“Wives” are becoming more popular among young women. What do you know?
“Trad Wives,” or traditional wife lifestyle, has gained popularity on social media. Now more young women are exploring alternative lifestyles.
Ariana Triggs and Claire Hardwick, USA Today
32-year-old Meghan Montelibano-Gorman had no idea what to do after giving birth to her first baby in 2021. She was always hardworking and never saw herself as a stay-at-home mother. However, she didn’t want to miss out on her son’s early milestones.
She said she felt she had to choose between two camps of women who were regularly blown up in film, politics and social media.
Four years later, after another baby, Monteribano Gorman said she recognizes how “completely naive and unforgettable” she is in the reality and nuances of motherhood. She wants to build her own path – it allows her to see the first first of all her babies, work part time and create an online parent community that goes against the typical “Momfluencer” trends.
“I was really consciously trying to change some kind of paradigm,” she said. “I can’t get it all, I know that, but I can almost have bits here and there.”
From working mothers who destroy cars after they have lost their children to wearing eyeliner and lipstick and baking bread from scratch, Tiktok’s maternal photos look overwhelmingly binary. However, while working mothers and wives stereotypes govern online and in popular culture, many moms fall between these two ratios. Still, the damage these images produce can last a long time, experts say.
The “fake binary” of motherhood distracts from the need to truly cherish the work of care, says Elissa Strauss, author of “When You Care,” writes about the politics and culture of parenting and caregiving. For some moms, it also limits what makes them comfortable sharing about their maternal experiences with other moms.
“I love raising children,” Strauss said. “But I feel like the second person who says it loudly, I’m a wife.”
While some moms have admitted that perfect images of maternal paintings on social media have performances, a study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research in 2023 found that “the fire of these idealized images” led mothers to criticise themselves, causing them to feel guilty and uneasy. There have been pushbacks in recent years as more moms on social media show parent-child disruption and compromise, but even so, past research suggests that moms looking for social media for guidance often feel uneasy.
“It puts us in a competitive position like women. Or there’s some sort of “right way” or “wrong way” to be a mother,” he said he is a marriage and family therapist and director of adult psychotherapy services at Northwestern University’s Family Institute.
And promoting the image of a motherly fairy tale “creates deep and true pain for the mother,” Strauss said, even if he knew what they were seeing was mere entertainment.
Motherhood is not just two aspects, Strauss said. “But somehow these are these categories that are being stabbed by women, and I think they are distorting the conversation and distorting the actual efforts to create real stability and mama support.”
Motherhood: “You’re just surviving.”
Lindsey Schubkegel, a 38-year-old mother from a suburb of Chicago, left her full-time Billings specialist when her son Levy was born in 2023.
“I don’t believe it,” Shubkegel said of those videos. Every time someone posts a photo or video and tries to show how “perfect” their lives are, she says that all she sees is a “giant red flag.”
Most days, Schubkegel said he doesn’t have time to make up or follow a strict schedule. Often she said, “You’re just surviving.”
Still, Schubkegel believes that there is a particle of truth in the girl’s boss/wife binary. Some women are more attracted to home life, she said.
Schubkegel said her own decision to leave the workforce would place her family in financial restraint. However, the cost of childcare that she said could have been $2,500 a month in her area was not worth the time she had to leave her son.
“To be honest, you feel like you have the crazy mom guilt about your job,” she said.
Monteribano Gorman said much of her identity was wrapped in work. She needs a lot of effort to help her repetitive life and unleash her social expectations of what kind of work should look like. She has worked part-time as a marketing consultant while raising two children, so she often tells clients that her children may make noises in the background.
She is happy and surprised to find her clients welcome her credibility.
Finding real connections is the best antidote, experts say
Montelibano-Gorman’s Instagram page is full of ideas about fun things a family can do in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she lives. Monteribano Gorman said her description was not about drawing morning routines or drawing everyday life. And it certainly isn’t about attacking different kinds of mothers on each other. It’s about sharing resources and building a community.
The dichotomy between “this and this” is really frustrating. Because we are all just struggling like women,” Monteribano Gorman said. “I think it’s difficult on any side, either side. There’s a challenge. And it’s just patriarchal and at the end of the day, you’re about to give birth to women, births, and each other.”
Schubkegel said her mom’s friends’ network runs the scope between home moms, single moms, working moms and other parents. She said they often leaned over each other, asked parenting questions and found support in each other’s stories.
“It really helps and you have a group of women who are experiencing the same thing as you in that moment,” she said.
According to Klear, what moms and all parents really need to thrive to thrive are parenting policies, access to high quality childcare, workplace flexibility and “more subtle spaces for what women can do.”
And when it comes to social media consumption, there are things moms can do to make them more connected and less competitive. Set a time limit and ask yourself, “What will you get now?” Clear said. Klear said he benefits from recipes from several content creator posts and finds good time management tips. Chima Hope-Lubin, marriage and family therapist at Betterhelp, agreed that setting time limits would be helpful. Finding a supportive community is important. If everything else fails, you’ll go offline.
It’s easy to get sucked into the influencer’s content fantasies, especially since many content creators have confirmed what many mothers want to hear.
Madeline Mitchell’s role in covering women and caregiving economy at USA Today is supported by partnership with extremely and Journalism Funding Partner. Funders do not provide editor input.
You reach Madeline with memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ x.
