Meghan McCain slammed author Sheryl Sandberg after she claimed “trad wives” could be “detrimental to women.”
“Shut the f*** up Sheryl Sandberg,” McCain, 41, wrote via X on Wednesday, March 11, alongside a link to Sandberg’s Tuesday, March 10, interview with People. “I don’t even know why you’re still talking given the amount of abject lies and insanity you tried to sell my generation.”
McCain was seemingly referring to Sandberg’s stance on women leaning into work and career advancement, outlined in her 2013 book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, with the promise of success and moving up the corporate ladder.
The rest of McCain’s tweet is directed at Sandberg’s latest interview with People, in which the former Meta CEO addresses the trend of women promoting the “trad wife,” or traditional wife lifestyle on social media. A so-called “trad wife” adheres to predominately conservative values, in which heteronormative women stay home and raise their children while their male partners work outside the home.
“The message that is going out is that in order to be a good wife or a good mother, you need to do it full time,” Sandberg, 56, told the outlet. “And the truth is that that is a decision almost no women can afford to make.”
She added, “If you look at the percentages of women who need to work outside of the home to support their families, it’s the great majority of women. And so these messages that ‘this is how you have a successful marriage, that this is how you have six children,’ I think, are very detrimental to women.”
Sandberg noted that she doesn’t think “they are meant that way,” but pointed out that “there are so many messages that tell women what their place is that limit their ambition.”
She argued that the “trad wife” trend — which includes several white, thin influencers showing off their home-cooked meals on expansive farms while wearing pearl necklaces and raising large families — is “potentially, inadvertently, one of” those messages.
The most notable “trad wives” are Ballerina Farm influencer Hannah Neeleman and model influencer Nara Smith, though both have said they don’t “identify” with the label.
Sandberg, for her part, said that a better message is that women, no matter where they come from, should determine how they want to live their lives.
“If you have the resources and you want to be a trad wife, that’s great,” Sandberg told the outlet. “That’s for you to decide.”
The Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Family Foundation founder revealed that no matter what, society needs to be “realistic” and stop using “new ideas to reinforce what are old, outdated and very, very, very sexist notions of what roles are.”
“Let’s be clear: You are not harming your marriage and you are not harming your children by working and by being ambitious,” Sandberg concluded.
