In Defense of the Trad Wife Influencer

In January 2024, Utah-based rancher, entrepreneur, and lifestyle influencer Hannah Neeleman made headlines competing in Las Vegas for the Mrs. World pageant only two weeks after giving birth. Photos on her Instagram showed Neelman getting her hair styled and makeup done while she breastfed her new baby, and looking incredibly fit and put together in her gowns during a time when many mothers are still wearing diapers. 

Neeleman, 34, along with her husband Daniel (the son of billionaire JetBlue founder David Neeleman and cousin of NFL quarterback Zack Wilson), document their lives as parents of 8 children and proprietors of Ballerina Farm, their 328-acre beef, dairy, and hog ranch in Utah, on their respective social media platforms, @ballerinafarm and @hogfathering, which have 10 million followers on Instagram alone. Hannah has been dubbed in the media “the queen of the tradwives.”

Neeleman rejects the label “tradwife,” a social media genre that encompasses a variety of different lifestyles depending on who is using it. Generally, tradwives are “stay-at-home-moms-plus.” Many homeschool, some homestead, and most talk about their Christian faith. Because these lifestyle accounts are on image-based social media platforms, they usually adopt a very specific aesthetic, which varies from Estee William’s 1950s pinup style to Nara Smith’s supermodel chic to Neeleman’s ranch traditional.

The media frenzy the trad trend has caused is, frankly, extraordinary. “Is Tradwife Content Dangerous, or Just Stupid?” asked the New Yorker last September. In November, Salon warned of “The insidious rise of “tradwives”: A right-wing fantasy is rotting young men’s minds.” Even Christianity today criticized, saying, “Tradwife Content Offers Fundamentalism Fit for Instagram.” And now last week, the Sunday Times published “Meet the Queen of the Tradwives (and her eight children),” a profile on the Neeleman family, in which the author, Megan Agnew, made zero attempt to conceal her contempt for the family’s lifestyle choices. She painted Hannah as an emotionally abused victim whose wants and needs are constantly ignored in favor of those of her family and Daniel as a manipulative puppet master who makes all the major family decisions without considering his wife’s feelings. After receiving serious backlash, the author issued a part II of her profile, softening some of her criticism and providing audio clips that clearly show she removed important context from quotes so they could better align with her preconceptions about the family.

The chief criticism of all “trad” content seems to be the bizarre and cynical take that women could not possibly be happy and fulfilled doing the things that most women around the world are happy and fulfilled doing and have been doing for most of human history. I don’t know many heirs to billion-dollar airlines, but I do know an awful lot of women in their mid-thirties, being one myself. Most women Hannah’s age have chosen a similar path—we married in our 20s and now spend our time chasing kids, taking them to dance lessons and soccer practices, cooking, keeping our families in order, and using our personal talents and interests to contribute to the economy of the family, whether that’s a job outside (or inside) the home, or practicing intentional homemaking in a way to reduce family expenses and live off a single income. Most of us do it in a decidedly less glamorous fashion than Hannah Neeleman, but thus is the way of social media—it’s entertainment, aspirational. No one is concerned that the Real Housewives are promoting an unattainable lifestyle because, well, duh. 

Perhaps what draws so many women to trad content is how happy these influencers are, even when they are milking cows in the snow or burning potatoes. Maybe it is also because it so often shows the beautiful and valuable work of motherhood in a world where moms are often the butt of the joke (see “basic,” “soccer mom,” “Karen”) and motherhood as a pursuit is seen as far inferior to the corporate girl boss life.

Compare trad content, on the other hand, to “relatable mom content,” or, as I like to call it, “birth control content.”

“Relatable mom” content is another social media genre popular among young mothers and often features women documenting their challenges in parenting. When it’s done right, it can be a lifeline to lonely moms who think they’re the only ones who are struggling with breastfeeding, are late to every other ballet practice, and don’t send their kids with picture-perfect bento box lunches to school every day. When done poorly, it sends the message to young women figuring out what they want out of life: whatever you do, don’t be a mom. Moms are fat, overstimulated, sleep-deprived, miserable, and have no agency over their own lives. This content attacks the types of lives many women choose for themselves. But notably it does not attract the same fervor of criticism.

This is the picture that Agnew attempted to paint of Hannah—a young woman whose promising ballet career was smashed when she was tricked into marrying a manipulative man who forced her to have baby after baby while he lived out his own dreams to be a cowboy. Forget that Daniel himself first gave up his collegiate athletic career to move to New York and support Hannah in her Julliard ballet training. Forget that Hannah is a literal beauty queen with the most extraordinary collection of beautiful dresses, that she has a home ballet studio and a social media empire, and runs a massive farming and market operation that includes everything from beef and dairy cattle to baked goods to florals.  All Agnew could see was those pesky kids who kept interrupting, and she knew that there was no way a smart, empowered woman could choose this life.

A couple of years ago, after an exhausting day, I climbed into bed to find a drawing on bright orange construction paper sitting on my pillow. In the center of the picture was a saguaro cactus surrounded by hearts. Written in the sweetest little kindergarten handwriting were the words, “Do not let a cactus poke you; let love poke you.” That was the first of many quirky homemade greeting cards made by my now-8-year-old, and it’s the most treasured of my earthly possessions—you’d have a hard time stopping me from running into a burning building to get it. It represents the extraordinary love I never knew existed before I became a mother. It is a love that I suspect Hannah Neeleman knows a little bit about. A child’s love is worth pursuing, prioritizing, and restructuring your whole life around. Christ described the paradox of the pain and joy of motherhood well, “When a woman gives birth to a baby, she has pain because her time has come. But when her baby is born, she forgets the pain because she is so happy that a child has been born into the world” (John 16:21, NCV). The joy of motherhood truly overcomes its pains, sorrows, and sacrifices. This used to be common knowledge, but now few truly understand it.

Do I know for sure that Daniel Neeleman isn’t a controlling monster? Of course not. Some abusers are very good at hiding in plain sight, appearing as charming, handsome, doting family men. But everything about what I can see of their lives depicts Hannah as an empowered woman blessed with many resources, and who uses those resources to create a very intentional life for her family.

Do I think that the Neelmans’ life is attainable or realistic? Again, of course not. No one who has a healthy understanding of social media could possibly think that with just the right aesthetic touch, they too can live like the billionaire farming princess on Instagram. It is absolutely possible to enjoy some of these content creators as entertainment and even use the content as inspiration for choices we make for our own homes and families while remembering that the content is a created art, not a documentary of everyday life. I assure you Hannah Neeleman’s day-to-day life is not fully represented in the little snippets she shares online. Neither is mine.

But I can see why she chose the life she did. Unlike Agnew, I see the beauty in not just Hannah’s glamorous gowns or the perfect bouquets of flowers she arranges but the beauty in the dirty-faced smiles of her Crocs-wearing toddlers, the pride of watching her son make a rhubarb cake from vegetables he had planted and tended to and picked himself, the romance of a twilight walk with the husband she’s grown up with or the home that they’ve built together with a baby snuggling warm against her chest. This is not a life to be sneered at. The most beautiful parts of Hannah’s life are not so different from the best parts of my life—the nightly calming ritual of sandwich making and orange-wedge slicing for the next day’s lunch boxes alongside my sweetheart, the joy in watching my children work hard and develop their talents, the peace, and sacredness in listening to the prayers of my children as they develop a desire to love and serve the Lord. This is a life worth pursuing—pursuing at the expense of worldly accolades and success. There are many types of lives that are glamorized on social media. I’m glad Hannah is glamorizing this one.

Editor’s Note: The article was corrected to include the first name of Megan Agnew, the author of The Times profile