The New Right’s Cult of Domesticity

How conservatives use feminine identity as a political weapon

This week on Substack, I’m digging into the Right’s strategy for putting women back in their ‘place,’ starting with today’s post on the new right’s version of feminism. Later this week, we’ll get into the rise of pronatalism and why tech bros like Elon Musk are suddenly so interested in your uterus.

But it’s not all bad news. I’m also sharing an interview with Liuba Grechen Shirley from Vote Mama, plus a piece on how to keep fighting without burning out.

If you’ve been thinking about subscribing, this is the week to do it:

I’m donating 10% of all Substack subscriptions from this week to Vote Mama to support progressive moms running for office.

Let’s push back, and push forward.

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Over the last decade I have spent many hours of my life trying to implore political elites to see the power of Instagram to shape politics. For years it was dismissed as a platform where women just shared pictures of their babies and links to buy shoes.

I was hoping that point of view would shift during the Trump administration when I first started seeing QAnon conspiracies circulating in gorgeously filtered content that perfectly matched the aesthetics of the platform. The conservative ecosystem's use of the tool to persuade and politically galvanize women has since grown to include Moms For Liberty, MAHA, tradwives and the mean/hots of MAGA.

While there is an economic driver to all of this (the MLM/MAGA mom Venn diagram is often close to a circle) there is a critical political story that often gets lost.

1. In the same way men with podcasts impacted the 2024 election, I think women with large social followings will drive big changes in 2028.

2. There is a cogent theory of “feminism” being presented by the new right, one that is a direct attack on women’s autonomy and one whose political impact will reach far beyond the destruction of Roe if it continues to infiltrate the culture.

Last month I was quoted in a New York Times story about the rise of Evie magazine. I told them that Democrats needed to take Evie and its contemporaries seriously.

These media outlets, she added, are zeroing in on “moderate, apolitical, exhausted women” who are broken down by the lack of support for working mothers.

“By weaving identity politics and conservative values into lifestyle and wellness content, the right has been able to capture a cohort of women voters that the left never dreamed they could lose,” Ms. Amick recently wrote on her Substack, Emily In Your Phone.

​​“Millions of women have been forgotten by the publishing world,” reads a statement on Evie’s “About” page. “Women are no longer buying what they’re selling. And if you’re reading this, we have a feeling you’re going to feel right at home.”

The right has been furiously working to rebrand femininity and feminism for political gain. Evie is just the latest offshoot of that.

The modern tradwife movement isn't demanding that women should get back in the kitchen. It's whispering, "Wouldn't you be happier there?" That's the marketing genius of it. Today's conservative influencers are reframing submission as liberation. They've created a glossy, filtered world where stepping away from career ambitions isn't portrayed as a retreat but as an enlightened choice.

You've seen them in your feed: sun-dappled kitchens, linen aprons, and women baking sourdough while extolling the virtues of "returning to traditional femininity." What looks like a harmless cottagecore aesthetic is actually part of a sophisticated political strategy to strip away women’s rights.

Recent data reported in the New York Times shows a remarkable uptick in the belief that women should return to their “traditional roles”, particularly amongst Republican men. If you’ve spent any time consuming man-o-sphere content, you can see how we got here. But you’ll also notice the significant uptick in this belief amongst Republican women.

I love a graph and when I saw this one I immediately thought it was feed and Stack worthy. For years I’ve talked about how conservative influencers are overtly trying to shift the Overton Window. The Overton window explains how the window of acceptable discourse moves the more we talk about things. Those ideas then become ‘normalized’ and considered viable policies to support. This is not just about how ideas go from absolutely wild to totally normal, but how those very conversations are reflected in our policies. Yesterday's radical notion might become tomorrow's common sense that Congress considers actionable.

For example: The conservative influencer Alex Clark has spent years talking about how birth control is evil, how it is terrible for women’s health and how no one who actually cares about their body should take it. I was recently with a group of women and every single one said they went off birth control because of concerns raised by influencers they follow. If conservatives continue to push the Overton Window on birth control, when the first State bans contraception in order to test the constitutionality of Griswold v. Connecticut, there will be a loud contingent of women who support it as a policy in the interest of women’s health.

Yesterday's radical notion like ‘returning to traditional gender roles’ morphs into today’s ‘women don’t need equal pay or protections in the workplace.’

Unlike Phyllis Schlafly's stodgy anti-ERA crusade of the 1970s, this new movement wraps conservative ideology in the language of self-care, wellness, and personal empowerment. It's not "women belong at home," it's "You deserve to escape the rat race."

The pattern starts with gorgeous lifestyle posts, spotless kitchens where someone's kneading bread by hand, women in those flowy dresses that somehow never get dirty.

Then they pull you in closer by sharing struggles we can all relate to. "I was so burned out at my corporate job," or "Can you believe what childcare costs these days?" They talk about workplace stress in a way that makes you nod along thinking, "Yes! This is exactly how I feel!"

That's when they introduce their solution: embracing "traditional femininity." You'll hear them say things like, "I left my career to be a homemaker and honestly, I've never been happier." It sounds so genuine and personal.

But then comes the shift. Suddenly they're advocating for conservative policies that would essentially force all women into these same roles whether they want them or not.

What makes this approach so effective is how they build that emotional connection first. These creators aren't just sharing information. They're telling stories that persuade their audience to reconsider everything from gender roles to birth control. And because they've established such deep trust with their followers, their words carry serious weight.

In Project 2025 conservatives lay out a clear political strategy for turning back the clock on women’s empowerment. From The Atlantic:

A focus on heterosexual, married, procreating couples is everywhere in Project 2025. “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-­ordered nation and healthy society,” writes Roger Severino, the author of a chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services and a former HHS and Justice Department staffer. (The document is structured as a series of chapters on specific departments or agencies, each written by one or a few authors.) He argues that the federal government should bolster organizations that “maintain a biblically based, social-­science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,” saying that other forms are less stable. The goal is not only moral; he and other authors see this as a path to financial stability and perhaps even greater prosperity for families.

In the Heritage Foundation’s recent report on the American Family, a key takeaway is that “Marriage and family have been altered and redefined over time to prioritize adult autonomy over commitment and family.” They argue that America must return to “traditional family life” or it will “continue down the path of deconstruction.”

This movement has gained traction because post-pandemic burnout is real. Women were disproportionately impacted by childcare disruptions and work-from-home challenges. Economic pressures have made "having it all" impossible. Without affordable childcare, paid family leave, or living wages, the work-family juggle doesn’t just feel like a losing battle, it is one. There's also genuine disillusionment with "lean in" feminism. Many women feel betrayed by corporate feminism that promised success without changing the underlying systems.

When someone's struggling to balance work, family, and self-care on four hours of sleep, a beautifully curated feed showing the "simple life" hits different. It looks like escape, not oppression.

MAGA preys on cultural nostalgia of a time that didn’t actually exist for most people. And even amongst those white women who were benefiting from the post-war economic boom, The Feminine Mystique makes clear that it didn’t necessarily deliver happiness. They were popping valium like candy to get through the day.

The most compelling part of the tradwife pitch is what it offers: permission to stop trying so hard in a system that wasn't built for you. Modern work culture expects women to function as if they don't have families while parenting as if they don't have jobs. Without structural support, many women are exhausted. The tradwife aesthetic acknowledges this exhaustion and offers a solution: not fighting for better conditions, but opting out entirely. It can feel like relief.

“When I see a barefoot and pregnant former ballerina baking her sourdough in her Utah homestead while balancing a toddler on her hip, I can’t help but let out a little sigh. It’s pretty. It’s weirdly calming. It’s probably staged (because all influencer content is a performance), but it is also validating the actual “work” of motherhood,” my friend Jo Piazza wrote for Bustle.

“This is something else we can take away from the tradwives. As a society we need to respect and elevate the work done in the home. Homemaking has been shit on and denigrated in our society for the past fifty years. There’s the false notion that women who stay at home sit around and eat bon bons and watch soaps all day. It’s a bullshit idea. Women who work in the home raising their children are CEOs of their households.”

The “feminism” promoted by the New Right isn’t feminism at all. It’s a carefully packaged rebrand of patriarchal values dressed up in empowerment language. It speaks to real frustrations many women feel, but instead of offering liberation, it prescribes submission. Below are the core tenets of this ideology, and why they are a distortion of what feminism actually stands for.

Domesticity as Empowerment

Definition: The claim that a woman’s true power lies in embracing domestic roles, homemaking, cooking, caregiving, as her primary purpose. This isn’t presented as duty, but as liberation from the chaos of modern life.

The Problem: Feminism has always been about choice and has always defended a woman’s right to choose the life she wants, including staying home if that’s what she wants. But the New Right frames domesticity not as one valid path among many, but as the ideal. It pressures women to retreat from public and professional life under the guise of “freedom,” while ignoring all of the reasons modern life feels so unsustainable.

Femininity as Strength

Definition: A redefinition of traditional femininity, beauty, softness, submissiveness, as a source of power. Influencers tell women that leaning into hyper-feminine aesthetics and behavior gives them more control in relationships and society.

The Problem: Real feminism celebrates all expressions of gender, but the New Right rewards women who conform to a narrow ideal of womanhood, and punishes those who step outside it. This ideal is still entirely based on male validation and the male gaze. It tells women they’re powerful, but only if they stay pretty, thin, agreeable, and unthreatening.

Motherhood as Political Identity

Definition: Turning motherhood into a core political identity that defines a woman’s value and purpose. Movements like Moms for Liberty weaponize maternal concern into a conservative organizing principle, claiming the moral high ground in debates over education, rights, and public health.

The Problem: Feminism has always fought for mothers to be respected, supported, and free, not used. The New Right uses motherhood as a way to silence dissent, claiming that “real moms” oppose reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and comprehensive education. It’s not about uplifting mothers, it’s about narrowing what it means to be a woman.

Traditional Gender Roles as an Assertion of Social Order

Definition: The belief that clearly defined roles for men and women are not just natural, but necessary to restore “order” in society. Men lead, women support. Men protect, women nurture. It’s sold as harmony, as “balance.”

The Problem: This is patriarchy with a fresh coat of paint. Feminism exists precisely because these rigid roles have historically denied women power, safety, and independence. The New Right doesn’t want to empower women, it wants to reinstate a hierarchy where women serve a political function: to stabilize a conservative vision of society by being compliant, dependent, and quiet.

The Bottom Line

This isn’t empowerment, it’s marketing. The New Right is using the language of feminism to sell women their own subjugation. They’ve wrapped restriction in pastel graphics and called it freedom. But real feminism shouldn’t assign roles. It shouldn’t shame ambition of any ilk - whether to stay home, work, or do some combination. It doesn’t tell women what they should be, it gives them the power to decide for themselves.

So where do we go from here? If the right is redefining womanhood in their image, progressives need their own vision, one that acknowledges current frustrations while pushing for meaningful structural change. This means acknowledging that modern life IS exhausting for many women, rejecting the false choice between career burnout and traditional domesticity, and getting specific about the policies and cultural shifts we need.

The right is using femininity as a weapon in the culture wars. Their strategy isn't just nostalgia, it's a deliberate political project designed to make oppressive systems feel like a choice. Understanding this movement isn't about judging individual women's choices. It's about recognizing how personal discontent can be warped into a political movement and how aesthetics can become vehicles for ideology.

So the next time you see that perfectly filtered reel of traditional femininity, remember: you're not just watching lifestyle content. You're watching politics in action.

The question isn’t whether women should bake bread or stay home with their kids. The question is: Who gets to decide what a good life looks like, and who benefits when that vision is prescribed from above?

The tradwife aesthetic didn’t go viral by accident. It’s the result of years of deliberate strategy, content creation, and digital infrastructure. The right didn’t just build a narrative, they built an empire. And while we were debating talking points, they were shaping identity and creating community online.

If the left wants to meet this moment, we need to stop dismissing this as fringe. We need to stop rolling our eyes at sourdough reels and start taking seriously the power of culture to shape politics. Because this is politics. And if we don’t tell a more compelling story about womanhood, one that values autonomy, care, and real support, someone else will.

The future of feminism won’t be decided in white papers or think tanks. It’ll be decided in the scroll.

We have to show up where the battleground actually is: in feeds, in stories, in culture. And we have to offer more than critique, we have to offer a vision.

A vision where freedom doesn’t mean burnout, where motherhood isn’t isolation, and where femininity isn’t weaponized against us. A vision of modern womanhood that’s not defined by tradition or performance.

This is where I want to hear from you. Please head to the comments to discuss what you want the future of women to look like.

Not a return to the past, but a future rooted in autonomy, joy, and real freedom.

So tell me: what does that future look like to you?