The coalition for the sexual counter-revolution.
Megyn Kelly recently appealed to conservative men to stop preferring women who will not work. Young conservative men “are telling young, amazing conservative women that they are not attractive if they also work,” she said. We would be losing lots of talent, Kelly continued, if we tell young ladies they are only valuable if they give up work and “go into the home and only raise a family.”
The popular podcaster was thinking about recent polling showing a conservative vibe shift about “traditional gender roles.” Nearly 50% of Republican men and 37% of Republican women think “women should return to their traditional gender roles in society,” a 23% increase among men and a 14% increase among women since 2022. Support for “traditional gender roles” among Democrats unsurprisingly remains very low.
Conservatives should greet the rising popularity of tradmoms as a boon, not a crisis, so long as we avoid too narrow an understanding of tradmoms.
The Left’s framing of the woman question is powerful but poisonous. According to the Left, either a woman embraces the feminist, career-uber-alles track, or she must remain barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Since Phyllis Schlafly’s campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, successful nonfeminist women are called hypocrites: their cultural and political actions are traced to latent feminism. Similar barbs were leveled against the founder of Evie Magazine in a recent New York Times feature, and against any woman who does anything outside the home.
What family-first American women mean by “traditional gender roles” is both simple and complicated—certainly more complicated than feminists suggest.
First, the simple part about tradmoms: women who prioritize being a mother and a wife are conforming to traditional American gender roles. Traditional women have babies and raise them themselves (they don’t put them in daycare), for instance. They appreciate a husband’s loving provision for what it makes possible or honor how he forges businesses, makes cultural institutions, or engages in politics. Tradmoms prioritize building a home and are often hubs of community. Meals express loving devotion to all, creating a time for conversation and connection, not drudge work. Tradmoms take pride in what their children accomplish.
Now, the complicated part: Megyn Kelly’s speech reveals a truth. Some conservatives buy into feminist framing, as if only the full-time housewife is our tradition. American tradmoms, however, live in a variety of ways.
The Three Tradmom Models
Americans no longer understand precisely what a tradmom is after more than 50 years of feminist gaslighting. Any sexual counter-revolution demands renewed attention to the rich American tradition of family-first women. Megyn Kelly is on to something, but not exactly what she thinks. Conservatives should name and support the three models of tradmoms.
The Side-Hustle Wife. The great American contribution to “traditional gender roles” is the side-hustle wife. A side-hustle wife prioritizes family life while using her talents outside the home. Many women work part-time, especially when their children are young. Sometimes wives feel they must work, if only for a while, to make extra money. Sometimes, she finds working rewarding and is good at it. Husbands and side-hustling wives work out a modus vivendi that allows women to prioritize child-raising while working in the side-hustle. Perhaps men do a little more around the house when the part-time work is pressing or on the weekends.
I know dozens of young families with young side-hustling wives (mostly college graduates in their 20s) who do real estate, graphic design, or legal work; spearhead communications for companies or nonprofits; teach as substitutes; design clothing layouts; write for a living or copyedit; or do accounting, bookkeeping, or nursing. Higher education often purchases the flexibility that makes side-hustling possible and lucrative. Perhaps side-hustling wives do not need to make money, so they take their talents and ambitions to public commissions or organize cultural events.
Side-hustling families often build flexible schedules to prioritize homemaking and child-rearing while keeping skills sharp and contributing to the family fisc. Many aspire to reach trad tradwife status; many don’t.
The Trad Tradwife. No one should equate the trad tradwife to Ballerina Farm. A trad tradwife rightly understood is a full-time homemaker. Perhaps she makes sourdough bread; perhaps not. Perhaps she homeschools; perhaps not. Perhaps she hires a housekeeper; perhaps not. Maybe she gardens; maybe she shops (with or without coupons). Many prepare for honorable grandmotherhood after their children fly the coop.
Media treatments of tradwives often confuse elements of the trad tradwife life with its beating heart—and always with a wink of ridicule. Tradwifery is not about sourdough bread per se. It involves planning nightly family dinners, raising children, and minding details (perhaps with hired help) as part of a home. Daily work contributes to the family’s overall health, order, and soundness. Tradwives prioritize shaping the loves and dislikes that will make up a child’s character and build communities within which the family lives. Like side-hustling wives, high-agency trad tradwives participate in central cultural and religious institutions too.
The “Eras” Wife. Taylor Swift has been through lots of “eras,” as her last tour suggested. Real American women have different eras, or seasons, too. They may have an era of trad tradwifery or side-hustling while the children are young, but pursue jobs before they have kids and/or after the kids are in school.
Before my wife had children, she worked as a retail executive. She was great at the job, and was creative and valuable to her company. After having children at 24, she side-hustled until we had enough money for her to be a trad tradwife. As our five kids marched through the family, though, she coordinated events for a local non-profit as an occasional side-hustle even then. After our fifth started school, she started working nearly full-time again. Now she is pulling back so she can watch grandbabies. She worked differently in the eras of life, though always “below” what a feminist would say she “should” have done so that she could prioritize home, children, relationships, and community. We thought the moral price of her full-time work was too high, and we have no regrets.
Recovering the Heroic Feminine
Polling consistently shows that most American women would prefer not to work full-time outside the home while raising their children. Nearly 60% of mothers with children under 18 yearn for “a homemaking role” rather than full-time work, according to a 2015 Gallup survey. In 2015, Alexandra Killewald and colleagues found that 24% of mothers with children under 18 prefer trad tradwifery, while 20% aspire to a side-hustling role, and 18% intend to work in seasons. A 2019 article from Killewald and Ziaolin Zhuo in Demography similarly finds that 36% of mothers are working full-time, while 21% are trad tradwives, 13% are side-hustlers, and 29% work in seasons. A 2019 longitudinal study of Virginia Law graduates found that many more women “leave the workforce or work part-time for protracted periods to care for children.”
These polls are cause for celebration for family advocates and critics of feminism. A coalition of trad tradwives, side-hustlers, and “Eras” women has long been there for the forging. The vibe shift makes it possible.
Hardly anyone is writing Megyn Kelly out of the conservative movement because she works, just as not many are stigmatizing Amy Coney Barrett or others like her for working full-time while allowing other family members to be involved in raising her brood. Both are rare kinds of women.
Still, many conservative men would rather not marry someone who rejects being a tradmom, in whatever form. Conservative “power women” like Kelly should appreciate that the heroic feminine prioritizes motherhood and wifeliness and celebrates the men who make it possible. The tradmom coalition will laugh at the girlbosses and find careerism unfulfilling and empty, and they may sneer at AWFLs.
Conservatives are reassessing the priority of family life. As a result, conservatives should judge themselves by how they create conditions where the coalition of tradmoms can be tradmoms, not by how they promote full-time careerism and opportunities for women in the workplace.
