So you want to be a stay-at-home mum?

As the fourth wave of feminism rolls over social media’s tradwives’, can you still admit you might want to leave your career to raise a family? Adrienne Tam reports on the latest motherhood taboo

When Gretchen Adler’s three children want a snack, their mother doesn’t hand them supermarket-bought sweets or packaged chips. Instead, the 38-year-old goes into the kitchen to make them “Goldfish” crackers and “Oreo” biscuits – from scratch. A self-described traditional mum and wife, Adler’s TikTok and Instagram accounts (@gretchy) are filled with videos of her cooking or baking food for her young kids, aged eight, six and three. More than half a million people follow her across her social media channels, watching as she creates cheese, flour, muffins, bread, and a variety of sauces, from home-grown ingredients. Adler proudly states her children have never eaten “ultra processed snacks” and she espouses the belief “food is medicine. It’s also poison, so choose wisely”.

While the stay-at-home mum (SAHM) has her fair share of fans, she also has a large number of detractors. A one-minute viral video of Adler making her children snacks produced thousands of negative comments, most of them pointing out the “privilege” of this kind of lifestyle, while others expressed anger that she was seemingly judging them for how they fed their own children.