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Is the Tradwife Queen a fraud? Ballerina Farm isn't what it seems

Hannah Neeleman, dubbed “the tradwife queen” (Ballerina Farm)

Hannah Neeleman, dubbed “the tradwife queen” (Ballerina Farm)


August 17, 2024   7 mins

The pioneer dream is deeply engraved in American culture and history. It’s simple but powerful: setting forth into the unknown, with just a few belongings and your immediate family, and creating a self-reliant, flourishing home in an unforgiving environment. As depicted in the (now resoundingly cancelled) Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, it’s a dream that required practical skills, physical strength and mental fortitude.

It was also, always, an easier sell to men than to women, which is why frontiersmen often had to obtain a wife by mail order. What for a man might be a pioneering adventure might be, for his wife, an arduous daily grind of growing and preparing food, making and mending clothing, laundry, animal husbandry and so on, all with no family help and multiple children underfoot.

Over time, though, a slew of innovations — from cars to ready-made foods to labour-saving home devices — have made it ever easier to live life in a seemingly self-contained way. Perhaps most of all, this has liberated women to pursue individualist dreams just like men. As the American antifeminist Phyllis Schlafly once observed, women were liberated more by the washing machine than feminism.

But what if something was lost, as the grind disappeared? This was the view of perhaps the most controversial modern critic of technology: the late mathematician and domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, commonly known as the “Unabomber”. In his manifesto, Kaczynski argued that as “industrial society” developed, it corroded human freedom, leaving behind enfeebled, inhibited and “oversocialised” individuals unable to exercise full agency in the “power process”. He was so vehemently opposed to this perceived degradation that he pursued a campaign of anti-technology vandalism and letter-bombing that killed three and injured 23 more.

Obviously I don’t condone terrorism. But there’s something to the idea that labour-saving devices have stripped us of practical skills, making us more dependent on their services and infrastructure, even as they relieve us of effort. But if you can’t separate agency from effort, what does this imply for all those mothers condemned to the grind? This tension supplies much of the power, and also the controversy, surrounding the very contemporary cultural figure of the “tradwife”.

Across social media, these influencers document their labours as wives and mothers. In doing so, they make a virtue out of adding the very domestic chores back into their lives that earlier generations of women rejoiced in escaping. And this invites reflection. With such a reactionary message, why is their content so popular? Was Kaczynski on to something, about the need to escape “oversocialised” industrial society? And if so, what does this mean for women?

Among these figures, none is more popular — or, lately, more contentious — than Hannah Neeleman, dubbed “the tradwife queen” in a recent viral Times interview. On her Ballerina Farm social media channel, Neeleman documents the earthy aesthetic, agrarian lifestyle and expensively styled “back to the land” lifestyle she enjoys with her husband, airline heir Daniel Neeleman, and their eight children on a 328-acre farm in Utah. But if Neeleman’s popularity, output and controversy tell us anything, it’s that neither Phyllis Schlafly nor Ted Kaczynski is a good guide to the tradwife phenomenon.

In the Times interview, author Megan Agnew describes Neeleman’s home life with a clear insinuation that something is off. She hints that perhaps Neeleman is putting a positive gloss on a life of drudgery with an overbearing husband; she did, after all, give up a place at a prestigious ballet school for barefoot pregnancy and pig farming. Perhaps, too, she was pressured by the same overbearing husband into declining pain relief for her many home births. And perhaps her accomplishments have been pushed aside and her potential discarded: Agnew details the beauty queen costumes dumped in the garage, and the room Neeleman wanted as a dance studio but was instead turned into a homeschool classroom.

Agnew observes that she has barely a moment to speak to Neeleman without her being interrupted by toddlers, or talked over by Daniel. Where, we are invited to wonder, does this beautiful, gifted woman get to be a person, over and above being a dutiful wife and mother? Since the interview was published, it has incited a storm of speculation as to the health of her marriage and the meaning of the birthday egg apron, compassion for her obviously oppressed condition, as well as an equally spirited defence of her lifestyle (including from Neeleman herself).

So what’s really going on at Ballerina Farm? Is Hannah Neeleman oppressed? Did she have her dream stolen from her? Certainly, what’s depicted in social media often diverges from reality, and it is of course true that relationships that appear loving may have less happy backstage dynamics. Some purportedly “trad” marriages really are abusive. I’m not privy to any such gossip about Ballerina Farm, though, and have no interest in adding to speculation.

But what about the structure of Neeleman’s situation? Surely the mere fact of her being diverted from her dream of life as a prima ballerina to one of agrarian domesticity, pregnant every 18 months and besieged by sticky toddlers and farmhouse chores, reveals an “abused” woman whose chance of self-actualisation in the “power process” was stolen by a domineering man?

This, however, also misses the point of Ballerina Farm altogether: one that neither Neeleman’s would-be feminist rescuers or traditionalist defenders fully acknowledge. At face value, yes, the setting looks unnervingly antifeminist. But if you take as its message not just the content of the social media posts but the entire Ballerina Farm project, Hannah Neeleman emerges as neither classically “oppressed” nor “empowered”. Rather, she shows up as profoundly embedded in her life’s work, in a way that doesn’t map easily onto either the Kaczynski-style pioneer libertarian vision or the high-tech world that emerged from that vision to “liberate” women in the Schlafly sense.

The suspicion directed at “tradlife” is directionally correct, in this sense: if Kaczynski got his way, and industrial society vanished tomorrow, it might well return some practical agency to individual men from bureaucracies and complex social structures. But it would also remove the majority of women from public life, into the everyday grind of subsistence chores with children.

All the most contentious aspects of Ballerina Farm discourse are animated by this intuition. For example, the Times interview and its swarm of respondents on TikTok and X have all made much of the fact that the Neelemans don’t have a nanny to help with the smallest infants, because Daniel doesn’t want one. This detail is consistent with the self-reliant pioneer image, but evidently a greater burden on Hannah than Daniel. Also consistent with “going it alone” pioneer-style, most of her babies were home births, without pain relief. How far was this her choice? Who knows?

But perhaps the real question is: how “pioneer” is their life anyway? The rugged, self-contained Little House schtick is only believable as long as you never ask yourself: who’s filming? I can enjoy watching Neeleman making a “perfect summer lunch” of sourdough flatbreads, pesto and cheese all from scratch — including making and straining the cheese — because I choose to look past the obvious fact that it’s all confected for the cameras. Doing all that would be an insane amount of work just for lunch, for someone with eight kids and farm chores, unless she had a ton of help.

“The rugged, self-contained Little House schtick is only believable as long as you never ask yourself: who’s filming?”

But, very obviously, she does have a ton of help. For starters, with production values that good there’s likely a crew on-site to assist with lighting, shooting, editing and publishing her all-natural-looking kitchen creations. Neeleman herself has detailed their 30+ employees, and shared footage of the (considerably less artfully styled) space where Ballerina Farm Oompa-Loompas package and dispatch products from the show’s multimillion-dollar spin-off food and lifestyle brand. Their farm-cum-home-cum-studio is clearly a hive of activity and people, all the time. As the interview notes, there are also domestic cleaners, plus a home tutor to educate the older children.

No, Hannah Neeleman doesn’t have a nanny for the babies. But nanny or no nanny, there is no shortage of people about to keep an eye on a swarm of kids. This is not Little House on the Prairie, with no one for miles in any direction but Ma and Pa and the brood. And nor, as evidenced by the fact that both Neelemans are actively engaged in the Ballerina Farm enterprise, is this a “traditional” domestic setup on the homemaker-breadwinner model.

This split between working husband and dependent wife, often glossed as the “trad” bit in “tradwife”, dates from the industrial era. That is: it’s not “traditional” at all, but distinctively modern. It’s also the model that, over time, drove many of the dissatisfactions challenged by feminism. But Hannah Neeleman is emphatically not a “tradwife” in this sense: more accurately, she’s a tradewife: a mother who works within an economically productive household.

Ballerina Farm is both a home and a tightly run and obviously profitable business. In it, both Daniel and Hannah are engaged in distinct but equally vital roles. It’s a lifestyle that more closely resembles the pre-modern era, than anything “trad” in the “tradwife” sense. But it’s not an attempt to go back to the pre-industrial era either. On the contrary, Ballerina Farm is only possible because it’s not a low-tech project on the Uncle Ted template.

After all, none of it would be possible without the internet: Daniel Neeleman’s IRL farming exists in symbiosis with his wife’s engagement farming. Unlike the many miserable farmers living hand-to-mouth as supermarkets squeeze their margins, Daniel can charge $139 for a box of croissants and sausage meat. For him, the difference between this and American farmers’ more usual elevated suicide risk is his glamorous, internet-savvy wife. Who knows what their relationship is like behind closed doors; but in terms of money and power, I have no trouble believing Hannah Neeleman’s characterisation of them as “co-CEOs” of Ballerina Farm.

Seen in this light, as a family business blending high and low tech, Ballerina Farm isn’t propaganda for the “pioneer” model or its suburban successor, the bourgeois housewife. What the Neelemans have constructed is closer to a 21st-century update on a far older domestic template: the preindustrial “productive household”. That is, a home that is also a workplace, in which everyone is economically active. Even the Neelemans’ large number of full-time staff recalls the extensive historic employment of servants in productive households.

And perhaps this gives us a clue as to what’s really driving Ballerina Farm discourse: envy. For a 21st-century “productive household” of this kind is not available to all. More than ever, the internet has made it possible for mothers to have it all, after a fashion: the rewarding, economically active life, the big family, the beautiful home, all woven together with the remote-working possibilities opened up by the internet. But not all women. Just those with the skills, the money, the charisma, the space for a home office — and a spouse who shares the vision.

If that’s you, you can enjoy your flexible, rewarding career from home, with half an eye on the kids, the home help, and the rising sourdough. For everyone else, there’s the same old juggling as ever — and scrolling through Ballerina Farm as you commute.


Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd.

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Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
3 months ago

It’s some sort of law of social thermodynamics that, as society becomes more and more complex, it requires ever-greater integration with said society to become economically “independent”.
Also, no nanny?! Why, I bet she sends her kids to bed without their nightly Madeira, too!

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
3 months ago

These kinds of things are like reality television. Not a real reality.

Burton Tallen
Burton Tallen
3 months ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

They are not like reality tv, they are reality tv. No different than real housewives of Beverly Hills. A form of entertainment competing for eyeballs and engagement with high margin product pull-through.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago
Reply to  Burton Tallen

I guess one difference is that it is more led by the couple themselves. One of the terrible things that turned me off regular reality tv was the way producers manipulate footage and scenarios to maximise conflict and create ‘villains’…which is fine, until you realise these people were almost always taken out of context (or caught at a low point) and are going to have terrible public reputations for the rest of their lives. Most also don’t actually see much financial reward for it.
At least with a YouTube channel people control the image they want to put out to the world.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It’s not just reality TV. I remember seeing an interview with an actor who was a “bad guy” on a long running US TV soap opera. He said he was regularly accosted in the street by people complaining about the “bad” things he had done whilst in character.

Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
3 months ago

It seems that whether we are female or male the media tell us what we should do rather than letting us blunder through our happy and unhappy days. Just go away and leave us alone !

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
3 months ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

I’m old school, the wife tells me what I have to do.

Geoff W
Geoff W
3 months ago
Reply to  Bret Larson

But do you do it?
Your answer will indicate whether you are truly old school.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Through decades of experience I attempt to interpret the actual requirement and assign a timely basis to get to it.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago

I’d be happy enough to embrace the “Pioneer” life if I had 30 employees to do the actual work. I always thought that if I ever went into farming, I would want to be the sort of British farmer who wears a tweed jacket, and drives around in a Range Rover, checking up on the help.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

That’s the “Gentleman” farmer who doesn’t, actually, do any work because he Inherited the land and the wealth. Dream on.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

I have always had a sneaking respect for the British Upper Middle Class, despite being from an essentially working class background myself. I have a friend from the same home town as me (but from “the other side of the tracks”) who went to Rugby School. Even now (he is in his mid 70s), a mention of the place induces a look of horror on his face. No wonder building an Empire didn’t faze them.

Hugh Marcus
Hugh Marcus
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

I understand your thoughts Martin. I’m a hill farmer at the top of a glen. At the bottom of the glen is a large estate. His Lordship spends most of his time in London. The reality for his big estate though is that it’s now a very diverse set of businesses in order to make the money needed. The farm sends its organic beef to the best London restaurants, they have high end glamping pods, there’s history tours of the castle, a restaurant & coffee shop, walled garden tours, high end wedding venue. etc.
The estate manager who went to school with me, tells me it all just about washes its face financially.
I’m guessing the image of the Lord of the manor has met the harsh reality of the 21st century

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Marcus

Well, sure. Things have a habit of doing that. Still, I suppose the Upper Classes have realised it by now (those that have rural holdings, rather than city holdings anyway). I read a biography about a guy called Nubar Gulbenkian a few years ago. His father was Calouste Gulbenkian, one of the first people to make money in oil 130 or so years ago. He was famously called “Mr 5%” because of his habit of taking a 5% share of every oilfield development he brokered, realising that he could only run a few of them directly, but he could have a 5% interest in hundreds of them. They family lived in a ritzy part of London surrounded by the city residences of the aristocracy, all of whom were astounded that Gulbenkian Senior went to work at his office every day (not realising that he could have bought most of them a dozen times over).

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
3 months ago

Aaaah, the Tradwives…live and let live, I say.
Watched an interview with one of them, Estee Williams, a few weeks ago because I was writing something about the phenomenon. Was quite suspicious, as the woman really does look like some kind of cartoon – but she was very nice. She was articulate, settled, happy and well explained why she has chosen to lead the life she has. While that kind of dependence on my other half is not for me, I get it. And good for her (and her husband) for making the life they want together.
Being a tradewife sounds like a much more appealing deal. We spent the weekend daydreaming about growing all our own veg in a garden out in the country, far away from the city and the people who stand outside my bedroom window at night in summer, playing awful Arab pop music, bashing each other’s heads in and screaming (I live in a pedestrian zone in a fairly “colourful” area – no wonder I don’t have a TV, I just need to look out the window and I have more entertainment than Netflix).
In the meantime, I make my jams and mess around with micro-gardening projects on my windowsill. Currently: a pot of forget-me-nots that are expanding like some kind of monster green sourdough and 5 little lemon trees from seeds I planted just for fun after I made lemon chicken several months ago. It’s all good fun.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

I hope you get your dream one day if it hadn’t had a new town,future slum plonked on it.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
3 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Sounds very creative, actually. Making the best of it.

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
3 months ago

Anyone who pursues a career as a social media influencer while claiming to be “traditional” is obviously full of it.
Did you really need to dig any deeper than that? I dread to think how many hours of this lady’s content you watched to prepare for this article.

Geoff W
Geoff W
3 months ago

Indeed. The young woman’s life is so obviously hypocritical and fraudulent that only a very slow thinker would need to write a whole article to work it out.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

It takes a shallow thinker to read such a superficial interpretation into the far wider perspective that MH invariably includes within her articles.

Geoff W
Geoff W
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

I usually find her wider perspectives to be either glaringly obvious, or verbose piffle.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

I guess you’re not understanding them; some insights are beyond narrow minds.
The use of the word “piffle” is revealing, in that respect.

Geoff W
Geoff W
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Ooh!

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Then why read them?

William Shaw
William Shaw
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

I believe she wrote “a whole article” to a) explain it to others, and b) pay the bills.

Geoff W
Geoff W
3 months ago
Reply to  William Shaw

I don’t think many people here would need the general principles explained, although I suppose there’s some interest in the details.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Having never heard about any of it I found it interesting.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

But it sounds enjoyable to me,even with all those adorable kiddies,it may not be Little House etc but it’s defo The Waltons.

Mark Knight
Mark Knight
3 months ago

A good and interesting analysis, thanks.

Obadiah B Long
Obadiah B Long
3 months ago
Reply to  Mark Knight

Well, yes. Respectfully, I would submit that it’s two mediocre analyses, one of the show, and another of the actual traditional lifestyle. The two keep getting tangled, to no good effect. Little House on the Prairie (the show, although the books were better) was entertainment. It did little to illuminate the debate about the pros and cons of modernity. Same with this show.
The question “Where, we are invited to wonder, does this beautiful, gifted woman get to be a person, over and above being a dutiful wife and mother?” made me lose interest. It is unserious.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago
Reply to  Obadiah B Long

Well,try being an ugly old spinster that nobody likes,has ever wanted to have sex with and gets shouted at by the black kids in the nearby house “it’s the idiot,it’s the idiot” when you’re outside gardening . Since their Mum is single,got 5 so far and just had a new baby maybe her sprogs should revise their definition of ‘idiot”. I don’t have ANY kids to feed,clothes,laugh with,read to,have about the place,I don’t have to cook and clean if I don’t want to,I’ve got no man to beat me up,but the older of the black neighbour kids seem quite keen on the idea in theory at least so I guess I could get that equality too. God,my life is WONDERFUL. I MUST BE THE SUCCESS!

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
3 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

You definitely sound eccentric.

Obadiah B Long
Obadiah B Long
3 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

You should be a writer!

AC Harper
AC Harper
3 months ago

Don’t worry – if many women adopted a tradwife stay at home lifestyle they wouldn’t be earning money and paying taxes. That would never do. The State has an endless appetite for revenue and doesn’t care to be thwarted.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago
Reply to  AC Harper

Yes. No one really cares if you have a career or not. CEO of Virgin media or shelf stacker at Tesco,it’s all one to them so long as you pay tax they can spend on things you don’t approve of.

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
3 months ago

Agrarian back-to-the-land social media influencer? The hypocrisy is obvious in the description.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Lighten up,it’s fun to watch,if it’s not fun to live thats not your problem

Aidan Anabetting
Aidan Anabetting
3 months ago

The faux-traditionalism masks a very contemporary hyper-individualism. Narcissism dressed up as wholesomeness and monetised. This is a media business not a farm.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago

All the better then,it’ll actually make a living

Malcolm Webb
Malcolm Webb
3 months ago

Oh dear, it seems that even nostalgia isn’t as good as it used to be! Personally I can think of no period in history that I would prefer to have been born in – even as a king.

Geoff W
Geoff W
3 months ago
Reply to  Malcolm Webb

Indeed. Even kings could die (in our terms) prematurely of influenza or tetanus or…

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

A creepy doctor.

JOHN B
JOHN B
3 months ago

There is everything to be said for subsuming one’s ego into family, duties and chores, meanwhile rejecting the absurd progressive, identarian version of personhood, but if it is not symmetrical, involving the man as much as the woman, then it becomes merely an exercise in power

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
3 months ago

I got about five paragraphs in and realized I just can’t be made to care. Everyone has some sort of social media gimmick. It’s tedious.

Kimberly Carlile
Kimberly Carlile
3 months ago

It’s stunning to me how the media can take a glance at something and think they know it. In this instance, bias, envy and worldly drench has blinded them. Ballerina Farm is a mail-order business so, like any other business, they have workers to execute. But anyone who imagines the home is a photo studio doesn’t have an iPhone nor conceived of a tripod, which is how 99% of BH content is created, by the Neelemans themselves. Just one of 500 details the media has gotten dead-wrong in recent write-ups.

“And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” John 1:5

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago

They’re not working for The Man so got to be brought down.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
3 months ago

It’s their narrative glasses that trouble them.

Harrydog
Harrydog
3 months ago

A very insightful article. I always look forward to hearing from Ms. Harrington. Check out this wonderful series on life on a Tudor era farm.
Tales From The Green Valley Series – YouTube
Everyone worked and contributed to the household economy. What you had was two intersecting worlds of men and women; worlds with their own hierarchies and duties. Camille Paglia has often noted this reality.
It reminds me of when I worked for five years as an interpreter at Plimoth Plantation, a living history recreation of the early Plymouth settlement in Massachusetts.

Robert Millinship
Robert Millinship
3 months ago

….”with half an eye on the kids”, you say. Will any of these women ever understand how to devote sufficient time to bringing up their children? Or is it always someone else’s responsibility?

Duane M
Duane M
3 months ago

Well, yes, but Hannah is professionally occupied in the full-time business of playing Hannah. That kinda limits the time available for the kids. Who are probably getting lots of attention from their own directors and coaches for acting like themselves. 😉

Kimberly Carlile
Kimberly Carlile
3 months ago
Reply to  Duane M

A lot of hubris and ignorance in the word “probably.”

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

It’s hard to live on one salary anymore. Eight kids? How can any women watch all of them at once. I suggest you try it.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Why do you need to watch your kids all the time or even know where they are all the time. In my 1960s childhood,and my Mum was a careful and strict Mum.but nevertheless I could go off for hours,my siblings could,other kids had even more freedom than us. Your parents felt no need to know exactly where you were all day or what you were doing.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago

By the late 1990s I was totally fed up with lady writers publishing books or writing TV series about how much they disliked their children and how objectionable and inconvenient to they found them.

Duane M
Duane M
3 months ago

No surprise to learn that Daniel and Hannah are actors playing the roles of Daniel and Hannah in the make-believe reality show called Ballerina Farm. Everything that makes the cut for viewing release must be carefully scripted and scrupulously edited, including the apparent inequality of the marriage relationship. Making Hannah appear to be overworked and oppressed is part of the show, because it’s catnip to the self-righteous viewers and the producers know it.

Paul Airey
Paul Airey
3 months ago

An utterly pointless boring article written by a vacuous nobody about another nobody.

Faith Ham
Faith Ham
3 months ago

Joanna and Chip Gaines started all this 20 years ago. In that situation, the husband plays the doofus, in this one, the boor. It’s entertainment, and its vicariousness is fun till it’s not. I know a “tradwife,” who doesn’t have a camera crew logging her every breath. She’s gorgeous, smart, industrious, focused, vivacious, and always pregnant. She’s going to be moving within the year, and I’m heart broken because she’s a breath of normalcy in a sea of idiocy.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
3 months ago
Reply to  Faith Ham

Always pregnant? Yuk!

C C
C C
3 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Reminds me of a spicy moment back in artschool- the communal kitchen was in a mess by the end of the day so I nobly decided to clean up before going home – and in walked the sculpture teacher who happened to be midwest American. « That’s what I like to see! But it would be better if you were barefoot and pregnant » . Of course the joke was on him for embodying all our favourite hillbilly stereotypes, and I could not be offended in the face of such silliness.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago

There is a saying about the level of flak being taken and one’s proximity to the target. Perhaps the trad wife thing is extreme. Is the litany of videos from 30ish professionally successful but personally empty women where they insist, through bitter tears, how happy they are better?
Also, the only thing real about reality tv is that actual people are involved in the production. It’s not the only thing in common that reality television has with its dramatic and comedic cousins.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

I’ve heard that some tv production companies are already looking into AI,then they wont even need unreliable real actual people.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
3 months ago

OK, rich people cosplaying an “authentic” traditional family and the life on a 19th-century farm… Not that original as an idea, I would say.
Reminds me of stories about some young men from rich families who, just for the thrill of it, spend a couple of years as beggars in the street. Now maybe such young men also have their dedicated channels on social media where they present the “authenticity” of their beggar’s experience to broader audiences.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago

Bristol the city I live in is stiff with Trust Fund beggars. There is a whole alternative street scene with its own rules,laws and etiquette.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
3 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

Ah, that’s very interesting, thank you. Things are getting organised and even codified, as it seems, in this particular group 😉

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago

Peoples Republic of S…. C….for one…active Class War cell…etc

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago

Good point. It seems JD Vance thinks we should cosplay minor characters on “Happy Days”.

Russell Sharpe
Russell Sharpe
3 months ago

“Obviously I don’t condone terrorism.”
Actually, nothing is obvious any more; so thanks for clarifying.

John Tyler
John Tyler
3 months ago

Is there really anything ‘as it seems’ on social or broadcast media? This isn’t new. I recall many years ago seeing David Attenborough being the first ever human to enter a cave, filmed from the inside; soldiers raising the Stars and Stripes on Okinawa (?) were posing. “Reality” entertainment is not real, but it can be entertaining!

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago
Reply to  John Tyler

Neil Armstrong driving a sand buggy on the moon while singing hippity hippity,a profound moment for mankind.

0 0
0 0
3 months ago

30 employees doing the filming, packaging and homeschooling? No wonder they have time to film mealmaking and cow milking.

T Redd
T Redd
3 months ago

sounds like a jealous writer mad that they did not think of this idea first…

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
3 months ago

Strange level of resentment here. These people have a successful family business. They make good money, employ a bunch of other people and seem to be working very hard at it. An important part of it is Hannah’s PR work. Truthfully, if she enjoys starring in her own short films I can’t imagine objecting. A bit of pride, even vanity, is a sign of a healthy human psyche. I’m sure the kids will look back very fondly on their life at Ballerina Ranch. And no marriage is quite what it seems; the Neeleman’s included, we can be certain of that.
Mary herself has written about the empowerment of the life of pre-Industrial, working class households. In fact I could swear I once heard her presenting an argument that women were better off in the Middle-ages. Ballerina Ranch is like that except with internal combustion engines, central heating, anti-biotics, etc.
I’m kinda envious.

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago

It sounds lovely to me.

Mark M Breza
Mark M Breza
2 months ago

BS There is a camera everywhere, which means she is a poseur.
Don’t think a trad wife knew her best angle, lighting or had a photographer.

Paul Rodolf
Paul Rodolf
3 months ago

I grew up on a small family farm where the traditional life was more a matter of necessity than a hobby. It is hard but it is also gratifying. Men and women work equally hard just in different roles. Men more physical labor and women more detailed work requiring planning and often multiple stages of processing. Look at the process for canning peaches for instance. It is not glamorous or romantic, I took great pains to wipe the cow-shit off my shoes after morning milking so not to be teased at school. There is something to be said for knowing how your food got to the table though.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
3 months ago

This tradwife nonsense is just incel wish fulfillment. No wonder you guys love it!

General Store
General Store
3 months ago
UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

I appreciate Harrington actually making the distinction between a 1950s-style “tradwife” and the more practical “tradewife” who engages in something akin to the home economies people have nurtured for centuries. Such things are not often discussed anymore, but everyone has a home economy, even if most just mirror the global economy’s dependence on disposable commodities and cheap outsourced labor. I personally welcome people trying to reclaim a few of these forgotten arts, even if I find the highly selective and sanitized portrayal a little ridiculous (and the haters predictably flooding their comment sections with cries about “privilege” and “problematic” and “eww nature has bugs!” even worse). But that’s just social media for you. Actual homesteaders do still exist, but most of them would not touch Instagram or TikTok with a 10-foot-pole, or at least not the manic world of short-form content.
The discourse around Mrs. Neeleman’s choice to live this lifestyle reminds me of the years I used to work for a Muslim fashion brand that catered to the hijab-wearing market. Although neither Muslim nor hijab-wearing myself, I was no stranger to the frankly endless conversations about choice, and particularly the feminists who insisted that my colleagues only wore what they did because they were brainwashed and oppressed by male relatives and a patriarchal religion. (An argument which was of course returned in kind by more modest-dressers asserting that *actually,* it was the bikini wearing women who were truly brainwashed and oppressed by secularism and the Western male gaze.) It’s true that none of us makes our own choices in a vacuum, but it’s a little too convenient to project that analysis only onto those who make choices we personally wouldn’t. All the more reason to take people at their word, as long as everyone also knows to blink twice if they need rescuing.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

“Mrs. Neeleman? We say Ms. nowadays. Or do you feel she’s definitely a Mrs?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

Eight kids? A baby born every 18months? With no pain killers? I would sleep with a gun and tell my husband I’d use it if he ever came near me. (My mother-in-law, after nine kids, told my father-in-law she’d kill him if he came near her only she had a knife.)

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Exactly!

jane baker
jane baker
3 months ago

I don’t know about this farm,this couple or their business but it sounds great to me. Yes, despite the high tech a return to the pre-industrial revolution family that could live and work in their traditional family home + land. Over the last 30 years I’ve seen on tv,read about in magazine features or heard on radio,people men and women who went to university,spent 10 years in the City,trading,working in IT and then on having saved enough money they’ve chucked it all in and established themselves as rare breed pig farmers,or chickens,or the Head Gardener at an NT property. Jobs that pre WW2 only ignorant thickos did because higher up careers were not available to them..No,I don’t think that. But you only have to know a bit of literature,watch some old British movies and have known a few old people in the 1960s when you were a little kid to know that was how it was thought of them. Now very clever people get to realize that sort of thing is what they really like doing. But they have the nous to make their money first and they are savvy enough to know you’ve got to sell more than a plain commodity. You’ve got to enhance value. Your actually selling THE STORY the sausages,or eggs or fresh veg is the added extra!

Kate Collingwood
Kate Collingwood
3 months ago

People like the binary, trad wife or career woman, in fact there is a spectrum. My daughter is a very happy stay at home Mama to two young children. Her husband works long hours in a start up. But Daddy helps a lot with the kids, and the cooking when he is not working. My daughter loves cooking, and they raise chickens and some vegetables and she enjoys that and feels privileged to be able to dedicate herself to home and babies, for now anyway.
Tradwife influencers are entertainment, and maybe inspiration, but the reality is that there is a huge spectrum. But what IS true is that many, perhaps most, women would love to be able stay home and take care of their kids for at least a few years or longer when the children are young.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
3 months ago

You can count a lot of men in also.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

Mary H. is a good and interesting writer. Gratitude.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
3 months ago

Servants. Exactly. In the old days you either were a servant or you had servants. Think George Eliot’s Mrs. Poyser in Adam Bede. Of course, Mrs. Poyser’s servants were mostly teenage girls. And, wow, did they need a firm hand. As now.

Brian Matthews
Brian Matthews
3 months ago

> Just those with the skills, the money, the charisma, the space for a home office — and a spouse who shares the vision.

AND incredible luck.

Christine Novak
Christine Novak
3 months ago

Thanks for pulling the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. Now I have even more appreciation for her schtick. And, sigh, the pioneer dream has been my childhood fantasy even before Little House or the Waltons. And I’m neither trad or a wife.

Kelly Madden
Kelly Madden
3 months ago

Reality TV is big business.

Jim M
Jim M
3 months ago

Balanced presentation. I liked the punchline about envy. Yeah, it’s a clever show. Farming does not really pay that much. It’s the most essential thing to do and they get paid so little.

Kelly Madden
Kelly Madden
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim M

Which is why the farm produce is secondary to the product this couple is actually selling.

Kate Madrid
Kate Madrid
3 months ago

The untraditional of the self-consciously constructed “Trad” is an idea Harrington examines in her book and it is delved into even more deeply as a modern “idyll” (read idol) in RJ Snell’s most recent book—Lost in the Chaos: Immanence, Trancendence, and Despair in the Empire of Desire.

Betsy Bell
Betsy Bell
3 months ago

Hands off Hannah! I think what she and her husband are doing is fabulous and agree with equally wonderful MH – envy has a lot to do with the media storm surrounding her interview.
Back in the late 70’s my then husband and I ran a diary farm, had chickens and a pack of children and I basically did everything Hannah does- minus the Mrs America ‍♀️.
Plus. Its entirely normal to have help when you’re running a business from home.

I simply don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
3 months ago
Reply to  Betsy Bell

I don’t know what all the fuss is about, either! But you won’t find much cheer in the comment section here.
I’m glad you were able to enjoy the tradwife life! And even whilst tending to all those diaries.

JB87
JB87
3 months ago

Virtually every small business is what you describe as a ‘productive household’. Everyone has their own part and that is embedded in the daily rhythm of life. If not, the business will generally fail. As, unfortunately, most of them do anyway.

Retanot Bromium
Retanot Bromium
3 months ago

That Times fake so-called ‘journalist’ Megan Agnew has now apologized for many of the ideological lies and opinionation that she made up about this family. Please look at her mea culpa.

Frank Leahy
Frank Leahy
3 months ago

I heard my teenage children discussing tradwives, so I googled the term to see what they were talking about.

The mainstream newspapers and magazines were full of condemnation, which is usually a positive sign. I gave ballerina farm a miss as it sounded slightly odd, but found a site belonging to a woman living in Cheltenham. Her views were sensible, with no hint of the extremism hinted at by the feminist mainstream. Her story was that she grew up in a broken home, and dreamed of having a whole family herself. This matched what my son had said; tradwives tend to be women who want to create the happy home they wish they’d had themselves, but as they have no personal experience the outcome can be slightly odd.

My comment is that a tradwife is impossible without a “tradhusband”, and slightly pointless unless there are trad children, so this development might be better termed “tradfamily”. But it has to start somewhere, with a women who trusts a man enough to become dependant on him, and that takes real courage in contemporary society.

Jae
Jae
2 months ago

Thank goodness and phew. For a minute there judging by the headline I thought Mary Harrington was going to join the woke brigade of miserable feminists who excoriate the likes of the Neelemans.