The Tradwife Illusion: How “Not Working” Became a Full-Time Job

One of the wildest things about being a content creator is watching tradwife influencers claim to be full-time stay-at-home moms when they are clearly running businesses. We know what it takes. The planning, filming, editing, and brand deals are all full-time work. So when someone says they “don’t work,” it becomes one of the most misleading and damaging messages being pushed toward women right now.

We are watching a handful of women build entire brands around the idea of choosing family over everything while quietly operating as powerful CEOs. They are building an image of simplicity while managing full-scale operations. It is a business model built on pretending not to have one.

I would know. I was one of the first mommy bloggers and spent almost a decade writing about being a stay-at-home mom. I never hid how much work it was to both raise kids and create content about raising kids. I was honest about how exhausting it was because I wanted validation for the reality of it. What we are seeing now is the opposite. Women are presenting the stay-at-home life as effortless and serene when it is anything but. It can be beautiful and meaningful, but it is also demanding and relentless.

Do you know how damaging it is for a young mom to look around in the chaos of raising small children and think everyone else is doing it beautifully and easily? It is a direct path to self-loathing, self-doubt, and silence. It teaches women to hide how difficult motherhood really is. Can you not see how anti-motherhood tradwife behavior actually is? Because it brands motherhood as something it is not. Motherhood is hard, and that is one of the things that makes it so beautiful. It breaks you open and rebuilds you every single day. But if we pretend it is something effortless and picture-perfect, we will destroy the mental health of countless women.

And let’s be clear, the effortless aesthetic being shown online is often built with professional cameras, editing software, lighting, and sometimes entire teams helping to craft the illusion of ease. It is not authenticity. It is marketing.

The one thing this tradwife message truly benefits is the idea that women should remain in quiet servitude to men. When we are told that giving everything to our family is easy and our duty, it normalizes an imbalance where one partner gets to live their life freely while the other is expected to manage it all, the home, the children, the mental load, and still be grateful for it. We are told not to complain because it is supposedly simple and beautiful. People, wake up. That is not empowerment. It is manipulation repackaged in an Instagram filter.

Feminism is not about one kind of woman. It says you can choose to be whoever you want to be. A stay-at-home mom, a corporate leader, a creator, a homesteader, a Sunday school teacher, or a woman who chooses to step completely outside of traditional family roles. What feminism rejects is the idea that there is only one right way to be a woman. And that, my friends, is what we are fighting against. Because you can be a woman however you want to be.

If you want to stay home with your kids, like I did, do it. But do not give up your power. Do not be coerced by a message that romanticizes servitude. Your work, your choices, and your independence matter, no matter what form they take.

What is truly destructive is when women are told their value only comes from staying home while the people spreading that message are quietly building empires from it. Feminism is what gives all of us the freedom to choose our path, and diminishing that truth while profiting from it is one of the most dishonest things happening online today.