A Not So One-Sided Conversation About Yesteryear
If you’ve spent any time on TikTok or Instagram in the last few years, you’ve likely seen the tradwife aesthetic go from niche curiosity to a full-blown obsession. The soft-spoken women in prairie dresses who seem content to homeschool endless children and bake bread for their husbands framed the aesthetic as a throwback to simpler times. But now the niche is having an identity crisis, magnified by a debut novel that’s about to be released as a movie.
Enter Yesteryear
Yesteryear is a novel by Caro Claire Burke. It focuses on fictionalized tradwife influencer Natalie Heller Mills, who lives on a ranch in Idaho with her husband, five children, and a sixth on the way. Then one day, she wakes up in the 1800s to find out what being a tradwife means when it’s not just a brand.
The book is getting a lot of attention. It sparked a bidding war between 15 publishing houses before Knopf finally won and has been a #1 New York Times bestseller and a “Good Morning America” book club pick since its April release- quite an accomplishment for a first-time novelist. It’s been described as a tradwife thriller, a satire, and even a horror story, but most reviewers agree it doesn’t fit neatly into any box.
A Mixed Reception
As with most popular things, some people love the book, and others, not so much. Fans enjoy the way it exposes what’s behind the ‘simple life,’ and it’s not so simple. The production crews, industrial ovens, and nannies are a far cry from what should be the foundation of a ‘from-scratch’ lifestyle.
Critics argue that the book reduces Natalie into a political meme that you can either root against as a villain or defend as a martyr.
Burke pushes back on both interpretations, stating that the tradwife image is curated, not a documentary of real life. It’s a performance that tells you nothing about how the woman lives day to day.
The Book Reflects a Movement
The novel’s timing couldn’t have been better. It comes amidst a storm of tradwife influencers moving away from the movement.
For example, Nara Smith, one of the biggest tradwife creators with over 12 million followers, pushed back hard on being a tradwife at all during a July appearance on “Call Her Daddy.” She even looked up the definition of tradwife on the podcast and made point-by-point comparisons, saying it had nothing to do with her life.
Some viewers accused her of a convenient rebrand, now that the label carries baggage; others defended her, saying her content clearly exhibits satire.
Smith isn’t alone. A 2026 academic study of ‘de-tradding’ finds the trend comes from two camps: women rejecting the label for ideological or religious reasons while living a trad lifestyle, and those who reject the lifestyle because they experienced infidelity or domestic violence while living in a household with unequal power dynamics.
In other words, denouncing the tradwife aesthetic means different things to different women. Some are rebranding, others are leaving.
And while older women are distancing themselves from the label, a new wave of teenagers are embracing stay-at-home content without the same hesitation, suggesting it’s not disappearing- it’s just changing hands.
The Anne Hathaway Adaptation
Yesteryear also sparked a bidding war among studios, with Amazon MGM winning the rights. Anne Hathaway will both star and produce the film through her production company, Somewhere Pictures. Hannah Friedman (Obi-Wan-Kenobi, Willow) has been brought on to write the screenplay.
Hathaway revealed she will be working on the project this August, adding that she read an early draft of the book roughly two years ago, before it was published. She has enjoyed watching her friends discover the book, and follows their reactions to something she’s privately been sitting on for years.
Burke has talked about the challenge of adapting a first-person interior novel into something visual and notes the film will inevitably divert from the original.
The Dynamics of the Conversation
Yesteryear’s timing is impeccable, releasing in the middle of a two-sided argument: some people see the tradwife movement as cultlike, while others say it’s simply about women who enjoy homemaking, cooking, and raising kids and don’t want to be part of an organized group. But either way, the label is fracturing.
However, because the book came out before the fracture, it doesn’t pick sides. It merely mirrors a trend that’s getting a lot of attention right now. And that’s why it’s having a real moment.