Feminists have spent decades arguing that women should have the freedom to choose in their own lives. Yet those who choose marriage, motherhood, and homemaking often receive the harshest criticism for allegedly being backward, oppressed, and complicit in harmful stereotypes. Somehow, we have gotten the idea that choice means having only one correct option.

These women have become the target of the “progressive” feminists. Critics struggle to understand why a woman would voluntarily leave work to stay home.

Hannah Neeleman, known as Ballerina Farm, is a prime example of someone who receives criticism for favoring a more traditional style. A Juilliard-trained dancer-turned-housewife-farmer who earned millions of followers, she became the center of a viral controversy in July 2024 after The London Times published a profile on her titled "Meet the queen of the tradwives (and her eight children).”

Neeleman was framed as an exhausted, overextended wife whose husband called all the shots in the family. Many viewed her as lacking agency and being trapped in something she couldn’t escape. The online response was less concerned with what Neeleman had to say and more with the assumption that this life could only result in despair.

The issue isn't these women's choices, but the double standard embedded in modern "choice feminism": women are free to choose, but only if it's the lifestyle the movement approves of.

As Simone de Beauvoir, a French writer and feminist theorist, said in a 1975 interview: “No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” The underlying assumption that some choices are “wrong” is obvious.

The narrative is contradictory as it shows the hypocrisy when it comes to being a woman. You can’t win, because there is only one right choice to make, apparently.

Ideally, modern-day feminists should be happy with tradwives deciding to support their families in a way they deem fit. They can still pursue opportunities, vote, and establish their families, all without being coerced.

Except they want to argue that this is an issue. Not because they are forced into it, but because it shouldn’t be validated to begin with. Which exposes the truth: choice feminism is always going to stop the moment someone chooses something the movement doesn’t like.

The judgment on tradwives has gotten to the point where clinical research has tried to invalidate these women's decisions. University of Hawai’i researchers studied tradwife TikToks for “anti-feminist themes” in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence. It has come to the point where sourdough now deserves analysis through the lens of political extremism.

In all honesty, not every concern here is in bad faith. There is true merit to ensuring women understand the full picture of giving up a salary and relying on someone else for financial security. Except that there is a difference between caring and controlling. The first concerns protection, while the second concerns judgment.

You cannot disguise your abrasive comments as concerns to force women onto a single path of living. It unravels the entire point women have fought for centuries, the desire to pursue our own idea of happiness without being viewed as less than because of our gender.

Most criticism of tradwives ultimately does not come down to their aprons or homeschooling, but to who gets to define what a successful woman is.

For generations, women were handed one script: stay quiet, know your place, stay home. Today it is all about your career. Subscribing to hustle culture rather than the domestic lifestyle will fulfill you. There was a change in expectation, but constant pressure to conform.

We have allowed the conversation to focus more on a single vision of liberation and less on women’s own opinions.

You do not have to admire the traditional lifestyle. One can debate its trade-offs without bashing these women for their choices. If feminism is truly about expanding women’s freedom, it cannot harshly judge those who choose to live a traditional life. A movement that fears women's choices was never really about choice to begin with.

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Jess Hamilton is a Regional Communications Associate for Media and Public Relations at The Heritage Foundation.

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