Aprons Off!

How Tradwives & Soft Life Trends Expose Cracks in Feminism + Women's Movement

Last week, I was a featured guest on the Slate Podcast Hear Me Out with Celeste Headlee. In the episode, we discuss the threat of the Trad Wife and Soft Life Trends to Women’s Progress and seek to answer the question of whether or not the women’s movement can attract and keep younger women.

Check out the episode here and read my take below.

“So long as you, the mainstream media, continue to try and cancel traditionalism and the at-home role of the wife and mother—you’ll see me in the opposite side of the corner, ready to fight for it.”

Reading the passage, I rolled my eyes dismissively. She is cosplaying June Cleaver in a world of Oprahs, Beyonces, and Taylor Swifts; I thought to myself as I flipped through the pages of the New Yorker magazine. She’s tangling around a ring, shadowboxing with women’s progress – a losing battle. We had come so far, or so I thought. 

The woman, Alena Kate Petitt, the British grand dame of trad wifery and founder of the Darling Academy, an online finishing school for traditional women that instructs women on how to be beautiful, nice, dress modestly, and be subservient, rose to fame at the exact moment women in the United States and globally were facing an existential crisis. 

When a BBC news crew arrived at Petitt’s house in 2020 as she was ironing her husband Carl’s shirt in a pristine kitchen, working women and mothers across the globe were hanging on by a thread and at their wit’s end. It was the height of the pandemic, and the world had closed. Women were doing double and triple duty, juggling their full-time jobs and caretaking responsibilities without much help or support. 

For the first time, women in the C-Suite and women working in grocery stores understood that being unable to do it all was less about their will, drive, or ability to find more time in a day–the system was rigged. Despite feminist rhetoric that lauded women’s economic success, independence, and entry into the workforce, their lives were hard and unsustainable. In sharp contrast, Petitt’s life seemed soft, manageable, and, by the looks of it, easier. 

I went down a rabbit hole. I wanted to know more. Was there a shift happening that I had somehow missed? Was traditionalism…back? 

Online, I found scores of articles and content created by “traditional” wives and self-proclaimed stay-at-home girlfriends proselytizing about the soft life, defined by a life of comfort and relaxation with minimal challenges and stress. The ultimate goal is to enjoy life without enduring hardship, pain, or burdens. Without context or consideration for what I’d be giving up in exchange, I was curious.

Could I live a soft life? Should I want a soft life? 

I came across an article about a young woman who had successfully stalked Harvard Business School mixers to snag a boyfriend who would care for her. Her only responsibilities, as far as I could tell, were to look beautiful, have sex, drink good wine, and be available to travel. I also read a letter from a distraught mother to an advice columnist. She was upset that her daughter’s postsecondary plans had begun and ended with finding a husband and getting married. Her grades and academic success no longer mattered because she didn’t plan to attend college. What in the Gloria Steinem was happening here?!

To get some perspective, while attending a conference at Oxford University, I asked a group of friends what they thought about traditional wives, stay-at-home girlfriends, and the soft life trend. Some had never heard of it, and others hadn’t given it much thought. When pressed, they all seemed to agree it was anti-feminist, retrograde, and set women’s progress back. What happens when he finds someone younger or prettier? What happens if he leaves? It’s dangerous to be economically dependent on a man or husband. They’re delusional. This is not what we’ve been fighting for all these years.

The women around the table parroted many of the one-liners left in the comment section of the articles I read. For them, there wasn’t much more to it. There had always been pockets of women who had undermined women’s advancement and progress. We were good feminists and knew better. There was nothing to see here. However, I couldn’t let it go.  

As I sat thinking of ways to agitate the conversation, an older woman with spry hair said matter-of-factly, “I have two nieces, both bright, successful, and with careers. Over the holidays, they told me they planned to get married and become stay-at-home wives. I told them it was a mistake, but they didn’t care. They knew better,” she said sarcastically.

They want a soft life, I replied.  Frankly, I am not sure I blamed them. I could not believe the words coming out of my mouth. Don’t you want a soft life? I asked around the table. No one nodded or shook their heads. I rationalized that being a woman is hard, and being a “non-traditional” woman in a patriarchal society is even harder. I began to tick off all the ways women’s lives were difficult. Heads nodded. The list was long but not exhaustive. As a single mother by choice of twins raised by a single mother, I knew what I was talking about. As feminist as I was, I wished my life was easier and wondered why it wasn’t. 

In my early twenties, I worked for and looked up to second-wave feminists who were ballsy and wore power-pants suits. Hillary Clinton, Kimberle Crenshaw, Ellie Smeal, and Faye Wattleton, I am looking at you. They didn’t take any shit, and we were all better for it. I spent my days and nights absorbing the feminist message that I could do and have it all. The only limits were those hoisted upon me by society. I was going to bulldoze the patriarchy and create a life on my terms. And I did, sort of. However, it wasn’t without its own kind of hell, second-guessing and wishing at times, things were different and easier. 

Two days after giving birth to twins, I returned to teach my graduate seminar at NYU because I delivered early. My maternity leave was a combination of sick and vacation leave. I had it timed out and couldn’t afford to miss one day of planned work. After a few years of running myself ragged and struggling with childcare, I off-ramped my career, cobbling together consulting and teaching gigs to make ends meet.  It was exhausting. 

Feminism promised women equality, protection, a fuller bundle of rights in society, more opportunity, sexual freedom, and a seat at the tables of power–and yes, an easier life—but it hasn’t delivered (yet). While women have seemingly gained more rights over the last half-century (hello, the right to vote and own property), it also appears we have fewer rights, less power, and a steeper hill to climb to the top. 

We have also received conflicting messages about success: how to define it and how to achieve it. Is it a high-powered career? Is it a high-powered career, a partner and children? Is it being a stay-at-home mom or being a so-called trad wife? Is it being likable or being labeled a bitch? I can’t call it. What I do know, however, is the number of memoirs and autobiographies written by “successful” women documenting being shortchanged, passed over for promotions, harassed, earning less, sucking it up, crying on the way home from work or in a bathroom stall is enough to make any of us ask: is it worth it? And does it have to be this way? 

I also worry we don’t have a robust feminist response to young women who have looked at their mothers' lives, our lives, or the way women are treated in society and believe equality is not worth it or impossible to achieve. They’ve witnessed our struggles. What do we say to them? 

I wish I had an answer. 

What I do know is that we can not unring the bell of progress. The yearning for a return to real men like Clark Gable and Billie Dee Williams and traditional women like Carol Brady or Harriet Nelson is just that: a yearning.  Society has changed, and so have the roles of men and women in it. 

Today, two-thirds of mothers are either breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their families. In families with children, 91.3 percent of parents work outside the home. And in 2021, an estimated 2.1 million fathers were stay-at-home dads—up nearly 10 percent since 1989. Rather than longing for something that never truly was, let’s lean into the messiness of a world where men are afraid to kill spiders, can’t change a flat tire, and women who are president and never once tried to make a souffle.  We’ll all be better for it. 

What’s Nicole up to? Nicole is hard at work on her next book and Future Forward, a new project powered by the New York Women’s Foundation & Fondation CHANEL. iamcnicolemason.com | @cnicolemason