the woman the wife she is the Homemaker she takes care of the home she takes care of herself and she does the cooking and the cleaning we like cooking we like running a home we like supporting our husbands and having good marriages this is the greatest work I will ever do being a mother white mother white mother white mother mother have you seen this video okay this my birthday present from Daniel their tiet to Greece where's it from I know the boys took it off from Ukraine so PL tickets that's Hannah neilan who goes by
ballerina Farm on Tik Tok where she has over 9.6 million followers she might have come across your for you page before making meals from scratch while a football team roster of children trade turns clinging to her Hell she's one step away from making the mozzarella for this lasagna with her own breast milk what do you think her husband Daniel neilan Son of millionaire founder of multiple Airlines got his wife of 13 years for her birthday I'll give you a hint it's not tickets to Greece not even with that sweet family discount a hat I can
wear in greas not a hat oh my EG friend eggs in it great then you can gather eggs you're welcome thanks D people really didn't enjoy watching the light leave a Demir housewife's eyes after opening a disappointing gift while her husband loomed over her and demanded her gratitude for some strange reason but they became even more concerned after can I help you oh don't mind me I'm just making a YouTube video love what you've done with the furniture by the way can I keep going or you fold clothes uh yeah oh wonderful continue uh right
uh okay but they became even more concerned after Megan agu published her experience interviewing or rather trying to interview Hannah on their Utah farm for the Sunday Times according to Megan it was difficult to talk to Hannah without her husband or a child chiming in with their opinion Hannah is presented as the queen of tradwives seemingly able to do the impossible popping out babies like a Pez dispenser while maintaining a beauty pageant ready body somehow juggling all the tasks required to raise a rapidly growing family but Megan's article also offers a peak behind the curtains
some insight into what goes on when the cameras are off and I want to highlight a couple of disturbing details Hannah is a talented dancer and was attending juliard an incredibly prestigious perform performing arts college when she was introduced to Daniel bum bum bum Daniel insists that he wanted to marry Hannah the moment he laid eyes on her but that Hannah dodged his advances for 6 months one day when Hannah offhandedly mentioned her flight back to juliar Daniel pulled strings at Jet Blue since his father was an owner and made sure that he got the
seat right next to hers which is uh so romantic horrifying I was going to say horrifying using Daddy's influence to be in close proximity with a woman who rejected you for hours while thousands of feet in the air if this had been used as a plot device in a horror movie I would have said it was unrealistic I guess Daniel can buy plain tickets if it means he's going to get some tail Hannah wanted to date for a year so that she could finish school but Daniel was going for that Mormon marriage speedrun world record
I guess so after 1 month they were engaged to months after that they were married and 3 months after that she was pregnant with their first child the article describes Hannah's life as slowly being smothered by the expectations of her husband and the needs of her children Daniel doesn't want to hire a nanny so Hannah takes care of their eight children alone Hannah only experiences the pain relief of an epidural during the one birth Daniel didn't attend the barn that was going to be a dance studio becomes a Schoolhouse and Hannah's sequence gowns are moved
into the garage slowly but surely the dreams of the ballerina are pushed out of the picture while a tiny framed dancer hangs above the stove as a reminder of the life she could have had but hold on have you seen the neilan's response video I'm I'm sorry uh who who are you again a physical representation of your inability to resist an unnecessary costume change sorry I mean a simplified characterization of your ideological opposition that interrupts the video periodically for comedic effect wow how creative no YouTuber has ever done this before some might call me a
straw man but I go by Nancy well you're right Nancy the neilan did post a response video they were um not happy a couple of weeks ago we had a reporter come into our home to learn more about our family and business we thought the interview went really well we were taken back however when we saw the printed article which shocked us and shocked the World by being an attack on our family and my marriage portraying me as oppressed with my husband being the culprit this couldn't be further from the truth nothing we said in
the interview implied this conclusion which leads me to believe the angle taken was predetermined we aren't done having babies we are excited for our new farm store to open and I can't wait to see what the future holds for the rest of it but for now I'm doing what I love most being a mother wife a businesswoman a farmer a lover of Jesus and making meals from scratch that British had an agenda whoa careful there Nancy we wouldn't want your husband to overhear you using that unladylike language now would we contrary to popular belief journalists
are human and humans have biases Megan did not put a lot of effort in to conceal hers and while I ultimately agree with many of her points I think the article was diluted by her personal speculations about the neilan's and her sloppy social commentary it was so bad she had to retract it and write an apology I don't know how that rumor started the original article is still available and Megan's follow-up was a retrospective not a retraction it's important to note that while the neelans disagreed with Hannah Being Framed as a victim they didn't deny
any of the basic details about their relationship that Megan published in either their video response or the statement on their website speaking of websites is that really the segue you're going with yep speaking of websites I'd like to take a second to talk about today's sponsor Opera the Opera desktop browser is packed with tons of unique features like a built-in ad blocker that can get rid of pesky popups with a single click and a toggleable VPN that can protect your privacy online say goodbye to boring browsers and customize your experience with fun wallpapers like this
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Hannah neilan even identifies with the label the article has once again ignited a fierce debate about tradwives and I'm here to introduce something to the conversation the internet's Kryptonite Nuance oh my God I left the oven on female hysteria am I right you see while many are mourning the crushed dreams of the ballerina turn housewife others are a lot more skeptical I don't feel bad for Hannah neilan at ballerina Farm because she lives in a hell of her own making Hannah was wasn't some naive sheltered girl who never saw anything of the world she chose
to marry her husband and she chose to give up her dream of being a ballerina and now she chooses to glamorize her lifestyle and influence young women all over the world through her social media profiles she is a willing participant in all of these things when do we as women start to hold each other accountable for our own choices I completely get how it can be incredibly frustrating to watch thousands of people lavish unwanted pity on someone as privileged as Hannah neilan it's easy to say that she chose this life and seems happy so why
should we care but I think this dismissal of Hannah's experience as a choice she made greatly underestimates the influence of religion dinner's ready okay cool you cannot analyze the I said dinner's ready okay okay okay I'm coming I'm coming [Music] you cannot analyze the ballerina Farm outside of the context of Mormonism both Hannah and Daniel are practicing Mormons and were raised in traditional Mormon families now religion isn't really my thing anymore but I did devote almost two decades of my life to it while I wasn't raised Mormon I was taught many of the same values
that Hannah was and like Hannah was on the receiving end of some very intense messaging quite literally since birth so I'm a former Mormon tradwife I have six kids I'm 38 years old I don't have an education I got married young I had kids young and I absolutely give up on my hopes and dreams to choose the life that I have now now that I've been out of the church for 3 years I will tell you that I was never actually given a choice it's not fair to show someone 10 candy bars and say Hey
you can choose this candy bar which is the right candy bar that you should choose or you can choose these nine which are poisonous and deadly and if they don't until you they're going to kill all of your friends and family members what would you like to choose if you haven't had the experience of being raised in a conservative religion that has a strong emphasis on gender roles in preserving a patriarchal hierarchy it can be hard to understand just how much every single aspect of your life is influenced by the mandates of the church as
an ex-mormon woman here's what I think is getting lost in a lot of the discourse around the Times article about ballerina Farm it's been super invalidating to see a lot of people saying how dare we disempower a Woman by suggesting that she cannot be happy making bread and making babies it completely disregards the intense every fiber of your being messaging that Mormon women and also many other Christian women get about their only value ad to society is as wife is as mother is as Homemaker these aren't influences that are easy to shake off either you
can't just run out the doors dye your hair green get an adventurous piercing that later rejected and move on with your life just me I tried that and depending on your flavor of religion the consequences for leaving both in this life and the next can be quite extreme I have a little bit of insight into this because I was raised Mormon we are taught at a very very young age what our roles are and how we are going to get into heaven and as a woman you have a uterus and you are there to populate
the Earth with as many Mormons as you can did you know that when uh a Mormon couple is married in the church they're bound to each other okay they're not just bound together in life they are bound together in eternity if she were to leave him she would still be bound to him however she would lose access to her children in eternity they would no longer be hers they are his they belong to him for a devout Mormon that is terrifying it's so much deeper than she's just promoting Traditional Values this is the stuff that's
been told to her her whole life so are you really making a fair choice if you believe one option will lead to you losing everything you love and damning your Immortal Soul aen fellas is it okay to feel bad for rich white CIS straight able-bodied women that's like a super loaded question I like to think that empathy isn't a limited resource and that the conversations surrounding these very visible affluent families like the neilan's can act as a barometer for the messaging trickling down to the less fortunate because as much as Hannah doesn't want to associate
with the Trad wife label and insists that she's just living her life online content doesn't exist in a vacuum it exists in the uh context of uh coconut trees Etc you get it millions of people are consuming her videos every day buying the fantasy that she is selling because let's be clear the lifestyle presented by Hannah and other ironically named Trad wife influencers is a fantasy when Nara Smith Glides into frame in full Glam describing the Michelin star meal she's preparing for her toddlers she isn't exactly representing the experience of an actual traditional wife oh
she is so beautiful and thin and her kitchen is always so clean exactly she is posting a carefully manufactured image an image like the neilan's hypnotically neutral colored Farmhouse that is Tastefully propped up with immense amounts of wealth in fact Nara Smith's content is even further removed from reality than the ballerina Farm while Hannah has to fend off sticky curious hands nar's kitchen is a sacred well-lit domain where children are conveniently occupied by unseen helpers until the last few seconds of the video when I asked my toddlers what they wanted for lunch they both wanted
to grill cheese so that's exactly what I got started on and the kids absolutely devoured this I bet they did they had to wait two business days for lunch the camera is not a passive Observer it's an active participant nara's kids couldn't give less of a that their mom made the bread and cheese for their sandwiches it's all for you the viewer there's a reason you don't see tradwife influencers cleaning stains out of shirts scrubbing toilets or Nancy Nancy [Music] Nancy sorry that effortlessness is part of the brand every ingredient needed to satisfy her family's
random requests just so happens to be lying around even to the point of absurdity my sister's in town to visit and she's been craving bubble gum so bad but she ran out so I just decided to make it for her before combining my G with some corn syrup we were about to go to bed when I realized that we were all out of toothpaste and so he started out by measuring some are we shopping at the same grocery stores I don't think I've leveled up enough to unlock the aisles where they sell this stuff the
thing is though not all tradwife influencers are created equal some like Hannah and Nara simply film a curated view of the gender roles their faith dictates others use their platforms to directly promote marital submission as prescribed in religious texts like the Bible and then there are those that simply throw on an apron for a few minutes to farm engagement but all of these women contribute to a growing body of content that either implicitly or explicitly promotes the idea that A Woman's Place is in the home that her delicate femininity can only survive within its walls
the tradwife influencer is a paradox promoting a simple domestic life while she herself enjoys the freedom of expression and financial Independence that women were denied for centuries these women aren't traditional they're business owners laring the 1950s just like your average nerd wants to get hammered and run around renfair and chain mail without Contracting the Bubonic plague these women want to wear vintage clothing and promote vintage ideals without acknowledging the troubling history behind the aesthetic because as much as conservatives bemoan the loss of high value women posted montages of the good old days with vaguely racist
undertones the perfect Housewives of the past were famously subjected to labotomy or had to sedate themselves with barbituates just to tolerate their lives what this this is just Mommy's little helper of those who managed without uh medical assistance many did so by sacrificing their own health and happiness over and over and over again people like you always act like we're one Tick Tock away from the handmaid's tale we just want to stay home bake bread and have babies why are you so threatened by us this script has been sitting on my computer for a while
now because ah I know that my job can basically be boiled down to professional talker but I don't want to talk about these women they're beautiful they make delicious food and sure they love spending time with their families it's just when I see the commentary surrounding these tradwife accounts I can't help but feel like the more this content is popularized the more efforts for women's equality will begin to erode because this has happened before writer and activist Betty fan noticed a bizarre phenomenon that swept the United States during the 50s and 60s despite the leaps
and prog ress made for women's rights in the preceding decades young girls were suddenly retreating back into the home getting married younger than ever having more children than ever with no other aspiration outside the role of housewife despite what Mary Poppins might imply the protests for women's suffrage weren't cutesy choreography and frilly pedots women starved themselves were imprisoned and even killed fighting for their rights to vote to work and to be educated if these women in reach recent memory had suffered so much how could their own daughters and granddaughters flee from such dearly one Freedom
what happened fedan describes a creeping influence that began to permeate American Life slowly but surely the stories of Brave heroins pursuing success and reports on world affairs were choked out of women's magazines by advice columns on Happy marriages sandwiched between ads for vacuum cleaners women's college attendance plummeted and of those who did graduate few went on to pursue a career why should they the very Educators whose responsibility it was to Foster their intellect were the ones telling them over and over again that they would have to choose between having a family and having a job
the memory of the suffragette was distorted into an ugly bitter spinster who compromised her own Womanhood by demanding the same rights as men sound familiar women weren't forced into the home they were gently lured back inside through the combined efforts of advertisers academics and politicians who all benefited from maintaining the status quo that suffragists had upset they sold women an idea that for Dan coined the Feminine Mystique the title of her book that's right I'm one of those YouTubers who has books in their videos now fedan defines the Feminine Mystique as the assumption that women
can find fulfillment through marriage and motherhood alone but in her own experience and the experience of countless other Housewives across the country even amongst the most socially privileged this traditional position left them with intense feelings of dissatisfaction fatigue and general unhappiness now to be clear the Feminine Mystique has its serious blind spots and when I say serious I mean serious but the warnings in this book are unfortunately as relevant today as they were in 1963 that the packag for patriarchal values can be very pretty in fact they can be presented as reaffirming women's femininity protecting
them from the harshness of the outside world women should consider themselves lucky that they get to stay home and fulfill their biological Destiny while men I don't know explore the stars as for Dan puts it protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women wait a second no here we go I know what you are say it out loud say it a feminist and it's at this point that I am forced to acknowledge that I am the traditionalists worst nightmare the thing that makes them toss and turn at night terrified that their daughters
will turn into a hairy opinionated tattooed gender non-conforming unmarried freak with too many piercings that lives alone with their cat we're effectively run in this country via the Democrats Bea via our corporate oligarchs by a bunch of childless cat ladies but worst of all a feminist a manher who draws unsuspecting girls to their Doom with my Sirens call hellbent on destroying the country but don't worry you can kill them by driving a stake through their heart no Nancy that's uh that's Vamp actually technically you could kill a lot of things that way see there is
so much misinformation about feminism online that it would probably be easier for me to explain to you what feminism is by telling you what it isn't I'm not a feminist I can see men and I don't immediately feel threatened actually I have many male friends and I'm dating a man sorry chaperon I have failed you I'm not a feminist I can wear dresses and feel pretty not to brag or anything but I actually think I look pretty phenomenal in a dress not that one though that one is uh h I'm not a feminist thank you
that's actually just basic politeness that everyone should participate in the only factor that should determine who opens a door for who is whoever gets there first I'm not a feminist I don't hate children those crazy feminists getting abortions for fun every weekend hissing at passing strollers and plucking infants from cradles to put them in delicious children's stew no you're talking about witches Nancy language there are so many feminists that are literally parents I myself worked in child care for many years and even though yes they are excellent sources of protein I am proud to say
that no kids died on my watch I'm not a feminist I can actually cook cooking is actually like a super important skill that everyone should learn feminism views domestic tasks like cooking and cleaning as legitimate forms of Labor instead of just assumed responsib abilities for women it's traditional men not feminists who view these tasks as beneath them perhaps even openly bragging about not being able to do basic household chores I'm not sure in our entire marriage if I've ever done a full load of laundry I have not done anything around the house for 40 years
I've been a completely useless Mrs Shapiro said I'm not sure Ben knows how to do laundry so I'll go with the dishes ah Nancy can you do a quick tutorial for these poor helpless men step one put clothes in washing machine step two put soap in washing machine step three let me know if I'm going too fast step three turn washing machine on I'm anti-feminist of course I birthed my baby at home there are countless very personal reasons why somebody might choose to have their baby at home or in a hospital but the fact that
you and not the father of your child were the one to make that decision is because of feminism I'm antiem feminist of course I track my menstrual cycle instead of taking toxic birth control fertility awareness methods require a lot of discipline and are shown in studies to be less effective than other methods even when followed perfectly but yet again it is feminism that gives you this Choice I'm anti-feminist of course I healed my menstrual cycle with raw liver and beef after 8 years of veganism what are you talking about what does beef have to do
with anything I'm anti-feminist of course I know I can do whatever I'm in can do why would I want to huh okay okay clearly you guys need some help so here are some actual critiques of feminism you could point out that historically the movement has excluded people of color Nancy are you writing this down the movement has historically as well as lgbtq plus voices in fact a very prominent Harry Potter writing feminist has been spearheading a black mold fueled campaign against trans people for years now I hope you like the taste of lawsuits JK but
if you just want to call us ugly and mean that's okay too I guess though maybe you should shut the up and sit the down because you know you're not feminist so maybe you should let the men do the talking they're really good at it there isn't a woman on planet Earth that doesn't want to be led by a their no guy right wants to be with a girl that has up for sales on let me see the stats what's your body count how old are you how much you weigh tell me there's something so
painfully ironic about women using the freedoms that feminism won for them to bash feminism their ability to build a platform at all is because of the Decades of hard work that the very women they ridicule devoted their lives to I'm not going to lie don't tell the feminists but I would rather stay home and cook and clean there's something within me as a woman maybe it's almost turning 25 they got me thinking like this cooking and cleaning thing isn't bad like I just don't understand why we wanted to work what what was the what was
the point like there is nothing satisfying about working hey hey mallerie guess guess what you are working posting content online and profiting off of it is by definition a job not to mention that labor you're doing for your husband is stuff that he would have to pay hundreds of dollars to get someone else to do if you like pretending it's the 50s so much why don't you put your money where your mouth is oh wait nowhere because women in the US didn't even have the right to open a bank account until 1974 now even though
we've taken this little detour or long detour to talk about feminism I'd like to point out that a lot of support that I've seen for tradwife Content online has been from feminists these feminists insist that the ability to choose between being a tradwife or not being a tradwife is what feminism is all about and to a point I do agree but I think that feminism that only focuses on women's agency to make decisions and doesn't investigate the social pressures Behind these decisions and consequences for these decisions leaves women vulnerable to exploitation because while these ticktockers
get to cosplay being a Trad wife real stay-at-home moms suffer the consequences and women deserve to know what they are risking ever wonder why you never seem to see old older tradwife influencers that's because a lot of older tradwives have stories to tell for those of you who don't know I was a St home housewife from when I was 17 to nearly 27 I was incredibly submissive and I loved him absolutely unconditionally regardless of what he did to me wasn't allow to get tattoos he had absolute say over what I looked like he would decide
how I dressed how I wore my hair I learned how to cook like a chef because his expectation was from the time I was again 17 years old was that I made everything from scratch when you leave you have no ability to make your own money you have no Financial Independence you have to figure out how to untangle all of his wants over your needs I am still a good 10 15 years behind everyone else my age 1995 got married 1997 had my first baby 2000 had my second 2004 had my third no career no
education Beyond a high school diploma it is what I wanted having no understanding of the consequences that I'm now facing and then fast forward to uh 2016 were divorced and I'm starting at the bottom with no job experience now I'm 49 years old I'm struggling financially because I don't have 20 years of work experience being a stay-at-home mom is both rewarding and extremely s sacrificing I wish I had known then what I know now I wish I had had people like me telling me what I'm telling you now you see at the end of the
day I really don't care if a woman TR truly truly believes that she can achieve complete fulfillment through being a wife a mother and a homemaker I promise I'm not going to Clockwork Orange her with stock market charts and Excel tutorials my real problem with the tradwife lifestyle is that it can be really dangerous traditional marriage is often explained as an equivalent exchange support for security comfort for Cash the man he is the provider the main bread winner he goes out of the house and works the woman the wife she is the Homemaker but the
husband is holding all the cards if he decides to walk away from the table the wife is left with no job no education and years of missing work experience the wife's well-being is completely dependent on the goodwi of the husband if he's a good guy things are good if he's a bad guy things can get really really bad especially if the woman has been isolated from any outside support network you add a dash of religious fervor a pinch of social stigma against divorce and you've got a recipe for misery gumbo but my husband would never
do that he loves me I really truly deeply hope that that's true but how do you know for sure and what if he changes that would never happen but so many women have said that and been proven wrong you're just jealous of me why you just let me get out get out of my house get get well I wish I could say that that was the first time someone's kicked me out for yapping too much I'm sure there are going to be many people commenting paragraphs underneath this video citing historic precedent religious text biology psychology
feminine and masculine energy anything they can to convince me that a woman's natural place is in the home but if it's so natural for women to be submissive Housewives why do so many men feel the need to scream at women from pulpits and podiums and places of power to stay in their place I think it is you the women who have had the most diabolical lies told to you you may go on to lead successful careers in the world but I would venture to Guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage
and the children you will bring into this world why so insistent that women's accomplishments must always come second to their Duty as wife and mother even when they cross the Finish Line first why do companies scramble to remind women to keep centering men in their lives ridiculing the 4B movement so they can continue to sell men access to potential Partners but also sometimes potential victims how many Einstein have spent their lives washing dishes how many mozarts bent over stoves instead of pianos because they had The Misfortune of Being Born a woman while skimming through tradwife
content on Tik Tok I saw many women laughing at the idea of fighting for equality how could any woman prefer the rat race over peaceful Domesticity because of those meddling feminists I have to go to work in the morning and I just think about how so many of us since we were little we were raised in this kind of Boss bab feminist society that told us you can be so much more than just a mom you can be so much more than just a wife and so many of us listened and we you know tried
to climb corporate ladders and we boss babed so hard now like we're we're a little bit boss bed out but that's just capitalism babes and I don't think becoming a tradwife is the clever exploit you think it is it's just exchanging corporate drudgery for another form of servitude a form of servitude that has no salary no HR department and no 401K not to mention that the reality for a lot of women is getting hit with the double whammy of working a 9 to-5 only to come home to a second shift of household duties and child
care that their male partner refuses to participate in you might have noticed that there is a lack of Statistics in this video when I first started writing this I had this idea in my head that I was going to make an absolutely watertight highly researched essay like those super smart commentary YouTubers I like to watch who post a 7h hour long video every other leap year and maybe I will do that one day but right now if I'm being honest I'm just tired I shouldn't have to present statistics when I say that women have a
wealth of contribution to offer industry and Academia though according to the Pew Research Center women account for over 50% of the college educated labor force in the United States I shouldn't have to present statistics when I say it's a really bad idea for women to live their lives at the mercy of their husbands though according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline one in four women has experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner because unlike a lot of people making videos on this topic I've actually had to live this I was raised by a traditional
Christian wife in a traditional Christian Community there is a lot of hurt there that is not completely mine to share but trust me when I say I have seen the terror men can wield when they believe that the submission of their wife and children is their god-given right if you've been watching this and you feel like I've been a bit over dramatic I don't blame you but I would like to remind you that we have a presidential candidate who has surrounded himself with people whose involvement with project 2025 is public knowledge this document outlines plans
to restrict women's access to health care and birth control remove protections for lgbtq plus people and people of color and reinstate traditional gender roles as outlined by a certain interpretation of the Christian Bible amongst many other radical changes it would be as the kids say a major L for the us if you're a traditional wife and even after everything I've said you want to continue in this role that's fine though I do hope you have a plan B in case things go wrong and not the one Republicans are trying to ban I want you to
have the right to do so and have your decision be respected despite my reservations and experiences but I also want a world where there's a place for me and people like me so if your husband does let you participate in this election cycle here's a quick tip you can lie to him when he asks who you voted for maybe this video was just me screaming into the void wearing goofy costumes but I hope I've given a voice to the fears that some of you viewers have also felt I don't hate Trad wives not even the
fake ones but I felt like I had an obligation given what I've been through and given what the women in my life have been through to talk about the realities of choosing this path at best the Trad wife lives her life comfortably in a gilded cage at worst she's caught in a death trap [Music]
