Becoming a tradwife is tougher than it looks.

Having spent three days at Turning Point USA's Women’s Leadership Summit, I’ve seen the light about what Christian conservative women face finding a husband and carrying and raising as many babies as possible – all while dressing the part, being judged and even cancelled by feminist friends and family, and holding their tongues in the process. 

Why sign up for such heartburn, I asked many of the young women in attendance.

‘Because it’s my calling,’ said Caylee Kattner, 17, from Loving, Texas, who came with her grandmother, Katrina Fullingim, 68, herself a proud tradwife.

‘I know it’ll be hard, really hard. I’ll just have to faith it until I make it.'

TPUSA’s annual conference – the largest young conservative women’s event in the country – was less the political powwow I expected than a bootcamp for young women seeking lives as traditional wives, stay-at-home moms and homemakers. 

The vibe at this year's event in San Antonio, which was hosted by Charlie Kirk's widow Erika Kirk and drew in roughly 2,000, largely replicated that of a beauty pageant and sorority sleepover. 

Participants were urged to consult a Pinterest look-book before arriving to ensure they had an appropriate supple of demure business casual attire. 

But sequined heels turned out to be the footwear of choice, while diamond-encrusted crosses hung on the spray-tanned necks of scores of sundressed attendees. 

Some in the crowd seemed just as transfixed by the look of tradwifery as by the practice of it. 

‘I love seeing what everyone is wearing,’ said MacKenzie Mceldowney, 17 from Arizona, for whom the summit was her fourth TPUSA event. 

College co-eds on my hotel floor stayed up late in their jammies playing ‘Who would you rather marry?’ – the Christian conservative version of the game ‘Who would you rather sleep with?’ 

It’s not easy, they lamented, finding young men – let alone ‘tall ones, cute ones’ – who are willing to ‘court biblically,’ meaning no sex before marriage, or who want large families.

Those same young women woke up early each morning to curl their hair and do each other’s makeup, MAGA-style, while discussing how much their parents pay for their Ozempic prescriptions and how to live up to Proverbs 31, the Old Testament guidebook for wives of noble character. 

‘It’s tempting to just throw on sweats, especially because it’s the last day,’ one, dressed in a pink and metallic gold pantsuit, told me on Sunday. It cost her six months of babysitting money to have it hand-sewn by a woman who makes beauty pageant gowns near Dallas.

‘But maybe my someday husband’s mom or sister is down there scouting for a wife for him. I need to look my best to meet that moment.’

Despite the glitz and glamour, the event was by many accounts a more somber affair than previous years – especially as attendees continued to mourn Kirk's absence in the wake of his assassination last September.

And those hoping to rub shoulders with Erika Kirk, the 37-year-old tradwidow heroine of the group, were only left disappointed. 

Wearing a matching, silver-gray silk turtleneck and slacks, Erika opted for a noticeably low profile during the multi-day event.

Without her signature tear-dabbing or the pyrotechnics that marked her appearance at her late-husband’s memorial service, the mother-of-two spoke for just 17 minutes at the beginning of the summit on Friday before disappearing for all of the VIP meet-and-greets or public events that followed. 

The brevity of her appearance was widely assumed to stem from security concerns, as well as her desire to be at home with her two fatherless young children. 

Her speech, which was briefly interrupted by a heckler who shouted ‘Erika Kirk protects pedophiles,' largely stuck to the organization's overall messaging.

The new TPUSA leader told the crowd that Christian faith, family, marriage and motherhood should take precedence over modern feminist ideals.

'At its core, feminism is a worldview that treats many of the things that make women uniquely women as obstacles ... rather than divine gifts,' she said during her brief remarks. 

She and several other speakers framed her takeover of TPUSA as an act of obedience to her late husband – a sacrifice to carry out his legacy and not a mark of her own ambition.

Despite being billed as a ‘leadership summit,’ submission was a key theme.  

Speakers urged those in the audience to submit themselves to God and their future husbands whose role is to earn the money and call all the shots. 

Choosing faith over feminism, as organizers framed it, involves a lifelong battle against satanic forces, liberal evil-doers and devil-worshipping progressives.

Other speakers, meanwhile, decried everything from birth control and liberal arts educations to anti-white racism and blue-light exposure to dog moms. 

‘Surrender your life to the Lord every single day,’ Michelle Bachman, a former conservative congresswoman from Minnesota who fostered 23 children in addition to raising her own five, told one panel audience.

The founder of a baking company in Georgia hawked a $330 electric ‘Wondermill’ for wives to home-grind bread flour and improve their familial microbiome. Women could be seen after the conference loading the devices into their Escalades and lugging them to the airport.

Australian pastor Millicent Sedra told the audience that 'Islam wants to oppress you as a woman.' Fellow panelist, Pentecostal pastor Mary Hudson – who is singer Katy Perry’s mom – agreed, calling Islam ‘a death cult.’

Ginger Hubbard, a Christian parenting author and staunch supporter of spanking kids, urged what she called ‘biblical parenting’ – strict discipline for children that includes making them aware of their ‘sin nature'.

And Kathy Koch, a parenting researcher who acknowledged that she is often mistaken for a man, told the crowd it is unchristian to question the gender that she or anyone else was assigned at birth.

‘We can’t be whoever we want to be. We can only be who God made us to be,’ she said.

Despite undertones of disappointment, bitterness and even shamelessness in some of the speeches, there was some hope for the scores of wives in training.

Alex Clark, a 33-year-old wellness and lifestyle podcaster who has spent several years talking about her own spinsterhood, surprised the crowd with news of her own engagement.  

Just moments earlier, she had spoken of maintaining strict, faith-based standards for a partner and ‘stewarding your single season’ by pursuing interests, preparing for marriage and motherhood and assuring yourself that having trouble finding a partner isn’t a punishment from God.

Her speech resonated with the audience of would-be tradwives, many of whom told me they want nothing more than a ring around their finger.

‘She so sees us,’ said a 29-year-old single attendee named Emily, tearing up from Clark’s words. ‘She feels our pain.’

At a conference marked by the pall of Kirk’s killing and the increasing difficulty of finding a good man, Clark then wowed the crowd by revealing her big news. 

‘Everyone, meet my fiancé, Vance Voetberg,’ she said during a dramatic reveal where she flashed her blingy engagement ring and brought her soon-to-be-husband on stage. 

‘Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I so need that to happen to me… preferably sooner than later,’ one young woman said hours later, still giddy about what she viewed as Clark’s triumph.

‘Ladies, let’s stay in tonight and pray on it,’ she continued, suggesting that she and her friends cancel plans to have dinner and watch the Spurs play in Friday’s NBA finals for a night of quiet devotion in their hotel room.

‘Let’s pray that what happened to Alex happens to all of us.’