In this episode of On the Mones, Kate reflects on what it means to grow up as a young woman today as her daughter Audrey turns eighteen and prepares to vote for the first time. Named after Kate’s grandmother, born in 1925, Audrey represents three generations of women who have lived through enormous social change.

From marriage bars that forced women out of the workforce, to the feminist movements that fought for economic independence and voting rights, the freedoms women have today were hard-won.

So why is social media suddenly romanticising a return to “traditional wives”?

Kate explores the rise of the tradwife movement, the nostalgic aesthetic that makes it appealing, and the historical realities often left out of the story — including economic dependence and limited choices for women.

Along the way she looks at:

• why the tradwife aesthetic spreads so easily on social media

• the connection between tradwife culture and anti-feminist online movements

• the surprising return of anti-suffrage rhetoric

• why Australia’s mandatory voting creates a very different political system

• and what women’s rights have to do with astronauts flying around the Moon.

There’s also a detour into hormone pharmacology, a satirical wellness advertisement for the revolutionary Whole Body RetoX™, and a reminder that sometimes nostalgia looks better from a distance.

Because the real achievement of the last century isn’t that women must work, or must stay home.

It’s that women get to choose.