Terry Prone: This anti-tradwife campaign must be stopped

The Government plans to thwart influencers promoting 'stereotypical roles for women and girls'. Meanwhile, Irish girls prefer shopping, gossip, make-up, and spice bags to a life as a stay-at-home mother

A typical trad wife 'with an impossibly tiny waist and a gingham apron who, having crafted a gourmet meal for Himself, rushes off to make up her face because that’s the least the main breadwinner should expect.' Picture: iStock

We haven’t seen much ‘trad wifery’ here yet but the Government has announced plans to prevent it, and I want those plans stopped. Seriously. Right now.

At the end of last week, they announced they were going to provide good money — ours, like — to prevent Irish girls being social media-messaged into what they confusingly call “particular care roles”. 

The Government is going to stand up to tradwife influencers who “promote restrictive, stereotypical roles for women and girls”.

Are we with them? Of course we are, says the instinctive consensus.

Who wants to see their teenage daughter turn into one of those 1950s cartoon figures with an impossibly tiny waist and a gingham apron who, having crafted a gourmet meal for Himself, rushes off to make up her face because that’s the least the main breadwinner should expect — a pretty wife who kisses him at the front door and asks him how his day was?

Now, the immediate danger of the teenage daughter of anyone in this country opting for that career would seem kind-of small, since their choices of social media have propelled many local influencers to fame and fortune. 

Plus, Irish teenagers tend to prefer shopping, gossip, make-up, and purchased spice bags to making soup from scratch and having eight children. The “from scratch” bit is mandatory for trad wives. The eight children is an example, rather than a rule.

That said, trad wifery demands you stay home to take care of your babies. Not that this is hard.

Trust Hannah Neeleman, who won a ‘Mrs American’ contest in her home state in 2023 just two weeks after giving birth by candlelight, at home, without anaesthesia, to her eighth baby. 

When she is asked what empowers her as a woman, she identifies birthing babies and holding them as the factor that enriches her life.

Now a mother of nine, Neeleman might remind a few Irish survivors of the 1960s of Angela McNamara, who had a page to herself in a Sunday newspaper to tell the teenagers of the time to be pure, not to have sex before marriage, and, after marriage, to have as many babies as God chose to send their way, contraception being forbidden.

Tradwife influencer Hannah Neeleman and her husband Daniel brought their family to Cork in Ireland last year. See links below. Picture: Ballerina Farm/Instagram

You might think, given the fairly precipitate 50-year decline in the number of fans for the Angela McNamara approach to life, that our Government would logically infer that it doesn’t actually need to protect our daughters from trad wifery. 

Honestly, now, how many of the female students in our secondary schools are eager to have nine kids by candlelight at home, having earlier squirted milk from the cow directly into their coffee cup? To clarify, that would be the mother-of-nine’s coffee cup. 

She milks her own cows by hand and drinks the stuff raw. She also makes kefir. You can tell that if this caught on in Ireland, we’d be doomed. Making your own kefir would be as unpatriotic as spitting on the floor in front of the Kilfenora Céilí Band.

Understandably, then, our Government has let us know that it’s going to try to protect us against our kids becoming the Irish equivalent of Hannah Neeleman. The issue we have to address is the degree of protection required.

Hannah comes from a Mormon family where she had eight brothers and sisters, so she’s following a family tradition. Which happens to be exactly the same family tradition as that of her rich husband, who also had eight siblings. Family tradition is, as we know, hugely influential on the formation of humans.

Don’t know about you, but my impression is that families of nine children are kind of thin on the ground in Ireland, right now, so any of this social media trad wife propaganda would have to compete with a quite different lived experience: Couple of siblings, pasteurised milk in cartons, and the expectation, not just of a maternity hospital, but of a full-strength epidural when giving birth.

Whence, then, does the Government get the notion of a generation of young ones ready to be press-ganged into cooking from scratch and weaving their own shroud?

We in Ireland are rich, educated, ambitious (particularly to wander Bondi beach) and our teens are rarely overheard on their mobile phones sharing kefir recipes. In short, as a target market for trad wifery, we’re lousy.

Notwithstanding that we do not seem, in the immediate future, to be threatened with a return to the 1950s, you have to give credit to the Government for being ready to divert our kids from being radicalised by the likes of Hannah Neeleman. Or maybe not.

Hannah Neeleman might remind survivors of the 1960s and 1970s of columnist and broadcaster Angela McNamara who told teenagers to be pure, not to have sex before marriage, and, after marriage, to have as many babies as God chose to send their way. Picture: RTÉ Stills Library

Because here’s the thing. If I had a 13-year-old who, against all the odds, fell in love with the notion of growing up to be a trad wife, basing this on what we know of Neeleman’s life, I would know that, first of all, my kid may eschew third-level education. Shock, horror. (We’ll gloss over the fact that this putative 13-year-old’s mother eschewed third-level education without it ruining her life.)

Instead, this kid would concentrate on snagging a rich spouse who wants to be the sole provider and to be greeted at the door after a hard day’s money-making with the smell of freshly-baked bread and a fetching wife in a gingham apron eager to hear about his day.

All of this nauseates to the point of gagging any woman who remembers reading Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, with its overarching questions: “Is childrearing enough to fulfill any woman, and is being dependent on a man for your money a good thing?”

Our own brilliant Maeve Brennan answered those questions in her short stories, which testify to the steadfast silent hatred engendered by both, in the Ireland of the 1950s.

Going back there is never going to happen.

Despite that being pretty obvious, the Government has nevertheless resolved to mount a campaign to alert the young to misogyny and trad wifery.

This is a mistake of astonishing proportions.

First of all, if your trad wifery makes you millions, if you have staff to wash, shine, and fuel your kids, if you like squirting your coffee with raw hot milk squeezed directly from Daisy by your own hand, those are your choices, your human rights, and good luck to you.

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The rest of us, absent evidence of you being coerced into this lifestyle, should adapt that Voltaire-attributed quote and defend to the death your right to live in a way that you like and we don’t.

Secondly, how could social media-addicted teens be reached or converted by a country with a tiny budget competing with millionaire global influencers?

Finally, and most importantly, the precedent for any Government using taxpayers’ money to fund propaganda about that government’s preferred marriage arrangements is not good. Right back to 19th century Germany’s ‘Kinder, Kuche, Kirche’, this kind of social engineering is undemocratic and just plain bad.

Next year’s planned campaign should be halted right now.