Nara Smith & the Tradwife Trend: the American Nuclear Family
Image courtesy of Smith’s Instagram @naraaziza, captioned “growing a human from scratch, what are you up to?”
If you are on TikTok and often come across niche influencers on your For You page, then you will know of Nara Smith. But for those who don’t, she is one of the trending influencers right now with over 2.5 million followers. Her content is effectively the epitome of the Tradwife Trend (and for the girls and boys who were on Tumblr in 2014, she is married to Mormon model Lucky Blue Smith!)
So, what is the Tradwife trend you may ask? It may become clearer when I tell you that it is a neologism for a traditional wife. But if you still need a bit more explanation, according to Hadley Freeman, a tradwife is ‘a woman who doesn’t work so as to look after their children, their husband, their home and then talk non-stop about how great this is on social media’. Smith essentially embodies this character type that is plastered on our phone screens. Her content involves meal-prepping breakfast, lunch, and dinner for her family, morning or evening vlogs, or simply what she, or her toddlers, eat in a day. While this may sound all perfectly innocent, through a feminist lens, some red signals are flashing as to the nature of her content: tradwife content effectively highlights the troubles of the American nuclear family.
Image courtesy of Smith’s TikTok account @naraazizasmith
From a historical and social context, female reproductive autonomy has recently been an area of contention within the American social sphere. On February 16th, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that all embryos that are a product of in vitro fertilisation are considered children. Not only has this conjured various issues for healthcare professionals, but it is another example of stolen female-reproductive autonomy by the American administration since the repeal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022. What does this have to do with the TikTok Tradwife trend? Well, this celebration of the American nuclear family and the specific role of the mother as the homemaker draws some direct lines to that of the Supreme Court ruling and the domesticated labourer.
Never in history have all women withheld the liberty to declare themselves as homemakers; even in the 1950s, an epoch where we imagine women with ankle-length floral skirts and clean aprons with a curled updo, only a minute demographic of women could afford to be a homemaker. The appliances, the look and the financial stability were not readily available, especially such specific and expensive materials and tools we see Nara Smith use to make fresh pasta. So as we look back, in nostalgia, the iconic not-so-matriarch that we valued so much within a nuclear family did not thrive on the American values, but on financial freedom. So what ended this homemaker? The answer is simple: access to birth control and the increase of reproductive rights.
The booming Tradwife trend merely depicts the latent removal of female reproductive autonomy, with less of a concentrated focus on familial values but rather on financial support and social welfare. As we watch influencers like Nara Smith perform a rather dystopian idea of simplified domestic labour and homemaking, we cannot deny that these actions are granted by financial freedom. Furthermore, the Smith family also denotes the idea of the wife that keeps giving birth - what makes this a point of contention is that families like theirs have significantly greater access to reproductive freedoms than others in the United States, given their capital. It is important to note that this analysis is not a direct critique of Nara Smith and her family, however, her content is food for thought on the familial social structures and the influences and consequences of said structure.
Do not get me wrong, I am a fan of watching Smith milk her own oats to make fresh and organic oatmeal for her family, but there is a lack of reality to her content as well as a pressure placed on the standards of American mothers. For example, in 2022 7.4 million American families were living below the poverty line, meaning they could not afford the most basic domestic needs. Perhaps the glamourisation of the traditional homemaker needs to be acknowledged, alongside a call to address what the true familial values of the United States are.