The Tradwife Lifestyle and Judaism
There is a certain irony in the portmanteau word “tradwife.” Deriving its first half from the word “traditional,” the movement itself, along with its spread, is a creature of pandemic and post-pandemic-era social media and is firmly lodged within Generation Z, none of whom are beyond their 20s. So to what tradition could they possibly be harking back? Certainly not one that they themselves could conceivably recall.
As depicted on such platforms as Instagram and especially TikTok (Facebook is so last Gen), tradwives come closest to replicating the social mores of an idealized Eisenhower era. After World War II, men returned home to men’s jobs and dislodged the women who had earlier gone out to work in their stead.
Women then returned to homemaking, childcare and financial dependence, which in turn led to the wife’s deference to her husband. (Anyone who does not think that the controller of the purse is the wielder of the power has simply not been paying attention.)
This template was spread via television sitcoms and advertising, far more “viral” and leveling than today’s media, to the point where, looking back, one could easily view this lifestyle as universal. Yet it presupposes a middle class that was not only much broader, but was in some ways more affluent in terms of how much middle class life could be purchased by the average breadwinner than is the middle class of today.
Certainly, the labor-saving devices that we take for granted were out of reach for much of the population, but many things that were luxuries then are necessities now. A second car was not a necessity if you could work locally and do your shopping in your small-town downtown filled with mom-and-pop grocers, butchers and cobblers.
Those men—and they were almost always men—who commuted to work could take the train to the city, which is where most of the work was to be found. College was beyond the means of many—less than 5% of the American population was college-educated at that time. But a degree was not necessary for a comfortable living, unlike today when it is a minimum requirement for the majority of the labor force, along with the financing that can act as a ball and chain well into middle age.
It is true that homes were much smaller—median single-family home sizes in the 1950s were less than half of what they are today—but they could be purchased with only one income: the single factor that makes a tradwife lifestyle at all possible. Labor-saving devices and convenience foods were not strictly necessary if there was a woman at home to do the labor and cook from scratch. Office-suitable attire was not necessary if she was not going to an office. Daycare, restaurant meals, carfare and all the other expenses incident to employment were not incurred by the wife if she stayed home. As long as the home could be purchased without an income from the wife, the arrangement was workable.
Just as the division of labor into income-producing and non-remunerative by sex roles was a hallmark of the 1950s lifestyle, it is the essence of the 21st century tradwife. The major difference is that the 1950s woman lived most of her waking hours behind closed doors—her lifestyle was represented by fiction. The tradwife, by contrast, lives her life visibly online—also perhaps much of it fictional.
Ironically once again, the two universally recognized avatars of the tradwife movement reject the label. Hannah Neeleman is a multiple beauty-pageant winning Mormon mother of nine. She and her husband own Ballerina Farm in northern Utah. When googled by name, she is described as an internet personality with approximately 10 million followers on Instagram and TikTok. She wears vintage-style long dresses and aprons and posts cooking, homemaking and farming videos as advertisements for the products Ballerina Farms sells.
If you are picturing something along the lines of the Longstreet living history farm in Holmdel, Ballerina Farm, named for Ms. Neeleman’s pursuit of ballet during her time at Juilliard, is a larger enterprise in every way.
The property itself was listed for sale for close to $3 million at the time it was purchased. The stove in her cooking videos is a luxury Swedish AGA cooker. She describes her husband, Dan Neeleman, the son of the founder of JetBlue Airline, as a hands-on farmer, yet the many full-time workers at the farm and at their warehouse are invisible in the videos. The children are home-schooled, but by a tutor, not Ms. Neeleman. As far as deferring to her husband, the Neelemans refer to themselves as co-CEOs. Not exactly “The Egg and I.”
Nara Smith, the other woman most widely viewed at the archetype of the modern tradwife, rejects the term even more explicitly. While her videos show her cooking everything from scratch in beautiful clothes in immaculate surroundings, she attributes that to her love of fashion and cooking, however impractical. An international model and Mormon “but not hardcore,” she describes herself as just a working mother, and that the tradwife narrative was one she had a hard time wrapping her head around.
The fact that these tradwives in all but name are Mormons is not a coincidence. According to former Mormon Celeste Davis (not the Jewish comedienne of the same name), a Mormon woman is supposed to show her connection to the Divine by being obedient to her husband and dedicating herself to her family, all while looking good. Ms. Davis said that she herself had been a tradwife, as had the members of her community. Other evangelical Christians espouse the same values, based in part on Titus 2.5, that abjures women “to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands,” as set forth in the King James Version.
Is there a place, then, for a Jewish tradwife?
Is Abigail Shapiro in fact another tradwife in all but name? She has certainly been accused of it. But reared Modern Orthodox and self-described as an “Orthodox aspiring” opera singer, she fits uncomfortably under the tradwife rubric, if at all.
Judaism has its traditions and some of those are quite compatible with an aspirational 1950s lifestyle. Indeed, Judaism recognizes sex roles, mostly but not exclusively, among the Orthodox—the Creator of the Universe could have made us all unitary, after all—but tying a woman to her hearth by her apron strings is a bridge too far, at least from a theological standpoint.
The description of the valorous woman in the acrostic conclusion to the Book of Proverbs, upon which many Christian tradwives rely (apparently without having carefully read it), includes inter alia one who buys real estate, uses her earnings to plant a vineyard and sells her handiwork, but does not particularly bother about charm and beauty, which are described as false and vain, respectively.
By all means, bake sourdough challah from scratch in your hand-sewn gingham apron if that is what you want. But if you are Jewish, no authority says you should.
Sue Kleinberg is a contributing writer to Jlife magazine.
