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From tradwife to radwife: abandoning perfection in favour of the ‘good enough’ life

No they don’t cook from scratch, sometimes forget the sunscreen and often miss work deadlines, but at least their kids are wearing secondhand clothes … Meet the new gen of radically normal mums

But in recent years she has rebranded, growing from traditional role to niche subculture, to full-blown digital movement (her current incarnation is the Maha – Make America Healthy Again – mom, who wangs on about her distrust of vaccines and suncream to camera in head-to-toe florals). She reads cookbooks like novels, Grazia at the doctor’s and the LRB on the loo The tradwife caused a major stir globally; not surprising, perhaps, given that it is largely a fantasy role which hinges on personal wealth, and is almost totally removed from the maternal ideal it promotes (it’s also, in part, why Meghan Markle’s With Love Netflix series, with its unnecessary pretzel decanting, feels so ill-timed). But if big business is responsible for the idea of putting a career first (see Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and “girl bossing”, a mid-2010s movement that became a byword for pseudo-woke corporate feminism) and trad-wifing feels like a cop-out, something in the middle seems like a reasonable reaction.

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