Over the past few days, the Internet has been set ablaze with an article exploring a day in the life of the quintessential Trad Wife, Hannah Neelman. She is a pretty, blonde lady with eight kids (and the hope of birthing more), a $20,000 stove, and abandoned dreams of becoming a ballerina.
Notably, Hannah, after the article was published, has contended several times that “she couldn’t love her life more.”
What Does the Article Say?
Megan Agnew, Sunday Times writer, published a profile on Hannah Neelman—popularly known as “Ballerina Farm”— titled “Meet the queen of the ‘trad wives’ (and her eight children)” after she travelled to the mountains of northern Utah, United States of America. To followers of the domestic mom aesthetic, Hannah is the picture-perfect Trad Wife: she has a billionaire husband (basically fulfilling his part of his bargain as Patriachy would expect him to), she makes her family food from scratch—bread, yoghurt, etc.—, she gives birth without medication, and she moves around her 328-acre farm barefoot, in modest dresses. Ballerina Farm lives for her husband and kids, and she does this smiling and seemingly content.
However, Agnew’s profile on Ballerina Farm paints a whole different and sinister picture. From the writer’s POV, Hannah is an exhausted and overwhelmed Mom, living according to the dictates of her controlling husband. The love story of this couple is, quite frankly, creepy. He basically stalked her for six months, and he proposed to her after one month of their first date—blatantly ignoring the fact that she thought it would be ideal for them to date for at least a year so she could finish school. Hannah got pregnant that same year, and with the introduction of a baby came the deletion of her lifelong passion for becoming a ballerina, which she worked tirelessly at AT JULLIARD, guys!
Things get darker. It’s revealed that despite all the money they have, Hannah has no nanny for her eight kids, so the bulk of the childcare falls on her—including food shopping and cooking from scratch. Apparently, sometimes, the woman gets so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week. Also, the first time Hannah has an epidural is the one time her husband isn’t present with her during labour. For me, the horror of it all was learning how the Farm, “Ballerina Farm”, uses Hannah’s alias, but the papers of ownership are solely in her husband’s name.
By the time I was done reading the article, my eyes hurt with the number of times they had widened in disbelief at the things I had read about the life of Hannah, which I am certain thousands of women in this world hope for—without the oppressive bits, of course. And that’s the problem: the glamorization of the renewed trad-wife movement thrives on a single story—the story of ‘the soft-girl era’, of contentment and fulfilment playing one’s gender role. Single stories can be dangerous. The Point of View that many Traditional Wives don’t speak about is how that lifestyle reinforces oppressive structures as well as perpetuates economic risks that feminists all over the world have fought hard against.
Who Exactly is a Trad Wife?
If you ask one of my dearest aunties this question, she would tell you a Trad Wife is a woman she never wants any of her daughters to be. Why? Because it is a reality, she lived, and it was peppered with financial abuse. In the 90s, she was thriving in a medical career when the man who would become her husband married her and immediately asked her to quit her job to take care of the five children they would later have. When I speak to her about this article I am writing, she tells me that at the time, her husband’s request made her friends green with envy—understandably so, because if, in today’s economy and sharp claws of capitalism, my romantic interest asks me to stop stressing with work because he can and will provide all my needs and wants forever, I might be tempted.
Today, quitting her job for her husband is one of her biggest regrets. The table has turned for her; she is now envious of her friends who have acquired assets in their own name, not their husband’s, and who do not need to turn to any man to survive. In her own words, “If marrying rich is your sole source of income, you will end up working for every single penny. And men can be very cruel and selfish employers.” Whew. After what she said, my “Oga wife” roleplay has never been the same.
Simply put, a Traditional Wife is a married woman who does not work (although I strongly believe that household and child care are labour that should be generously remunerated by husbands). Her job is to raise and take care of her children 24/7 and manage her household, while her spouse assumes the role of provider. This lifestyle is quite common in Nigeria for many women, though it was more popular in the past than currently.
Notably, Nara Smith, another woman popular in the traditional wife space, is not a Trad Wife in the true sense of it. The woman is literally a social media creator raking in thousands of dollars daily. Is that the woman you want to influence you into making a man the only source of your income? I don’t think so.
The Dangers of the Trad Wife Lifestyle
1—Lack of Financial Independence
It is neither wise nor safe to solely depend on one’s spouse for everything—financial independence is a must. A lot of advocates of the Trad Wife lifestyle look down on the idea of being an “independent woman”. For them, it’s easier to embrace “their femininity” and get a man to cater to their needs rather than getting a job. But in truth, is it really easier? Imagine spending your whole life having to ask another human being for money when you can just get the money yourself. The former implies that getting money from this person means having to appeal to his good moods and love for you.
Traditional marriages foster a situation where a man has absolute financial autonomy, and as a result, the woman is highly motivated to stay in the marriage no matter what. What happens when your husband is in a bad mood? Worse, what happens when he is no longer in love with you? Now, you’re 43 years old, divorced or stuck in an unhappy marriage you feel trapped in, with kids who will never fully understand the sacrifices you made to raise them, little knowledge on how to make money and a 20-year gap in your resume, you cannot reasonably explain.
In the Ballerina Farm Article, Hannah badly wanted tickets to Greece for her birthday, and her billionaire husband gifted her an apron designed to ease egg-picking on his farm. Enough said.
2—Loss of Identity
The Ballerina Farm article reveals why the traditional 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. Hannah still nurses her dreams of being a ballerina. My aunty still thinks about what life would have been like if she was still a Doctor. She often jokes about how she probably would have had clinics around the world. Nothing robs us of our joy like the helplessness of not being able to determine one’s fate.
For every seemingly affluent trad wife on social media who seems to float seamlessly throughout their house and child care, there are countless others who struggle financially, feel crushed under the weight of it all, or are unfortunately dealing with less-than-ideal husbands, and they don’t have the financial means to get away from them.
The appeal of the trad wife lifestyle thrives in its promise to provide a respite from capitalism. Yet, the solution is only a band-aid to the problem and could result in even more oppression if the partnership were to be unsuccessful. Yes, women should be able to choose how they want to live, but trad wife influencers must be cautious with the signals they are sending to their impressionable audience of young women because, for me, their content isn’t really for women, it’s for men, who not only fetishize the idea of a submissive and ‘good’ wife but also romanticize a view of motherhood that has historically proven to be harmful to women.
