Former Meta Exec Claims Tradwife Ideal Is ‘Detrimental,’ Says Women Must Be ‘Realistic’

Former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg said the popularity of the “tradwife” lifestyle could be “detrimental to women, and further asserts that these “very, very, very, sexist” gender roles need to be revised.

Sandberg claimed that the rise of the tradwife trend has caused more harm than good. “The message that is going out is that in order to be a good wife or a good mother, you need to do it full time,” the former Meta exec told People. “And the truth is that that is a decision almost no women can afford to make.”

“If you look at the percentages of women who need to work outside of the home to support their families, it’s the great majority of women,” Sandeberg went on. “And so these messages that ‘this is how you have a successful marriage, that this is how you have six children,’ I think, are very detrimental to women.”

The 56-year-old tech exec is best known for serving as Meta’s chief operating officer from 2008 to 2022. She is also the founder of LeanIn.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to “offering women the ongoing inspiration and support to help them achieve their goals.”

She went on to clarify, “I don’t think they are meant that way … there are so many messages that tell women what their place is that limit their ambition…and this is potentially, inadvertently, one of them.”

“If you have the resources and you want to be a tradwife, that’s great,” Sandberg told the outlet. “That’s for you to decide.”

She went on to repeat the popular leftist talking point that traditional gender roles were the real villain of the story. 

“We need to be realistic and we need to not use new ideas to reinforce what are old, outdated and very, very, very sexist notions of what roles are,” Sandberg said, adding that she thinks terms like “tradwife” make women who choose to work feel guilty.

“Let’s be clear: You are not harming your marriage and you are not harming your children by working and by being ambitious,” she insisted.

One of the most infamous examples of the tradwife trend going viral online is social media influencer Hannah Neeleman, better known by her social handle and business name, Ballerina Farm. She just made headlines again for announcing she was pregnant with her ninth child.

Neeleman has received criticism from the Left for being “a hammer blow for feminism,” but she’s also earned a decent number of critics on the conservative side. They argue that because her husband’s family is very wealthy, she’s not exemplifying the sacrificial life of a stay-at-home mother.