The Tradwife’s ‘Mental Stimulation’ Paradox

MAGA influencer Emily Wilson, under the username “emilysavesamerica,” went viral on X last week when she incited a “MAGA Civil War” with a rant attacking right-wing women for “promoting tradwife bullsh-t.” And while her comments were not entirely wrong — posting about sourdough on social media is indeed “cringe” — her claim that “guys want to be mentally stimulated” was not just wholly misguided, but an obvious indictment of her own singleness and childlessness.

“…Let’s bring some other things to the table beside sourdough. Guys want to be mentally stimulated as well as physical, okay? But I’m just like please, you guys are too young to be promoting this, and also, by the way, it’s cringe. You guys are cringe.”

The implication here is that choosing to be a homemaker instead of girlbossing at a 9 to 5 email job is somehow less interesting or thought-provoking for both women and their husbands. She goes as far as to say that choosing to “tradwife” (be a traditional stay-at-home wife and mother) is actually “setting yourself up for failure” and “to be trapped by a man.”

These are the types of comments childless women make when they are trying to overcompensate for the lack of ring on their finger or trying to hide the sounds of their empty uterus crying out to fulfill its intended duties. But let’s engage with them anyway.

The idea of being “mentally simulated” as a wife and a mother is a paradox. Such is the case with nearly every aspect of tradwifing. You can be drowning in children without a moment of solitude, and yet feel painfully alone. You are creating and shaping civilization, and yet it’s awfully mundane. You loathe your body and what’s happening to it physically every day for nine months (or longer), and yet you long to do it again.

I’m not the kind of mother or a wife who would argue these vocations are the most intellectually stimulating jobs I’ve ever had (although I know women who would). In fact, I’m as equally annoyed by this MAGA influencer girl’s comments as I am by the needlessly frazled mom who complains of her “mental load” and that she’s just “stretched thin right now.” For every homemaker who feels despair by the banal lunchmaking and the eighth consecutive reading of If You Give A Moose A Muffin all before 8 a.m. (as I did this morning), there is also a homemaker consumed by the narcissism of being at the center of the universe of her home and all the bodies occupying her time and attention. That’s not healthy for complementarian marital relations, either.

And although I’ve had “intellectual” email jobs like this MAGA influencer insists I cling to, perhaps as some sort of financial safety net, no 9 to 5 job has been as challenging or as rewarding as being responsible for the physical and spiritual formation of my children. As G.K. Chesterton asked:

How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children [math], and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

And so, like any paradox, being a “traditional” wife and mother is both mentally stimulating and excruciatingly boring. And you can experience both within the same day, even the same hour.    

The reality is there is no “MAGA Civil War” because any wife or a mother — including women who do work full-time or outside the home — knows that the fear of leading a life with no “mental stimulation” for ourselves or our husbands could only be conceived by someone who is neither a wife nor a mother and who has no place speaking down to those who are.