In recent years, a traditional stay-at-home-mom lifestyle has increased in popularity on TikTok. To define the term, a tradwife is a woman who would stay at home and care for her children and husband, typically with no independent income. The issue isn’t in staying at home and wanting to care for her family, but rather in having no independence and often being forced into this role.
In the 1950s, women and girls practically had their lives set up for them. Women were pressured into finding a partner and marriage quite early in life, marrying right out of high school or in college. They were often said to be in search of a “Mrs.” degree, meaning they were in search of a husband. Women still had their own aspirations but were pressured into believing that marriage was far more important for them than a real degree.
Girls would be married as early as 18 and would start a family quite quickly. Within seven months of their wedding, most would be pregnant with their first child and would often have four to six children. However, this wasn’t always by choice. It wasn’t socially acceptable for a wife to shut her husband out of the bedroom, as it was deemed a necessary component of a healthy marriage. Without easy access to birth control, women would be forced into bearing children for decades.
At this time, domesticity was treasured and idealized in media. A woman who chose to work and have an independent income was deemed selfish. If a family could afford it, it was practically necessary that the woman stayed home and did all the cleaning and cooking while her husband worked.
They weren’t getting all of this work accomplished every day and staying their most beautiful self with just their own will, of course: Their best friends were drugs.
Back in the day, amphetamines, barbiturates and benzodiazepines were all considered “mommy’s little helpers.” Amphetamines are stimulant drugs that speed up your body, increasing your heart rate and breathing; barbiturates induce drowsiness and relax your body; benzodiazepines are sedatives that serve as a short-term treatment of stress and anxiety.
Women would even be prescribed blends of different drugs, like a drug called Dexamyl, which was a blend of amphetamine and barbiturate sedative amobarbital. These addictions practically deteriorated women’s brains, making it easier for them to cope with abusive home lives and fear during the Cold War.
Today, women online are embracing this traditional lifestyle. Famous creators like Hannah Neeleman, known as Ballerina Farm online, and Nara Smith post videos showing their day-to-day routines, such as cooking, cleaning and raising their children. These women are exhausting themselves taking on this “do-it-all” mentality.
Of course, this differs greatly from tradwives in the 1950s. These women are choosing this role as a stay-at-home mom and wife instead of being forced into this life. That’s what feminism is all about: a woman’s right to choose. However, the rise of this lifestyle may lead to regression.
With women in this position being more vulnerable, it leads to men being seen as “protectors” of women. The attitudes of a traditional working, protector husband and stay-at-home wife “are reminiscent of 18th-century legal customs that placed married women under the protection and authority of their husbands.” This meant that they had no independence, and their life was their husbands’ life. It sets “a precedent of social and political inequality.”
The SAHMs of TikTok are not entirely dependent on their husbands, though—having millions of followers and likes on TikTok—they get a large amount of personal income. It just comes down to whether or not it was their choice and if they are comfortable taking on these roles.
