In America's most woke state, one influencer is a radical because she loves to cook healthy meals for her family, including homemade Cheez-Its and Oreos.
California mom Gretchen Adler has been making headlines for her “ancestral diet” and her embrace of unprocessed, classic junk food, as well as her role as a housewife and traditional wife (or “traditional wife”). The stereotype of cooking, cleaning and raising children takes women back to the 1950s, she says.
“I think a lot of women are looking for this lifestyle,” Adler, 38, told The Washington Post. “They want to reclaim their homes. They want to get away from the hectic lifestyle of the work environment and the boss baby mentality and just be at home.”
“I don't think it needs to have a negative connotation at all,” she added.
In a recent video from her exquisite San Diego kitchen, Adler wore a floral sundress while cooking a McDonald's copycat meal featuring leavened sourdough bread, einkorn battered chicken and homemade mayonnaise.
“Today I told my husband I wanted him to come home from the office and have lunch with me, so I was going to make him some McChicken, and it worked out great,” she said.
Adler, from Ohio, said she started using her hands in the kitchen about six years ago, when she was pregnant with the second of her three children.
For her, the chicken came before the egg.
When her family was preparing to move, chickens appeared on her doorstep and started laying eggs, which inspired her to find a suitable house to build a chicken coop and start cooking meals from scratch.
Now she has six chickens and three dogs, and makes everything from sour cream to cooking oil to bread.
Adler says her lifestyle doesn't mean giving up on her passions or giving up on her pursuit of higher education.
She attended Babson College, one of the top business schools in the country, and hosts her masterclass, “The Nourishing Kitchen,” and her exclusive subscriber-only series, “The Nourishing Kitchen.” Recipe available on her websiteHer following has soared this year to 430,000 on Instagram and 75,000 on TikTok.
“You don't have to be that person who gets married at 18, has seven kids, gets no education, then gets divorced and has no income,” Adler said as she baked sourdough bread in her San Diego home. “I figured out how to run a business from home and raise my kids.”
Housewives like model Nara Smith and mother of eight Hannah Neeleman, Mrs. Utah 2021, have become icons in the trad community, and have been mocked and criticized in recent years.
Australian blogger Jasmine Diniz shocked the internet last year when she said she would teach her daughter that “it's totally acceptable.” [to] “Rely on a man”
By 2023, women will make up 47% of the U.S. workforce, up from 30% in 1950. According to the Pew Research Center:In the 1950s, 85% of husbands were the primary breadwinners, but today that figure has fallen to 55%.
Critics say the controversial trad trend glamorizes a sexist era, forces women into submission and reverses women's progress.
But advocates say the choice to stay at home and reject corporate culture is empowering.
“Our most important job is to raise healthy children and build happy families, but it's also important to have passion and purpose in life,” Adler said.
