‘Serve, smile, procreate’: Yesteryear author Caro Claire Burke on the rise of the tradwife

As her dark debut about a tradwife who wakes up in the past is made into a film by Anne Hathaway, the novelist explores the sinister truth behind the barefoot influencers Gingham dresses, linen aprons; toddlers smiling toothily out from their perch on a perfectly cocked hip. And the mothers holding these babies? They’re beautiful, obviously. They speak in a whisper. Their skin tone is varied in the exact range and spectrum of honey. Tradwife. It’s a frilly word, the kind that holds a gun to your head and demands you say it in sing-song. The media coverage of the phenomenon has been as breathless and decidedly feminised as the term itself. I have yet to find an article on the topic that was not written by a woman, which feels ironic, given that the term – as well as the vision therein – was originally coined and circulated by men, born out of the dank, murky caves of online “incel” forums, where anonymous usernames set forth the deeply unoriginal vision of a wife who would do everything the real women in their lives refused to do: manage the house, give birth to children, have sex on command, and most importantly, ask nothing in return. Most people don’t know about the