“The ‘tradwives’ or traditional TikTok wives don’t exist: they’re a social media mirage,” says Mariola Cubells in an article in which she warns that these Betty Draper-esque content creators of 2025 likely earn far more money than “the husbands they claim to serve.” But who are these husbands? While the women put themselves out there, receiving effusive praise, furious criticism, and placing themselves at the center of the political debate between right and left, we know nothing about the men — the ones who eat those delicious meals and enjoy those spotless houses. As in so many other areas, the spotlight is on them.
A very recent example: in Spain, we know Rocío López well. Known on social media as RoRo, last year she sparked controversy by turning her recipe videos into a veritable ode to class exhibitionism, with a pretense of pleasing her partner, Pablo, that bordered on subservience. “The menu Pablo wanted” was the slogan accompanying the menu created by the influencer for a well-known hamburger chain. Because Pablo Santos’s wishes were orders, and those orders translated into recipes that could take hours in front of the camera, presented with the impeccable esthetic of someone who can dedicate time not only to cleaning and baking, but also to their appearance. López has also found time to participate in cooking talent shows and attend streamer Ibai Llanos’s dinner parties.
The message these domestic goddesses convey is that women who cultivate their appearance and prioritize domesticity will find a husband who supports them. “Husbands are secondary characters. When they appear in their wives’ posts, they’re usually a kind of benevolent background figure, meant to show how happy traditional marriage can be without drawing too much attention,” says Sara Petersen, author of Momfluenced.
“The idea of the tradwife doesn’t exist without a husband; he’s the head of the household, the one to whom everyone else must submit,” explains Anna North in Vox. North points out that these women’s husbands — the “trad husbands” — “are so invisible that even the term requires quotation marks.” She points out that the invisibility of these husbands reflects a larger void regarding the role of men in debates about family policy and culture. “In 2025, do young men want to be traditional husbands? And if not, what do they want to do instead?” she asks.
Inés Echevarría, founder of Uttopy and an expert in corporate awareness, explains to EL PAÍS that what’s interesting about this phenomenon is that even when women monetize their role (Rocío López for example has almost five million followers on Instagram), the model remains rigid: he is the symbolic authority, she the caregiver amplified for the camera. “What’s truly debilitating isn’t who has more followers, but that both end up trapped in an identity script. Any relationship based on rigid roles (him strong and her dedicated; or her the star and him the accessory) generates dependency and harms both parties,” she points out.
“Although tradwives may seem to be honoring their husbands, in reality, they expect far too little of them. Married men should aspire to a demanding, self-sacrificial vision of service, not the cushy, entitled life as a master tradwifery would seem to offer,” explains Felix James Miller, co-host of the podcast Truth, Beauty, Comics, in an essay in which he clarifies that what worries him about the debate surrounding tradwives is “the negative view the traditional wives movement has of what it means to be a husband. What concerns me is that husbands are presented as nothing but providers of financial support.”
While they talk to other women about how to live their lives, their husbands aren’t talking to men, or at least, men aren’t listening
Anna North
Erick Pescador Albiach, a sociologist, sexologist, and specialist in the development of a culture of care, asserts that these husbands represent the traditional role of the man delighted to have a woman at his service, believing that a simple thank you, at best, is enough to balance the scales of caregiving. “It’s a role that is excessively absent from the domestic sphere, but also from shared emotional, relational, and even sexual responsibility. It represents the worst of oppressive patriarchy disguised as a couple satisfied with exploiting their partner,” he explains.
He emphasizes that, observing his adolescent students, he regrets to see that many men think of these husbands as idols who “have managed to control their partners in a world where women rebel against everyday injustices.” He also outlines the dangers of this retrograde representation of the division of labor and caregiving: “It paralyzes the emancipation processes of many women, increases men’s demands in unequal relationships as if it were normal and desirable, and widens the care gap in a society that has yet to fully achieve equality in public and private spaces. In 2025, women bear the brunt of caregiving, and 82% of women will partially or completely abandon their career development upon becoming mothers. We are clearly doing something wrong.”
As North says, while tradwives are content creators in their own right, their husbands are relegated to the background. “While they talk to other women about how to live their lives, their husbands aren’t talking to men, or at least, men aren’t listening,” she clarifies.
And that’s the problem, as Pescador emphasizes. “The central issue for me is why, in a social universe where many women are involved in protest movements against hegemonic masculinity, like the 4B movement in South Korea or Rosalía’s volcel [voluntary celibacy], so many men continue to cling to the relational model of their great-grandfathers,” he says.
When tradwives become the perfect wives so many young men desire, the question arises as to why so few people care about the role of their husbands. Pablo, RoRo’s husband, started a TikTok account last year. He’s amassed nearly two million followers — an impressive number, but she has 10 million. In his videos, Pablo refers to RoRo as his “princess,” encourages his followers to remove their girlfriends’ makeup if they fall asleep watching a show (while advertising micellar water), and makes it clear that he’s into sports, and she’s into clothes.
American tradhusbands are even more in the shadows: they’re heirs or airline executives who play a secondary role in their wives’ stardom. Probably, for the general public — as Adam Stanaland, a psychology professor at the University of Richmond, says in Vox — they might simply be boring. “While they go to work, someone like Andrew Tate is angry, yelling, and raging. Hate is super-attractive for clicks,” he says.
The U.S. feminist theorist Betty Friedan once said: “No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.” What’s clear is that, decades later, many people inexplicably enjoy watching them do it. Meanwhile, no one is watching their husbands.
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