Modern Women’s Labor: Tradwives & Cooking on Social Media

an academic essay on 'tradwives' & domestic labor

hello! welcome to another academic essay from my master’s program at NYU. This one is about women’s labor, domestic labor, and the social media phenomenon of “tradwives.” Let me know your thoughts on this paper!

Throughout most of modern history, the traditional role of a wife and mother involved cleaning, general housekeeping, and – most notably – cooking. Preparing nutritious and hearty meals for the children and husband in a family has been the brunt of this unpaid women’s labor, until more recent times. The contemporary woman works just as much as men do, often flipping this traditional dynamic on its head, thanks in part to the many feminist movements making this possible. In a time where western society has largely moved on from the rigid nuclear familial roles, there has been a sudden resurgence of traditional women’s labor shown on social media in the form of a ‘Tradwife.’ In this essay, I will analyze this performance of traditional wife ideals and women’s labor on social media through the lens of Ruth Cowan and Erving Goffman. I’ll also discuss the ways in which this phenomenon ties into the falsehoods of social media as well as wealth disparity among social classes. 

The word ‘tradwife’ is a very new term, coined around 2018 and rising in popularity ever since. The term combines the phrase ‘traditional wife’ into one word. Because the term is so new, a strict definition is hard to find, but a tradwife generally refers to a woman who represents herself online as an idealized heteronormative wife and mother figure. These women, who often espouse this lifestyle through videos posted on Instagram and/or TikTok, are regularly shown cooking elaborate and extremely time consuming meals. They also often depict or mention cooking for a large family and/or for their husbands. A common thread among most or all of these tradwives is that they tend to fit within a western standard of beauty, are relatively thin, and most of them are white women. Of note, an outsized proportion of them are also very religious with some being devout Christians and quite a few being devout Mormons. 

To fully understand the tradwife phenomenon requires a broader understanding of modern day food media. Most, if not all, of modern food media is originating and growing from social media platforms. On places like Instagram and TikTok, most recipe creators share videos of themselves cooking a recipe, then they share the recipe for others to make it. A tradwife content creator may share videos of themselves cooking, but not in a way that is replicable or with any instruction or recipe. A common rebuttal to critics of the tradwife conversation is that it is anti-feminist to criticize women who want to be a stay at home mother or who want to cook for their families. This rebuttal, however, misses the point and fails to understand the aim of a tradwife. There are many figures in modern food media who present and even promote a heteronormative way of life yet are not considered within the tradwife category. A prime example of this is personality and cookbook author, Ina Garten, who has a cookbook dedicated to cooking for her husband. Despite this, Garten would not be considered a tradwife. The biggest signifier of a tradwife, in my opinion, is someone who shares content that heavily revolves around cooking, yet shares no recipes and is not instructing the viewer in any way. For the sake of this paper, I will define a “food influencer” as either a recipe developer who shares recipes and other content surrounding the process of cooking, or as a content creator who shares about restaurants and the industry as a whole. Both of these types of food influencers are influencing their audience to do something specific; either to try a recipe of theirs or to try a restaurant, or something similar. A tradwife influencer is notably different from these, even when all of their content is about cooking. The tradwife is influencing their audience only to envy or to emulate their own lifestyle of traditional homesteading. In the most extreme cases, some tradwives are influencing women to become submissive to their husbands, and thus, to the patriarchy at large. 

In Ruth Cowan’s More Work for Mother, she describes women’s housework in general, showing how the work changed throughout time in accordance with technological advancements. Her main argument is that despite improvements in conveniences such as white flour, electric microwaves, gas stoves, and more, modern women were still doing as much labor as the women who existed in colonial times, before such conveniences existed.

“The eggbeater, which was invented and marketed during the middle decades of the [19th] century, may have eased the burden of this work somewhat; but, unfortunately the popularity of the beater was accompanied by the popularity of angel food cakes, in which eggs are the only leavening, and yolks and whites are beaten separately—thus doubling the work.”

Cowan argues that many technological advancements replaced or made easier only the work of men – such as milling flour, or gathering firewood used to prepare food – thus, increasing the standard of productivity expected in a homemaker. This gets at the ever-present pressure of self-optimization. In today’s society, everyone falls into the capitalism-fueled cycle of self-optimization, but it goes further for women. In an article written by Jia Tolentino, she echoes Cowan’s argument but places it in an even more modern and feminine example,

“Technology, in fact, has made us less than oppositional: where beauty is concerned, we have deployed technology not only to meet the demands of the system but to actually expand these demands”. In the same article Tolentino says “The ideal woman … is always optimizing”.

When considering these arguments with respect to the tradwife movement, it is clear that what is being presented and being pushed is an unattainably idealized standard of woman. The tradwife is actually intentionally forgoing many of the conveniences mentioned by Cowan, but rather making all of their food from scratch, including even basic things like cheese and cereal. Despite the forgoing of some tools of optimization, the tradwife is still presenting as a fully optimized wife. Now, a man who has been influenced by this tradwife content may expect their wife – who may already have a full-time job – to mother a handful of children, make elaborate meals from scratch, and continue being a homemaker, all while looking like the ideal and effortless woman. A full optimization which can never realistically be achieved.

In Erving Goffman’s work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, he argues that the way we present ourselves to those around us is, essentially, a performance. Goffman likens the way in which we present ourselves to that of theater, claiming that individuals attempt to control the impression that they make upon others when interacting by changing their manner or appearance. The way in which Goffman compares social interaction to an act of performance is only amplified now by modern social media, where an individual is interacting with far more people far more often, both online and offline. An influencer or content creator of any kind is always performing in some manner when they post on social media platforms. Whether that be by way of posing for a photo, dressing a certain way, speaking a certain way, or presenting a certain kind of content. In fact, applying Goffman’s work to the realm of social media is only bolstered more by the varying types of social media. The way one presents themselves on a private Instagram account will likely be vastly different from the way one presents themselves on a public LinkedIn account, and that vastly differs from who one may act as on a TikTok live stream. Social media blurs the boundaries of the different stages Goffman mentions, but expands the personas one can enact. 

Goffman’s work ties into the concept of a tradwife influencer as it is a performance put on, usually very intentionally. The unattainability of the ideal tradwife woman (as I mentioned earlier) is reinforced largely due to these performances of perfection. Surely, these women aren’t making every single meal from scratch, caring for multiple kids on their own, dressing in a full outfit and full face of makeup everyday, all while keeping their own health, fitness, and beauty in order so effortlessly. But, due to the nature of social media, it appears as though that is true in daily 60-second videos. For all the viewer knows, the influencer could lead a completely different life outside of what is shown on the camera. This performance of domestic labor is what makes a tradwife. It is worth mentioning the irony of being both a tradwife and an influencer. In 2024, being an influencer can be an extremely lucrative career, especially for women. Even if a tradwife influencer isn’t sharing paid brand partnerships, they may be getting paid large sums of money directly from social media platforms, based on views. The irony lies in the fact that the tradwife ideology promotes being a stay at home mother, which usually involves no personal income. As TikToker Caro Claire Burke mentioned in a video discussing Emily Mariko (a popular influencer who many are considering a tradwife),

“What does it say about our economy that, if you are a woman, you can go to Columbia, then work at Meta, then go to Stanford Graduate School, and you still end up getting better business opportunities by filming yourself cooking,”. 

My final point, and this does tie somewhat into Goffman’s concepts, discusses the portrayment of elaborate wealth by such tradwife influencers. Because they are performing an ideal of perfection through their domestic labor, they have to find ways to become enviable. One of these ways is through subtle boasting of wealth. It may not be obvious that this is happening, but the abundance of fresh produce from farmer’s market hauls, the highest quality of ingredients, nice kitchens and cookware, the ability to feed such large families, and – most of all – the time to prepare such painstaking meals, are all blatant shows of wealth that most middle income viewers are unable to attain. This imparts an impression on viewers that having bounds of fresh produce and the free time to, say, prepare sourdough from scratch is somehow morally better than a mother who uses the tools mentioned in Cowan’s work, like microwaves or canned foods. This only furthers the promotion of wealth disparity in the modern age, but in a way which is much less obvious and overt to the typical viewer. 

To conclude, the rise of the tradwife phenomenon on modern social media platforms can be seen as a performance of traditional wife ideals and domestic labor, reflecting a resurgence of traditional gender roles and an apparent backlash against feminist progress. Using the works of both Ruth Cowan and Erving Goffman, we can analyze this social trend in the greater context of feminism and interpersonal sociology. The tradwife movement is one that furthers the performance of everyday life even more by promoting unrealistic standards for the stay at home mother and female homemaker, along with exacerbating the appearance of wealth disparity. By examining the tradwife trend critically, we can gain insight into the complex interplay of gender, politics, and social media in contemporary society.

Citation List

Cong, Lin William, and Siguang Li. “A Model of Influencer Economy.” NBER, May 15, 2023. https://www.nber.org/papers/w31243. 

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More work for mother: The ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008. 

Garten, Ina. Cooking for Jeffrey: A barefoot contessa cookbook. New York, NY: Clarkson Potter/Publishers, 2016. 

Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books. New York, NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.

Google trends. Accessed March 14, 2024. https://trends.google.com/trends/. 

Tolentino, Jia. “Athleisure, Barre and Kale: The Tyranny of the Ideal Woman.” The Guardian, August 2, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/aug/02/athleisure-barre-kale-tyranny-ideal-woman-labour. 

(@caroclaireburkeee) “Cool cool cool #fyp,” TikTok, February 22, 2024, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLN1Shru/