Do Gen Z Women Want to Be Tradwives? Most Say No.

Most Gen Z women don't want to be tradwives. They want work that leaves room for the rest of their lives.

This summer, I interned at Lean In researching the effect I thought tradwife content was surely having on my generation of women's career ambition.

After all, my social media was flooded with videos of girls expressing their interest in going to college for an “MRS. degree,” and a community of Mormons on TikTok that makes videos titled “Day in my life as a 19-year-old stay-at-home wife.” But more importantly, when I spoke with my female peers at my college preparatory school, I kept hearing that their biggest goal in life was to be a mom. From where I was standing, it seemed like the “tradwife” life was becoming more and more attractive, and the idea of being a #Girlboss, something I deeply believed in as a precocious 10-year-old, was becoming smaller and smaller in the rearview.

And so I began my research process fully expecting to find my hypothesis was correct – that there was a direct correlation between the amount of tradwife content a young woman consumed and her overall career ambition. But this past summer, in my interviews with women ages 18-25, I realized my original idea was wrong, and the real answer was far more nuanced.

Most young women don't want to be tradwives

Most young women don't appear to want to be tradwives. King's College London surveyed 1,000 women ages 18-34¹ and found that most said they would not adopt a tradwife lifestyle, with just 8% saying they would definitely adopt that lifestyle. A recent NBC News survey² showed that the top three ways Gen Z women define success are: having a job or career you find fulfilling; having enough money to do the things you want to do; and achieving financial independence. Out of 13 options, having children ranked 10 and getting married ranked 11; Gen Z men rank children 8 and marriage 7.

Gen Z women are redefining ambition, not dropping it

At the same time, some of the young women I interviewed said they had grown skeptical of the Girlboss ideal that equates personal success with career advancement. This does not necessarily mean young women have become less ambitious; rather, research on Gen Z workers suggests they are redefining what a successful life looks like. Deloitte's 2025 survey of Gen Z and millennials³ found that, while younger workers remain ambitious, they do not necessarily define success as climbing the corporate ladder, instead seeking a balance of financial security, meaningful work, and personal well-being.

“What I value is a job that allows me time to pursue my hobbies and do the things I love,” says one recent college graduate, aged 22, “because those are the things that make me feel fulfilled, more so than an office job would.”

The media may seem to push the narrative that young women are choosing to be tradwives over being girlbosses, but the young women I interviewed described wanting something different: work that leaves room for the rest of their lives.

Why tradwife content appeals: burnout and invisible rewards

For some Gen X women, including one I interviewed, attitudes toward work and ambition were partially influenced by the social and economic constraints on their mother's lives. Research on intergenerational gender attitudes⁴ found that mothers' views on gender roles in the 1950s were linked to their daughters' views as adults in 1988.

“My mother was captive to my father, financially, socially, economically,” says one woman, aged 50. She now has her own company and has held senior positions in government and the private sector. “So I grew up feeling I didn't ever want to be captive to a man.”

And so, many women in her generation entered the workforce as women's labor force participation peaked at 60% in 1999⁵.

Just as some Gen X women reacted to the social climate their mothers faced, members of Gen Z may be doing the same. Some of us watched firsthand as our mothers climbed the corporate ladder only to feel exhausted and dissatisfied, while still shouldering responsibilities at home. Today, women report high levels of burnout: Lean In's 2025 Women in the Workplace report⁶ found that 42% of women (and 41% of men) say they frequently feel burned out, and 60% of senior-level women do. It's understandable that some Gen Z women might be disillusioned with the corporate grind and drawn to aspects of tradwife culture.

“Growing up, my mom was a lawyer and worked very long hours,” says an incoming Freshman in college, “so I don't blame women for being tradwives… I probably would have loved to have something like that as a kid.” Research suggests she may not have turned out any happier, though. Adults raised by working mothers are as happy as those raised by stay-at-home moms⁷.

But Gen Z women aren't reacting only to lifestyle factors. There are signs they're also reacting to how far corporate leadership still is from gender equality. Gen Z women are 21% less likely than Gen Z men to want senior leadership roles, but when they believe their company wants women in leadership, they become just as likely as Gen Z men.

In an interview with Heejung Chung, director of the King's Global Institute for Women's Leadership, she explained how economic factors shape how young people think about ambition. Professor Chung explained that in her generation (Gen X), “the career opportunities and career progressions were very visible, and the rewards were also very visible… right now they're not visible for a lot of young people,” as recent college graduates now face higher unemployment⁸ than the overall workforce.

Gen Z wants balance, and may misjudge what leadership is like

One college student, age 20, spoke about how she too used to have that “Girlboss” mentality but quickly realized that it wasn't realistic, nor sustainable: “I kind of looked around at the situation, and I was like, ‘okay, realistically, we can't all be at the top.’”

She explained that she's currently majoring in Political Science but plans to go to law school and become a criminal justice lawyer. But to her, success as a lawyer doesn't necessarily mean working overtime to make partner. “I'd rather be happy, just happy with my life,” she remarked, “establishing myself as a good worker, not the best lawyer.”

This attitude, I feel, is reflected among some of the young women I interviewed, who described feeling less captive to their work lives: their goal is not living to work, but working to live. And while social media has its own vocabulary for life around work, with many posting about being “Corporate Girlies” or talking about their “5-9s after their 9-5s,” research suggests these trends extend beyond the online world and into real life.

Gen Z's search for balance is underscored by a recent Deloitte study: only 6% of Gen Z respondents worldwide say reaching a senior leadership position is their primary career goal. In the same survey, good work/life balance was one of the top three reasons Gen Zs gave for choosing their current employer. In Lean In's research⁹, Gen Z men and women who don't want a leadership role give the same top two reasons that point to a desire for balance: “The hours and stress aren't worth it” (41% of Gen Z women vs. 40% of Gen Z men) and “I want to prioritize things outside work” (37% of Gen Z women vs. 34% of Gen Z men).

However, given what the research shows, Gen Z may have an inaccurate view of what it's actually like to be in leadership – something particularly important to note for young women who are considering their career paths. Senior women leaders report being energized by work at nearly twice the rate of entry-level women, and women leaders are twice as likely as their male peers to say they didn't have to give anything up to become leaders.

Gen Z women aren't choosing between tradwife and Girlboss

It can be easy to mistake a woman's interest in tradwife culture for a complete rejection of work, but that is not the case; the appeal of tradwife culture may be less about opting out of ambition and more about reclaiming parts of domestic life that can coexist with it. It may not be about staying home with the kids and baking bread all day, but about having a job that gives you time to raise your kids and bake bread if you choose. King's College London researchers found that what attracts young women to tradwife content is less the male-breadwinner model and more the simplicity and leisure it portrays.

I began my research assuming Gen Z women were sacrificing careers to be tradwives, but now I know that something else is happening. Many of the young women I interviewed weren't choosing between being tradwives or girlbosses; instead, they seemed to reject the idea that those are their only options and, in the process, expand what it means to be ambitious and successful.

Notes

1. Bobby Duffy, Kirstie Hewlett, Rebecca Benson, et al., “Tradwife: Between Myths and Realities,” Policy Institute, King's College London, October 2025, https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/tradwife-between-myths-and-realities/.
2. “Poll: Gen Z's Gender Divide Reaches Beyond Politics and into Its Views on Marriage, Children and Success,” NBC News, September 8, 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-gen-zs-gender-divide-reaches-politics-views-marriage-children-suc-rcna229255.
3. Deloitte Global, 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey (Deloitte, May 2025), https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/about/press-room/deloitte-2025-gen-z-and-millennial-survey.html.
4. Phyllis Moen, Mary Ann Erickson, and Donna Dempster-McClain, “Their Mother's Daughters? The Intergenerational Transmission of Gender Attitudes in a World of Changing Roles,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 59, no. 2 (May 1997): 281–293, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ559312.
5. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Women in the Workforce Before, During, and After the Great Recession,” Spotlight on Statistics, August 2017, https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/women-in-the-workforce-before-during-and-after-the-great-recession/home.htm.
6. LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, Women in the Workplace 2025 (LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, December 2025), https://leanin.org/report/women-in-the-workplace/.
7. Kathleen L. McGinn, “Kids of Working Moms Grow into Happy Adults,” Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, July 16, 2018, https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/kids-of-working-moms-grow-into-happy-adults.
8. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, “The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates,” accessed November 2026, https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market/index.
9. LeanIn.Org, “Gen Z Women and Leadership: Factsheet,” 2026, https://leanin.org/articles/findings/gen-z-women-leadership-factsheet/.