Housewife Doesn’t Fully Identify With Viral Traditional Wives (Exclusive)

• Since her wedding in July, Sophie Kelly has been sharing glimpses of her daily life as an 18-year-old wife in a number of TikTok vlogs.
• The Kansas native has openly shared that she’s always wanted to be a young wife and eventually a young mom, and isn’t interested in college or her own career.
• Although her videos are reminiscent of content posted by the creators of “tradwife,” Kelly says she is not affiliated with the label.

Sophie Kelly knows her lifestyle is unusual for Gen Z women her age. Her longtime ambition to become a wife and mother is at odds with the hopes of many of her peers to go to college and start a career before settling down and starting a family.

“I just always wanted to be a young wife and a young mom,” the Kansas native told PEOP. “But that’s not how people around us actually do it. It’s not common in our community… I do think I’ve definitely gotten my fair share of criticism.”

Kelly expected such a mixed reaction when she got married in July this year, but the 18-year-old decided not to shy away from any confusion, judgment and doubt directed at her. She posts vlogs on TikTok about her experiences as a young wife while going about her daily routine.

The videos, which range in length from one minute to more than five minutes, show Kelly doing everything from brewing coffee to applying makeup in the popular “get ready with me” style to trying to make homemade strawberry jam. In one video, Kelly shared a time-lapse of herself in the kitchen with the text overlaid: “Take my blue collar husband’s lunch (sic).”

While Kelly says she’s not actively trying to fit into any TikTok trend, she acknowledges that her videos may attract the same viewers who are looking for “shopping wives” content that focuses on married women documenting their everyday household routines. affairs. Most traditional wives, many of whom are popular influencers, differ from Kelly in that they have many children and actively occupy “traditional” gender roles, living in a subordinate status to their husbands.

Kelly says her husband of 21 years, Jack, doesn’t have as much control over her life. He is the family’s breadwinner, but the 18-year-old insists she will need his support if she wants to start her own career.

“It’s not like he always dreamed of living at home or anything,” Kelly says of her husband, whom she began dating in August 2022. “It’s just the way our lives turned out.”

And despite what her social media content suggests, Kelly has a job. She works as a barista about 35 hours a week, but the family coffee shop is currently on its “annual summer break” so she is currently filling her days with housework.

She’s also just started monetizing her TikTok content, but Kelly admits she doesn’t put a lot of money into their lifestyle. Jack runs his own landscaping company, and thanks to his success (and reasonable rent), they were able to live comfortably on his salary, as Kelly explained in one video when asked about her finances.

Kelly confirms to PEOPLE that neither she nor Jack’s parents are helping fund their lifestyle, although both families contributed some money toward wedding expenses.

In the comments to the video of her financial collapse, Kelly answered the question of what she dreams of doing in her future career. “I always dreamed of becoming a wife and mother, school was never my strong point,” she wrote in response.

It’s not that Kelly has never thought about pursuing higher education or starting her own career, she tells PEOPLE. She says both of her parents worked for everything they had. Her mother made her living as a lawyer and businesswoman. At one point in her youth, Kelly assumed her path would lead to college, like many of the young Gen Zers around her. But she was not happy about this prospect.

Instead, Kelly found her ambitions closer to home, if not within the home, a goal stated by many of the traditional women taking TikTok by storm. Given the similarities, Kelly says she’s “in the middle” between resonating with and rejecting the tradewife lifestyle.

One thing Kelly is absolutely sure of is that she has no interest in judging these viral housewives and wives.

“I don’t like the Trajan stereotype. To me, it’s stupid in a way. I just don’t think people should be put in that box. And it’s definitely so negative right now,” she explains to the publication. PEOPLE. “We all have different lives and we all do different things. Some people dream of being a housewife-wife and a housewife-mother, and as long as I feel supported by my husband, that’s very good.” ”

While Kelly may be a stay-at-home mom in the future, she says she’s not quite ready at the moment, although she’s looking forward to eventually hosting Jack’s many children.

“I grew up with four siblings… and I always wanted five more kids,” she explains, before revealing why she wants to “wait a little longer” before becoming a mom. Besides the fact that she doesn’t want to be a teenage mother, Kelly also wants more time to travel freely. She recently enjoyed a trip to Africa and the couple honeymooned in Jamaica.

She’s also been posting more regularly on social media lately and wants to realize her potential on TikTok before becoming a parent.

Many of her diary-style videos revolve around the premise of Kelly’s marital status—”Wednesday morning as a (sic) wife of 18 years,” she captioned the video—whether she discusses the fact or not.

In the videos, which talk more directly about her time as a young bride, Kelly directly addresses the more controversial aspects of her lifestyle. She recently uploaded a video of herself making banana bread while discussing “what people think of me as an 18-year-old wife.” Kelly addressed the false, albeit common, assumptions that she is a Mormon or that she got married because she was pregnant, and also discussed strangers’ doubts about the longevity of her marriage.

However, the TikToker claims that getting married young is “seriously so much fun,” adding: “It’s so fun to do something for young people… which we did when we were dating, but then just know that this is my forever man, and we “You’re married.”

Continuing to bake and chat in the 4.5-minute video, Kelly noted, “I understand why people write all their comments too. Like that actually makes sense… I just think it’s funny when people comment on other people’s lives. and I don’t even really know them and why they made this decision.”

Kelly told PEOPLE that her parents and most of her friends fully supported her when she decided to marry Jack, 21, after dating for almost two years. But she’s still not immune to the common criticism of young brides.

“A lot of people say that if you get married at a young age, you ruin your life and things like that. And I think that for many people this may actually be true. I don’t know many other people my age that I would advise them to get married young,” says Kelly. According to Kelly, she is several years ahead of her fellow Midwesterners, many of whom seem to get married around the age of 23, if not older.

What makes Kelly an exception among her peers? “I think it has a lot to do with how I grew up and my level of maturity,” she explains. Kelly says she had to “grow up very quickly” as a child because many of her family members, including herself, had serious health problems.

“I was much more worried about whether my siblings or my parents would survive another diagnosis than I was about what sport I played or the drama at school,” she tells PEOPLE.

“I lost my hearing when I was five years old and had a lot of surgeries,” she continues. “From a young age I had to think things like, ‘Oh, am I going to go completely deaf?’ or “How can I read this person’s lips?” and not silly little things that other kids might worry about.”

Kelly also claims that living with her adopted siblings sped up her maturation.

“I was definitely not protected from real situations. I knew what abuse was from a very young age, and I heard the stories of many of the children who lived in our house and all that they went through,” she says. “I just realized what real life looked like from a very young age.”

Similar age issues arise in conversations about tradewife culture, since many popular influencers are young women who married young. So despite Kelly’s reluctance to label herself that way, she understands that she can share an audience with creators like Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman, who recently brought the tradewife conversation into the mainstream after a much-discussed profile in Times of London. (Neeleman said she doesn’t “necessarily identify” as a “trade wife”: “We try so hard to be neutral and be ourselves, and people will put a label on everything.”

Kelly invites all social media users to enjoy her content, whether they consider her to be part of the “tradwife” trend or not.

“I like to communicate with people. I have fun when people message me and say, “Oh yeah, I just did that today too,” or “I love cleaning this way,” she tells PEOPLE. “I welcome everyone. I think it’s interesting for people to see how I live my life, just because it’s so different from everyone else my age.”