In this op-ed, author Tia Levings explores how many trad wives can help proliferate Christian Nationalism, and what that meant for the 2024 Presidential election.
This time, nearly 40 million Gen Zers were eligible to vote, a number that ignited the Democratic party.
Harvard polls predicted 53% of young voters would follow through, and Rock the Vote emphasized that Gen Z was passionate about the issues. Climate, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, women’s healthcare, and the economy seemed like they would be a mirror of the Democratic platform, so it felt safe to envision the end of chaotic politics: Gen Z would save us — from Project 2025, from the patriarchy, and from Trump’s bombastic chaos. They’d sweep us into a progressive new future. We would not go back.
The Harvard poll overestimated; early counts showed that about 42% of young voters cast a ballot. But something far more unexpected — at least to many — happened. According to voting data collected by the Associated Press, there was a 15-point swing in Trump’s favor among Gen Z men and a 7-point swing among Gen Z women; a significant shift that sent Democrats into shock. What happened? Why didn’t young people save the world?
The first problem is that it was never fair to put that task squarely on young people. They never wanted to save the world — they wanted to inherit a halfway decent one. There are many other issues with the assumption that Gen Z would usher in a peaceful democratic future, but one of them is that many ignored the heavy influence of religious and conservative social media content, including the rise of trad wives — the often religious propaganda that lures in young people via lifestyle evangelism.
Images of women tending babies and men plowing fields have proliferated on social media in recent years, selling young people the idea that there’s freedom in returning to the past. Trad content lures viewers through pathos, which is an emotional persuasion rather than a logical or ethical argument. The images are lovely and nurturing. Sweet. Through stylized illustrations and cosplay on social media, retro simplicity and an aesthetic from life in the 1650s to 1950s draw us in. The promise is that, by abandoning career and money, young women can find true success and fulfillment by submitting to a patriarchal ideal that gives all the power to men. And men, of course, can retain the power they’ve always had, something many perceive to be waning in recent years. This, they posit, is how it should be.
But, this ignores the motivation behind much of this content. In many cases, trad wives aren’t just selling simplicity, they’re selling biblical patriarchy, a way of life endorsed by fundamentalist Christians that’s seeking to shape life in America in the name of God. Sometimes, they’re selling that explicitly, other times it may be unintentional, just a byproduct of the lifestyle.
What, exactly, fundamentalists believe can be hard to pin down, and it often varies from family to family. In general, they believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, and when extended to politics (as it often has been), they frequently believe that the United States is an inherently Christian nation, and should be governed as such — an idea called Christian Nationalism. Fundamentalist patriarchy is religiously driven and is now a part of or has influence in every branch of government. Some — including some people in our government — believe in or are associated with Dominionist theology, which teaches that Christians should have global control. To achieve it, they need the population count (white Christians in particular), power (military and leadership), and fuel (workers to capitalize and spread the message). According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dominionism has been a “driver of antigovernment extremism in the United States.”
Equality destroys patriarchy, so many tenets of liberalism, such as access to public education, bodily autonomy, and maintaining a secular government, can feel like an existential threat to Dominionists and Christian Nationalists. In religion overall, church membership declined to 47% in 2020. As a result, some religious leadership encouraged members to expand their ministry reach by evangelizing on social media.
This is not a new idea. Before social media, the trad lifestyle and the intersection with politics were popularized through shows like the Duggar family’s 19 Kids and Counting, as well as large-scale political training initiatives like Generation Joshua. These campaigns sought to convince new generations that the top-down power structure is essential: white men on top, women at home and beneath, children and non-white peoples for labor—both at home and through adjusted labor policies in wider society.
Sometimes fundamentalists mandate this structure; sometimes they persuade it, as is the case with trad content. But the sale can be soft and feel like women are making a positive choice for their families — not an extreme one. Women siren other women as men harken to other men. What blurred over time is that as legislation changes and options narrow, women who’ve traded their autonomy, financial agency, and education access find out too late they aren’t free to change their minds.
That’s why trad content is targeted particularly to white men and women by fundamentalist patriarchy — a powerful ideological movement that has always sought to radicalize young, fertile, hardworking, passionate young people. Generationally, the message is consistent. There are different flavors of trad wives, with aesthetics that romanticize different eras, but they all seem to promise the same things: You belong here. Men have a place in leadership. Women are meant to serve. Life can be simple. The world is a mess but we can clean it up by going back to old values and norms. Progress is dangerous.
They promise belonging to cis white men (you have a place here) and protection to the women (if you fall in line.) Both genders receive messages of seemingly simpler times where you could work hard and see the fruit of your labor, whether it’s in your paycheck, on your table, through your womb, or in your fields.
With clearly defined gender roles and responsibilities, trad wife and traditional masculine content in the manopshere works to convince a new generation of would-be population breeders and workers to embrace fundamentalist values. Maybe it’s not explicitly a group of powerful Dominionists dreaming up trad wife accounts, but often, their idealistic teachings, combined with resources and messaging online, spread and allow these kinds of ideas to take hold. To an exhausted generation of young adults who grew old before their time, the appeal is real.
Four Gen Z voters, a Trump supporter, a libertarian, and two Harris supporters, interviewed on their politics, all felt similarly: the marketing push for trad content online is constant and heavy. There are few social safety nets out in the real world. Roommates are a must; buying a house or living alone is out of reach. It’s necessary to have two jobs and work double shifts, sometimes at night. COVID botched their launch into adulthood; the grief was largely ignored. Older generations are passing down problems, rather than bequeathing a better planet or handing a baton of progress. Will there be a planet for them when they’re old? Will there be social security? Will there be democracy?
“I don’t feel connected to the issues,” said J, who voted for Harris. “I grew up with sisters, so I voted to protect their rights, but my biggest concern is the climate, and neither of them spoke much about it. I don’t think either candidate impacts my paycheck; that’s the billionaires. And I’m too busy with school and work to consume much online content.”
K, who would have voted for Trump if his work schedule would’ve allowed, didn’t trust Harris. “She won’t sit down and have a real conversation. She’s acting. At least he (Trump) shows up.”
K was talking about Trump’s appearances with manosphere podcasters Joe Rogan and Theo Von. Long conversations that sounded like your rambling uncle at a holiday dinner table overrode campaign conflicts like Project 2025, or facts, such as Trump’s felonious record. As Kate Scott wrote for The Conversation, “Trump was humorous and humanized. And for Gen Z men who consume more news through social media than traditional outlets, he was highly accessible. Suddenly, he wasn’t just a presidential candidate, but a certified ‘bro’ willing to openly discuss cocaine on a podcast.”
T, a Libertarian with a partner and a new baby, works 70-hour weeks and struggles to get by. He listens to Rogan and Von with a grain of salt. “They aren’t as biased as liberals think.” T was also too busy to vote; without family medical leave, he had just one week off work with the baby and feels pressured by a society experiencing extreme changes. “Harris needed to run on more than just Trump criticism,” he said. “She didn’t convince me.”
What was convincing for E, a young woman and former cult survivor who was watching her friends fall into trad content rabbit holes, was education. A former Republican, E voted for Harris after educating herself by reading books on the potential dystopian outcomes of the election, watching documentaries on fundamentalism, and taking gender studies classes, as well as traveling to Europe.
“My friends don’t want to work so hard. They’re falling for the lie that trad life is less effort, getting married so they can stay home and have babies while their husbands earn the money.," E said. "Their whole world is all the same people — at church, book club, cycle class. They’re building trad bubbles and it makes them forget what real life is like outside. I understand why Trump’s people want to ban books and take down the Department of Education. Simply educating people helps them make better choices.”
What these four young adults demonstrate is the push and pull of fundamentalist recruiting. By pitting men against women, and progress against simplicity, the religious powers behind the trad movement first exhaust us, then promise the solution for exhaustion. By coupling a binary with an ideal outcome, and a strict step-by-step formula, that if followed, will result in happiness, safety, and success, fundamentalism pledges to take us back to a better time. Evidence and testaments from the lessons learned last time are masked or ignored.
This is not a new trend but an old belief system with worn methods that perform until people who know better, choose better. We’ve been puritans before, agrarian colonialists, and post-war boomers. We have a record of what it was like for minorities, marginalized communities, women, children, and America at large. Gen Z isn’t a line of pawns in an old man’s game. They’re trying to build a life and it’s time to stop assigning them salvation or blame for America’s problems.
