The culture war of the “Tradwifes” – About the movement that doesn’t quite deserve its name

Pastel, cream and white.

So-called tradwifes (traditional wives) usually present themselves in these colors on Instagram and TikTok and propagate being a housewife and mother.

A social media trend that, like so many, comes from the United States of America and has been becoming increasingly popular in Germany since the beginning of the 2020s.

Tradwifes are influencers who show how they cook, clean, look after the children and wait perfectly styled until their husband comes home from work.

The emergence of the Tradwife movement and its ideological origins in the USA are unlikely to have arisen from simple social dynamics.

At a time when the conservative-libertarian forces surrounding the Trump camp, together with the Christian fundamentalist movement, are gaining momentum and are propagating the streamlining of the state by dismantling the already very frugal social system, we must examine the emergence of a supposedly traditional image of women in this context.

Women are increasingly expected to compensate for the decline in the social system through unpaid reproductive work.

The background for this libertarian course is the fundamental tendency of capitalism to maximize profits, which goes hand in hand with lowering taxes while increasing privatization and dismantling the social system.

Specifically for the USA, the struggle to maintain its own hegemony in competition with China plays a central role.

This results in the need to expand production in our own country in order to be able to keep up with the economic power of China and to reduce dependence on sensitive and war-relevant technology.

The USA should be made as attractive as possible for multinational corporations, with the availability of cheap labor being the focus.

These foreign policy developments form the basis of the current domestic policy course in the USA.

The memorandum from the “Heritage Foundation”, the most influential think tank in the USA and probably even worldwide, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years”, which has so far been ignored in Germany, provides a small insight into the domestic political strategy of the USA.

The fact that this think tank will not only be a nice inspiration for the political establishment in the USA becomes clear from the development of “Project 2025”.

This also represents a strategy paper from the Heritage Foundation, published in April 2023, which envisaged the transformation of the US government and the general political establishment following the Republican Party's victory in the US presidential election in April 2023.

According to the community project, the US government under Trump is now said to have implemented around 51% of the goals stated in the paper by February 2026.

So it's worth taking the Heritage Foundation's suggestions and analyzes at their word.

Already in the third paragraph, the memorandum describes the family as the “cradle of the state” and has thus hit the core of its essence.

Since the beginning of human history, the family has been a reflection of the basic organization of society, which has always been changing according to social conditions and forms of rule.

While feudalism was based on the extended farming family, which functioned as a working community, this changed with the advent of industrialization in the 19th century.

Century and the move to the cities to the nuclear family.

While in middle-class families the woman mostly stayed at home and only took care of reproductive work if they had no domestic servants, in the working-class family the woman had to bear the double burden of wage work and reproduction.

The man, on the other hand, did wage work in both models and kept the production process running in the factories or at the desk.

The family in general and the exploitation of women in particular form the basis for the functioning of a society organized according to capitalist standards.

The new Tradwife movement doesn't quite deserve its name.

Because the traditional image of women that is portrayed has never existed in society at large.

It was the women of the middle class who stayed at home and took care of reproduction alone.

The “traditional woman” largely always did wage work.

The attempt to increasingly propagate the classic nuclear family and thus women's unpaid work aims to promote the maintenance and expansion of the nuclear family for an ever-developing libertarian economic order in the USA.

The social system should be further dismantled and the state should be expanded as a purely violent organ.

The ideal capitalist as a whole is slowly changing and is replacing it with the lean state, which focuses on maintaining the property order through its organs of violence. “In many ways, a strong family – trusting in God and each other – is itself an expression of independence.

“It promotes freedom by minimizing the need for government assistance in everyday life” (excerpt from “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,” The Heritage Foundation).

The family and therefore the woman should compensate for the dismantling of the social system and ensure that society continues to function and does not sink into chaos. “State help in everyday life” here probably means the care of relatives and the needs of everyday life, from childcare to cleaning and cooking.

These then have to be taken over by women unpaid.

The reason for the past change in the family is also seen in the expansion of the “welfare state”: “This dramatic change away from marriage and starting a family has many causes, but two in particular stand out.

The first was Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.

The rapid expansion of the welfare state promoted the birth rate outside of marriage, imposed devastating financial penalties on low-income earners who married, and kept able-bodied people from working." (ibid.) In addition to the possibility of dismantling the social system and thus expanding profit maximization, there is a second crucial point for the propagation of the nuclear family, the defense: "Without families, a country can neither create meaningful work nor prosperity.

It lacks strong and courageous men to protect it from enemy aggressors at home and abroad.” (ibid.) This isolation and confinement of women in the house was particularly influenced by the women's movement of the 20th century.

Century heavily criticized.

It cannot be denied that these contributed to the change in the family.

The Heritage Foundation also sees the reason for the decline of the classic nuclear family in the “second wave of feminism and (the) sexual revolution”.

In addition to the expansion of the “welfare state” and the women’s movement, communism and the “black family” are used as reasons for the decline in marriage.

Nothing less can be expected from a think tank that played a key role in advancing anti-communism during the Reagan era during the Cold War.

The Heritage Foundation's strategy will not remain just on paper, but will be actively driven by Republican politics.

This is also clear from Scripture itself: “If trends, policies, and influences have led to the decline of marriage and family, the same trends, policies, and influences can also lead to their restoration.” The memorandum openly claims to propagate its view of marriage and family.

If you take a quick look at the leading US government Instagram accounts and websites, this quickly becomes clear.

On the Instagram account of the MAGA youth movement “turnigpoint” there is a feed full of romanticized images of a nuclear family and women as housewives and mothers.

A video shows a woman with a baby in her arms and the words “what’s your dream job?” and shortly afterwards “this” appears.

The propaganda is in full swing.

It can be said that women are an important protagonist in the current culture war in the conservative-libertarian camp.

Their unpaid work is the basis on which the current domestic and foreign policy course of the USA is to be secured and the country is to be positioned more strongly as an independent production location again.

It is obvious that millions of women are needed in paid work.

Therefore, the propagated image of women will only apply to limited middle-class circles, while the majority of women will continue to work in gainful employment and at the same time have to chase the traditional image of women as good housewives and mothers.

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