Your Tradwife is an Educated Liberal at a Brooklyn Farmer's Market
Some things we associate with "trad" women are actually super libbed-out.
One thing I’ve always found funny in the genderslop/political wars is the way many right-wing men envision (get ready for a jump scare!) liberal, upper middle class or affluent urban women.
These women are, I’m aware, a bit of a sleep paralysis demon for this type of man—often taking the role that “cishet dudebro” took for leftist women in the 2010s, where any derision is fair and de-facto accurate because it’s “punching up.” As a result, the AWFLs (affluent white female liberals, with ”highly educated” implied) are on the receiving end of some stereotypes that are completely untethered from reality, usually juxtaposed against their supposed polar opposite: some kind of mythical, all-natural, nurturing, domestic goddess—variations on the “tradwife.”
Take, for example, the idea that “girlboss moms” neglect their kids all day to scroll their phones and use iPads for babysitters. In fact, poorer children (who are less likely to have educated mothers) get far more screen time than richer children. And being surrounded by affluent, liberal, urban…dare I say, girlboss moms, I can attest to the fact that many of them are more dogmatically anti-screentime than Evangelical homeschool moms in the ‘80s who thought Elmo was Satanic. Most of those crunchy Substack moms who keep removing various home items to mimic the hunter-gatherers? Not exactly MAGA. Best you’re looking at is “politically homeless” or “heterodox liberal.”
These are the moms who can afford to spend $200 on an extremely minimalist wooden dollhouse instead of a Fisher Price Little People barn, which is bound to be so overstimulating that if Wren plays with such a monstrosity, she will be on a dark path to other dangers, like the occasional Bluey episode. Next stop: heroin.
Wealthier, more educated moms are also more likely to breastfeed, and for longer.
I’ll concede that liberal women tend to be less religious than conservative women (shocker). All other things equal, a conservative woman will have more children than a liberal woman, is more likely to marry a man, and is more likely to be a homemaker. But the other variables typically associated with AWFL-ism (education and affluence) are also strongly associated with a lot of the hobbies, aesthetics and social behaviors we typically associate with tradwives. Putting it another way: even if you remove the “liberal” part, a lot of terminally online guys believe there is nothing more antithetical to traditional Western culture than a college-educated, affluent woman. In fact, these are the tradwives.
