In this op-ed, Renee Bracey Sherman explores how JD Vance's apparent trad wife vision for America depends on the labor of women of color, particularly Black women.
Much of the Republican National Convention was absolutely horrifying. From transphobic statements to threats about mass deportation of immigrants, Republicans painted an alarming picture of the future they envision for the United States under another Trump presidency, one where certain basic freedoms are things of the past. But when former President Donald Trump announced the selection of Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate shortly before officially becoming the Republican presidential nominee, it ushered in a new layer of the conversation. Now, the “trad wife” aesthetic has gone from a TikTok trend to a viable political platform, as Vance’s anti-women views take center stage and bolster Trump’s history of misogyny. But Vance’s vision of a trad wife future is one where seemingly only some are welcome.
The trad wife fad on social media documents the lives of largely white women influencers who show themselves raising families, cooking meals from scratch, tending to the home, and engaging in other domestic activities that were traditionally thought of as “women’s work.” But what is sold as an idyllic return to the “seductive simplicity” of the past is actually just propaganda. Some trad wives hide it while others are more explicit, but the lifestyle typically hinges on the glorification of classic white Christian gender roles and being subservient to men. Vance has expressed some alarming thoughts on gender roles that seem in line with the values of some trad wives, and supports policies that uphold the “traditional” American family. That has led some to express concern that Vance’s vision for the country, and the one outlined in a conservative think tank's terrifying Project 2025, would essentially aim to force all women to be trad wives, condemning us to a life void of choices, restrained largely to the kitchen or the home, and unable to leave unfulfilling or even dangerous marriages through their goal of ending no-fault divorce.
This is partly true, but it overlooks a key part of this ideology: Vance and his peers don’t actually want the trad wife life for all of us, they want it for white women.
Going back to the 1950s means going back to a pre-Civil Rights Act era, when women of color, and particularly Black women, had fewer rights than they do today. White women might be enticed by a return to “simplicity,” but women of color have never been trad wives, instead working in the fields, factories, and as domestic workers. Going back further, enslaved Black women performed household duties, including nursing white children, under the supervision of white women, who often abused them. Between the forced separation of families through systems like slavery, migration, and mass incarceration, and jobs paying low wages, Black and Brown women have largely always had to work to provide for their families. There never was a trad wife moment for most women of color, particularly not one that could be glorified. The right to stay-at-home motherhood was never a real option.
Even when the United States launched a welfare program to support mothers who didn’t have a husband’s income, white widowed women were envisioned as the primary beneficiaries. In fact, Black women were often excluded from the New Deal’s Aid to Dependent Children program, and when they did receive benefits, the payments were generally lower, based on the assertion that “Blacks needed less to live on than whites.” In the 1960s, the National Welfare Rights Organization led a concerted effort to eliminate racist restrictions and help increase benefits from social service programs, particularly for Black women. However, around that time, the prevailing image of a welfare recipient also shifted from one of an innocent white woman parenting alone due to loss to a stigmatizing narrative of a Black or Brown woman living off of the white taxpayer’s dime. This image has been ingrained in politics for decades, touted by Republicans, and some Democrats, as the basis for the need to create welfare-to-work programs or gut social safety net programs altogether.
Vance has openly decried social safety net program ideas that would allow women more choice in their child care options, and, he’s advocated for an America where people can “raise a family and dignity on a single middle-class job,” which seems to be code for a return to the era when white women didn’t work outside the home. Universal childcare undoubtedly would be a gamechanger for working parents, especially mothers of color, young and/or single parents, and queer and/or low- and middle-income families. But they’re likely not who Vance envisions in his trad wife future, as they were never included in the past that the movement is based on.
Vance has openly picked a bone with women who don’t conform to this trad wife lifestyle. He’s targeted “childless cat ladies” (which, it’s implied, was directed at Harris, who does have children), and slighted working parents (likely mothers, who, data shows, take on the lion’s share of childcare) for sending their children to daycare. Vance’s own wife, Usha Vance, was, however, one of these career women. The couple met in law school, and since Usha enjoyed a career as a lawyer clerking for two now Supreme Court justices and as a corporate litigator. (It makes me wonder how JD and Usha were able to achieve so much while raising their children, given his comments on working parents.) However, shortly after he was added to the Republican ticket, it was announced that Usha had quit her job to support her husband’s aspirations. While Usha is a woman of color, part of a group who are largely excluded from the trad wife vision, she seemed to elude Vance’s gender ideology, working outside the home. They were the perfect power couple, until his quest for power became more important. But to me, it seems unlikely that all she did was stop working, or that she’s totally an exception to Vance’s rules; I suspect it’s only a matter of time before she becomes a trad wife influencer like the rest of them, one who conforms to traditional White Christian values despite the color of her skin.
I get why the trad wife lifestyle looks appealing. At a time when money is tight for many, more and more are disillusioned by how hard and stressful it is to work. Who doesn’t want to spend their days making apple pie and soap from scratch? It looks appealing because capitalism is destroying all our lives. It’s forcing us to work harder and harder for less and less. The trad wife aesthetic depends on the invisible labor of women of color because it’s just capitalism dressed up in nostalgia. It always was.
People like Vance are laying out a vision for white cis women, which includes a place in society bolstered by the subjugation of Black and Brown cis and trans women, as well as nonbinary individuals. It’s one where white women — or women who conform to white Christian values — are given a certain place, while continuing to capitalize off the labor of people of color. Conversations about trad wife propaganda must include a frank conversation about the exploitation of people of color, particularly women, that is forever central to capitalism. It seems as though if Vance has his way, the trad wife aesthetic will come for us all, but not all of us will survive it.
