A thirty-something woman with the easy smile of your favorite neighbor sits in her earth-tone living room, natural light washing over a gray couch long enough to fit four children. She speaks of a friend, a married mother frustrated by constantly reminding her germophile husband to wash his hands. The woman cautions her friend: ‘I think it would be better for your entire family to get the black plague and die than for you to continue treating your husband like a toddler.’
Welcome to Wife School, a video masterclass led by Tilly Dillehay, a 38-year-old Baptist writer, podcaster and pastor’s wife who teaches women how to ‘become the kind of woman who inspires a godly leader’. That means molding them into smiling, attentive, submissive wives who know not to nag – even if it means risking the bubonic plague.
Wife School is part of a cottage industry of affable Christian women selling online courses promising connubial joy, with Bible passages and anecdotes from their own enviable relationships. The proof of concept is their domestic bliss: Dillehay has a satisfied husband, a picture-perfect family and a living room straight out of a Pottery Barn catalogue.
Though still small in reach, these courses hint at a crisis in Christian wifedom. Women, especially those aged 18 to 29, are fleeing organized religion due to its regressive view on gender roles. Meanwhile, their male counterparts seem to be in a religious reawakening.
‘You’ve got a lot of young women questioning the church,’ says Mariah Wellman, an assistant professor at Michigan State University who studies influencers and the wellness industry. ‘Everywhere outside of the home feels unknown.’ That turmoil can be addressed by cultivating strength within the home, according to course creators. ‘The way these women are selling these courses is by saying, “I promise this is what you need. God would never steer you wrong.” They’re selling wife skills, but what they’re really selling is stability.’
The courses align with a conservative movement that claims feminism is responsible for women’s discontent. Fox News host Lara Trump touted a poll finding 47% of Gen Z women interested in being ‘trad wives’ – influencers who churn butter in milkmaid dresses, representing retrograde ideals of femininity. ‘It’s about a focus on returning to family and a return to God,’ Trump said, pointing to the failures of the ‘girlboss’ era.
Dillehay does not call herself a tradwife. She has a fraction of the Instagram followers of Allie Beth Stuckey or Erika Kirk, but echoes their talking points while projecting the domesticity of June Cleaver. In February, she garnered a powerful endorsement from Jessa Seewald of the Duggar family, who called Wife School ‘encouraging, practical, and rooted in truth’.
In reality, Wife School and similar courses are indoctrination disguised as self-help. ‘These women are building businesses that exploit feelings of inadequacy,’ Wellman says. ‘They can say whatever they want because they have been extremely successful in their curated presentation of self.’ Much of what they say is that every problem in a modern Christian marriage is the woman’s fault.
‘Proactive Submission’
Wife School is a $17 six-week course covering the ideal family structure and the necessity of submitting to your husband. Dillehay uses a tandem bike metaphor: the husband is at the front managing the ride while his wife pedals behind. ‘You’re exerting effort without being in control,’ she says. When couples disagree, wives should practice ‘the skill of “zip it”’.
Wives must subtly guide husbands into their God-given ‘leadership role’. Dillehay quotes Ephesians – ‘for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church’ – and calls a wife’s deference ‘proactive submission’. Homework includes a worksheet asking husbands’ permission on nearly every decision: ‘Is it all right if I go out with the ladies on Saturday?’ ‘Is it OK with you if I budget $300 for a new chair?’
When Christian wives are taught there is power in accepting an inferior position at home, ‘that feels very comforting, because there’s a sense of autonomy in that choice’, Wellman says. Dillehay, who trained with the Association of Biblical Counselors (not accredited), says 700 women are enrolled.
Ashley Lima, a ‘feminine coach’, teaches a similar course for $167, showing ‘women how to become the Queen that inspires her man to lead, protect & provide’. She speaks to wives whose husbands have ‘drifted away from the alpha role’ because women are not connected to their ‘God-given femininity’. In a video, she uses a mini-scale to dispense pink and blue pills representing feminine and masculine energy, warning that if energies get muddled, ‘the woman who wanted a grown man beside her now has a little boy’.
Husbands’ actions are not interrogated. Dillehay advises wives to ‘rewrite the headlines’: ‘The fact that my husband doesn’t do [blank] means he has time/space to [blank].’ Women are told to thank their husbands three times a day.
In March, Rachael D Robnett, a psychology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, published the first study on men’s opinions of the tradwife movement. She found these men were ‘overt, explicit and hostile’ in their sexism, believing stay-at-home wives had easier lives and feeling exploited as breadwinners. ‘Clearly, the element of submission is a really major draw for men who have negative attitudes toward women,’ she says.
Husband-First Sex
Dillehay advocates for wives to track their cycles – not for family planning, but to be kinder to their husbands during ‘hormonal slumps’. Former evangelical women report receiving little guidance on their bodies due to purity culture. But purity culture has given way to something sexier in some Christian right corners: Evie Magazine, a conservative women’s magazine, serves up ‘The Wife’s Guide to a Morning Quickie He’ll Think About All Day’.
Lima generalizes that women are less interested in sex than men, but sex was created by God ‘to glue you two together’. When you make it about you, ‘you are opening the door to division, temptation and starvation’.
Dillehay’s instruction to wives to ‘take your own pleasure seriously’ – if only to increase their husband’s pleasure – sounds revolutionary. ‘Discussion of sex, even within marriage, is probably not bad for this audience,’ says Elena Trueba, who covers Christian fundamentalist culture. But it’s a restrictive standard. ‘A patriarchal lens is not going to be women-centered,’ says Tia Levings, an ex-fundamentalist. ‘It’s dangerous, because that’s how misinformation gets spread.’
Wife School’s sex advice favors ideology over safety. ‘A husband expects a yes,’ Dillehay says, quoting Corinthians: ‘Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time.’ She compares sex to pizza: when it’s good, it’s great; when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. Sometimes wives settle for ‘frozen pizza’ – a metaphor that sounds not entirely consensual.
The CDC reports one in four women experience intimate partner violence. Abuse is underreported in patriarchal communities. Trueba notes Wife School doesn’t address abuse until week six, directing wives to blogs by Christian counselor Jim Newheiser, who argues against always believing victims and writes that sometimes abuse stems from a victim’s ‘sinfulness’. ‘Wives are told that abuse is their problem,’ Trueba says. Dillehay said in an email: ‘If a woman’s husband is forcing her to engage in sexual activity, she should get help. That’s wrong.’
Teachings Based in Evangelical Christianity
Dillehay is connected to Douglas Wilson, an Idaho-based extremist pastor who opposes women’s right to vote, describes himself as a ‘Christian nationalist’ and espouses pro-Confederacy views. His Canon Press published Dillehay’s latest book. Levings, who escaped Wilson’s congregation, describes Dillehay’s course as ‘old ideas with new faces’. Dillehay stands out for her authenticity: a homeschooling mother who doesn’t project stardom. ‘She’s not flashy, her social media is manageable for one person staying at home. It has that authenticity.’
Marketing Christian marriage as something to be studied gives Wife School ‘theological depth’ lacking in performative tradwife content. ‘Her audience thinks they’re being studious,’ Levings says. ‘It doesn’t manifest a different outcome, but it will appeal to their intelligence.’
Christian nationalists want a patriarchal theocracy, with wives supporting the movement. One survey found a third of Americans support Christian nationalist ideals – women as likely as men. Wife School doesn’t discuss politics, but its students are primed for compliance. In her goodbye, Dillehay says she hopes her instruction resonated, noting ‘a sweetness’ felt by her family at the price of shutting up and following orders. As she puts it: ‘If you’re going to suffer, suffer as a righteous woman.’
