Men who favor the tradwife lifestyle often view the women in it with derision

A recent study published in Psychology of Women Quarterly suggests that young men who favor the internet subculture known as the tradwife movement tend to hold hostile and patronizing sexist attitudes. The findings provide evidence that the appeal of this lifestyle for men is rooted in a desire for traditional power dynamics rather than a simple preference for a stay-at-home partner.

The term tradwife is a combination of the words traditional and wife. It refers to an internet subculture made up of women who promote a return to traditional gender roles. These women often use platforms like TikTok and Instagram to share videos of themselves cooking from scratch, cleaning, and caring for children.

The subculture relies heavily on a nostalgic aesthetic that glorifies the 1950s American suburbs. Women in these videos are often seen wearing vintage dresses, aprons, and high heels while performing domestic labor. The movement partly emerged as a response against the modern girlboss culture that encourages women to prioritize corporate careers and individual wealth.

The lifestyle centers on the idea that women should focus entirely on homemaking while submitting to their husbands. In this dynamic, the husband acts as the sole financial provider and the primary decision maker in the family. Women who identify with this subculture often reject the idea of working outside the home.

“The overarching goal of this research was to better understand how men perceive the #tradwife movement. Although the traditional homemaker/breadwinner lifestyle is nothing new, social media influencers who identify as tradwives have popularized this lifestyle anew by sharing idealized images of their homemaker role that invoke a sense of simplicity and nostalgia,” said study author Rachael Robnett, director of the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada and professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“Tradwives also emphasize the importance of submitting to their husbands, with some even deciding to avoid leaving the home unless their husbands escort them. Only a few previous studies have focused on the #tradwife movement. Of these studies, all focus on women who identify as tradwives.”

“To date, research has not examined men’s attitudes about the #tradwife movement, which is surprising considering that the husband’s financial support is a necessary component of women’s ability to live the tradwife lifestyle. Because tradwives yield substantial personal and financial autonomy to their husbands, it is crucial to better understand what types of men are drawn to the tradwife lifestyle.”

The researchers recruited a sample of 595 young men living in the United States. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 29 and were recruited through an online survey platform. They represented a diverse mix of racial backgrounds, including White, Black, and Hispanic or Latino individuals.

The men completed an anonymous online survey that measured their familiarity with the tradwife movement. To ensure everyone was on the same page, the survey provided a standard definition of a tradwife before asking opinions. Participants then answered 12 questions designed to measure how favorably they viewed the lifestyle and the women who adopt it.

The researchers also measured the participants’ levels of hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. Hostile sexism refers to openly negative feelings toward women, such as the belief that women try to control men. Benevolent sexism is a more subtle, patronizing form of sexism that frames women as pure creatures who need men to protect and provide for them.

Benevolent sexism is broken down into three separate parts. The first part is protective paternalism, which is the belief that men should shield and financially support women. The second part is complementary gender differentiation, which suggests men and women have distinct natural traits suited for different roles. The third is heterosexual intimacy, which is the idea that a man is incomplete without a romantic relationship with a woman.

The survey also included a single open-ended question. This question asked the men to explain why they thought the tradwife lifestyle was appealing to some couples. The research team read through these written responses to identify common themes in how the men reasoned about the movement.

When looking at the data, the scientists found that about 31 percent of the men were already familiar with the tradwife movement. Most of these men had learned about it through social media. White men were more likely to be familiar with the movement than Black or Hispanic men, which aligns with the heavy focus on White aesthetics within the subculture.

Unexpectedly, men who identified as Christian or Republican were less familiar with the subculture than other participants. The scientists suspect this might be due to social media algorithms. Tradwife content is primarily targeted at audiences of women, meaning it might not frequently appear on the digital feeds of conservative men.

When examining what drives a man’s approval of the movement, the researchers made an unexpected discovery. They originally predicted that protective paternalism would be the strongest predictor of favorable attitudes. They based this on the idea that the tradwife lifestyle emphasizes a man’s role as a provider and protector.

The data did not support this expectation. Instead, hostile sexism emerged as the strongest predictor of whether a man liked the tradwife movement. Men who scored high in openly resentful attitudes toward women tended to view the tradwife lifestyle very positively.

“We expected protective paternalism to play a central role in explaining why some men perceive the #tradwife movement positively,” Robnett told PsyPost. “We were taken aback to discover that it was instead men’s overt sexism that played the most important role in their attitudes about the tradwife movement.”

Heterosexual intimacy was the only part of benevolent sexism that predicted favorable views of tradwives. Men who believed they needed a woman to feel complete were more likely to support the movement. General religious devotion, being married, and having a higher level of education also predicted more positive attitudes toward the subculture.

“Although hostile sexism was the strongest predictor in our statistical model, our findings also showed that men tend to perceive the #tradwife movement favorably when they believe that intimacy (both physical and emotional) is a necessity for men that only women can provide,” Robnett explained.

“Together, these findings indicate that men who perceive the #tradwife movement favorably believe that they rely on women for intimacy and simultaneously resent that this is the case. This mentality could put tradwives in a precarious position considering the amount of control–both financial and otherwise–that they yield to their husbands.”

The written responses provided deeper context for these statistical patterns. Many men wrote that the tradwife lifestyle offers a sense of fulfillment and purpose through traditional roles. These participants often suggested that women are naturally predisposed to caregiving and homemaking.

Other men noted that having strictly separated roles makes running a household much easier. They liked the straightforward nature of the husband working and the wife managing the home. A smaller group of men liked the lifestyle because it allows for traditional power dynamics, explicitly mentioning a desire for submissive women.

A final theme that emerged from the written responses focused on the trendy nature of the movement. A small number of men recognized that the lifestyle is heavily driven by internet algorithms and a desire for social media views. These participants viewed the movement as a glorified aesthetic rather than a practical way of living.

Some of the written responses revealed a darker, more derisive view of the women in the movement. These men suggested that the tradwife lifestyle is simply an easy out for women who want to avoid the hardships of a real job. They described women who choose this path as lazy people who just want to stay home and do nothing.

The researchers note that these findings include some exploratory evidence of racial differences. For instance, the belief that men are incomplete without women did not predict tradwife approval among Black participants. Because this specific analysis was exploratory, scientists need to conduct more studies to confirm and fully understand these differences.

Another limitation is that the sample consisted of men aged 18 to 29, meaning the results might not apply to older generations. The study also looked at men in general rather than specifically focusing on men who are currently in tradwife marriages. Men who are actively living this lifestyle might show different psychological patterns than those who just observe it online.

“That said, the findings nonetheless provide new insight into the traits and belief systems that might lead men to seek out the tradwife lifestyle in their current or future relationships,” Robnett told PsyPost.

“The link between men’s hostile sexism and their tradwife attitudes was moderate in its statistical magnitude even after taking into account a range of control variables that included demographic background, political affiliation, religiosity, and other forms of sexism. Thus, the link between men’s higher hostile sexism and their more positive attitudes about the #tradwife movement appears to be fairly robust.”

“It also merits noting that the sample included 595 men from a wide range of sociopolitical backgrounds. The large sample size and sample diversity were intentional methodological choices we made to help enhance our confidence in the findings and their generalizability.”

In the future, the research team plans to explore whether there is a connection between the tradwife movement and the manosphere. The manosphere is a collection of online communities that promote masculinity and anti-feminist ideas.

“Our next step is to examine whether there is crossover between the manosphere and the #tradwife movement,” Robnett said. “Specific communities within the manosphere advocate for a return to traditional gender roles in a manner that parallels messaging in the #tradwife movement; however, it is not clear whether these communities (i.e., manosphere and tradwife) are directly engaging with one another. It is possible that these are two largely separate communities that are both shaped by the same sociopolitical forces.”

“In the social sciences, there is a burgeoning interest in understanding how strict gender-role adherence can create challenges for men,” she added. “For example, economic trends indicate that it is increasingly difficult to support a family on a single income.”

“Accordingly, men in tradwife marriages who enact the breadwinner role may find themselves under significant pressure. Although we do not equate the challenges that women and men encounter in tradwife marriages, we do want to emphasize that gender-role norms that put men in positions of power (be it in relationships or in society) can come with downsides for men’s wellbeing.”

The study, “Ambivalent Sexism Theory as a Framework for Understanding Men’s Attitudes About the #Tradwife Movement,” was authored by Rachael D. Robnett and Matthew D. Hammond.