Girlboss? Tradwife? How about neither?

On the hollowness of (non)maternal identity and the necessity of female vocation.

As I sent my children back to school after the holiday break, I had to freshen up all of their things. After the wear and tear of autumn, name tags on coats, water bottles and lunchboxes were ripped and faded. Now, everything is again clearly labeled. When it comes to kids’ items, labels are key.

In more complex aspects of life, though, labels can be misleading. That’s particularly true when it comes to how women identify themselves. There are so many labels to choose from: Working mom. Stay-at-home mom. Childless cat lady. Girlboss. Tradwife.

If you open up Instagram, X or TikTok — or if you chat with women who get their ideas about womanhood and motherhood from these apps — you’ll notice that these labels are freighted with all kinds of politically and culturally inflected expectations.

The “girlboss” proudly proclaims herself “child free” or says outright that work comes first even if she does have children, in part to endorse an ideology in which having children is nothing more than an individual, commodified lifestyle choice like any other. In some circles, it’s a mark of distinction to say that one’s deepest self is so deep that it might not easily coexist with the biological and social realities of motherhood.

The “tradwife,” in contrast, homeschools her four or more kids and makes all the family meals from scratch. No baby formula, babysitters, day cares, crock pots or air fryers. No frozen vegetables or store-bought baby food. And all while wearing pretty, freshly ironed dresses. How can a mere “stay-at-home mom” — with various obligations to friends, neighbors, extended family, and perhaps half a foot still in the career she once had — possibly keep up?

In truth, these labels are more performative than they are descriptive. After all, those who monetize the “tradwife” life are very much “working moms” and often even “girlbosses.” So are many other stay-at-home moms with formidable side hustles or freelance jobs. Indeed, internet access and remote work have blurred the line between “working moms” and “stay-at-home moms” for good. Our tech-dependent world and its proliferation of part-time, contract and freelance work is for many college-educated professionals more like the pre-industrialization, agrarian homestead (where most women and men worked with children underfoot) than like the aberrant 150 years between industrialization and the internet. That is, the decades when “working mother” referred to a professional woman with kids who held a full-time job outside the home.

Why, then, do today’s college-educated women remain so invested in these increasingly meaningless labels? Here’s one answer: the elite fixation on identity.

Until about 30 years ago, having children was just what adults did. It was a near-universal vocation, save for people who struggled to have children or find the right partner. Most mothers would work, as they always have, because families and society needed their labor. Crucially, it was also taken for granted that motherhood was a laudable and valuable thing — a societal good redounding to the benefit of those beyond the child and her family.

But as Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman document at length in their recent book “What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice” (which I reviewed for “Law and Liberty”), many progressive, college-educated women today no longer see motherhood this way. They and their partners agonize over whether or not to reproduce. They view parenthood as a lifestyle choice that — like any other, such as what college major to choose — requires extensive planning and justification. With “girlboss” as an aspirational identity, they worry about what becoming “working mothers” will do to their careers.

Meanwhile, the decline in fertility has created backlash. The tradwives (who, as I have written, really aren’t “trad” at all) curate an oppositional mothering identity that embodies a holistic repudiation of the “girlboss” and equates fertility with virtue. In this worldview, “childless cat ladies” become villains rather than fellow human beings.

The problem with identity, though, is the same for both the tradwife and the girlboss: This is the stuff of grasping curation, and as such, it’s fragile and hollow.

In contrast, returning to the view of parenthood as a vocation — an extension of well-lived adulthood — allows for less pressure and more substance.

For my first seven years as a mom, I worked full time at the most flexible jobs I could find because we needed my salary and benefits, but I was also our kids’ primary caregiver. For the past three years, I’ve been a stay-at-home mom who freelances, because my husband’s career has advanced to the point where this is an option for us. Many of my friends and my own mother — like most moms without big Instagram followings — have optimized their lives similarly, making sequential choices for changing circumstances.

In each stage, we remain the same moms, and the same people, because a vocational life is lived, not labeled.

If the goal is “girlboss,” there’s always someone with a bigger job and an attitude more dismissive of motherhood. If the goal is “tradwife,” there’s always someone with tastier homemade bread and more kids.

But if the goal is “living as fully and generously as I can, as a wife, a mother and a human being with other unique gifts and talents,” there is no competition and no labels. Except the ones you have to put on your kids’ stuff.

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Labels belong on lunchboxes — not on moms.

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published at Deseret News. It has been reprinted here with permission.