Illustration: Peter Quinnell/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Illustration: Peter Quinnell/The Guardian Women Why tradwives are fleeing the movement: ‘I can’t undo my past – but I can warn other women’ In recent years, some of the most vocal tradwives have left their husbands, renounced their religious faith and promoted financial independence. What is behind this sudden and seismic shift?
Lucy Knight Wed 4 Nov 2026 06.00 CET Share Prefer the Guardian on Google W hen Bernadine Bluntly posted a video earlier this year renouncing the tradwife movement she had championed, it caused shockwaves through the “alt-right” social media world. Previously, posts of her and her six children had flooded feeds as the Maga movement gained ground. She was one of the defiantly anti-feminist influencers who promoted a return to patriarchal gender roles, pronatalist ideals and fundamentalist Christian values – particularly around the sanctity of marriage. Bluntly, whose real surname is Barber, had, in the past, sold T-shirts reading “RIP Feminism”, supported Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the supreme court and developed a course, Simply Smitten, to help young women attract husbands who were “traditional masculine men”.
Then, last year, she left her husband. Her divorce was finalised this year. In the proceedings, she got a restraining order against her ex, whom she said was abusive (he denies this). In April, the 36-year-old posted a video titled: “ What I got wrong about the trad movement ”, in which she said that, while she is still a Christian and believes in the differences between men and women: “I no longer believe in extreme gender roles, especially when they’re wrapped in spiritual language and used to justify control, silence or harm.” She said that the tradwife movement, one she initially thought was about a “return to strong family values”, has “become indistinguishable from the current wave of the red-pill manosphere”. She concluded: “If my past content contributed to that, I am so genuinely sorry.”
Bluntly is part of a growing movement of ex-tradwife influencers. Even those who have not outrightly denounced the term seem to be distancing themselves from it. Nara Smith, the model and influencer who was married at 18, had four children by the time she was 24 and posts content of herself wearing cutesy dresses to cook for her husband to her 12.5m TikTok and 4.8m Instagram followers, told the Guardian last month that there is no secret tradwife “agenda” to her content. Even 36-year-old Hannah Neeleman, perhaps the archetypal modern tradwife, appeared to backpedal from the movement in a recent interview with New York magazine . Neeleman’s content, which she posts as Ballerina Farm, romanticises the homestead lifestyle of her Mormon family on their Utah ranch and became a blueprint for other tradwife wannabes. She and her husband have nine children, rear cattle and pigs and have built a 10m-strong following on Instagram. “If there’s things that I’m sharing that people think are actually doing harm to our sex, then OK, let me take the feedback,” she said.
View image in fullscreen ‘No secret tradwife agenda’ … Nara Smith in New York City last month. Photograph: TheStewartofNY/GC Images Jennie Gage, 52, was one of the first ex-tradwife influencers. She grew up in what she describes as a “very traditional, old-fashioned” Mormon family in Arizona. Gage went to scripture evenings, studied Bible texts and, at 12, joined her church’s women’s progr…