Concern over Ballerina Farm influencer Hannah Neeleman’s ‘horrifying’ life
A profile on the woman dubbed “queen of the trad wives” has sparked a furore, with fans expressing their worry for the mum-of-eight.
Lifestyle
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An interview with the US woman dubbed “queen of the trad wives” has sparked a furore online, with fans and social media users expressing their concern for the mum-of-eight.
Hannah Neeleman is the face behind the popular Ballerina Farm accounts, which boast a following of almost 20 million across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
The 34-year-old Mormon’s content centres around her life with her husband, Daniel, and their children – aged six months to 12 years old – on a 328-acre farm in rural Utah.
Ms Neeleman’s output on social media is said by many to uphold the “trad wife” movement, which glorifies women’s return to the traditional roles of mother, homemaker and homesteader.
But a profile of Ms Neeleman, written by reporter Megan Agnew for The Sunday Times, has offered what one TikTok user described as “a brutally-accurate depiction of what’s taking place behind the scenes on this ranch”.
“The real deception that’s taking place with (the Ballerina Farm) account is the appearance of everything being easy, breezy, beautiful when in fact it seems Hannah Neeleman is slowly working herself to death to do multiple jobs, take care of these children, perform as an influencer online, without any additional help,” user Caro Claire Burke continued in her video recapping The Times story.
“So, not exactly a win for anyone there.”
In her piece, Agnew is careful to note multiple times that it was difficult to speak to Ms Neeleman “without her being corrected, interrupted or answered for by either her husband or a child”, and that she often looked to Mr Neeleman for help in responding to questions.
Asked by Agnew “when we get a moment alone” if their life in Utah is what she always wanted, Ms Neeleman responded: “No.”
“My goal was New York City. I left home at 17 and I was so excited to get there, I just loved that energy. And I was going to be a ballerina. I was a good ballerina,” she continued.
“But I knew that when I started to have kids my life would start to look different.”
When Agnew put the same question to Mr Neeleman, who is the son of the billionaire founder of multiple commercial airlines, David Neeleman, his answer was the opposite.
“Yes,” he said. “I expected Hannah to be more at home with the kids, but she said, ‘I watched my parents working together and so whatever we do, we got to do it together’.”
While he described them as “co-CEOS”, he also told Agnew that his wife sometimes “gets so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week”.
Ms Neeleman said that when she and her husband met, aged 21 and 23 respectively, “I thought we should date for a year (before marriage)” so that she could finish her education at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School.
“And Daniel was, like, ‘It’s not going to work, we’ve got to get married now’,” she added.
Within a month, the pair were engaged; two months after that, they were married; and three months later, she was pregnant with their first child.
“Our first few years of marriage were really hard, we sacrificed a lot,” Ms Neeleman, who made headlines earlier this year when she competed in a beauty pageant just 12 days after welcoming her youngest child, said.
“I gave up dance, which was hard. You give up a piece of yourself.”
Ms Neeleman has given birth to all but two of the couple’s children at home, without pain relief. During one of her two hospital births, for which Mr Neeleman was not present, she received an epidural, describing it as “kinda great”.
She also shared that the family have no help with childcare, because Mr Neeleman “didn’t want nannies in the house”.
And revealed that she doesn’t “necessarily identify” with the trad wife movement she’s been labelled the leader of.
“We are traditional in the sense that it’s a man and a woman, we have children, but I do feel like we’re paving a lot of paths that haven’t been paved before,” Ms Neeleman said.
“So for me to have the label of a traditional woman, I’m kinda like, I don’t know if I identify with that.”
Reaction in the almost week since the story went live has largely been one of alarm, with Forbes describing Ms Neeleman “as a victim of misogynistic circumstance and not as the business-savvy content creator (her) fans assumed they knew”.
“Frankly, it was an incredibly upsetting read that portrayed Neeleman as a victim of both a controlling husband and a lucrative brand that thrives on her submission to his ideals,” a piece for Jezebel read, calling the reality of Ballerina Farm “bleak as hell”.
Over on TikTok, one creator, Rhody Ray, said in a video: “She’s put last every day. She puts herself last. Her family puts her last. Who she was as a person before she was a wife and mother – that part of her is gone.”
While on X, users described the piece as “beyond depressing” and “horrifying”.
“That woman’s husband has completely stolen her identity,” one person wrote.
Another said the “article reveals why the trad wife phenomenon is so dangerous. It encourages young women to become wives and mothers before they get a chance to learn and explore their own ambitions and desires”.
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