In recent years, the notion that motherhood is binary has gained significant traction. As a quick glance at social media will confirm, there are seemingly two competing forces at play: that of the “girlboss” and the “tradwife.” For those who fully subscribe to one, they find passionate allies to commiserate with. The sisterhood is strong among those who prize careers and corporate lives or those who prefer what is presented as domestic bliss. But lost alongside these rigid categories are the many women who fit neither mold. There are millions of mothers in America who choose to do both, or must do both, out of necessity. And for some reason, modern society can quickly view these “partial” commitments by another word: inadequacy.

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The aforementioned scourge of social media has done much to introduce strict adherence to certain lifestyles as some sort of ultimate virtue. If you’re a girlboss whose goal is making money and advancing in your career, well, you’re really doing something with your life. If you’re a stay-at-home mother focused on making sourdough bread from scratch and raising children, well, you’re really doing something with your life. If you’re doing something other than that, including a combination of both, you’re not fully committed. And that in itself is unacceptable. Or so says the pressure-filled digital landscape.

But what if the “girlboss” and “tradwife” crowds are the minorities? What if those of us who blend the two are the real, silent majority? From all indications, this appears to be true. 

In February 1963, Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, was published. Friedan’s book greatly affected the American populace and helped to usher in the second wave of feminism. Friedan introduced “the problem that has no name.” This so-called problem? That of the housewife. Namely, her existence.

Friedan wrote, “Can the problem that has no name be somehow related to the domestic routine of the housewife? Is she trapped simply by the enormous demands of her role as modern housewife: wife, mistress, mother, nurse, consumer, cook, chauffeur; expert on interior decoration, child care, appliance repair, furniture refinishing, nutrition, and education? … We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.'”

There is nothing wrong with a wife and mother doing and achieving things outside the home. But Friedan, and countless others who sang her praises, acted as if being a housewife is not enough, not fulfilling, and painfully stifles women as a matter of course. This mindset, this about-face, did not bring about a positive change. The feminism of the 1960s and 1970s did much to permanently alter not just American life, but how we measure women and their worth. Unlike what we’ve been told repeatedly, these alterations were not improvements.

Fast-forward to the 2020s and the computerization of everything. Neither women nor men could have anticipated just how much the online world would impact our offline one. Among many other things, the internet is used to spread ideals, foster a sense of community, as well as mock and shame. The social and emotional contagion that is naturally part of the online world does much to influence women. There is a lot of content about being a girlboss in a male-dominated world. There seems to be just as much content about being a tradwife in a world that urges you to be a girlboss. The display of........

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