Abstract
This study examines the contemporary “tradwife” phenomenon through the intersecting
lenses of postfeminism, neoliberal femininity, and affective labor. While tradwife content is
often framed as a backlash against feminism, this article argues that it operates within a
postfeminist sensibility that rearticulates traditional domestic femininity through discourses of
choice, empowerment, and entrepreneurial selfhood. Drawing on qualitative netnography of
tradwife social media accounts, the study analyzes how domestic labor is aestheticized,
affectively produced, and commodified within platform capitalism. Rather than representing a
simple return to pre-feminist gender roles, tradwife content re-signifies submission,
homemaking, and motherhood as self-chosen lifestyle strategies embedded in neoliberal
rationalities. The article demonstrates how affective atmospheres of serenity, nostalgia, and
moral certainty coexist with grievance and anti-feminist sentiment, producing a digitally
mediated form of gendered governmentality. By integrating postfeminism, neoliberal
femininity, and affective labor frameworks, this study contributes to feminist media
scholarship by conceptualizing tradwife culture as a contradictory yet patterned formation that
privatizes social reproduction while monetizing intimacy and domesticity.