The first
time I heard of the trad wife trend, several years ago, I was like, “Oh, that’s
interesting, good to see that catching on.” But then I looked a little bit
closer at it and realized, that it was just another way for women who want
attention to get attention. There is nothing traditional about turning your
quiet home life, or homesteading life, into an online social media movement.
I have not
followed this movement closely, because following such people does not interest
me. But also because it was obvious where such a movement was going to go. Some
of these women would turn out to be frauds. Others would publicly deconstruct
their traditional family lifestyle and go full feminist. Others would have
been planted in the movement to do just this, so that many young, impressionable
wives were motivated to upturn their families. Others would just become
generally disillusioned by the movement and seek to go the way of many modern
normie women. And the true traditional wives, the ones whose way of life has
been appropriated for social media stardom and attention, would simply keep
plugging away in their family homes, caring for and raising their children, and
honouring their husbands, blissfully unaware of the grifting these social media
starlets were doing.
Low and
behold, where are we now? Evelyn Rae from Caldron Pool notes,
“It
now seems like hardly a few months pass without another self-styled
traditionalist influencer being exposed as a fraud. We’ve all seen it happen. A
carefully curated online persona proclaiming modesty, order, submission,
virtue, and family values, followed by the sudden unveiling of a gross, double
life. The warning from the Book of Numbers proves inescapably true: “be sure
your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23).
But
why does this keep happening? And why does it seem particularly common in the
world of “trad” or conservative influencers?...
…The
Corrupting Power of Recognition
There
is also another factor rarely acknowledged. The intoxicating effect of even
minor fame.
A
small following can awaken big pride. Even modest recognition can stir up a
spirit of arrogance and amplify sin. Many of us have seen it happen in ordinary
life. Give someone a little attention, and suddenly a different personality
emerges.
Social
media can accelerate this. Praise, admiration, ‘likes,’ and attention follow
every post, story, and comment. The influencer begins to believe their own
projected image, and eventually, the persona overtakes the person.
And
if character has not been deeply formed in private, public visibility will
inevitably expose the cracks of hypocrisy.
The
Illusion of the Curated Life
What's
more, there is also another problem. Social media is inherently selective.
No
one posts their worst moments. No one broadcasts their impatience, marital
tensions, private doubts, or sinful habits. What you see is an edited highlight
reel, carefully chosen, filtered, and presented for effect.
This
is not unique to “tradwives.” It is universal. Everyone online only shows what
they want you to see and withholds what they do not.
The
danger is that followers too often forget this.
Men
compare their wives to curated online personas. Women compare themselves to
impossibly polished domestic ideals. Couples assume their own struggles are
abnormal because nobody else’s marriages appear this dysfunctional or chaotic.
But
proximity gives perspective. Anyone living closely with even the most polished
online influencer would discover the same mixture of virtue and weakness, 0bedience
and sin, found in every human heart.
To
imagine otherwise is pure naivety.”[1]
What Evelyn
says here is correct.
But I would
also add that the core of the problem is that these tradwives have largely made
themselves the content they are presenting. They know that the online algorithm
loves to see a pretty woman doing the things that other people do. They know
they can sell themselves while claiming to sell a traditional model of life. Hence,
a lot of women with no values at all, have been incentivized to publicly
present themselves as “trad-wives.”
This does not
mean that woman should not be contributing to the public culture, not at all.
But wherever you see women making themselves the focus, or men for that matter,
you should see serious problems.
In reality if
you and your wife are living a simple, traditional life, her focus will much
more centre around the home, than it will in public presence and attention. In
the case of some women God has used them to bless other women in society, and
they have a genuine positive influence, but this not the norm. The norm is that
many women, and men, see online presence as an arena with a low bar of entry
with which they can attempt to get attention, by any and all means. A movement like this was bound to
attract such bad elements. When a woman is seeking attention about herself from
others, especially men, then you know that she is going to end in disaster. When
a woman is seeking to stand for something, that is different. But overall, this
trend was always going to end bad.
List of References
[1] https://www.caldronpool.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-tradwife?fbclid=IwY2xjawQDTAJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeY8aq4GWTUiGSrqk5QoMfnSBQmoYKp9GqnVHlsJFGbhcs-bSGShki_ey65Z8_aem_ge30KY8VOh2SUjBr8O-rEQ
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