They’re beautiful, traditional and full of advice. So long as women do what they say, not what they do
Updated ,first published
Something is happening with the tradwives of America.
The stars of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives – who rose to fame by peddling the traditionalist lifestyle to a new generation via social media and are now the “it girls” of America’s Christian cultural zeitgeist – appear to be having a crisis of faith.
From the outside, the reality television stars are the embodiment of what a traditional wife should be. They married young and had kids early, they deferred to their husbands, maintained extraordinary standards of beauty, rarely raised their voices, mostly followed the teachings of their church and worked tirelessly to make it all look easy.
In many ways, they are walking, talking billboards for the kind of women conservative commentators want American girls to aspire to be.
But as the Mormon Wives’ fame continued to rise throughout the first three seasons, cracks began to show. And in season 4, released last week, those cracks have transformed into something much bigger.
All nine women on the show are now far and away the financial breadwinners of their household. They speak openly about their careers and goals for their futures. The monotony of domestic life, as well as the strain that comes with shifting power dynamics in once deeply traditional households, is a topic of near-constant conversation.
This disconnect between expectation and reality is, ironically, something that the movement’s best saleswomen already understand.
Erika Kirk, whose husband Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September, has spoken of “the beauty” of being in an Ephesians 5 marriage (a reference to a Bible verse that calls on women to submit to their husbands). She has called for a “revival of Biblical womanhood”, said women should prioritise childbearing over careers, and called motherhood “the single most important ministry [women] have”.
And yet, the 37-year-old took over as CEO of one of America’s most powerful political organisations following Kirk’s death, and last week accepted an appointment to a key advisory board of the US Air Force Academy. The fact that she has chosen to work and taken on new opportunities instead of staying at home to care for her two young children is rarely mentioned.
Similarly, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, a staunch supporter of conservative Christian values, said she went back to work four days after the birth of her first child in 2024, and continues to work while she is almost seven months pregnant with her second.
American influencers such as Alex Clark and Caitlin Sinclair arguably push this false dichotomy even harder. Clark, whose podcast celebrating debunked science and the Make America Healthy Again movement has almost 750,000 subscribers on YouTube, last year told the audience of a women’s conference to prioritise caring over careers, saying, “less burnout, more babies, less feminism, more femininity”. Sinclair, a former Turning Point USA spokesperson whose conservative politics podcast has 700,000 subscribers, recently announced the greatest threat to Western civilisation is the declining birthrate because, “ladies, we’ve traded cribs for careers”.
Both of these successful career women are unmarried and childfree.
Like the Mormon Wives, Kirk, Leavitt, Clark and Sinclair clearly have no interest in giving up the professional lives they’ve worked to establish. But they are a driving force in the movement advocating that other women should.
Christian-nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson, a mentor to Trump’s Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, has said “Women are the kind of people that people come out of” and that they can serve as “the chief executive of the home”. He also advocated for women to have their right to vote revoked in favour of household voting, where the head of the home (the man) has the final say on who makes it into power.
Nick Fuentes, an American 27-year-old conservative commentator and proud virgin, has gone even further, saying, “the number one political enemy in America is women” and that women should “go to the breeding gulags”.
But to understand the true realities of trad life, it’s worth looking to the women who have actually practised what they once preached.
Influencer Lauren Southern, one of the most prominent and outspoken conservative voices to decry feminism and champion traditional roles for women during Trump’s first term, revealed in her memoir last year that the experience of becoming a mother and a stay-at-home wife who was subservient to her husband left her suicidal and financially destroyed.
Ashley St. Clair, another conservative personality who worked with Turning Point USA and promoted traditional gender roles, also experienced a substantial change of heart after having a child with Elon Musk and facing the wrath of a man she refused to submit to.
As for the Mormon Wives, they have navigated gambling, pornography and substance addictions, processed trauma from childhood sexual abuse, battled pre- and post-natal depression and PTSD, and dealt with unplanned pregnancies, divorces, infidelity, eating disorders and domestic violence – mostly before the age of 32 and with several young children in their charge.
On the one hand, it makes for deeply compelling viewing. But on the other, especially if you’re a young conservative Christian woman, the harsh realities of the life you are told to aspire for are difficult to ignore.
When the chief proponents of the tradwife ideal are telling you to do as they say and not as they do, it is painfully clear that the idealised stay-at-home wife life might not be the great American dream after all.
Katy Hall is a senior editor and regular columnist.
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Katy Hall is deputy state topic editor. She was previously the deputy opinion editor for The Age.
