Enitza Templeton, a woman who identified with the tradwife movement, has shared details of her experience in a household governed by gender roles that many might consider archaic.
After four children and ten years of marriage, Enitza paused to question whether she was truly satisfied with the lifestyle she was leading, which involved cooking from scratch, cleaning, taking care of her kids, and staying at home so her husband could be the sole breadwinner.
Highlights
- Enitza Templeton spent ten years as a tradwife, doing all domestic chores while her husband was the sole breadwinner.
- The encouragement from other mothers inspired Enitza to leave her traditional role, leading to a shift to a professional career.
- She criticized the tradwife lifestyle promoted on social media, calling it disingenuous and highlighting the hidden struggles behind it.
"I felt like, as a mom, it's my job to clear the path for my daughters. And I have to make as much of an impact as I can for them. I don't want them to grow up in a world like this," she told People Magazine.
Image credits: emergingmotherhood
"I was not raised to believe that women had a right to think and a right to ask questions. I thought if a woman didn't have a child, she was going to be miserable for her whole life.
“I did not understand there were women that were just happy to just live and be themselves."
The mom, who married her ex-husband in 2009, rejects the glorification of the tradwife lifestyle often shown on TikTok. In her view, the image of the superwoman who works around the clock to do chores and take care of her household is the exact opposite of empowering.
Enitza Templeton married her ex-husband in 2009 and took care of all domestic chores throughout their relationship
Image credits: Canvas Rebel
"I remember watching TV, folding the towels thinking, 'I wish anybody could help me out of this. If I had the money, if I had the means, if I had some way, I would not be married. I hate this. I don't want my daughters to be in a marriage like this,'" she explained.
The "tradwife (traditional wife)" movement emerged on social media platforms around six years ago, gaining popularity on Reddit, namely through an anti-feminist thread called Red Pill, Euronews reported. Tradwives then surfaced on other mainstream social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
This group of women advocates for a return to traditional gender norms by submitting to their husbands and promoting domesticity.
Despite the term's association with the far-right, not all of these women identify with this ideology, explained Cécile Simmons, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Image credits: emergingmotherhood
"I see their deep, deep, deep desire to validate the lifestyle and to be like, 'Look at me. I'm so perfect and beautiful, and I do all these things amazingly.' It's super sad. It's also a little bit disingenuous. I know what it's like. You're not showing the full picture. There is a lot of ugliness behind the scenes," stressed Enitza, who has a degree in graphic design.
For her, being a tradwife came with the constant feeling that whatever she did would never be enough.
"It's this stupid, stupid, stupid goalpost that's always moving. You can never reach it because if you bake the bread, well, did you use fresh yeast? Oh. Well, did you mill the flour? Oh. Well, did you grow the wheat that you milled the flour? They can keep pushing it back.
"You can never reach perfection in the tradwife life. You just keep going deeper and deeper down rabbit holes. I feel like it's just to keep you busy and keep your wheels spinning."
Enitza always cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner for her family, homeschooled her children while her husband worked, and wore makeup and nice dresses every day
Image credits: emergingmotherhood
Initially, the 41-year-old Denver resident contributed to the household finances, working in graphic design and then in human resources.
Her husband was an aspiring entrepreneur and generated income in a "mishmash" of ways, such as animal trapping, web design, and working at a grocery store.
While pregnant with her first child, Enitza was fired from her HR job, an event which the couple took as a sign to settle into their gendered roles.
According to the mother-of-four, most couples don't have access to that much money when they begin the tradwife lifestyle. The culture is commonly based on faith and "just trusting that the Lord would provide," she added.
"Pretending your relations is working does not mean it’s actually working. Adding more kids is not going to magically fix everything," the graphic designer stressed
Image credits: emergingmotherhood
Her routine started before sunrise at 3 A.M when she woke up to breastfeed her fourth child, a boy. She then returned to bed for a few extra hours of sleep and woke up again to bake bread.
Enitza "wasn't allowed to use fast-acting yeast" because doing so would go against the unwritten rules of her household, so she started baking earlier to ensure the bread would be ready by lunch.
She also "wasn't allowed" to use disposable diapers for her first three kids because back then, "we had to be as minimalist as we could."
She described the demands of being a perfect traditional wife as a "goalpost that's always moving"
"I would get [the children] set up with breakfast, and while they were eating breakfast, I would knead the dough, get it ready, and split it into loaves. The baby would be getting up, so I'd get him up and nurse him for the second time."
After breakfast, she homeschooled her children, prepared lunch, took them on a group outing, and went grocery shopping with them to buy ingredients for dinner.
At night, her husband returned home from work, and they all had dinner together. The kids went to sleep, and they followed soon after.
"That's it. Just cooking meals, taking care of kids and tending to everybody else's needs. That was the whole day."
Enitza had no control over her household finances, not even the money she had earned while working as a graphic designer and later in HR, as her husband managed the funds in their bank account.
"If [I] wanted to save up for something, like a trip to Greece or something, I didn't have the abilities to do that.
Image credits: emergingmotherhood
The decision to leave the tradwife lifestyle behind came after Enitza began spending more time with fellow mothers at her daughter's Girl Scouts event.
"It was the first time I was hanging out with women that were a little bit above my socioeconomic class, women who did have businesses and who were told, 'You can do anything. You don't have to be a wife.'
"They knew I had four kids, and the baby was just now old enough to be home. I was like, 'Oh, I think we're going to start talking about having our next baby.' And they were like, 'No, no.'"
Feeling inspired by the encouragement from other women, Enitza took on two nursing jobs. She also divorced her husband after a dramatic fight, which ultimately led to her moving out of the family home.
After separating from her husband, Enitza faced the difficult challenge of searching for a job with a ten-year gap in her resume
Now, she's a certified nurse and earns her own income by working as a graphic designer.
She also has a podcast, Emerging Motherhood, through which she hopes to inspire mothers and women to break out of traditional gender roles.
"After I left the tradwife life ... all the energy that I was pouring into other people, I started to pour into myself. It started to make me feel younger, feel more regenerated."
"When you give someone the power to feed you, you also give them the power to starve you," a social media user wrote
