“Trad wife” is short for “traditional wife,” but what we’re seeing online seems to have grown into something more than just a woman who takes care of her home and family. Apparently, being a wife, raising your kids, cooking dinner, and keeping your house running needed a rebrand. Enter the trad wife.
If you’ve spent any time scrolling social media lately, you’ve probably seen the videos. She’s baking bread from scratch, cooking meals, tending to the house, maybe homeschooling the kids, and somehow doing all of it while looking cute in a dress and little apron. Meanwhile, some of us are trying to remember if we ever moved the clothes from the washer to the dryer. 😂
Now, before anybody starts fussing, I’m not knocking the trad wife lifestyle. If baking bread, making every meal from scratch, staying home with your kids and taking care of your household is your happy, then baby, DO YOUR HAPPY! But Grace and I started talking about this whole trad wife thing on The Mamas and Coffee Show, and somewhere between laundry, baseboards, and me imagining myself getting up at 2:30 in the morning to prepare my husband’s lunch, I realized that I am obviously NOT an internet trad wife.
And you know what? That’s perfectly fine.
So, What Exactly Is a Trad Wife?
“Trad wife” is short for “traditional wife,” but what we’re seeing online seems to have grown into something more than just a woman who takes care of her home and family. During the show, Grace talked about how the internet version has almost become a personality or aesthetic of its own. There’s the sourdough bread, homesteading, farming, certain clothes and, of course, the cute little apron while you’re cooking.
That’s where I think things get interesting, because there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things. There’s nothing wrong with staying home with your children, homeschooling, cooking every meal, doing the laundry, or having dinner waiting when your spouse walks through the door. The question for me is whether you’re doing those things because that’s genuinely the life you enjoy or because the internet has somehow convinced us that this is what being a “good wife” is supposed to look like.
Social media has a funny way of taking somebody else’s happiness and turning it into a measuring stick for everybody else.
I Told My Husband BEFORE We Got Married
Grace asked me what my day would look like if I actually lived according to the internet version of trad-wife life, and this is where the conversation went completely off the rails.
I started thinking about my husband’s current work schedule. If I were going to do this thing the way I see it portrayed online, I’d probably need to get up around 2:30 in the morning, wake him up, fulfill certain wifely duties—and we’re just going to leave that right there. Pack his lunch while he’s getting ready, send him out the door around 4:00 AM and then, I guess, go collect some eggs from the chicken coop.
Girl! We don’t even have chickens.
I couldn’t make it through my imaginary trad-wife morning before I was ready to quit. And honestly, none of this should surprise my husband because before we got married, I told that man straight up, “Look dude, I don’t cook, and I don’t clean.” Now yes, I cook, and yes, I clean, but what I meant was that he was not marrying somebody who planned to wait on him hand and foot. We were going into this marriage as a team, and that has always been our arrangement.
And twenty-something years later, we’re still here, so apparently it worked out just fine.
But Wait…I LOVE Cleaning Baseboards
Now here’s where I may lose some of y’all. I might not get up at 2:30 AM to pack a lunch, and I certainly don’t wash my husband’s clothes; he actually prefers that I DON’T, but I absolutely love cleaning baseboards.
Grace looked at me like I had confessed to a crime when I told her that I enjoy cleaning baseboards and bathrooms. Meanwhile, she hates mopping. She’ll organize and create systems all day long, but that mop bucket can sit right there and wait for her husband and kids. That whole part of our conversation actually made me think about how silly these labels can become. I can love scrubbing a bathroom and still have absolutely no desire to do everybody’s laundry. Grace can enjoy taking care of her home and family while also having household chores she refuses to claim.
One little snapshot of either of our lives could probably make us look very “traditional,” but life isn’t a snapshot.
Yes, I Was a Stay-at-Home Mom
This is also where our conversation became a little deeper for me because I was a stay-at-home mom.
Before we had children, I was working and focused on climbing that corporate career ladder. After our first daughter was born, I planned to return to work, but then I looked at that baby and basically said, “Yeah…nah. I want to stay home.” And of course, being a stay-at-home mom isn’t some new internet phenomenon. Plenty of parents make that choice for all kinds of reasons.
Over the years, I went back to work at different times, stayed home again, took nice long maternity leaves when I could, and eventually our military lifestyle made staying home easier because packing up and moving every few years isn’t exactly career-friendly.
My husband recently asked me whether I ever resented him or his career because of some of those choices. I didn’t. I genuinely loved being home with my girls. Now, did being home with them day in and day out sometimes drive me completely bonkers? ABSOLUTELY. Both things can be true.
I also realized during those years that I needed things that would fulfill me, so I took on little side gigs, made friends, and found ways to have something beyond being somebody’s wife and somebody’s mama; that’s exactly how Mamas and Coffee® was born. That’s one of the things I think gets lost when we put these pretty labels on motherhood and marriage. You can love being home. You can love taking care of your family. You can be grateful for that season of your life and still need something that belongs to YOU.
My Kids Were NOT Coming Home to a Freshly Cooked Meal Every Day
And apparently my children have been telling people about my stay-at-home mama days. 😂
One of my daughters told me she was talking to some friends and mentioned that I had been a stay-at-home mom when they were younger. Her friends immediately pictured this lovely scene where my children came home every day to a freshly cooked meal waiting for them.
My daughter cleared that up REAL quick.
She basically told them, “Nah, my mama would tell us to go in the kitchen and fix something to eat.”
Ummm…EXCUSE ME. I was teaching survival skills! Independence! Life preparation! 😂
Once my girls were old enough to safely do things for themselves, I expected them to learn how to do those things. If there was food in the kitchen, go make yourself some breakfast. Fix yourself some lunch. I wasn’t neglecting those babies; I was raising future adults.
Being a mother doesn’t mean doing everything for your children forever. Part of our job is teaching these humans how to function without us. And now that my girls are grown and grown-ish and heading out into the world, I stand by that decision. Please know how to make yourself a sandwich.
What You See Online Isn’t the Whole Story
This is probably my biggest issue with the trad-wife trend, and really with social media trends in general. We’re watching content, and content isn’t necessarily someone’s entire life.
Someone can set up a camera, put on a cute dress, bake bread, clean the kitchen and make a beautiful 60-second video. That doesn’t mean the other 23 hours and 59 minutes of her day looked like that. And there’s nothing wrong with creating beautiful content, but there’s something wrong when the rest of us forget that we’re watching content and start comparing our real lives to somebody else’s edited version.
Grace said something during our conversation that I loved. She basically said she wants to know YOU, not the trad-wife you, the trend you, or whatever version of yourself happens to be popular online this week.
And I thought, YES!
Know You. Be You. Love You.
See how I slid that right on in there? 😂 But seriously, it fits. You don’t need to reinvent your entire life every time the internet decides something new is trending.
Trad Wife, Career Wife, Stay-at-Home Wife…How About Just Being YOU?
Grace and I actually live very different versions of motherhood and marriage. She takes on more of what we might call traditional household roles because that’s what works for her family. She homeschools, manages much of the household and handles the finances because she has the time and it makes sense for their family. She also works outside the home a couple of days a week, so even she doesn’t fit neatly inside this little internet box.
And that’s really the point.
She isn’t doing those things to show out for strangers online. She’s doing them because they work for her household and because she finds joy in many of them. As she said during the show, do it for yourself, your family and the people you’re serving—not for the praise of everybody else.
Me? When I asked my husband whether he thought I was a traditional wife, this man busted out laughing.
Sir.
I didn’t quite know how to take that.
Eventually he admitted that yes, I do take on some traditional roles. But he also knows who he married. I talk. I have opinions. And sometimes when I present one of my FABulous ideas to the family, I’m not necessarily asking whether we’re doing it. I’m informing everybody of what we’re about to do.
There’s a difference.
Maybe We Don’t Need Another Box
That’s really where I landed after our conversation.
Want to stay home? Stay home. Want to work? Work. Want to homeschool? Homeschool. Want to send those babies right on down to the schoolhouse? BYE BABIES! Have a FABulous day! Want to bake your bread from scratch? Girl, bake it. Want to buy it already sliced, bagged and ready for a sandwich? Add that thing to the cart.
Marriage, motherhood and womanhood aren’t competitions, and they certainly don’t need to become performances just because something is trending online. Build a life that works for your actual household, not the camera, the comments or the algorithm.
And if your happy happens to include a cute apron, homemade sourdough and fresh eggs from the chicken coop, I love that for you.
Just don’t ask me to wake up at 2:30 AM and collect the eggs.
Because…
Yeah, nah.
Now, Let’s Talk About It
Would you consider yourself a trad wife, a traditional wife, neither, or a little bit of everything, depending on the day? And do you think what we’re seeing online actually represents traditional family roles, or has social media turned the whole thing into something completely different?
Drop your perspective in the comments, and then catch the full episode of The Mamas and Coffee Show because Grace and I had A LOT to say about this one.
☕ Real talk. Different perspectives. Good coffee.
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