Social arrangements of work, gender, and family have undergone profound transformations over recent decades. The traditional male breadwinner model has been replaced by adult worker and dual-career models as well as by dual-earner households, accompanied by a pluralization and diversification of life forms (Walby 1997). In this context, gender equality and diversity policies have contributed over the past decade to a rising share of women’s participation in paid employment. However, as numerous studies indicate, these transformations have not resulted in a sustainable resolution of work–care reconciliation problems (Hochschildt 1989; Fraser 2016). Instead, institutional incompatibilities have been displaced into neoliberal forms of individualization and self-responsibilization (Gill 2014).

Care work has increasingly emerged as a contested social field. Keeping the material, practical and power-related (such as neo-colonial) conditions of care work in mind (Lutz 2018; Hochschildt 2015), our paper approaches care work from the perspective of knowledge production and the politics of knowledge. In late modernity knowledge must be understood as a highly important, widely distributed resource that is produced, negotiated, and interpreted by a variety of actors (Stehr 1994). Not least with regard to such negotiation processes, feminist theories in particular emphasized that knowledge is always situated and embedded in powerful, gendered relations and organizations (Haraway 1988; Harding 1991; Acker 1990).

Building on the research project „Radical Domesticity“, this contribution examines the knowledge production of so-called TradWife influencers in the context of care work. TradWives (traditional wives) are influencers on image-based platforms such as Instagram and TikTok who present themselves by publicly displaying domestic practices such as raising children, cooking and cleaning. Several studies have examined the neo-traditional concept of womanhood, whose aesthetics and visual language often correspond to right-wing extremist, white supremacist, and conservative religious positions (Koca-Helvacı 2025). Less attention has been paid to the specific references to the care crisis although it plays an important role in TradWife content, sometimes as a biographical impetus for personal retraditionalization, sometimes as an anti-feminist argument (Stotzer & Nelson 2025).

Against the backdrop of the ‘care crisis’, which also raises questions about how a society should reproduce itself (Fraser 2017), it can be assumed that TradWife influencers exploit the issue to align it with conservative, sometimes far-right visions of ‚just‘ and ‚equal‘ futures.  Accordingly, this paper addresses two central research questions: (1) What knowledge about care ist produced and negotiated by TradWife influencers? And (2) how is this knowledge mediated?

The paper thus draws on „critical perspectives on gender and the politics of knowledge production in education“ and examines how educational knowledge about care is taken up, selectively appropriated, and rearticulated in new discursive and aesthetic forms within digital publics. Using the example of TradWife influencers, the analysis explores how feminist and educational bodies of knowledge on care, family, and gender not only circulate but are reinterpreted, depoliticized, or re-politicized in popular media contexts. The article asks on the one hand under which conditions educational and feminist knowledge can unfold transformative potential and how, on the other hand, this potential is simultaneously constrained, appropriated, or embedded in counter-hegemonic as well as reactionary projects.

The analysis draws on the tools of Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM) (Glaser & Strauss 1967; Strauss & Corbin 1990), employing an iterative process of data collection and theory development. Using theoretical sampling, four German TradWife accounts were selected for in-depth analysis and comparison. The selection of accounts was guided by their prominence within the German TradWife scene, as well as their explicit engagement with care-related topics. The analysis considers the entire profile, including reels, stories, shared images, comments, and hashtags, to capture the full spectrum of communicative practices and discursive strategies. The coding process followed the principles of open, axial, and selective coding (Strauss &Corbin 1990).

This paper critically interrogates the politics of knowledge production in educational settings - in this case Instagram - by analyzing how TradWife influencers selectively appropriate and rearticulate feminist and educational discourses on care, family, and gender. It demonstrates how educational knowledge about raising and caring for children is mobilized and repurposed to imagine and promote unequal futures. By asking whose voices are heard, valued, or silenced in these digital spaces, the study shows how neo-conservative actors strategically deploy educational knowledge to legitimize conservative and far-right visions of societal reproduction, framing them as emancipatory. At the same time, the analysis highlights the need to discuss the transformative potential of educational research and of researchers themselves, asking how educational knowledge can be produced in ways that actively reimagine more just and equitable futures, and how such knowledge can be positioned as critical and emancipatory without risking its appropriation in support of neo-traditional gender roles.

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