You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mama Miya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. How far away was it from your life?
Very different. I'm twenty nine and I now live in New York, but had been living in London at the beginning of the year.
This is journalist Meghan Agnew.
And I don't have any children, and I'm not married, and.
You have a career outside the home, and I.
Have a career and unmarried and childless at the same age as my mom was when she was married and with children.
I'm talking to her today about trad wives. One trad wife in particular, perhaps the queen of the tradwives, Hannah Nielman. She's thirty four and she runs Ballerina Farm with her husband, Daniel, who's thirty five, and their eight children. They live in Utah, which is often referred to as Mormon Country because a lot of Mormons live there, and Hannah and Daniel are
both Mormons. Ballerina Farm is an actual farm with actual animals which are farmed for food, and Hannah is an actual Ballerina at least she was until about after child number two or three. When she stopped dancing professionally and
switched to farm life with her family. Ballerina Farm, though, is also a brand, a huge brand with millions of Instagram followers, where Hannah makes content about her farm life, the meals that she makes from scratch, the babies she births in her bedroom, the farm work that she and her husband do, and all the many many children that she homeschools. You'll see all of that on the Ballerina Farm Instagram account. Here's the audio of one of Hannah's reels about what an average day.
For her looks like.
This one has been liked by one hundred and sixty thousd people.
I wake up nurse for Joe, with the kids fed and ready for school, which is in a little schoolhouse we have here on the farm. Then today I decided to make some soup.
Now, the images that you see when you watch this reel are almost like a country music.
Video entered gathering food.
It's this depiction of a very wholesome Americana lifestyle, big ranch under a big wide open sky, happy kids running barefoot everywhere. We see Hannah exercising and nursing her youngest baby, picking fresh produce from the garden, cooking, and parenting. And there's also a fair amount of Ballerina Farm product placement because they sell protein powder and meat and sour dough starters as well as merch through their Ballerina Farm website, and all of it's a very sort of soft focus,
aesthetically pleasing, simple vibe. Hannah never breaks a sweat or looks stressed or overwhelmed or even disheveled, and as you're about to hear in this episode, that's not by accident. Because to sell products, the Ballerina Farm sells a lifestyle, and the lifestyle it sells is that of a traditional wife and mother. Some even call it an ideology.
If you've been on social media, you've probably seen the hashtag beautiful women cooking, cleaning, and embracing life as stay at home moms. These glassy, gorgeous videos showcasing life seemingly plucked out of history.
But for all the instagramminess of tradwives and their proliferation on social media, it's rare for journalists to get access to them. And maybe that's because it's a hard image to keep up all day long in front of strangers. But somehow the times journalist Megan Agnew did get access. She spent a whole day at Ballerina Farm with Hannah Nuw and her family, and then she wrote a profile for The Times that went viral and sparked a million
think pieces about Ballerina Farm and tradwives. And what was the reaction from Hannah and her husband Daniel after the profile came out.
I don't think that they were thrilled.
Yeah from mom and Maya, this is no filter. I'm meya Friedman, and let's get into it by starting with some basics. What even is a trad wife and how is a tradwife different to say, a housewife or a stay at home mother.
My feeling about it is that it's about the public way of being a housewife. So you can be a housewife, but that's not being a trad wife because tradwife is performing it on the internet for other people's consumption and as a product that has the sort of shop front.
I guess when I interview former tradwives who've sort of escaped from what they call the col of trad wifery, we free all rides tend to laid back to the duggers in terms of, you know, Michelle and Jimbob who with all of their children in that reality show. That was the first time we saw this tread wife life being performed. Is that your understanding of where it all began.
I saw it beginning in Lockdown, really on social media, specifically when lots of people went back to this really earthy existence of having their fingers in the soil and making every morning. And we really wanted to do that, and we really wanted to escapism, and I think we really sort it out, and you know, we were like on zoom calls and we kind of wanted that alternate lifestyle. But I also think it's been rumbling on in the
background through pop culture as well. You look at like the Kudashians, for example, who are a product that sells glamorous motherhood, an easy motherhood. You know, you don't see the nannies and you don't see the things happening. They are occasionally referenced, but this is not a new thing that's just appeared out of nowhere. It's really underwritten by lots of other sort of pop culture politics, reality TV,
weird random things like COVID that we can't predict. So I think it's sort of been rambling on for a while.
Would you consider it like mostly an American phenomenon. It's certainly been boosted by Instagram, because you're right, a big part of the trad wife aesthetic is the aesthetics. So Michelle Dugger certainly didn't tick that box because no one wanted to look that kind of amish depiction of what a traditional wife looks like. There's also this overlay of hotness to treadwives, isn't there. How do you say that?
Well, it's kind of a man's dream, right, It's like she can have all of my children that I impregnate her with, and she's a beauty queen and she turns out well, and she looks like this while she's on my arm, and that's the perfect presentation of like American family values, which I think you're right. I think in the US the emphasis on family is so strong, particularly as you
know a foreigner landing here from the UK. Comparatively, it's really core to existence and also to existence since you know, the pioneers went west, it was drawing a boundary of your own land and building a house on it. And you know, the politics, the darker politics, you know, obviously exists alongside that, building a house on it and filling it with your family and pro creating this brilliant, pioneering
American society. So it's really built on that. And you can hear it as well in the current election from the Republicans talking about the importance of family and JD. Vance talking about Kamala Harris not having a steak in the world because she doesn't have children, and it all harks back to this importance placed on nuclear, heterosexual family by a certain aspect of American society.
How does Mormonism overlay because I've been thinking about past incarnations of this. Of course, there was Martha Stewart, who was that sort of waspy, whitebread homemaker, you know, making it all look aesthetically pleasing, but there wasn't the hotness with her. And then there was Nigella Lawson, which is of course, you know, her whole tongue in cheek domestic Goddess series in her book. But that felt different because she was clearly How was that different? Because it was Nigella.
Was naughty and is naughty, and she does everything with this wink and she kind of makes shortcuts and she like crushes packets of salt and vinegar crisps on top of her dinner parties, pasta bake that she's just done, and she like Wham's whole packs of butter into things and yeah, and it's all about it's about being a listen. It's about doing the things that you shouldn't do, which is also within the confines of another sort of femininity.
It's not straightforward, but it is about naughty nurse and it's about cutting corners, and it's about sort of making it all look good but being a bit cheeky and probably a great shag, you know, kind of like packaged that with all of that, and that was thrilling in that era. Before that, we had Delia Smith who was like very colored between the lines and it was about baking your cakes in the ark and you do it like this and you follow the instructions and she was
very posh. And then Nigella was yeah, cheeky and right.
So Nigella was sexy, but it wasn't that traditional model of femininity with I guess it would be cool, you know, it's often referred to as modesty.
Yes, exactly. And also the new wave of tradwives or the wave of tradwise and not sexual. There is no sexuality to them at all. They're very beautiful, but there's no sexuality.
So let's talk about Hannah. Hannah Nielman is unequivocally the queen of tradwives. How did you first hear about bellerin a farm and Hannah?
I first heard about her when she did the New York Times interview in January February, shortly after or during the pageant, when she was twelve days postpartum, and that went pretty viral. And then in those months after, I started getting fed loads of content by her, and my friends were sending me things like how funny is this? And it would be Nara Smith making chewing gum and talking in this sort of really breathy voice, and it all just seemed quite mad and you couldn't really believe it.
How far away was it from your life?
Like?
How old are you? What's your life like? I'm interested in the juxtaposition very different.
I'm twenty nine and I now live in New York, but had been living in London at the beginning of the year, and I don't have any children and I'm not married.
And you have a career outside that, and I have a.
Career, and I am unmarried and childless at the same age as my mom was when she was married and with children, So there's a diversion there. And I had lots of conversations with my mum actually through this, because she was like, I'm a trad wife. I was a trad wife, you know. She stayed at home for a period of time to look after us. So we had
lots of conversations about that. And a lot of the pushback from the article and the controversy from the people who felt it was so was around the fact that I was in some way judging their lifestyle who had chosen these traditional models. But from conversations with my mom and her friends and other people, it is a structure
that enables, not always, but enables for the issues. You know, like you can and this is not my parents, just for the record, but not having access to money in a household has the potential to lead to really serious financial and emotional abuse. Or not having a boss separate to your husband or your children can also do the same.
This is a structure that actually deserves more scrutiny. That's not to say that we can't choose it, But I do think and still believe now despite the endless DMS that I received otherwise, but I still do believe that it deserves a little bit more eyebrow raising because we've seen it before, We've been sold this before, and we've been missold it before, and I think that we just need to slightly go into it, like not completely blinkered by what's happened previously.
Before I ask you about your interview with the Nielmans. For anyone who's not familiar with Hannah and Bellerina Farm, can you tell us who she was before she became famous as Bellerina Farm. What's her origin story.
She was born into a Mormon family sort of near to Salt Lake City, and she was the eighth of nine children, and they were pretty working class family. They owned a sort of mum and pop flower shop basically, and she was homeschooled and gravitated very naturally towards ballet.
Her brothers actually both went on to have a really successful shed building company, so they were really naturally entrepreneurial family, as with the parents, and so she gravitated towards ballet, and over various summer holidays got these sort of summer camps at Juilliard and eventually qualified to do ballet at Juilliard, which is this incredibly prestigious performing art school in New York on the Upper Side West Side.
One of the and I'm not going to contradict, you don't worry anyway, super fancy and it's very lofty. And that's what she did. And she wanted to be a ballerina, and she wanted to live in New York City, which seemed wild. You know, it's a long way from Utah, and it's a long way from Mormon life, though she did live with other Mormon girls who she knew from church. Do we know much about her life in New York when she was studying ballet, It.
Was pretty church orientated, and I think in and culture that is quite important.
So it wasn't a sex in the city, you know, coming to New York and living that kind of carry breadshare life.
It wasn't a sex in the city life. But she also said like something along the lines of New York was my dream and New York is where I wanted to be, So there obviously was a bit of that in her. And she said, when they still go back now with all the kids they go back every year or whatever. She was like, I love it. I just love the energy, and I love the vibe and I love being there. So she was obviously really taken by it.
And you know, if you're taken by New York, then you are also taken by the sort of sex and city late night it's lots going on kind of vibe because that's everywhere. It is sort of implicit in the city too.
So what about Daniel Nielman, Where did he grow up? He had similar Mormon origins, but he grew up in a very different way.
He grew up in a very very rich family. So his father was the founder of Jet Blue, which is an airline in the US, and various others and was incredibly successful. And they grew up in Connecticut, which is real sort of commuter belt. You know, there are so many associations with Connecticut, and he would get on the train every day and go to New York. And Daniel, as a teenager would get on the train with his friends and go to the city. And so he lived a life that was closer to it all and a
bit more integrated, I suppose, with secular culture. And they had a suburban life. They didn't have any animals. They had no animals. He had no family who were farmers, but he dreamt of this big wildlife on a farm way way out in the west. They had come from Utah though his family and they have since returned there, so they had a base there. And he at the time was at university in Utah when he met Hannah and was looking. I suppose to work at one of
his father's companies. That's what he was going to graduate onto. How did they meet, So, as they told me when I was there, they met a basketball game, like a college basketball game. They were introduced by mutual friends.
So we're ment of the basketball game.
I was doing Thanksgiving break.
I was going to school in New York and Daniel was going to school in Utah, so we kind of like switched starts. So I went. I went back to school the following weekend.
Daniel was like, oh my god, yes, let's go. I want to marry this woman.
I was instantly smitten.
Hannah didn't want to date, didn't want to do that yet.
It took Hannah longer to realize.
That we were so mad.
He texted her. He was like, please commendate with me. She said no for six months.
So we didn't see each other for six months.
After the first night we met, she.
Was back in Utah and mentioned to him that she was flying to New York City on this flight from Salt Lake and he said, oh, that's so funny. I'm on the same flight. So they went and they checked in and she was like, this is so weird. We were sitting on seats next to each other, and he had made a call to jat Blue, which is the airline they're flying with.
Which had found mind.
Yeah, which as father owned, and they sat next to each other, and that was their first proper date, which is a five and a half hour it's quite a long flight. I have done it, So five and a half hour flight, it's quite a long date where you you can't go anywhere. And that was their first date.
And so how did things progress from there? Because it's interesting when you said she didn't want to date, she clearly knew for her what dating meant and that it would probably lead to marriage, which would lead to children, and she was still focused on her career.
And this is a Mormon culture too, so you're right, it's that you don't date in the same way as I would. For example, it's much more proper, and it's much more chased, and it's much more you have to be respectable. So often it leads to marriage. And that wouldn't have been an unusual time for them to have got married. In fact, lots of people get married earlier.
Because one Yeah, and they dated and he said, we need to get married, we need to get married, and she wanted to date for a year and then finish her course and then get married, and he said that's not going to work. So they got married three months later.
Why do you think he said that? Is that because the subtext to me on that was that I can't wait that long to have sex with you.
I did also think.
That, Yeah, because it's like when he said that won't work for me, I mean like, there's not a lot of guys who are like, I really want to get married. It's urgent.
Yeah. And they also said, you know, we were so in love with each other and we couldn't stay away from each other. Yeah, So that is some of the subtexts that I read too. But I also think that he probably just wanted to lock it down. Yeah. She was a cat. She's gorgeous, and she comes from a good family in Utah and also had the sort of glamour of New York too, which reflected his own life in a way. I mean, I'm just reading into what they told me. So this is just me speculating, But
I think he just wanted to lock it down. And I wonder if she did a bit as well. You know, it wouldn't have been respectable necessarily for her to have dated for a year. She wasn't an unwilling participant in all of this, but that was just how the stick went. That was the bit that they did and the story that they told. So it's difficult to know who felt what.
When I like that it subverts that idea of the you know, young woman trying to lock down the rich guy and him wanting to keep his freedom until the last possible minute. He was very much the one who wanted the commitment. And so then what happened after they got married. Did she give up her dancing career?
Well, they stayed in New York for a couple of years, and they had their first and second child there, I think, and then they moved to Brazil because Daniel was made the chairman of one of his father's companies, which is a security business. And Brazil's quite a big outlet finally for Mormon missions, so instead of a gap year, a lot of Mormons go and do mission and they work with local community and they volunteer and they also sort
of spread the word of the Latter day Saints. So there's a large community of Mormons in Brazil, and they also have a lot of business there. So they went to live there and she had a third child, and then that is when she gave up ballet.
I mean, it's amazing. There's not a lot of dancers who come back even after one child, you know, you writing your piece that she kept dancing, and she stayed at Juilliard even when she was pregnant, and was the first dancer to do so.
Yeah, And I mean she said that it was really difficult. It was like it's one of those things that you just can't do when you have babies and when you have children, which is a universal experience, I'm sure for women that it's a difficult career to continue, not impossible, a bit difficult. And so I think there was some relief when she decided to give it up, but I went back through her blogs. She had this blog when they moved there and in the early days of her
career as a sort of online influencer, I suppose. And it's really cute. It's just an account, a really honest written account of her days and what she does and having babies. And there was real heartbreak about her figuring out her new identity as a mother and the long days with the children. And as the blog post goes on, she says something like, you know, I made the decision
not to see this as a sacrifice. I am making the active decision to see this as a gift that I am bringing down the souls from heaven and embodying them in my children. And we are creating something bigger, And we are creating a legacy, a family legacy. And how important is that? And there's nothing else more important. So you could see the shift from her really struggling with it and losing that identity of her own as a ballerina, to then reframing it essentially.
In a moment. Bellerina farm is big business and Hannah and Daniel are super savvy. So is the treadwife thing really just a marketing tool or are they for real. More of my conversation with journalist Megan Agnew in just a tick. So I didn't realize that she had an online presence before she got married and before Ballerina Farm was born. How was that brand, Ballerina Farm born.
The name or the brand itself or both.
Well both of it? Like how did she go? You know? I know his dream was to live in a farm, hers wasn't, and they ended up doing it, which a lot of couples make sacrifices like that to pursue one partner's dream and then the other one does often get on board with it. But how did that happen? And where did Bellerina Farm come from? Because by the time I heard of it, it was just this huge viral sensation and she had millions of followers.
It was a really conscious maneuver. So she had been blogging and while they were in Brazil, she really fell in love with animals and farming. So, as you say, this was a transition that was made voluntarily, like she wasn't dragged onto the farm in the middle of Utah. So then they decide to move back and they buy this first farm, and she starts blogging about it and there's not even there's not running water on this farm. There's no building, there's nothing. It's like completely raw land.
And every every day after Daniel's work and after the kids have done school, they drove an hour there from this basement apartment they were renting, and she cooked meals on an open fire basically, and Daniel was like building this house with his bare hands, and they said it was great content. They got loads of followers, and then they had this terrible fire in the summer and it burnt everything they'd done. It just burnt to the ground,
and it got them even more followers. And Hannah was like, oh no, I think after the fire it went from ten thousand to fourteen thousand, and Daniel was like, no, no, no, it was eleven thousand to seventeen thousand.
Oh wow. So they've always seen it as a mark of what is it Their entrepreneur is his entrepreneurial brain and clearly hers too, that had seen it very consciously. It's not a happy accident.
No, And she did courses, you know, online internet courses to learn how to do it properly. This enabled their dream essentially, or his initially, you know, this was the way to bankroll a really traditional small holding which you cannot uphold just by farming eighty cows. That's impossible in America.
So she was monetizing the account early on what sort of brands wanted to work with her.
They were sort of doing like tee tat, like homewear things and some food things, and now they do things like protein shakes and like it's sort of an FedEx, so it's much more mainstream. But it was planned, but they were also I think it just worked, you know, like it just worked because it was beautiful and it was an amazing location. And then they bought after the fire, they bought this other piece of land which then went
on to become Ballerina Farm. And they were trying to figure out a name, and her brother was there, who was this entrepreneur, and he said, what about Ballerina Farm, because obviously she had been a ballerina and that's what it is.
I thought that was really interesting, Megan, because you know, you describe Daniel Nielman as an all American stake of her husband square Jewed Denham Clad, you know, from this conservative Mormon family, and in some ways, the idea of calling your farm Ballerina farm could be seen to be quite emasculating or quite feminizing, but he was into it. Is that because he understood the value of marketing.
I think there are two reasons. One is that Hannah was the face, you know, and she's also the brains, but she was the face of it. She's head of marketing.
When you say she's the brains, what do you mean.
She understands social media in a way that Daniel doesn't. She understands it really thoroughly, and she understands what other people are doing and what works, and she's very engaged with it all. And she's the one who uploads all the content. But Daniel is the one who makes, from what I understand, the main business decisions. So I think that he understood that the way that they were going
to sell it was through her. And the second reason is I think that central to the brand is the fact that she went to Juilliard, and is the fact that she no longer is a vallerina. You know, is there a more worthy decision as a super talented, qualified woman than to choose looking after and bringing up your children.
So self sacrifice becomes part of the origin story as well.
And it always has been every bio, every interview is absolutely central. The fact that she went to Juilliard and then gave up is one hundred per central to the brand from the beginning.
I'm interested to know whether Daniel is an actual farmer or is he just cause playing being a farmer.
Now he's an actual farmer. He's out on the farm all the time, and he loves it. He absolutely loves it. He loves all the animals, and he loves all the land,
and he loves all the stuff. He called himself an agricultural missionary though, so not only is it about farming, but it's about sharing the farming with other people and encouraging people to start their own small farms and repopulate America with these homesteads, which I did say to him, that's financially impossible, though, how are you suggesting people do it?
And he was like, yeah, well, you know, social media pays for all of our basically allows us to have this farm, and it's a thing that allows us to charge four times more for a pint of milk than the farmer down.
The road or a steak, so it's not sustainable on its own. The income or the revenue comes from social and from her Instagram.
And it comes from being able to sell products mark them up by five times, four times more than if I had a milk farm.
Or and you were just so much year old Jerry had.
A milk farm, right, And I said, like, you know, about what if Jerry doesn't have a pageant, queen wife and eight beautiful children. And he was like, well, yeah, well you know, social media isn't for everyone. So yeah, he was quite deluded, if I'm big completely honest in like what exactly he was promoting, because the thing that he was promoting, that is impossible unless you're really hot.
Over the years that they have been, you know, working under the brand Ballerina Farm and on that farm and having all the babies are there's certain points where things went viral and their their fame and their followers jumped.
The pageant definitely was because that was quite recently. The pageant that was January of this year. Yeah, it was recent and then I don't know. There have definitely been these controversies around her not looking after her children properly and then running too wild or them abusing animals. She said that she dropped kicked to cockrel across the farmyard because it had packed one of her children and it drew blood. So everyone was pretty hurt up about that.
And then I think COVID was the thing that really like propels them upwards. In her recipes, she was making a lot of sour dough and churning a lot of butter, and so people went to have that.
And then we're going to mix the starter with the water until it's completely dissolved in nice and milky. Then we're going to add our flour. We're going to mix it together, and then I just need it with my hand because I feel like that's the easiest until it's nice and smooth.
This idea of the tread wife in the case of Narasmith and of Hannah, this obsession with building or making things from scratch. Can you talk a little bit about that, because I mean, I know Narra Smith makes bubblegummy.
I poured some powdered sugar on some waxed paper and created a well before combining my gumbased with some corn syrup and slowly melting it down. And so that was all melted, I gave it a good stir and poured it into my little powdered sugar well as I created, just.
Like it's almost a joke. Why don't you just go and buy some butter? Why do you have to make better from scratch? Particularly when you have eight children? Like, what's that about? Is that just a weird flex or it's an ideology.
I think the Narasmeth thing is like more knowing, and I think it's a bit more baiting people, and it's quite silly, I hope.
But does Hannah do the same thing. I mean there aren't. They don't have processed food, they don't have ready made meals. She does make it? Does she make everything from scratch?
Yeah? I said, do you never get like a cheeky pizza? She's like, no, no, don't. We don't do ready meals. I think more widely in the US, so much is processed and so much comes from big farms in a way that I wasn't actually ready for moving from the UK. It's extraordinary how difficult it is to get good raw produce, and so I think here there's a real desire to see and then hopefully consume that sort of cooking and
that way of life. But I think, as we've touched on a number of times, it's about this effortlessness, and it's about providing, and it's about your role as a woman to feed and nourish your children and your family in a way that is healthy and not cheating.
That's what's interesting to me because there's the implied judgment of cheating. And when she said to you, no, we don't do that. We don't do ready meals, I mean even bread, Like I wouldn't even consider bread a ready meal. I would consider bread of staple or pasta, or butter or cheese. It's everything from scrap, which.
Like why, it's a really good question.
Because it's kind of saying I'm better than you, isn't it? Or Am I being defensive of my storeboard butter and bread.
I think in a way it is. Yes. I think what she's saying is this is how it's meant to be right, this is how family life is meant to be, and it's about and it should be away from modernity in some way and things that are not good for your children. And that's it's so enthrined in Mormon teachings too, which is this domesticity of the wife and also this performed effortlessness of she can do it, and she never complains and it's like the last ten years was kind
of missed on her. And I said, you know, how do you feel about all the women who exactly feel like this is judging in some way and are really angry about that. And she completely missed the point of the question and said, you know, I hope that what I'm doing encourages women to see how lovely it is to cook lovely males for your family, But that's kind of not the point because a lot of people don't have time to do that. Most people don't.
Yeah, I mean, the word privilege is sometimes overused, but this whole idea relies on women doing nothing or someone. Of course it could be a man, but it never is. There aren't trad husbands. Really, it relies on these very you know, stereotypical gender roles, doesn't it, and like really hardcore gender roles, because the woman is only the carer because preparing all that food, I don't even know how
she has time to look after the children. And that's where, you know, the way social media condenses it and flattens it in terms of oh, here I made the butter, and I churned the butter, and it literally probably is shown for two seconds, but that's something that would take hours to do.
And it's also really boring. Again, you know, there's no promotion here, like you know, this is eighteen no longer than that, who ever knows how many years it is, thirty years straight of every day doing the bloody food. Yeah, I just I know that some people enjoy it more than others. But it's also it has got to get boring.
Yeah, And there's no acknowledgment. And you know, for her perhaps it isn't boring. But it's interesting what you said in her blog, how she said I made a conscious decision essentially not to complain, to see this as a gift and a calling. And so it's the implication, even if she might not be doing it consciously, is if you don't find this as rewarding as I do, there's something wrong with you and you're not a real woman.
I think that's why it's so controversial, why people get angry, right, Yeah, and they have really strongly held believes about saying sex marriage and sex before marriage. These have been really really destructive.
You know, a lot of these belief systems have been really destructive, particularly towards women and around abortion and rights over our bodies, and you know, part of that, part of not having so many rights over our bodies, is that we have to continue to give up our rights to our children to provide for them at the expense of everything else, and the expense of time for yourself, which is really important so that you don't go insane and so that you slightly remember where you're at to
collect your thoughts and all of these things. So, yeah, it's complicated and it can be dangerous as well.
After this break, how did Megan actually convince the nailman's to give her so much access and let her into their house and once she actually gets to bellerin a farm? Why is it so hard to get Hannah on her own? The rest of our conversation coming up. Tell me about the process of securing the interview. Was it easy to get then to a huge number of interviews? I mean, the Times is obviously very prestigious, but what was it like? There's always back and forth negotiating an interview and access.
How did that play?
That was my brilliant colleagues in London, my commissioning editor at the magazine, who is so good at doing this. But my understanding is that they were pretty keen.
Well expanding their market to the UK, so you can see what was you know, for them.
And they also love England. They were like constantly asking me, like, you know, do we turna argar off in in the summer? I bet it's really beautiful. Where do you live? What's it like? Like they were so fetishistic about England and it was kind of an interesting element actually to that form of really old fashioned countryside e domesticity that they
want in habit. Like they were asking, they were really desperate to hear in a way that they were like taking notes and then they just said come, come for the day. Come for the day and we'll do the interview and you can see the farm. So they were really open.
You'd seen it all obviously on social media a lot, as has anyone who's followed Bellerina Farm. When you actually arrived on the farm, what does it look like?
It's I mean, it's quite near to this skiing town which is pretty like bougie. Actually there are like you know, flashy cars and stuff as but forty five minutes away, so it's not miles away from anything. But it's really out in the sticks and it's along this long track off a main road, and it's sort of between these water meadows which is where the cows graze, and the more arid mountains which go sort of behind the farmhouse, which is where they have their rodeo horses and they
have the pigs and the chickens. And it's really unbelievably beautiful, like you just get your phone out and it looks amazing on your phone and it's made for Instagram. But it's also kind of scary. Like the day before when I arrived, I just wanted to go for a drive and I was driving along this really really really long road and I was planning on doing this big loop and I got about half an hour down this road and I was like, there is nobody else here if
I break down or something happens. I just suddenly started freaking out at the ruralness of it. And there's something a bit scary about it. I mean, you live in Australia, I'm sure you have had moments like that when you're like, oh shit, this is.
Actually really nice.
Yeah yeah, yeah, and then your brain goes a bit funny. And I grew up in the countryside in the UK, so I'm not like, you know, a city girl through and through. So there was this sense of like, oh, wow, you're far away.
When you opened the door. When the door was opened of the house and you met Daniel and Hannah, what were your first impressions?
Really relaxed, The kids were everywhere. Daniel is actually very hands on with the kids and like with the babies, and it just looked exactly how it did on Instagram. It was kind of chaotic and loose living. You know that they're not in any way. I mean, I don't think you can be uptight about like presentation of the house. It was sort of like rough and tumble, and it looked great.
So like the kid with the kids all sort of in coordinated outfits or share complimentary shades of neutral linen pretty much.
But they were also like very muddy and like had fruit all over their places, and I think they just have really good clothes. And it was good. I mean, the interview was very much involving Daniel, much more than I initially anticipated, particularly when it came to politics and religion and trad wifeeness. He was the one who sort of took the lead on those answers.
That's interesting, and it felt a little. I know you were obviously very tried hard not to inject your opinion into the story, and you reported it out very carefully in in a balanced way, but it did come across as controlling and a little ominous. His refusal to leave you alone with her, it seemed like he was diverting you away from being able to talk to her. Tell me a bit about that. Is that how you felt.
I think it would be extreme to say that he was like diverting or in any way possessive, but he was. He's the master of the house. And I've spoken to a lot of Mormon women since who've got in touch with me to say that, which was very moving actually and meant a lot, to say that it was an accurate portrayal. They felt it to be an accurate portrayal of the gender roles that they see in their own lives and throughout their community. And in Mormonism, the men
have the priesthood. All of the men have the priesthood after baptism, so they really are the ones who lead the press and who are able to make authoritative comments on culture, society, and their community. And it's the women who are the homemakers. And that added so much context to why she looked to him when it was about the bigger world, because it's the men who go out into it. They do their missions, and then they return
and they're full of worldly knowledge. So that's what it really reminded me of, was that he is the one who's right and has the important views on things, and she is the one who looks after the children. So I think him leading was more that rather than him taking away.
But did they seem like equals? Yeah, I know they call themselves co CEOs. Did they seem like equals? That is really important context what you say about it wasn't necessarily a sinister thing or a dysfunctional thing in their relationship. It's more just the strictures of Mormonism and how they were both and those really hardcore gender roles.
Yes, in terms of the kids and looking after the kids, he was way more involved than many other modern dads. I would have thought. You know, the kids joined him on the farm.
We have a lot of kids, so we have a lot of responsibilities, and I take care of more of the ranch side of things. Hannah takes care of more the marketing, but we also share so many roles, especially with parenting when we're very fifty to fifty. Hannah does more. I do as much as I can.
Well, especially because the kids are homeschooled and both of us are at home every day.
But his decision was the final one. Like we went out to the barn and this new barn that they're built and it's really beautiful's where the dairy cows are going to go, and had built this platform in the middle of it all, and I said, oh, why is this here? And he was like, well, I want to do tours. I want to do tours so that I can show people the building, but Hannah doesn't want to
do them. And I kind of like looked down and we were standing on the platform that he had built to do the farm tours, and he was telling me that they're not going to do them because Hannah doesn't want to do them, and I just thought, I think the decision might already have been made. Interesting. So I think that they are equals and that they're they both have different stakes in the same company, But I think that from my interactions with him and her, he seemed to have the final say in it.
What are the practicalities of running a farm with eight children that you have to prepare all their meals for, Like, they must have help. I know that she says that they don't. But did you get the sense that the help had been sent away for the day.
No, I don't think they want the help.
So who teaches the children? Because they're all homeschooled in the.
Barn, they have a teacher. So they have a Mormon teacher from down the road who comes to school the kids, but.
Most of them, I suppose. How old are the kids, Like, they range in age from almost newborn to what the eldest is thirty, right, So she's obviously preoccupied with the little ones all through the day. And then when they're not at school, all of them, I mean even just the physicality of supervising them and making sure they don't run off into a damn How do they even do that?
Well, they kind of look after each other, the kids, and the older ones look after the younger ones. It's like now joined into a circle, and they're pretty wild, like they do just go off and do their own thing, which again, like that is a genuine fantasy, Like that actually really worked and that is really real. And the fact that the kids just like kind of run wild
and are happy with it. Yeah, And that's the core of why people love it and want to watch it, because you think, oh god, I need to check that my baby's not picking up a cigarette bart.
Yeah, and instead of helicoptering, So they're not helicopter parents.
No, but they don't have to be because they.
You had some brief time alone with her, and there are a couple of things you asked her. You asked her if this was what she always wanted. What did she say?
She said no, She was like, I wanted New York. That was my dream. But as we said earlier, she wants it now. Dreams changed her life now. But I couldn't believe that it's so extreme that life. It's so extreme. And I was really surprised actually when she said.
That you start your pace like this. Hannah Neielman was pregnant with her eighth child, and she had two due dates. The first was for a baby, obviously, the second, just under two weeks later, was for a beauty pageant. Tell me about what you think was the reason she entered that pageant.
I think that so much of this sort of femininity is about performing ease and about making things look easy and pleasant and nice. And I think that she knew and thought that she could do it. She'd had seven children before that, and it was in the diary. She had this commitment, she had this duty, and I think to her it was slightly unthinkable that she wouldn't do it.
She trained, and you wrote about her extensive preparation for the pageant. It seemed to me to be a real act of defiance doing that pageant and competing in Missus World because she'd won the Missus America title. Is that how it came across to you, where it was like, I am determined to maintain my identity and do something that's not about me being a wife and a mother.
That's such a good way of putting it that there was this determination in her. But I don't necessarily think that it was about her detaching herself from being a wife and a mother, because the pageant itself is about being a wife and a mother. Missus American is about being a wife and they talk about that children and it's part of that brand. So I think it was
a defiance in showing people she could do it. But I think it was a defiance in showing people she could do it with children and with a husband, and while remaining modest, wearing her garments and wearing her you know, the modesty clothing that she's required to from her religion.
Well, the pageant itself isn't. I mean, I can't. I hate the term modest because it kind of implies that people who don't dress like that are immodest. But you know, I noticed just this week or last week, she reposted some footage of her and it was in a tight dress from the pageant. Tight dress. It wasn't the Missus World, it was I think the Missus America. And she wrote a night I will never forget this year has flown by heading to Las Vegas next week to crown my successor.
I was twenty weeks pregnant with Miss Flora Joe during this pageant, and I thought that last line was so to because she's in a swimsuit. She doesn't look like she's pregnant at all. And this is I think her
seventh or eighth child. And to me, you know, there's a lot of talk about body image and ballerinas and weight and all of those kinds of things, and the very strict structures and confines that women who are ballerinas have to live within but it seemed very important to her that she didn't look pregnant, and to be saying, look how skinny I am, Look how unpregnant I am. And it was again as if that was a flex
and as if that was an achievement. That she was in a swim suit, competing in a pageant with high heels makeup and she won, and yet she was twenty weeks pregnant. What did you get any sense of sort of body issues for her? And this because one of the things that the Internet's obsessed with is how skinnys she is despite having eight children. You know, she bounces back, She got back in that twelve days after postpartum. She was back in that you know, tight dress, walking in high heels, and.
She works out hard. She goes to the gym every morning.
It's like that a razure of evet as well, isn't it. It's this demand that I've had eight children, but you will see no sign of any of it on my body.
And in Mormonism again, how you look after your body is a reflection of how you attending to your soul. So that's why so many Mormon women, I don't know if you're watching this Mormon wives thing on Hulu, are so beautiful because it's they see it as being a reflection on your goodness, your spiritual goodness.
Is it the same for men? Them looking hot also a reflection of their spiritual goodness? Probably not. It's probably about how hard they work, right, that's probably the reflection of their spiritual.
Goodness, right, and how much money they're making.
And for women, it's how many children they have and they look, and.
How effortless you make it look.
Wow.
So I was expecting, like, it's funny that you say, like she was kind of like, look at me, look at me. I was expecting so much more of that metal and she'd had so much backlash, and she continued to do it and still does. I thought, Oh, this is going to be a woman who's like kind of doing a bit of an f you, who knows exactly what it's all about and exactly what she's saying and
exactly what the other argument was. But what I found was actually a woman who just said, well, I just wanted to do it, and I like doing it, and so why wouldn't I post about being twenty weeks pregnant, being pregnant, beautiful thing, and blah blah blah, and that I didn't find that deceitful. I didn't think that she was doing that in a deceitful way.
It's sort of guileless a little bit, though, isn't it. It's kind of like, oh, look, I'm twenty weeks pregnant.
Yeah, you know, and she's tiny, she's like a little like she's a Vallerina.
Yeah. So it's again that there's no sign of effort. There's no I work out, I'll go and dip in the dam while I'm nine months pregnant so that I can bounce back and get into this pageant and really punish myself and torture my body and arraise all sign of effort. Like in everywhere else in her life, it's all about it being effortless. Do you think that's why I Bellerina firm particularly, but treadwives in general make so many women angry.
Yeah. And I also think that we see it as being a judgment on our own lives and our own decisions, So we project things onto what they're posting, and we politicize it in a way that we're already angry about and I think it's really frightening. It's really, really, really scary to see that because you think, oh God, don't, please don't make me go there. I really don't want men to think that this is the way it has to be. I really don't want men to think that
this is how I should be. And I'm failing if I'm not, and other women, please don't. I don't want to go back.
It feels like propaganda, doesn't it, for a time when women had no rights and no choices.
And particularly when you see it coming up on your Instagram discover. You know, before I started researching all of this, it was coming up on my page and I was like why, and all these Catholic influences telling me how I should be dressing for church on a Sunday, Like, God knows how they found their way onto my Instagram.
It's that radicalization, Isn't it like that the algorithm will do? But in the article you wrote, you pose a question in the subtitle, is it's an empowering new model of womanhood or a hammer blow for feminism? Did you have a view on this before you arrived and was it different after you'd spent time with Hannah and Daniel.
I had had so many conversations with lots of different people before I went, because I don't have children and because I don't live a life anywhere like that, so I didn't feel like I had anything written in my head. Because a lot of mothers who had spoken to loved her and were really respectful of the life that she'd chosen.
And I'm also trained as a journalist to walk in somewhere and not have a preconceived understanding as much as I can do, having seen all of her life on Instagram, and I really didn't know what to expect, and I was surprised, as I said, like I was expecting to find someone who was more sort of steadfast in her views, and I left sort of feeling like, WHOA, Okay, I
thought I was going to be interviewing her. And there was a point in the day that I was really stressed because I was like, she's going to have to go and drop these kids off at ballet and I haven't asked her the questions that I need to. Yeah, clocks ticking, and my edge's going to ask me, like, why didn't you ask her this? Why didn't you ask
her this. So that was kind of stressful and I left, like just trying to work it out, and then I went for lunch actually with a friend when I got back here on the weekend, and I like blooded it all out. Everything happened, and in the midst of like this huge storm and virality. Afterwards, she called me and she was like, you know, everything that you wrote was exactly what we spoke about that day. So I don't think that I did go in and I think I was.
It was unexpected anyway. What was the reaction binary people thinking that it was an effective piece of journalism that as I said, those Mormon women who said that it was an accurate representation of their lifestyles and how they've been feeling about gender roles, and then other people saying that I had no right to walk in there and judge her, which I don't think that I did, and that I know nothing because I'm childless, and that I
should get out of other women's lives. There were other people who wanted to like thought that I was endangering her in some way. I mean, there were just the whole huge remit of response. But it was like so passionate, people are so moved by her because it's a comment on our most intimate personal decisions and how we choose to live and how we choose to bring other people into the world, also colored by our own experiences of parenthood,
being parented ourselves. So it's really it goes really deep. I think the people.
Who love her, why do they love her? Do you think they are a common thread between those people? Is it mostly kind of Trump voters, conservative women?
Well, there are lots of people who are very bad who love her, Like the mothers who love her. I think they love her for allowing them to talk about how much they love motherhood and to not feel like a failure for not choosing like monetary work outside of the home. And I think that they've felt like they're not allowed to do that anymore, and that she allows them to do.
That even though she does. Right. That's the irony. It's very meta because by performing all of that, she's a businesswoman. She's an entrepreneur, she's a co CEO of a company.
Yeah, yeah, and she's got a full time job.
When does she make the content? Does she make it herself?
Yeah? She makes it herself throughout the day and then she uploads it once the kids have gone to bed from like one am till two.
And there was a kind of bizarre, almost offhand moment where Daniel revealed to you that sometimes Hannah gets so exhausted that she's literally bedridden for a week.
Right, Yeah, said that to me when we were on the ute going around the farm, that you know, she ties herself out.
Did he seem to think that was a problem or it was just life on the farm with eight kids.
I mean it was said in a way that was like like she needs to learn. I don't want to I don't want to read too much into like the tone, but how I interpreted the tone was like she needs to land, to slow down.
Sometimes maybe by a stick of banner instead of churning it once.
In a while.
That's how I heard it.
Do you know how they felt about the piece.
I don't think that they were thrilled. I didn't hear from them directly. I know that there was some communication, but it was an honest piece against my transcripts. You can check my recorded audio, you know, next to the piece, and it's a true representation of what I saw and heard. So that was that, And I was getting these masters like you're being sued, And I was like, uh, I don't think we are. I think i'd know that. So there wasn't any I mean, it was as I say,
It was a true representation of what I experience. So there was nothing that much that could be done.
Last question, do you think she's happy?
I think that she has grown up in a community and a world which doesn't allow her to be connected to the question, am I happy?
Oh?
I would love to hear Hannah Nielman interviewed on our podcast, But are you happy? I wonder if she is happy? I mean, you know, it's not fair to suggest that she's not. If she says she's happy, maybe she is happy. But I think that question sums up so much of why we're fascinated by the whole trad wife thing, because on one hand, it is kind of alluring. Right, life is exhausting, and ambition and career and cities can be exhausting, and we do live in a culture that centers grind
and hustle and sort of idolizes it. And there is some legitimate pushback to that, and I think that is valuable cultural criticism. But look, let's be honest. What the traadwives are selling is a little bit dubious because it's not easy. They make it look easy, but parenting eight kids, living on a farm, making meals from scratch, that's no easier than working at a job in a city, is it. I mean, it might make her happier, but it's certainly
not easier, because how do Nielman is working hard? Man so hard that she sometimes can't get out of bed for a week. And I can't stop thinking about that, because when she's in bed for a week, who does milk the cows? And how does Daniel look after the eight kids and make all meals from scratch and do all the other things that he has to do. You
don't see that exhaustion anywhere on her Instagram. She doesn't mention when she's just had to take a week out to be unconscious in bed, because I guess that exhaustion doesn't sell products or gain you followers, or convince other women to buy your stuff or to try treadwifing for themselves. And look, I'm all for doing what we can to make ourselves happy and simplify our lives and connect with nature. If nature is your jam, it's not really my jam, I do like cows, but I don't think i'd want
to like live with them. I'm all for women living their lives exactly how they want, and I don't judge what Hannah and the other chidwives are doing. I judge kind of the idea of them selling a lifestyle that they make look one way and don't show what it's
actually like. And in America right now, there's a sort of an underpinning to all of this, as Megan said, about this strong conservative religious underpinning of a woman's place and this idea of I think the reason it makes so many women crazy is that this is where we came from, this expectation that we should look beautiful and raise all our children and never complain and make all the meals from scratch and be really fulfilled by that. And it's not to say that some women aren't, but
not all women are. In fact, most women probably aren't. So yeah, this is something that we are really looking at closely on no filter, this whole trade wife phenomenon, because the steaks are really high and you know, for some people it might just be a little bit like watching a cooking show when you don't cook. It's kind of soothing. I've got lots of friends who watch trad rife content like that just kind of to escape in the same way that I watch maybe fashion videos about
street style on YouTube. But we have got more stories about trad wife life coming down the pipeline, and we've already done several. I highly recommend that you listen to our episode with Tea Levings. She escaped her tradwife marriage barely and she is raising the alarm about what she says are the dangers of the tradwife ideology. Watch this space for more. The executive producer of No Filter is Nama Brown and somehow she managed to get through COVID
without making a sour dough starter Dido. Audio on this show is by Tom Lyon, and he says if being trad makes you happy, then you do you, although he also says that his wife is the opposite of a trad wife. Her career is soaring and she out earns him. But this works for Tom just fine. I'm your host, Mia Friedman, and the most TRADWIFEI thing about me is nothing.
See soon