Subhead: Social mood continues to fuel the growing tradwife movement
Headline 1: “The Boss Comes to Dinner. You, a new bride, want to do your husband proud… with a quietly elegant dinner that never betrays a low cooking I.Q.” – Good Housekeeping, April 1, 1950
Headline 2: “11 Recipes Every Wife Should Know How to Make… Classic wifey dishes that are sure to please any husband – and elevate you to tradwife status.” – Evie magazine, June 1, 2024
Evie is the modern broadside for the growing tradwife movement, a lifestyle brand that advocates for a return to the traditionally gendered 1950s America, when husbands were the breadwinners and wives baked the bread. The New York Times profile of Evie and its founders on March 21, 2025 writes:
Evie cover girls would not be politicians in power suits but the type of women who might compete in beauty pageants two weeks after giving birth to their eighth child (which their most recent cover girl, the Utah influencer Hannah Neeleman, actually did).
Socionomics has been tracking the tradwife trend as diligently as 28 – the natural, cycle-based fertility app founded by Evie so women can finally “break-up with birth control.” Our December 2023, March 2024, and December 2024 Socionomists covered the topic in-depth, providing uncompromising insight into how this “anti-feminist” crusade has risen to mainstream status so quickly.
From the December 2023 Socionomist article “Poodle Skirts, Saddle Shoes, and Dinner on the Table: Is the 1950s Style Back?”:
In the world of socionomics, however, nostalgia is one of the most reliable narrators of a story that could be titled “A Bull Market in Social Mood.” Since the early 1980s, we have observed a strong correlation between societal waves of nostalgia and positive social mood as reflected in stock prices.
Today, a wave of longing for the past is taking hold once again – this time for one of the most recognizable periods of economic prosperity: the 1950s.
Enter the cheery, pineapple-upside-down-cake-baking world of #tradwives, the digital hashtag for “traditional wives.” An international sorority of women, from zoomers to boomers, who lead this rising social media movement are calling for the reinstatement of classic gender roles epitomized in 1950s USA.
But as Robert Prechter noted in his 1985 study “Popular Culture and the Stock Market,” the resurgence of traditional gender roles is less a personal choice and more part of a recurring pattern:
Trends toward positive social mood produce gender idols that are clearly defined. In such times, masculine men and feminine women are the norm, as were John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Madonna in the 1980s.
History is long, but the catalyst behind why these historic cultural shifts repeat is short: social mood. Subscribe to The Socionomist today and get full access to all three issues that discuss tradwives as part of the 20+-year archive of Socionomist publications.
Or – purchase a single copy of the April 2025 Socionomist. Its gripping cover story establishes a profound connection between waning positive mood and the rise in vigilante folk heroes, like Luigi Mangione, the accused murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.