she: had this delusional view of relationships: that only women could be the ones that make or break them, and men can do no wrong. …I believed I had a certain role in my relationship, and it was to be the more submissive one that supports my husband's dreams. (Lauren Southern; @MediaInterview, 2024)
These arrangements of gender can be so ingrained that when relationships begin to dissolve, there may initially be attempts to reconcile and incorporate new and alternative views into existing right-wing belief systems. This attempt to reconcile opposing world views was presented by Tia Levings as a way to cope with domestic abuse by focusing on her responses rather than his brutality. She outlined: I had no college education at all, but I was very interested to learn. So, one thing led to another. I mean, I just I became very voracious for experience and knowledge and expansion, and I learned skills that I should have probably learned as a much younger person, but it took, you know, my life experience, to open me to that. And I at first, turned it into my ideology. I was like, Okay, this is going to make me an even better wife and mother, and I'm going to find a way to live in this abuse even better. I'm going to be so strong at this, and I'm going to be this great homeschooler, and really just wonderful Proverbs, 31-woman, wife to my husband. (Tia Levings; @Instagram, 2025)
Trying to assimilate conflicting ideologies created complex psychological and emotional labor. Such assimilation was often impossible due to the contrasting assumptions that underlie belief systems. As explained: …There's no way I could have ever gained enough steam to be good enough in a culture that was putting women down. I needed to be silent. I didn't have any rights. I wasn't allowed to vote. I wasn't allowed to speak to other women at church. We weren't allowed to talk during the week. So, like I was in this very, very, very high control, oppressive environment, and at the same time, I was trying to grow and become the best Tia I could be. (Tia Levings; @Instagram, 2025)
The process of rejecting ideologies that were fundamental to a sense of self was difficult and at times caused significant distress. Often, there was little sense of how to reject these ideologies and how a woman would navigate her pathway forward. For women who were in the public eye, such as Lauren Southern, this was described as an especially painful process: “I couldn’t let go of the ideology … I had been banned from countries over this ideology. I had destroyed my reputation internationally for this. How am I going to let go of this?” (Lauren Southern; @Media Interview, 2024).
Interestingly, for one woman, a rejection of Trad-life required the reversal of gender roles and a reconstitution of the notion of family. For this Tradwife, she made the decision to exit after leading her husband into the Trad-life. She explained: When I was pregnant with my third daughter, I finally faced the reality that stay-at-home motherhood wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to be a homemaker. I desperately wanted a career outside of the home… At the time when I was a tradwife and I was very conservative; I would actually say that I was driving the value set. And so, when we met, I was the one that was really falling in with the neo-Calvinist theological values that led to becoming a tradwife. My husband followed suit. So, my husband was going to become a teacher. He ended up becoming a pastor… And then of course when you move out of those kind of value sets it takes time and a lot of patience. And so, I would say we're at a much healthier place now. My husband actually is more of the stay-at-home parent… So, we have really shifted in basically our roles in the family. But it has taken time. And luckily for me I was not in a high control marriage, which is what a lot of traditional marriages look like. And when the man is driving these value sets, a lot of times it's because he wants to have control over his wife and his family. Thankfully for me, that was never a root issue, and we were able to fairly smoothly transition out of fundamentalism essentially. (Daisy; @TikTok, 2024)
Rejecting ideology and shifting of entire belief and value systems originated from a need to survive, flourish, and to escape painful and corrosive experiences of abuse. This need led to a claiming and validation of personhood on a woman's own terms within social media content, which appeared to be the first step in recovering from oppression and gaining self-determination and autonomy.
Recovery and Autonomy
“Recovery and Autonomy” characterized how ex-Tradwives reported recovery from psychological, physical, sexual, economic, and spiritual abuse, and how they grappled with economic security in the aftermath of divorce. Gaining independence from patriarchal systems and gaining autonomy allowed for women to be heard, especially within political advocacy, and created possibilities for peace and healing. I’ve been there/done that with high control religion. As far as I’m concerned, they took my past, but they’re not getting my present and future too. I will tell on them. I will listen to the sounds of birds and crunchy snow. I will defend the disenfranchised. I will read and sing and dance under stars and summer leaves. I will make art and also buy art. I will support independent writers. I will honor my boundaries and regulate my nervous system. I will go slow. I will find other ways to connect and earn and accept. When four years are over, I will look back and see what we lived through. In spite of—delicious spite of… Being a survivor of religious trauma who has reclaimed my soul and healing means I take responsibility for my growth and happiness. (Tia Levings; @Instagram, 2025)
Recovery from an abusive marriage structured by extreme right-wing ideologies was presented as a layered and complex process and occurred over a significant period of time: …And that all came to a head when I escaped. It was many things I was escaping. Many things, the mind control, the physical, actual restraint, the spiritual lockdown we were under. And then I found myself like with embedded fundamentalism in my body, and in my mind, I was still very polarized in my thinking, very this or that, either or always, never, you know, really, really divided gender roles and it's always this group in that group. And so, it took a long time to get to a place where I could hold plural truth or sit with nuance, allow for Shades of Gray, allow for color, allow for things to be in the realm of mystery. (Tia Levings; @Instagram, 2025)
“Recovery and healing refer to the ongoing process that enables victim survivors to be safe, healthy and resilient, to have economic security to recover and thrive” (Department of Social Services, 2022). There were no time limits placed on processes of recovery; it was seen as individual-centric, multifaceted and self-managed: …Heal in ways that feel manageable to you. Resist a life of urgency. Find rest in boundary spaces with intentional disconnection. Don’t rush or control the narrative—or trust anyone else who does. Sit and listen to whispers that only speak in the shadows. Take all the time you need. (Tia Levings; @Intsagram, 2025)
Recovering from a heteropatriarchal religious world was also presented as a reframing of how biblical scripture and religious practices dictated their lives. As stated, I really believe then we should have an anti-fundamentalist mindset that tries to hold plural truths, that is to be always curious, questions things, lives… A life of being where it's okay to question and it's okay to challenge ideas, and to hold the actual evidence of how they manifest. (Tia Levings; @Youtube, 2024)
A critical component of recovery was defined as economic security, as divorce may bring serious socioeconomic change. For women, these costs can be higher due to uneven participation across work sectors, gendered pay gaps, and the need to prioritize childcare and caregiving roles (Almog & Herbst-Debby, 2025). Some former Tradwives struggled to achieve economic independence due to a lack of tertiary education, paid workforce experience, and young marriage with multiple children. Not only was this crippling in the present but also signaled a bleak future. As explained: I have no retirement, I have no savings, no education, no resume. I was almost a straight A student throughout all of my education. I went to college at age 17. I had dreams for my future. I'm working so hard to get myself out of just perpetual side hustle. Hell, there's not a day that goes by that I don't wonder why. Why I didn't have a fucking backup plan. Why my kids eating and having stability was dependent on a romantic relationship. Why nobody told me to put money in the bank. Why nobody told me don't have babies until you have an education and some experience. Don't have so many kids. I wish somebody had told me to put my name on our vehicle loans and to put my name on our houses. I wish somebody had told me that it's okay to put those babies in daycare for a couple days a week and go to college and have a job. (Jennie Gage; @TikTok, 2024)
Women often make education and career decisions in anticipation of the female caretaker role which affect childbearing and earning power. The ideology of the family is a powerful tool that guides women's participation in the workforce. As such, the very character of a woman can be questioned for choosing work over family and this has significant economic and psychological costs. Recovery was sometimes bound in regret, which was used to communicate an imperative for women to create protections and guardrails for future economic security. Regret also served as a warning for other women who may lose their economic independence in traditional relationships. One woman explained: I didn't want to give up my very successful—high earning career, but I thought what kind of person would I be if I chose a job over family. So, I chose family and 10 years later I realized that it completely destroyed my life. Always keep a job, always have some sort of way to have an income stream. Get paid for what you're doing, make sure there are protections, make sure things get titled in your name. (Alice; @YouTube, 2024)
Gaining financial autonomy was seen as a collective struggle. There was a call for mothers to promote gender equality in education and in work opportunities in order to ensure the economic security of girls as they become women: “…We have to make this stop. Raise your daughters to be financially independent. Focus on their futures and educations just as much as you focus on your sons. I wish that someone had done that for me” (Jennie Gage; @TikTok, 2024).
There was also recognition of a need to obtain legal protection for women whose unpaid labor and spousal support had enabled wealth and career benefits for men. This benefit to men was seen as often at the expense and sacrifice of opportunities for women. It was advised to: …Absolutely get a prenup for every year that you work. You should have some sort of benefit if either of you want to leave the marriage because as they are climbing the ladder, as they are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, they are moving themselves forward in the work field. (Evelyn; @Instagram, 2021)
Recovery after divorce was not only a psychological and emotional process, it was also understood as relational: “…Post-divorce, after becoming a single mother, my mental health started to improve. I started to repair all these really important friendships. And I’m living a much happier, much healthier life than I was before…Some of the most miserable people I’ve met—in fact, absolutely the most miserable people I’ve met—have been stuck in this weird, larpy trad dynamic.” The happiest people she knows, on the other hand, “are just living in reality.” (Lauren Southern; @MediaInterview, 2024)
Recovery was also presented as overcoming fear and redeveloping self-identity, and through discovering a new and greater purpose in life. As explained: …I got to a place where I wasn't afraid anymore. I think we all paid a really high price from the ideologies that we were under, and from the systems that took advantage of young families… The pastors that systematically denied us help even when we asked for it, the lack of mental health care in Christianity, the lack of real attention to violence, and like the advocacy that they should be doing to protect people. There was a whole system that I knew I needed to speak against, and I knew that I was potentially making myself more vulnerable, but actually, the opposite is true—the more visible you are, the safer you are. (Tia Levings; Instagram, 2025).
Tia further stated “…My mission is to support the survivors of religious trauma towards their reclamation and healing, and to help you identify fundamentalist influence in the world around you” (Tia Levings; @Instagram, 2025).
Reconstructing subjectivity and gaining existential purpose was seen as providing meaning to life that was not centered around gendered arrangements or religious fundamentalism. Recovery from divorce and the exit from Trad-life, although extremely costly and often painful, allowed women to trust their own judgment, set boundaries, and make autonomous decisions.
Discussion
Perhaps for the first time online, women living traditional lives as wives and mothers have a global visibility and a voice about everyday life and active participation in heteropatriarchy (Mandel, 2023). For these women, Tradwifery is experienced as an exercise of conscious choice and commitment. Heteropatriarchal experiences of wife and mother are expressed as deeply embodied and fulfilling, and any suffering is constructed as an act of deference to husband and to God. Women come to Tradwife sites to express their identity, explore belonging, and perform expressions of femininity personally, politically, and through community.
For many, the appeal of Tradwifery lies in recognition and validation of a lifestyle choice that is different than what is contemporarily promoted as “normal” (Sykes & Hopner, 2024). Tradwife subculture offers a language and visual framework through which women can express a social purpose distinct from feminism and hustle culture. Yet, De-Tradding illustrated how the same communities and social media platforms that enable self-expression can also breed inauthenticity, create tensions around the performative nature of Tradwifery in heteropatriarchal relationships, and exacerbate the breakdown of heteropatriarchal relationships. De-Tradding was not simply a rejection of traditionalism or Tradwife subculture, but also a contribution to social conversations of what femininity, faith, and family look like for modern women.
Using Feminist Story Telling, women's narratives revealed De-Tradding as a process of reworking femininity: distancing from the politicized and commercialized Tradwife popularized by influencer culture and reclaiming the foundational values of care, spirituality, and belonging that traditional femininity represents. De-Tradding highlights how women navigate and renegotiate the versions of femininity that have been popularized by social and mainstream media. Through De-Tradding, women disengaged from Tradwife subculture in two ways: Rejecting labeling and the Trad-Brand as a commodified and politicized identity; and through rejecting the Trad-Life as a lived experience of gendered inequality, vulnerability, and control. In both forms, we identified De-Tradding as a process of boundary renegotiation within the broader landscape of online femininities and digital subcultures.
Reworking, Reimagining, and Reclaiming Traditional Femininity
Reworking
Rejection of the Tradwife label can be understood first through women's experiences of misalignment with commodified femininity and ideological rigidity. The Tradwife label and brand have been positioned as a political aesthetic that packages right-wing ideologies in the visual language of nostalgia, serenity, heteronormativity, and Christian fundamentalism. However, our findings show that women are not passive recipients of this positioning. These women perceive the modern Tradwife identity as a commodified “brand” that mistakes domestic devotion as content to be enterprised. This critical awareness and analysis of what a Tradwife is and is not led women to question the sincerity and authenticity of online influencer culture, exposing how publication of women as homemakers were being monetized and misrepresented through influencer marketing.
This discernment with the Trad-brand can also be theorized through critiques of choice feminism (Budgeon, 2014). The Tradwife brand thrives on the rhetoric of traditional femininity as a choice, and foregrounds that a career of submission and domestic labor, when voluntarily embraced, is a symbol of feminine empowerment. However, the rhetoric of choice can also obscure structures and value systems that limit agency (McCarver, 2011). Rejecting the Trad-label further revealed experiences of women who sought to maintain the foundational aspects of tradition adopted by the online Tradwife subculture (homemaking, faith, family, and maternal care), but who rejected the ideological narrative that such practices can only occur under heteropatriarchal authority. In doing so, they did not abandon the idea of the traditional family script; instead, they reinterpreted it by replacing submission with stewardship and patriarchal obedience with intentionality.
Reimagining
Social media algorithms increasingly reward aesthetic coherence over ideological consistency, privileging visual beauty and affective calm as markers of value. For Tradwife and Cottagecore creators, this means visibility is driven more by the algorithmic appeal of style, atmosphere, and femininity more broadly versus explicit ideological belief systems. Some social media algorithms facilitate proximity between ideologically adjacent yet aesthetically aligned subcultures. Within this landscape, Tradwife and Cottagecore creators coexist in algorithmically entangled echo-systems. Their beautified, manicured, and slow living aesthetic is highly legible and emotionally engaging for women seeking online escapism (Thömmes & Hübner, 2022). Such content is amplified, not because of its ideological affiliation, but because of its potential for engagement (Vaughan & Lane, 2025).
Where earlier forms of social media echo-chambers rewarded sustained engagement with like-minded creators (through conversation and community participation), the popularization of short-form content (i.e., TikTok and Instagram Reels) has established an echo-system environment where the algorithm rewards watch time more or as highly as community participation (Laskowski, 2025). As a result, some social media algorithms retain users by serving an endlessly scrollable supply of aesthetically or affectively related content. This appears to have shifted the crux of social media engagement from ideological coherence to aesthetic familiarity.
Women's narratives revealed how they navigated and used this shift away from Trad-life to make sense of their own ideological positions. Women discussed how engagement with one ideological aesthetic (i.e., Tradwifery through a baking or homemaking video), often led to encounters with the other (i.e., Cottagecore baking). The social media algorithm appeared to artificially reimagine the meaning of traditional femininity, creating ideologically neutral spaces where Cottagecore and Tradwife subcultures co-exist. This raises important questions around what femininity and feminine expression looks like when it is decoupled from right-wing ideology.
Women who identified traditional femininities within Cottagecore subculture also described learning to recognize when the content they were served belonged to the Tradwife world, even if the difference was intangible. This revealed a type of reflexive distinction, demonstrating how social media users may cultivate or interpret agency within their social media diet. Women with particularly strong ideological alignment may be able to sense ideological dissonance beneath aesthetic sameness, whereas others may more passively consume content from the ideological spectrum. This highlights that although ideological boundaries can blur, our ability to reflect and critically analyze the content we consume is retained through conscious consumption. The rise of social media echo-systems may then make feminist, queer, and other faith-based (re)imaginings of the Tradwife label and brand more visible. The computational nature of social media algorithms may therefore both sustain and destabilize online subcultures.
Reclaiming
Religious belief systems play a defining role in shaping both gender hierarchies and moral femininity (Whitnah, 2022). Within Tradwife subculture, faith is performed through content. For some women, De-Tradding was not a loss of faith, but a reclaiming of it. Tradwife sites opened up a new portal for Christian solidarity and messaging. Social media is a modern and widely used medium for Christian communication to testify and witness an individual's commitment to a life of faith, recruit followers, and as reiteration of theological authority over gendered social orders (Klassen & Lofton, 2013). The internet offers a place of inclusion for Christian women whose voices are often excluded from positions of authority in some religious denominations, and who are typically silent in practices of leading prayer, preaching, and teaching the word of God (Klassen & Lofton, 2013). The religious pulpit is reimagined and restructured in a mediated online world, “blending lines between religion and popular culture, believers and consumers” (Klassen & Lofton, 2013, p. 58).
Blogging has become increasingly popular for Christian women to share testimonies of faith to wide audiences. However, with such testimony also comes critiques around authenticity, accusations of hubris and even heresy (Klassen & Lofton, 2013). Women who invoked “the false gospel of Tradwife life” asserted that the value and recognition of Christian devotion is lived, not performed. They acknowledged the enduring appeal of the family script and its promise of moral order and belonging. In practice, this meant embracing a biblical womanhood that is lived rather than performed. These women reclaimed what traditional means in the digital age: a moral and ethical restoration of authenticity that reimagines traditional femininity as a lived practice of conscious belief.
New Lives and New Futures
In contrast, De-Tradding that rejected Trad-life was in response to domestic violence, infidelity, and unequal power arrangements in intimate relationships. These women voluntarily and involuntarily left worlds where the ideological traditional family was the script for naturalized and hierarchically structured gender roles (Okin, 2015). Although feminist researchers argue that the traditional family is largely an imagery in contemporary societies (Ferguson, 2016), for Tradwives, it is both an ideological and material reality. In this instance marriage and family “constitute the pivot of a societal system of gender that renders women vulnerable to dependency, exploitation and abuse” (Okin, 1989, p. 136). Former tradwives in this research reported taking sole responsibility for the health of their former marriages and for the institution of the family as ordained by God, creating enormous psychological, emotional and physical burdens for these women. It also opened up legitimacy for male dominance and clerical sanction of blame and punishment for failure to be a self-sacrificing—and therefore—good wife and mother (Nason-Clark, 1997).
Perpetuating traditional ideas about gender for these women meant uneven participation across workplace sectors, gender wage gaps, and asymmetrical authority and participation in political and economic systems (Okin, 2015). Rejecting the Trad-life, therefore, required grappling with harsh socioeconomic realities of single motherhood and recovering from physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. However, exiting Trad-life was also about experiences of psychological and emotional autonomy, recovery and joy, and at times, a discovery of feminism. Divorce can be an opportunity for women to gain self-determination and restructure their lives in ways that redefine their lifeworlds. Initiating an exit from a right-wing infused marriage as an act of autonomy requires a rejection of patriarchal gendered order, and a reconceptualization of relationships (Almog & Herbst-Debby, 2025). Rather than seeing autonomy in terms of individual self-management, feminist scholars argue for a “relational autonomy” (Mackenzie & Stoljar, 2000). This framing acknowledges the importance of social relationships and family in women's lives, and how these are managed in terms of seeking autonomy and managing emotional and psychological security (Almog & Herbst-Debby, 2025).
Divorce then becomes a reconstruction of selfhood within and through changing social relationships and life circumstance (Almog & Herbst-Debby, 2025). Our findings show that women's departures from controlling relationships and extreme interpretations of fundamentalist Christianity were not only acts of resistance but also acts of spiritual recovery. Many drew on new online communities to restore agency and purpose. In this sense, leaving Trad-life was not a renunciation of family or faith, but a redefinition of both.
Although women spoke of the financial and emotional challenges of rebuilding life after submission, they also framed this process as one of growth and moral awakening. In re-establishing autonomy, women discovered new ways to embody care and community (some faith-based and others not). These women founded online collectives, adopted mentoring roles, and uniquely blended lessons from faith with modern feminist advocacy. Women in this research wrote new cultural scripts about their place in the world, challenging systems that once oppressed them. These narratives blur the line between tradition and liberation and reveal how women authentically recompose their identities within universal ideas of love, belonging, responsibility, and justice.
Practice Implications
This research highlights the complexities of women's lives who both remain in and exit heteropatriarchal arrangements. For psychologists, educators, and health professionals understanding how religion may fundamentally shape a women's identity and daily practices is crucial. Respecting her agency to validate herself in terms of wife and mother in highly heteropatriarchal arrangements will be necessary to build the rapport when support is needed for mental and physical wellbeing. It is also important to recognize the groups of traditional women who are not right-wing, and that applying unilateral labels to women can be harmful in undermining their decision making and autonomy. For women exiting Trad-life, and especially those leaving abusive marriages, they will likely require additional layers of support to survive the existential shock of simultaneous losses of community, family, faith, marriage, safety, meaning, purpose, and economic security. Dealing with the complex grief that arises from exit may require experts who have extensive awareness of coercive control, and religious or spiritual trauma. It may also be vital to ensure that there is practical and economic assistance offered through education, vocational training, employment, and boosting financial literacy. More broadly, there could also be the need to build and strengthen the ability to critically analyze social media content and engage in conscious consumption when offered ideologically adjacent, yet aesthetically aligned subcultures. Greater attention needs to be given to the commodification of ideology, especially in times when there is a global shift towards the Right.
Future Research
Online platforms tend to amplify content that is likely to gain visibility, creating certain algorithmic currents. An interrogation of the reasons behind the popularity of social media sites constructed around idyllic slow living, rustic self-sufficiency, and the aestheticization of traditional femininity would be illuminating. Research that also investigates the algorithmic currents is needed to see what sites are delivered to women seeking information on marriage and motherhood.
The women who have shared their experiences about living in heteropatriarchal relationships, as well as de-tradding, are likely to represent a specific subset of women who are motivated to advocate and process their experiences publicly. Online storytelling can be shaped by follower expectations, platform culture, and digital communities. Online posts tend to offer limited demographic information, making it difficult to explore details of the social and economic environments of women through social media observation. Interviewing women from different social groups would add this necessary fine-grained analysis. In-depth interviews with tradwives to better understand their commitment to highly conservative gender arrangements and institutions, as well their stance against feminism, would make a significant contribution to research and practice. Likewise interviewing former tradwives who haven’t shared their stories online could provide greater knowledge about exiting heteropatriarchal relationships. Finally, greater research is needed to explore the lives of women living in traditional ways-of-being who are secular and/or left-leaning. In doing so, we may broaden understandings of the family that not only shape women's lives, but social norms, institutions, legislation, and political structures.
Conclusion
This study expands current knowledge of the Tradwife subculture into more complex, contested, and dynamic spaces. This study challenges binary depictions of women as either savvy ideological actors or vulnerable victims of strict heteropatriarchal relationships, instead considering women as active agents navigating intersections of ideology, identity, and lived experience. The content creators in this study highlighted that contemporary feminist theory must grapple with sometimes paradoxical forms of agency. Some of these women may still value marriage, homemaking, and motherhood, yet they also refuse to treat these as naturally ordained or compulsory roles. Their modern interpretation of the family script demonstrates an insistence that both feminist and feminine transformation can occur within tradition as well as against it. If feminism is truly a movement about the rights of women, then it must be inclusive and recognize the agency of traditional and modern women. This does not preclude critique of traditional gender norms and arrangements any more than it precludes critique of progressive norms and arrangements. Women deserve legal, moral, psychological, and physical protection both inside and outside of marriage. They have a right to have their choices respected, their experiences legitimated, and their voices heard. We must recognize and value autonomy and self-determination for all women, on their terms and in their time.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
