Let’s Stop Demonising Tradwives

This article originally featured on IMAGE.ie

Career and return-to-work coach Sorcha Keogh of Clarico explores why demonising tradwives can be detrimental to all women in the workplace, particularly those with caring responsibilities and a need for flexibility, compassion and understanding.

Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear has been the smash literary hit of the summer. It’s a story centred on the unravelling of a “tradwife” influencer. It has sold over 1.4 million copies worldwide. The premise has clearly struck a chord with readers everywhere.

The term “tradwife” has been gaining increasing media attention in recent years. An abbreviation of ‘traditional wife’ has slowly become a derogatory term for women choosing to pursue homemaking instead of a career in the traditional labour market.

The Irish government has also put tradwives on the political agenda. In August, the Department of Children and Equality published its national strategy for women and girls. It includes a public information campaign, due to launch next year, aimed at challenging online messaging that pressures women into “particular care roles”. The strategy names two particular cohorts, the “manosphere” and “tradwife” influencers, as responsible for promoting “restrictive, stereotypical roles for women and girls”.

The manosphere is a deeply problematic and toxic phenomenon, promoting strict, aggressive definitions of masculinity, anti-feminism and misogyny. A tradwife is a married woman who chooses to embrace traditional gender roles, staying home to manage the household and raise children while her husband works as the primary breadwinner. The implication that tradwives are as detrimentally influential to society as the manosphere is deeply concerning.

Whether we relate to the tradwife lifestyle or not, there are many dangers associated with the derogatory commentary and criticism of the career decisions of other women.

Being in a position to work outside the home is an extreme privilege. It is predicated on having a support system around you when it comes to childcare. It assumes your children are healthy and well, and don’t have additional needs, and it also assumes you don’t have caring responsibilities in the other direction either. With an increasingly ageing population, more and more people will be faced with taking on these responsibilities. For plenty of women, “tradwife” isn’t an aesthetic they’ve opted into; it’s simply the reality of their financial, childcare, or logistical circumstances.

The work within the home, and all that surrounds it, is an inevitability in life. Again, if you are in a position not to do it yourself, it likely means you’re in a financial position to outsource it, most likely to another woman. Homes need to be maintained, and children need to be cared for. These are two certainties of life, and it’s important that we remember and value this.

A lot of workplaces are also not designed to facilitate modern women and the world they need to navigate. What we have created in Ireland is an all-or-nothing approach to women in the workplace. We expect women to return when their children are young and pretend they never left: to continue at full pace and speed, without acknowledging that, to do this, they need to pay for their child to be cared for and sacrifice their full-time presence with them during key formative years.

Often we hear that equal sharing of parental responsibilities will alleviate some of the home care and caring obligations that tend to fall on women. This is undoubtedly true; however, we still very much live in a society where the assumption is that mothers are the default parents. They are the primary contacts for doctors, teachers, etc. It is harder for women to step away from these responsibilities. Let’s not forget that, in 2024, the referendum on changing the constitutional wording around the role of women in the home was defeated. Some 73.9% of voters rejected it. It was the highest ever ‘No’ vote share in Irish referendum history.

So why are we denying women true flexibility: to do both, or to choose their family for now and their career later, or to choose the home and build their own business from there if they want? We need to see the value in both, and make sure women aren’t punished for making either decision.

We need to think outside the box when designing roles: do they need to be strict, set hours, or can we incorporate practical flexibility into them? It also means respecting the women who decide not to re-enter the workforce at all, as there is value in the work they’re doing.

We are forcing women into all-or-nothing choices when it comes to working during their child-rearing years. Normalising things like fractional employment, part-time working, job shares and career breaks would give women far more workable and appealing ways to step out and step back in. We also need the systems and infrastructure to support that: more part-time childcare, and pension schemes that can be maintained throughout career breaks.

We need to be more open about the reality of trying to do it all, rather than placing that burden solely on women, making them feel they have to choose between their children and their career. Each can have its own season. There can be times in life when one takes priority and the other is picked back up later, and that should never detract from a woman’s capability, dedication and ambition.

A more flexible, practical set of options for working parents (part-time offerings, job-sharing, flexible hours) will help those who want to juggle both. But it also needs to become more acceptable to not want to juggle both, and to choose homemaking instead. It’s a completely viable and valuable option, and the sooner we stop pitting those in the corporate world, or the traditional labour market, against the tradwives, the greater favour we do ourselves.

The world of work has changed dramatically over the years, and the rate of change has never been quicker. What it means to maintain a home is changing too, and the skills it takes to do it well are valuable in their own right. If we’re going to keep reiterating that having women in the workforce is a benefit to the greater good, we need to put proper support systems in place for them. We need to see and appreciate the value of the work in the home, and champion women taking time out and returning later. We need to take a more flexible, nuanced and practical approach to work.

There is a lot of work to be done, but let’s start by leaving the tradwives alone.

Sorcha is the founder and lead coach at Clarico, a coaching, training and support service for employees and employers navigating life’s key transitions. Clarico offers individual career and return-to-work coaching. They also partner with employers to craft practical, employee support solutions.