You may have heard of Ben Shapiro, the conservative firebrand and Daily Wire cofounder, but have you heard of his sister Abby Roth? In 2019, she started posting YouTube videos as “Classically Abby,” in which she talked about makeup and hairstyles and showcased her voice (she’s a classically trained opera singer). She also extolls the virtues of her Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, encouraging other women to adopt a conservative modesty as well.
Five months ago, Roth announced in a YouTube video that she was switching gears to focus on her Substack, “The First-Gen SAHM.” Using an acronym for “stay at home mom,” Roth talked about wanting to speak to young women whose mothers worked and who are now themselves seeking guidance on how to transition into what they see as a more traditional female role. In the video, titled “Goodbye, Classically Abby,” Roth explains that she’s better able to write rather than film and edit videos while she takes care of her two young children. “I want to share that stuff with you,” she says to her audience. “I don’t have time to put on makeup, do my hair, set up my filming station, record, edit every week. I just don’t. But I do have time to sit at my computer for discrete amounts of time [to] write and edit.” Incidentally, Roth still does media appearances and also maintains an active Instagram account (thefirstgensahm) where she posts video reels.
Her shift to more conservative content started back in 2020. That May, Roth posted a YouTube video under the title “Conservative Women: It’s Our Time Let’s Take the Culture Back,” in which she discussed how conservative women needed to be more vocal about their viewpoints, dress more modestly and “date with purpose.” The video is pinned to her channel and has more than 940,000 views. Her most popular video (1.7 million views) is “Why YOU Should Dress Modestly || Get the attention you deserve!”
Roth also posted videos leading up to the 2020 election encouraging conservatives to vote in large numbers. In addition, Roth has frequently been seen with her politically active brother, including photos taken together on social media and in an interview on Ben’s YouTube channel about being pro-life. Her husband, lawyer Jacob Roth, is also a conservative and uses his social media to advocate for Israel and criticize politicians, mostly on the left.
Roth’s embrace of SAHM parenting and conservative politics seems like a comfortable combination for her. Speaking at a Young America’s Foundation conference in 2023, Roth lambasted how “every message we get in this modern hustle culture, outside of our religious communities and our own intuition, tells us to throw real purpose out the window in favor of what amounts to a careerist grind…climbing the totem pole or being famous or making lots and lots of money.” And yet while she proudly calls herself a SAHM and preaches a traditional lifestyle where women don’t work, in reality Roth has generated income as an influencer, through other women who consume her YouTube content and watch ads on those videos, as well as on Substack, which has a free option but also gives subscribers the option to pledge a monthly or yearly amount for additional content.
Roth also pushed her YouTube videos through advertisements on other people’s content, attracting clicks from viewers who wouldn’t normally be interested in her content, or garnering so-called hate clicks from those opposed to her ideas. Her most popular video, with more than a million views, has just 20,000 likes. The disparity between likes and so-called hate clicks was even more obvious back when YouTube still showed the number of dislikes (represented by the thumbs-down icon) on videos.
Roth is proud of her Judaism—she was raised modern orthodox, then became less religious and has become more Orthodox since becoming a mother—but it’s not necessarily the focus of her social media content. However, in her Classically Abby phase she did make explainer videos about Purim and Shavuot, as well as vlogs that describe the up-and-down journey of her Jewish faith. “I am so looking forward to keeping the ritual practices more and more as Jacob and I become more and more observant and sharing that with our children,” she said in 2020. However, in many ways Roth isn’t strikingly different from female conservative Christian influencers who preach modesty.
Like many Christian conservatives, and like her brother, Roth is strongly anti-abortion. She has said that having a miscarriage made her staunchly pro-life, and she has appeared on a podcast with the Christian pro-life influencer Christine Yeargin. (Conversely, the majority of Jews in the United States—79 percent in this PRRI study—say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Although there have long been debates on this topic, many rabbis would permit abortion if the health of the mother is at stake.)
Roth is also a homeschooling advocate, stressing that the content children are being taught in public schools is “dangerous,” including what she calls gender ideology. Additionally, she says she wants her kids to hear “alternative historical narratives.” In a recent appearance on I’m Right with Jesse Kelly, she also explained that homeschooling her two boys is important because in school they would be separated by grade level, and she would rather they spend more time together. She stresses the importance of following the interests of the child. Roth also says her goal is to create a homeschooling community for “first-gen” stay-at-home moms.
In February, Roth, 31, announced that her third baby is on the way. Since her oldest only just turned three, she’s got some time to develop her historical narrative lesson plans. In the meantime, she’ll have her hands full with three young children, a house and husband, along with close to 8,500 followers on Instagram and more than 5,000 on Substack, all waiting to see how she manages to do it all.
Top image: YouTube screenshot