Tradwife Influencing and Its Harmful Similarities to the 50’s Housewife

            A woman. She serves dinner to her family with a smile on her face. She cooks, cleans, and tends to the children while her husband goes to work to bring home the daily bread- a classic advertisement pasted on magazines and newspapers throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Or is it the depiction of a modern woman? The perfect, American, nuclear family. But the reality is not so well-hidden.. My US History teacher liked to introduce us to songs that are reflective of the era she is teaching. One song in particular stood out to me. “Mother's Little Helper” by the Rolling Stones, released in 1966, highlights the realities of being a stay-at-home mother in that era. Since those times, the Feminist movement has pushed this lifestyle aside, encouraging the working woman. In modern times, the average American family consists of two working parents and a number of kids. However, recent movements like the “tradwife” have shifted this modern way of life. This movement, which gained popularity on TikTok and Instagram, encourages women to remain at home and provide their families with home-cooked meals and all-natural lifestyles. The gaining social media influence of the tradwife movement is similar to that of the 50s, with housewives. Because of what we know about the realities of being a 50s housewife, the social media influence of the tradwife movement is harmful.

            With the rising popularity of the tradwife trend-turned-movement, there remains a question of why it has gained so much popularity. Tradwife, short for Traditional Wife, is a relatively new trend on social media, mainly on TikTok and Instagram. It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that TikTok gained massive popularity, especially with young people. According to Drew Harwell with The Washington Post, “Two-thirds of American teens use the app, and 1 in 6 say they watch it ‘almost constantly,’… And while half of TikTok’s U.S. audience is younger than 25, the app is winning grown-ups’ attention, too.” Large numbers of people, particularly those under the age of 25, are being consciously and subconsciously influenced by the possibly hundreds of TikTok’s watched daily.

            Because of the incredible popularity of TikTok, influencers of all kinds have gained massive popularity. Tradwives fall under the lifestyle influencer category. With those who wish to make it big as a lifestyle influencer, it is essential to establish a “brand”. Not a material item you wish to sell, but an idea: “Lifestyle marketing focuses on a niche target market's ideals, everyday interests, and values that align with the lifestyle they want to lead. Rather than selling a product, lifestyle brands advertise a way of life instead.” (Brook Boucher). If lifestyle influencers are selling what viewers aspire to be, then what are tradwife influencers trying to sell?

Lifestyle influencers Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm have gained popularity in recent years on TikTok. Both of these women post TikTok videos that showcase their “traditional” lives. Nara Smith (@naraazizasmith on TikTok), wife and mother of three, gained popularity by posting TikTok videos of her home-cooked meals from scratch. Viewers marvel at her soft-spoken voice and ASMR-quality videos. Before becoming a mother and influencer, Nara Smith was a famous model with IMG Models. Hanna Neeleman, commonly referred to as Ballerina Farm (@ballerinafarm on TikTok), is a mother of eight who gained popularity by posting TikTok videos about her family, life on their farm, and company. Before becoming a mother and influencer, she attended The Juilliard School as a ballerina. As of April 2025, Nara Smith has 11.7 million followers and 662.7 million likes. Ballerina Farm has 9.7 million followers and 170.4 million likes.

            Receiving likes and followers is a huge part of lifestyle influence. When selling a “brand,” lifestyle influencers must strive for relatability while maintaining an “ideal” lifestyle. “A whopping 35% of users follow brands on TikTok. This is fantastic news for anyone who wants to highlight their unique product or brand on the platform. Users are always looking for something innovative and new to follow and buy into and are actively searching for brand recommendations and creative content.” (Entrepreneur, 2023) Though neither of these women explicitly identifies with the tradwife term, both are large figureheads in the TikTok sphere for this new tradwife movement. What’s being sold by these two “tradwife” lifestyle influencers is the homemaker lifestyle: Women staying home, not having a job outside the house, cooking, cleaning, tending to many children, and being content doing it.

            Influence and advertising often go hand-in-hand on platforms like TikTok. Brand sponsorships ask influencers to advertise their product, which often enhances the influencers' "brand". Advertising itself has long been an influential aspect of life. Similarly to lifestyle influencers selling their “brand”, advertisements in the mid-20th century often influenced the desired lifestyles of women. Katherine J. Parkin’s book Food is Love: Food Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America, talks about how advertising has shaped gender roles in the 20th century. Parkin’s explains to the reader a deeper understanding of what advertisements create within a society: “Fundamentally, advertising seeks to shape. That it might at times have reflected reality was coincidental, but not its purpose. While it is tempting to use advertisements as a historical record of the past. They cannot serve as windows into the reality of people’s lives. Instead, they can only reveal the ideologies and messages that advertisers hoped to sell products… advertisers used images and text not only to influence consumers’ purchases, but also to sell gender roles.” (5.) Parkins notes that after a change in desired perception by companies in 1947, “ads relied almost exclusively on the ideal of young, attractive women. These women, usually smiling seductively, serves as the promise of things to come for those who consumed the product.” (172). Brands following trending advertisement styles, such as young, attractive women showing off a product, create more engagement. But they also encourage a deeper advertisement. Not for the products being sold, but for the desire to be that young woman. A constant reminder that, if you wish to become this woman, you must buy this product. If you don’t buy this product, you can never be this woman.

You may think advertisements showing off a “perfect” woman don’t affect those who see them. However, advertisements can influence a person on a very deep and personal level. In Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, Betty says that there is a thing that almost all women suffer from. It’s the desire to be something that is unattainable. These desires have been pushed upon women by things that they encounter in their daily lives. Based on Betty Friedan's experience and talking with other women about life in the 1950s, she says:

“The public image, in the magazines and television commercials, is designed to sell washing machines, cake mixes, deodorants, detergents, rejuvenating face creams, hair tints. But the power of that image, on which companies spend millions of dollars for television time and ad space, comes from this: American women no longer know who they are. They are sorely in need of a new image to help them find their identity. As the motivational researchers keep telling the advertisers, American women are so unsure of who they should be that they look to this glossy public image to decide every detail of their lives.” (Freidan 96.)

When consistently confronted with an “ideal” image, these women became unsure of who they were. There was a constant drive to achieve what magazines told women was “ideal.” The bar for “perfection” was constantly rising with women. When confronted with so-called “perfection,” these women were left feeling inadequate. In Betty Friedan's words: “I think that this has been the unknown heart of woman’s problem in America for a long time, this lack of a private image. Public images that defy reason and have very little to do with women themselves have had the power to shape too much of their lives. These images would not have such power, if women were not suffering a crisis of identity.”

            There is an idea that housewives in the 50s were happy homemakers. However, there is also an opposing and more widely accepted reality: that many housewives in the 50s were quite miserable in their roles. After World War II, numerous women who had been employed in traditionally “masculine” jobs like manufacturing were fired in order to return those jobs to men returning from the war. At the same time, much advertising and government influences encouraged women to stay home and start families for the returning soldiers. Initiatives like the GI Bill contributed to the expansion of suburban family home construction. The average age at which both men and women first married dropped significantly after World War II as well. During this period, there were very few options available for women. A woman could either raise a family at home and or work a job with very little pay and room for growth. The women who opted to raise a family were those struggling with numerous mental health issues. The song, “Mother’s Little Helper” by the Rolling Stones describes a housewife who takes drugs to cope with her unsatisfying life. Valium became the drug of choice for many housewives. Also known as Diazepam, Valium is a depressant used for anxiety, muscle spasms, and seizures. This drug gained popularity because many women experienced nervous breakdowns. Imagine if you were left at home with nothing to do except clean, cook, and care for children. At first, it may be manageable, but with little emotional support from husbands who worked every waking hour to support the family, one begins to feel isolated and alone in their own home. The advertisements during this time did not help either. With each new issue of a magazine, the latest and greatest products were promoted. And like we discussed earlier, the advertisements also sold a “perfect” American family and woman. Women in the 50s had little to no choice over the matter of becoming wives and homemakers. The lives they were compelled to live were incredibly harmful to their mental health.

            This isn’t to say that staying home, caring for children, and living an all-natural lifestyle is wrong. Many women would prefer doing so rather than having a 9-5 job. Feminism has changed the United States in a way that women are now able to make the choice of staying home or working a job. However, nowadays it is rare for families to not rely on two incomes. Many families with children depend on income from both parents to pay for childcare, insurance, loans, rent, and groceries. According to Julie Sullivan with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Based on 2015–17 CE data... the proportion of “both full time” households is 52 percent. So, even among households with children, dual-income households make up two-thirds (66 percent) of the total.” The majority of households with children in the U.S. consist of two full-time incomes. However, Ballerina Farm has a thriving company that sells animal products from her family's farm. This business supports her lifestyle of staying home and caring for her children. But, according to The Commerce Institute, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, “20.4% of businesses fail in their first year after opening, 49.4% fail in their first 5 years, and 65.3% fail in their first 10 years.” Operating a business from home is risky. A large number of businesses fail within the first year of opening. Although Ballerina Farm operates a thriving business, it is unrealistic for the majority of people. Sharing an unrealistic lifestyle often sets people up for failure and disappointment.

In modern times, it's easy to be influenced. You see someone wearing some new shoes and you think, “I’ve got to have those!” Or maybe you see someone lifting weights while you scroll lazily on your couch, and you get the feeling that you should be doing something better with your life. That feeling exists for all kinds of lifestyle influences. Especially when it comes to mothers and women watching tradwife influencers. When confronted with a simple, easy life, of course you would wish for that to be yours. You find yourself dreaming of what could be. But reality sets in. Life isn’t what's shown to you through a screen. And yet, those videos and posts are always on your feed. When constantly shown an image of a “perfect” housewife, women often feel disappointed in themselves. Just as women in the 1950s were shown the latest and greatest lifestyles of nuclear living, women today are presented with the same concept, just in different clothing. Tradwife influencers, like BallerinaFarm and Nara Smith, who showcase a more simplistic, easy, and maternal lifestyle, are just doing what lifestyle influencers do: selling unrealistic standards. By selling this tradwife lifestyle, they encourage viewers to aspire to that standard of living. This leads to envy and dissatisfaction. The 50s housewife was miserable and often relied on drugs to cope with the very same life that tradwife influencers are selling. And those who cannot attain that very lifestyle can feel inadequate.

            Tradwife influencing is similar to that of the advertisements shown to women in the 1950s and will likely have the same effect in the future, if not already. Women in the 50’s, who were largely forced to become homemakers, saw advertisements that sold them “perfection”, but that same “perfection” was largely unattainable. In the 21st century, with the emergence of social media, advertising has shifted into influencing. Lifestyle influencers wishing to sell a life that is “perfect” and advertisements selling a “perfect” woman are the same problem, simply with different packaging. The effect of advertising in the past led women to despise their lives, wishing to attain the unattainable. The gaining influence of the tradwife movement is harmful because it sets up an increasingly unattainable life in the same way advertisements set up an unattainable life in the 50’s.

Works Cited

Boucher, Brooke. “What are the Benefits of Lifestyle Marketing?” WFSB Advertising, 23 Mar. 2022, https://www.wfsbadvertising.com/blog/what-are-the-benefits-of-lifestyle-marketing

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 1963. Introduction by Anna Quindlen, New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 2001. https://elearning.unipd.it/spgi/pluginfile.php/201754/mod_resource/content/1/The_Feminine_Mystique.pdf

Harwell, Drew. “How TikTok ate the internet” The Washington Post, 14 Oct. 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/tiktok-popularity/

Parkin, Katherine J. Food Is Love: Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Sullivan, Julie. “Comparing Characteristics and Selected Expenditures of Dual- and Single-Income Households with Children.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Sept. 2020, https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/comparing-characteristics-and-selected-expenditures-of-dual-and-single-income-households-with-children.htm#top

“The Importance of TikTok Likes”, Entrepreneur. 1 May 2023. https://www.entrepreneur.com/en-au/growth-strategies/the-importance-of-tiktok-likes/450707

“What Percentage of Businesses Fail Each Year? (2025 Data).” Commerce Institute, https://www.commerceinstitute.com/business-failure-rate/