New research suggests it's a reflection of modern pressures rather than nostalgia for domesticity.
Researchers at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's Business School have questioned the so-called 'tradwife' phenomenon.
A tradwife is a modern-day housewife who embraces traditional gender roles, typically focusing on homemaking, childcare and supporting her husband, often while sharing her idealised lifestyle on social media. The movement has gained significant traction across social platforms, with influencers amassing millions of followers by vividly portraying traditional domestic lifestyles.
However, researchers argue that any glamorisation of domesticated roles for women is less a genuine embrace of tradition and more a plea from younger generations, reflecting what they describe as the impossible balance demanded by modern work and family life.
The researchers analysed responses from multiple years of the British Social Attitudes Survey, covering 1984 to 2022, with each year including between roughly 1,700 and 6,700 participants and the Genders and Generation Survey with close to 8000 participants. The report found no evidence of younger women turning back to traditional gender roles. Instead, they continue to hold more progressive attitudes than previous generations, with many expecting fathers to share responsibility for care and domestic work.
A survey of 1,000 young women aged between 18-34 found that what attracts them to tradwife content is less the male-breadwinner female-caregiver model and more the aesthetic of simplicity, leisure and escape from the pressures of increasingly demanding yet insecure work. The authors highlight that high childcare costs and intensive parenting norms have also put pressures on parents, especially mothers to balance work with family life. In other words, the popularity of tradwife content reflects growing frustration with a labour market that demands 'ideal workers' without accommodating family life.
Google searches for "tradwife" have been increasing across Europe, North America and beyond over the past five years. The phenomenon and its popularity have risen so much that the Cambridge English Dictionary has officially included tradwife as one of the new words in the English language for 2025. But the study suggests it reflects exhaustion with today's work/life pressures, not nostalgia for a bygone era.
Only a minority of men and women supported traditional gender roles in 2022. For example, around 10% of women and men across all age groups agreed that a man's role is to earn money while a woman's role is to look after the home and family. Similarly, over 60% agreed that both men and women should contribute to household income, rising to 70-80% of agreeing among young men and women.
The tradwife trend isn't nostalgia-it's a warning sign. Rather than evidence of a return to old-fashioned family values, the tradwife trend shows how younger women are struggling to reconcile impossible demands. They are signalling frustration with workplaces that still expect full devotion to work, while family responsibilities remain largely unchanged and shouldered by women. If not properly responded to, we risk pushing an entire generation of women toward authoritarian visions of family that promise escape from impossible choices, whilst in reality, restricts women's hard-earned autonomy.
Professor Heejung Chung, Director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership
The tradwife aesthetic can look idyllic, but it is far from reality. Most mothers leave the labour market less by choice than due to constraints such as inflexible working hours or a lack of childcare options; they are also among the population facing the greatest economic insecurity and health challenges. Rather than longing for the past, young people appear to engage with this content to imagine an alternative to the stress and mental health pressures of modern work.
Constance Beaufils, Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership
Many younger women engaging with tradwife content may have little historical awareness of the realities faced by women in eras when financial dependence left them vulnerable - without legal or economic power and often trapped in relationships marked by inequality or even domestic abuse. Forgetting this history risks romanticising a past that, for many women, was neither safe nor empowering. This is why the growing popularity of tradwife content should not be dismissed or trivialised as something pertained to young women and their light frivolous interest.
Shiyu Yuan, Research Assistant at King's Global Institute for Women's Leadership
The full report, Tradwife: Between Myths and Realities, is available from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's Business School.
