This special issue examines the phenomenon of the tradwife—a “retro feminine” figure who performs extreme domesticity on social media. The rise of the tradwife is familiar, yet also reflective of the current technopolitical moment. To introduce this special issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly, we first explore a set of cultural forces that we believe have paved the way for the tradwife's recent ascendence. We contend that tradwives used social media to sell a message perfectly-tailored to the moment: They championed old-school gender roles by tapping into women's dissatisfaction with feminist progress; they showed off laborious domestic pursuits during coronavirus disease 2019, when people's attention narrowed to the home; and they evoked nostalgia in ways that echoed far-right political communications. Next, we summarize seven articles published in this special issue. The first three articles use feminist theories and content-coding strategies to describe the visual and ideological landscape of the tradwife. The next two articles identify how sexist and patriarchal ideologies characterize men's roles in the tradwife phenomenon. The last two articles contend with women's experiences living and leaving the tradlife. Finally, we name several open questions about the tradwife phenomenon that feminist psychological theory and methods are well-equipped to answer.
Betz et al. (Mon,) studied this question.