Let’s settle something once and for all: are tradwives and stay-at-home moms the same thing?
A video I posted about the tradwife movement blew up, and the comments made one thing clear: most people are using “tradwife” and “stay-at-home mom” interchangeably. They are not the same thing, and the difference matters. In this episode, I’m breaking down what a tradwife actually is versus what Tiffany Dufu calls a “non-compensated working mom,” why romanticizing financial dependence is dangerous no matter how happy your marriage is right now, and the seven concrete moves every woman; married, partnered, or neither; needs to make to protect herself financially. This isn’t anti-marriage or anti-stay-at-home mom. It’s pro protecting you from financial ruin.
Key takeaways:
Tradwives and stay-at-home moms are not the same thing
A tradwife is an ideology: submission, a rejection of financial independence, often religiously rooted. A stay-at-home mom is a logistical arrangement that says nothing about her values or whether she has her own financial plan. Social media has collapsed the two into one aesthetic, sourdough, sundresses, and submission, and that’s dangerous, because it romanticizes dependence as aspirational. Cambridge added “tradwife” to the dictionary in 2025.
The influencers selling submission aren’t actually submissive
The tradwife creators with the biggest followings haven’t given up money or power at all. They’re the breadwinners in their households, running full product suites and content teams. The lifestyle they’re selling is not the lifestyle they’re living.
Handing off your finances isn’t the same as sharing the load
Women carry the brunt of emotional and unpaid labor in most heteronormative relationships, even progressive ones. When one more thing gets taken off your plate, it feels like relief. But giving up your financial power also means giving up your awareness of what’s happening with your money, and that’s the one thing you can’t afford to give away, compensated or not.
A financial safety net is car insurance for your marriage
You don’t buy car insurance because you’re planning to crash. You buy it because you don’t control what everyone else on the road does. Same logic applies to your marriage. And the stakes aren’t equal to losing a job: if you’re laid off, you have a resume, a network, and unemployment benefits. If your marriage ends after years out of the workforce, you’re starting from below zero. Women’s household income drops an estimated 41% after divorce, compared to 23% for men, and divorce rates are at an all-time high, over 50% of marriages.
The real villain isn’t the stay-at-home mom, it’s the system that removes her choice
Childcare costs are so high that it’s often the more “rational” economic decision for a woman (statistically the lower earner) to leave the workforce. Then she’s penalized for that exact decision if the marriage ends. The problem was never her choice. It’s a system that too often makes it not a choice at all.
Seven moves to protect yourself financially, married or not
- Have the “what if” conversation with your partner – what if one of you dies, gets sick, or you separate. A relationship that can’t survive that conversation has a bigger problem than the conversation itself.
- Your name goes on everything – bank accounts, mortgage, car title, investments, and your own credit card (not just as an authorized user).
- Have your own money – a personal account, ideally a 3-month emergency fund in a high-yield savings account. It doesn’t need to be secret, just yours.
- Keep your credit alive – one card in your name, used and paid regularly.
- Know every number – expenses, total debt, retirement balances, insurance, and beneficiary designations.
- Keep your skills and network warm – freelance, volunteer, take a course, keep LinkedIn active. You don’t need a job, just don’t disappear.
- Understand your legal protections – prenups and postnups aren’t just for the wealthy (every married couple already has a state-determined “prenup” by default), and know your state’s laws on marital property and spousal support.
Notable quotes
“The math does not care how much he loves you. The math does not care.”
“The hand that feeds you can also love you, and cherish you, and be your best friend, and you should still be able to feed yourself.”
“A woman who could leave but chooses to stay is in a fundamentally different marriage than a woman who stays because she cannot afford to.”
Episode at-a-glance
00:00 Intro: The 15-word post that broke the internet
00:37 Meet Tori + episode overview
01:46 What is a tradwife, actually?
02:32 Why the tradwife aesthetic is so appealing
04:21 The Ballerina Farm irony
05:01 Tradwife vs. stay-at-home mom: not the same thing
06:39 Tori’s parents: how to stay home without losing financial power
07:52 Why women hand over financial control
11:09 “Your boss can starve you too” — debunked
12:10 “Just marry the right man” — what the data says
15:28 Tradwife trend = burnout in a sundress
15:44 The real villain: the system, not the woman
18:28 The 7-step financial protection plan
18:48 1. Put your name on everything
19:13 2. Have your own money
19:51 3. Keep your credit alive
20:08 4. Know every number
21:08 5. Keep your skills and network warm
21:38 6. Know your legal protections
23:00 7. Have the “what if” conversation
23:37 Closing: bet on yourself
Thanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode!
Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode!
Not sure what to do with your money? Visit https://herfirst100k.com/ffpod and take our FREE Money Plan Quiz to get your personalized money plan, and find any resources mentioned on our show.
Also mentioned in this episode:
Episode 11: Practicing Self-Care
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Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
I posted a video last week, 15 whole words on a screen and my phone has not stopped blowing up since. In this video, I said, “We’re not envious that you’re a tradwife. The hand that feeds you can also starve you.” The comments split into three camps. Camp one, “Just say you’re traumatized and leave people in healthy relationships alone.” Camp two, “Nobody plans to marry a narcissist. There are reasons our grandmas told us to keep a stash of money hidden.” And camp three, “No one’s starving me. I have a law degree and my name is on every goddamn thing.” Here’s the thing. All three of these women are making my point and I don’t think they realize it yet. So let’s talk about it.
But first, a word from our sponsors.
Hi, I’m Tori. I’m a money expert. I’m a multimillionaire and I’ve helped over five million women be better with money. And today on Financial Feminist, we are talking, yes, about the Tradwife Movement, but more specifically, are tradwives and stay-at-home moms the same thing? And more broadly, how do we think about women who earn a living but don’t actually make money for the work that they do? So first, we need to define what a tradwife actually is. If you are unfamiliar with the phrase, which by the way, fun fact to my producer, Kristen and anybody listening, I have brought up tradwives multiple times in my life recently because like so many other people, I have recently read an absolutely devoured Yesteryear, which is an incredible book, if you have not read it, about tradwives. And I brought up this book multiple times to people and they went, “I’ve never heard that term.” So first of all, tell me you’re not chronically online without telling me you’re not chronically online, but I think it’s important that we all have a working definition before we continue with this episode.
Tradwives, as the internet has come to understand them, are women who end up living a very traditional relationship with their husband. And I say husband because it’s never with another woman. It is always with a husband. And this lifestyle is not only a lifestyle that they live, but also a lifestyle they promote. And this looks, in practicality, like maybe living on a farm, having seven children, and being subservient to your husband. At the end of the day, tradwives are out here telling you that you should live a soft feminine life and that the greatest gift you’ve been given is being a doting wife and mother. In our society, where capitalism has weaponized absolutely everything and we are all exhausted and the cost of absolutely everything is more expensive, it is very easy to look at the Tradwife Movement as something that feels idyllic, that something that feels like your shoulders dropping and you breathing a big sigh of relief because maybe you won’t have to worry so much anymore.
Maybe if you can give someone else the responsibility of earning an income, of managing the finances, of worrying about a lot of the stuff that you are worried about because capitalism makes you worry about it, you can focus on what truly matters. Being a good partner, specifically being a good wife, but also being a good mother. The issue that we start having with tradwives is not the demonization of motherhood or partnership, which are two incredible roles that women can play, but it’s in this larger movement of giving away your power, of saying that, “Above all else, you should sacrifice your own needs and definitely your own wants for everyone else other than yourself and that not only should you sacrifice all of those needs and wants,” putting you in a very precarious position, “But you should also promote that kind of lifestyle to women everywhere.”
We’re thinking about ballerina farm, right? That is the token tradwife that we are discussing, but the irony of tradwives on the internet is that they haven’t given up any money or power at all. The very women that are promoting a tradwife lifestyle who have millions of followers and a whole product suite and a whole content team, they’re actually the breadwinners. They are the ones making the majority of their family’s money. They have turned this lifestyle into a product. So when we talk about tradwives and the promotion of the Tradwife Movement, we are talking actively about women giving their power away to patriarchy and specifically over to their husbands. So when I went online and I talked about how we’re not envious of tradwives because the hand that feeds you can also starve you, the internet decided that when I said tradwife, I meant stay-at-home mom.
Ultimately, tradwives are an ideology. This is submission. This is a rejection of women’s financial independence. It is often religiously rooted. Fun fact, Cambridge even added the word tradwife to the dictionary in 2025, but a stay-at-home mom, or as Tiffany Dufu, who was a previous guest on this podcast, calls stay-at-home moms, non-compensated working moms. This is a logistical arrangement. You are home with the kids, but it says nothing about your values or whether or not she has her own financial plan. And what social media has done is they have merged these into one aesthetic. They have collapsed these into one thing. This is sourdough, this is sundresses, this is submission and that’s dangerous because it romanticizes dependence as aspirational. Now, in no way am I anti-stay-at-home mom. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. In no way am I saying that tradwives and stay-at-home moms are the same and in no way am I vilifying the very necessary and frankly continually undervalued and undercompensated work that stay-at-home moms do.
Staying home can be an incredible choice. Working from your home to raise your children can be an incredible choice if you have built the financial infrastructure to do it safely and that if is what this episode is about. One of the things that my parents are very conscious of is the fact that my dad has made all of the money for the last 30 something odd years, but in no way is my mom powerless in our financial decisions. Every big financial decision is made collaboratively with my parents. My mom has what’s called a spousal IRA, which basically exists for this point where he is contributing to her retirement, even though she is doing uncompensated labor and they very much know what’s going on together with the money. My mom has full logins to things. She makes financial decisions as much, if not, sometimes more than my dad does.
They are going to meetings with their accountant together. They are having so many conversations about money where they are both active participants. Ultimately, where this gets to be potentially harmful is that if you are a stay-at-home mom, and especially if you’re married to a man and he is not involving you in anything in regards to financial decision making or in regards to where the accounts are kept, this is where it becomes a problem. Now, I originally talked with my friend Liz Moody on her show about this theory that I’m throwing around and I think it’s really, really important to talk about here. I think in heteronormative relationships… In fact, I know in heteronormative relationships, women are exhausted. Women get the brunt of the emotional labor. You have to know when T-ball practices and you know exactly when you’re to pick your kids up from school and what their allergies are and when laundry needs to be done and your mother-in-law’s birthday.
You know all of these things and you’re carrying all of these responsibilities because in the vast majority of heteronormative relationships, even in progressive ones, women still carry the brunt of the emotional and unpaid labor. So I think what starts to happen is that we feel so exhausted by everything we’re tasked to do all day long that if we can give one thing away, it feels like a relief. If we can say, “Oh my gosh, he’s going to handle finances. He’s going to handle our money. Oh, thank God, that is one less thing I have to worry about. And by the way, he’s better at it anyway. He’s better at math than me. I don’t know what’s going on. He knows how to manage our money. He knows how to invest in the stock market. He can just handle it because thank God that isn’t something additional that gets added to my plate.”
It’s a totally understandable feeling. It’s totally understandable because you’ve got a million things already and you’ve also been told actively by society that men are better with money, men are better at math. They can manage it. In fact, they’ll probably do a better job, right? But what happens is you’re giving away not only your financial power, but your consciousness of what’s going on with money. This is one of those things that you cannot give up. Now, I’m not asking you to add another thing to your plate, but I am asking… In fact, I’m requiring you to be in a relationship with your partner where you can actively manage money together, where you can talk openly about money, where you have access to the accounts and where you, especially if you’re a non-compensated working mom, are being compensated in some tangible way because we never think that we are going to be the statistic. We never think we’re going to be the statistic, but I have to tell you a really, really honest truth.
I wish you could see how many emails and DMs and comments we get from women all across the world who never thought it would happen to them, but who are in relationships that they cannot get out of or are still in love with their partner, but their partner’s making really stupid financial choices and they had no idea. In fact, if you have not listened to an incredible episode with Jen Hatmaker on this very show, this was her reality. She was married to her husband for 25 years, had multiple children with him, had built a whole life and a company and a religious network with him and their relationship fell apart. She had no idea what was going on with the money and he was mismanaging it. We never think it’s going to happen to us, but this is why I need you to be an active participant.
There was a comment that I found really, really interesting that came up repeatedly, which was in defense of the Tradwife Movement, which is, “Well, your boss can starve you too. So why not me just marry somebody that I’ve picked who I think is really great who would never ever do this to me?” And we got a lot of engagement on this comment, which is like, “Okay, hand that feeds you can also starve you. Well, your boss can starve you too.” Well, yeah, she’s right, but she’s incomplete here. If you lose a job, if you get laid off, if you get fired, if something happens, you have a resume, you have work history, you have a network, you have unemployment insurance, you have unemployment benefits potentially. You can find a new work opportunity. If you lose your marriage after 10 years out of the workforce with no income, no credit, no retirement, you are starting from below zero.
These are not the same starting lines. These are not the same thing. Some of the other most liked comments, this one in particular grinded my gears, which was some version of, “Well, you’re not going to be in this position if you just marry the correct man.” Let’s see what the data has to say about this. Women’s household income drops 41% after divorce, men’s drops 23%. Let’s go back even further. Divorce right now, all time high. Over 50%, over half of marriages end in divorce. And ultimately, that gap in income, that’s not really a gap, that’s a cliff. It’s a motherfucking cliff. The math does not care how much he loves you. The math does not care. If I was getting in a car and I was starting to drive that car and I’m going 70 down the freeway, which is the speed limit, by the way. And I am making really smart choices. I’m like putting my blinker on, I’ve got my seatbelt on and I am a really great driver. I have no control over anybody else around me.
And in fact, yeah, I might know the person who is driving next to me. They could make some sort of crazy decision in the car. I still have car insurance. I still have car insurance and it’s not because I think I’m going to fuck up or anybody around me is going to fuck up, it’s because I have no idea what the future holds. If you got in an accident and the person who hit you didn’t have car insurance, you’re thinking, “Why? Why don’t you have car insurance?” Yes, it’s probably an economic thing. That’s a whole other episode, right? The fact that car insurance is more expected, blah, blah, blah. That’s a whole other thing.
Nobody gets in a car expecting to get in an accident that day. This is why we have car insurance. This is why we have business insurance. This is why we have home insurance. No one expects to light a candle and have your entire house burned down. Sometimes that’s what happens. This is why it is so naive to just say, “Well, just marry the right man.” And also so insulting to people that just implies, “Well, I have good taste, but you don’t.” The grandma comment is so relevant here. The top comment on this post was, quote, “Our grandparents weren’t together 60 years because they were madly in love.” Before no fault, divorce, before a woman could open bank accounts without a husband or father’s approval, that’s 1974, not that long ago, staying was not a choice. In fact, it was the only option. And the tradwife aesthetic romanticizes an era where women could literally not leave.
Women could literally not leave and ultimately, 99% of abusive relationships are somehow financially abusive as well. Women who are financially dependent on partners are more likely to stay in abusive relationships. And this might not be about your marriage, but it’s about what happens to women as a population when we romanticize dependence. This commenter, I think, nailed it, quote, “It’s not all men, but knowing that some of them is enough to build a safety net. And only 10% of men and women statistically agree a man should earn money while a woman stays home. 60% say that they both should contribute.” So the tradwife trend isn’t nostalgia, it’s burnout wearing a sundress. It’s sourdough, sundresses and submission. And women aren’t dreaming of the 1950s. We are exhausted in 2026. The real villain is not the woman who stays home. It’s not my mother. It’s not Janice Dunlap.
It is a system that makes childcare so expensive so that one person, one parent is forced to stay-at-home and then punishes the parent if the marriage ends. It is a system that is so expensive that it’s actually cheaper for statistically a woman because she’s not earning as much as her male partner to actually leave the workforce, to stop her resume building and to stay home. That’s the villain here, is a system that exists where a woman might not even get to have a choice on whether she stays home or not, but forces her to stay home because it’s the more fruitful economic decision. And I get why this makes women defensive. Protect yourself financially and don’t be dependent on a man. Sounds like your marriage is going to fail. I am not saying that. I’m not saying that. This is where the car insurance comes in.
You don’t have it because you’re planning on crashing your car. A financial safety net is car insurance for your marriage. It is not a bet against your partner. It’s a bet on yourself. And ultimately, this is why we spend so much time on the show and in my work talking about things like prenups and talking about money because ultimately, marriage should be about love. It should be about two people choosing to be together, not having one forced to be with the other because they can’t financially leave. There was one comment on the post that said, quote,” No one is saying to break up with your partner, but we have to build a life we can be proud of regardless of who is in it.” And that’s what we’re talking about here. If you’re thinking that having a plan B means you expect your partner to fail or you expect your marriage to fail, no.
Having a plan B and being fully transparent about you and your partner’s plan B means that you’re investing in yourself. That is not disloyalty, that is not sabotaging your marriage. That is actually protecting the sanctity of the partnership. Because the hardest truth is that a woman who could leave but chooses to stay is in a fundamentally different marriage than a woman who stays because she cannot afford to. Okay. Before we keep going, I want you to have a free resource to get started with your money. Over a million people have taken this quiz that delivers a customized free financial plan to their inbox. Head on over to herfirst100k.com/ffpod to take our six question quiz. It is the easiest resource we’ve built for you to immediately start on your financial journey, herfirst100k.com/ffpod. Okay. Internet fight’s over. Okay? We have agreed that tradwives are different from stay-at-home moms.
And we’ve also agreed that if you are a non-compensated working mom or in any relationship whatsoever, you need to make sure that you’re protecting yourself financially, even if you’re not earning an income. So here’s what you’re going to do. Number one, your name goes on everything. Bank accounts, mortgage, car title, investments. If your name is not on it, it is not yours. And it doesn’t have to just be your name, but it should be you and your partner’s name. And this is especially something I see all the time. You should not just be an authorized user on your partner’s credit card. You need to have your own credit card with your own credit. Number two, you need your own money. This is a bank account that is yours alone. It is not secret. It doesn’t have to be shameful. It is necessary. This should be at least a three-month emergency fund in a high yield savings account.
Even if it’s just $50 a month that’s getting squirreled away, this can be that emergency fund, a freedom fund, whatever you want to call it. Our grandmothers hid money under our mattresses. You can do better than the mattress. You need some of your own money. And again, you don’t have to hide this from your partner. Your partner should actively know, “Yeah, I got some of my own savings in case something happens.” Okay? Number three, speaking of credit, you need to keep your credit alive. You need to have one credit card in your name, but you also need to use it and pay it regularly. If you’ve been out of the workforce 10 years and your marriage ends, you will need a credit score that didn’t die in 2016. Number four, you need to know every number. Your monthly expenses, the total debt you and your partner have, your retirement balances, your insurance.
You need to set up beneficiary information so that if one of you passes away, the other one can easily access the accounts. If your partner handles the money and you don’t know the numbers, you’re just in the dark. So if you have no idea what’s going on, you’re going to schedule a money date with your partner. If you’re unsure how to do this, listen to episode 11 of this show or you can read chapter seven of my book. It guides you step by step how to go through and have a great productive money date with your partner. If this conversation feels scary, that’s totally understandable. You’re doing this for the first time. And again, if you don’t know your numbers, I need you to go to herfirst100k.com/ffpod. Take that quiz. It’ll give you a customized financial plan to get you started so you can ask informed questions when you’re meeting your partner.
Number five, I need you to keep your skills and network warm. This doesn’t mean going out every other day for a networking event or like scouring LinkedIn at all hours of the day, but it does mean continuing to talk to people. Maybe you’re freelancing, maybe you’re volunteering in your field, maybe you’re just taking a course or keeping your LinkedIn profile alive. You do not need a full-time job, but we just need you to not disappear. We need you to keep that network active. Number six, understand your legal protections. Do you have a prenup? Can you get a postnup if you don’t have a prenup? Postnups are a thing. Prenups are a thing and they’re not just for rich people. Fun fact, if you got married in the United States, at any state in the country, you already have a prenup. Yes, really. If you got married, you already have a prenup.
It’s what the state decided for you. In Washington state where I live, it’s 50/50, unless you dictate otherwise. I don’t like the government in my business. I don’t like the government deciding what’s going to happen in my relationship or my marriage. So therefore, when I get married, I’m definitely getting a prenup and it’s not just because I’m a millionaire, it’s because we need to be talking about money with our partners and we need to be deciding on what is actually equitable should this marriage dissolve. And fun fact, a prenup, by discussing it, actually prevents you from having to use it. Because you’re already having hard conversations about money. You are already cementing a plan that says, “Actually this marriage, we just want it to be about love because the money’s already handled. The money’s already figured out.” A prenup is not planning to fail its financial planning, period.
And I need you to know your state’s laws on marital property, spousal support, and retirement division. And finally, number seven. I need you to have a what if conversation. This is a conversation with your partner about some really hard topics. What if one of us dies? What if one of us gets sick? And yes, what if we end up separating? This is uncomfortable, but this is not optional. If you cannot have hard conversations in your relationship, if you cannot have hard conversations in your marriage, that tells you a lot. A marriage that cannot survive a what if conversation has a much bigger problem than the conversation itself.
All three of the women we talked about at the beginning, “Just say you’ve been traumatized,” or, “Nobody plans to marry a narcissist, this shit just happens sometimes,” or, “My name is on every damn thing,” they’re all right about something. The woman with the best chance planned for the life she wanted and the life she didn’t want. I am not anti-marriage. I’m not anti-stay-at-home mom. I’m not anti-love, but I am anti love will protect me from financial ruin. It won’t. You protect you from financial ruin. The hand that feeds you can also love you and cherish you and be your best friend and you should still be able to feed yourself. Those two things were never in conflict. Thank you so much for listening Financial Feminists. Make sure you have your own money. We’ll see you back here next week.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminists, produced by Her First $100K. If you love the show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you’re looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
