Tradwives come off like a modern phenomenon, a social media chimera spawned by MAGA, fed by women’s exhaustion over “having it all,” and wrapped in a pretty apron. In some ways, that’s true—the Nara Smiths and Ballerina Farms of the world only went viral in the 2020s. But the earlier round of the submissive-woman-as-influencer experiment ran long enough ago—hawked on tape, book, and DVD—that the women involved are now in their 40s or older. Some are becoming the loudest voices warning against the movement.

Bernadine “Bluntly” Barber, a former trad Instagram influencer—here she is dancing in a milkmaid dress gifted to her by the alt-right magazine Evie—has opened up on Instagram and just this month spoke out in the New York Times against the abuse that can thrive in marriages with such a power imbalance. Enitza Templeton, a former tradwife with more than 247,000 TikTok followers, uses her platform to warn young women they may one day regret forgoing education. Templeton describes how a wifely fixation on pleasing one’s husband can leave women emotionally and physically depleted.

Earlier this month, former advocates of stay-at-home-daughterhood Elizabeth and Anna Sofia Botkin issued two apologies on YouTube (and published a lengthy written self-critique) to women negatively impacted by the form of submission they once advocated, when they argued that young women should remain home under their father’s authority until they got married and thereafter could live in submission to their husbands. The sisters’ 2005 book, So Much More, and 2007 film, Return of the Daughters, spawned the stay-at-home-daughter movement, a training ground for the wifely-submission pipeline. It was a stopgap encouraged by Christian patriarchy-preaching ministries to keep women from ever being outside the authority of a man—and usually, out of college, where they might learn Marxism, or worse, feminism. While young women stayed home, they perfected domestic skills, preparing for marriage. Some helped with their father’s business or ministry. A few served as nannies (unpaid or poorly paid) for submissive wives from their churches—training for the day they would have their own big broods of kids.

“We have come to the very painful conclusion that we believed and taught some very destructive things when it came to stay-at-home-daughterhood,” Anna Sofia said as part of their YouTube apology. (Elizabeth and Anna Sofia did not return Slate’s requests for interviews.)