Modern Mormon feminism proclaims a support of all women’s choices: do you want to be an astronaut? a tax preparer? a mother? a full-time homemaker? have a big family? a small family? a working mom with a stay-at-home dad family? yes? More power to you!

So how and why, praytell, is not only the entire internet but also most Mormon feminists up in arms over the recent London Times profile of famous influencer Hannah Neeleman, of Ballerina Farm fame (and daughter-in-law of the founder of Jet Blue $)? The problem with Ballerina Farm to Mormon feminists is not that she is a stay-at-home mom, nor that she chooses to have a large family, or that she chooses to participate in beauty pageants mere weeks after giving birth while nursing backstage (go mama!); many of us are in her similar sahm boat and the water tends to be rocky but fine. Most of us had very emotional reactions to the article because it *appears* she never developed a sense of autonomy — and was very seemingly presssssured into consenting to her life.

Our concerns overlap a lot of what many secular feminists have expressed — although many in “the world” are more critical of a chosen domestic life. And we should state that plainly: many women with large Mormon families are looked down on and treated poorly by an increasingly secular and feminist world. Most mothers in the US have to work to help their families make ends meet. It is because of this thankless tension that the benevolent LDS patriarchy chooses to pedistalize these women and this labor. It is the MOST glorious, MOST closest to heaven, MOST angelic, MOST spiritual and holy, etc. It’s also true in our community there’s an increasing number of young Mormon women who have not and will not have the opportunity to bear children. We have swathes of single and childless women in the church. We cannot tell LDS wives and mothers that theirs is the foreordained only god-given purpose to Mormon women’s lives anymore.

That is a problem and tension Mormon feminists hold: we want to honor the work of our foremothers – care work is hard work and you can be hard-pressed to find folks valuing it appropriately (patriarchy sucks outside of the church too—in fact how hard it is pursuing work and goals as a mother in the US figures prominently in these dynamics). It’s unpaid work, but for those of us who have been through it we know deeply in our bones it is important, back- and at times sanity-breaking work (oh hi post-partum depression that jumpscared me after having 3 kids in 21 months, fancy meeting you here!). But we *must* learn to value the accomplishments and contributions that all Mormon women make in the building of the “kingdom of God.” Our current cultural freak-outs over Mothers’ Days show how impossible a task this is — if we mention the contributions of single and childless women on Mother’s Day (not by using the all women are mothers line) and then now mothers who already feel thankless and ignored have to SHARE THEIR DAY WITH SINGLE WOMEN TOO??!! oh Baby Jesus take the wheel. This is our task. We must hold these tensions. We must honor and value each other.

As a reminder from mere months ago: Mormon Feminism in the year of our Lord 2k24 is working out these tensions apparently online (mostly IG I think?), a lot of which has happened on the LDS Church’s own accounts earlier this year. Where many of us expressed frustrations at the cultural pressures that played into us choosing the trad-wife life, because we were often and explicitly told to do so over the pulpit by men who ~speak for God. Then they call as General RS Presidenta woman who was a full-time lawyer her whole life and had full-time nannies for her kids, and praised her for being obedient and following the prophets. Now, legions of Mormon women are both grateful for her example and increasingly frustrated with the state of our lives due to the trad-wife pressure we succumbed to from our church that apparently wasn’t all that necessary in the first place.

Slight background about TradWife movement: I’m sure dissertations could be written about the religiopolitical motivations driving it, but most of these online influencers are unsurprisingly Christian and explicitly endorse traditional gender roles INCLUDING submission to their husbands. Know for now that the Neelemans don’t embrace the label or community of them and maintain an air of neutrality (a very lucrative air that enables brilliant marketing across the spectrum) about it all, but she is often seen as the “Queen” of the movement. Also, many trad wife influencers have since come out of their marriages and influencer jobs divorced with stories of abuse. (The Internet’s response: SHOCKER!) The trad-wife movement isn’t happening in a vacuum, but when the VP candidate on the GOP ticket is publicly talking about changing laws so childless women have less influence at the polls.

So back to dear Hannah Neeleman and her infamous profile. The author of the profile obviously had a secular feminist bias … and a caveat here: we will never know how this day truly unfolded to those who experienced it. This was what one outside woman experienced and it was a snapshot of one day. I feel she came to Utah to see what is underneath the trad wife movement, the reporter specifically states she wants to ask Hannah about the backlash to her “Pageantgate”–which Hannah has maintained conspicuous and neutral silence about. Unfortunately, it seems Daniel Neeleman gave her a full show of what *appeared* to her a sexist benevolent patriarchal Mormon man. To many of us who have attended the BYUs, we knew (and/or dated) men like this, they were a dime a dozen in our wards and classes. In fact, I would say my husband and I were originally both supporters of this ideal Mormon family with “co-presidents” but with separate roles where the wife defers to the “head of the family.” We changed and grew over the last 20 years. And while we have, off and on, lived the stay-at-home-mom life of four kids …. the last twelve years happened while I concurrently developed my own voice and sense of autonomy through feminism. It does not *appear* a similar transformation has occurred at Ballerina Farm. A short summary of the red flags waving wildly in the (biased) profile:

  • “Back then I thought we should date for a year [before marriage],” she continues. “So I could finish school and whatever. And Daniel was, like, ‘It’s not going to work, we’ve got to get married now.’ ” After a month they were engaged. Two months after that they were married, moving into an apartment Daniel rented on the Upper West Side. And three months after that she was pregnant, the first Juilliard undergraduate to be expecting “in modern history”.
  • “Well, I gave up dance, which was hard. You give up a piece of yourself. And Daniel gave up his career ambitions.” I look out at the vastness and don’t totally agree. Daniel wanted to live in the great western wilds, so they did; he wanted to farm, so they do; he likes date nights once a week, so they go (they have a babysitter on those evenings); he didn’t want nannies in the house, so there aren’t any. The only space earmarked to be Neeleman’s own — a small barn she wanted to convert into a ballet studio — ended up becoming the kids’ schoolroom.
  • They have a cleaner but no childcare; Neeleman does all the food shopping — kids in tow — and cooks from scratch (they “don’t do” ready meals). Despite the more traditional aspects of their relationship, Daniel is a hands-on father, taking the kids out to the farm and doing all the laundry. The children appear to look after each other quite well too — there are so many that they seem to have become an almost self-sustaining entity. Still, Daniel says, Neeleman sometimes gets so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week.
  • She also gave birth to them without pain relief. None at all? She shakes her head. Why? “I don’t know, I just have never loved taking it.” She stops herself. “Except with Martha — I was two weeks overdue and she was 10lb and Daniel wasn’t with me … ” She lowers her voice. Daniel is currently out of the room taking a phone call. “So I got an epidural. And it was an amazing experience.” Where was Daniel that day? “It was shipping day [for the meat boxes] and he was manning the crew.” But the epidural was kind of great? She pauses — and smiles. “It was kinda great.”
  • Do you — I pause and look at her fixedly — plan pregnancies? “No,” Daniel says. “When he says no,” Neeleman responds gently, “it’s very much a matter of prayer for me. I’m, like, ‘God, is it time to bring another one to the Earth?’ And I’ve never been told no.” “But for whatever reason it’s exactly nine months [after a baby] that she’s ready for the next one,” he says. “It’s definitely a matter of prayer,” she says. “It’s a matter of prayer but somehow it’s exactly nine months,” he says.

My first impression was related to my experience: I have lupus and have been so exhausted I couldn’t lift my arms to pour milk. It takes days of rest to recover. This type of exhaustion is not normal and should not be acceptable. If my husband had enough funds we would hire necessary help so THIS WOULD NOT HAPPEN, EVER. They have many employees to cosplay 8 Kids and Little House on the Prairie with all their money: THEY NEED MORE. (because this is not how rural farmers in Rexburg Idaho live, this life requires money $$$ to maintain the aesthetic, another rural commenter called it a very expensive form of theater.)

Most of the internet is shocked by the blatant patriarchy and… jerkiness of this? The world is not used to benevolent patriarchs like this. Daniel Neeleman is probably on the number 1 most hated American men list at the moment: just Google “Ballerina Farm” on Twitter or TikTok for a look yourself. It’s notable that there’s a growing backlash to the original backlash of the article — as with all controversial internet controversies.

After sleeping on it I wanted to take a step back and I agreed with other commenters: we need to give folks some grace and acknowledge we don’t know these people or their lives based on this one article. I can identify with having my kids and husband around and feeling like I can’t get a word in edgewise. You’ll have to hear my unfiltered thoughts on social media, a practice I don’t think fits Ballerina Farm’s branding! And the reason for that is because she is a professional influencer–she’s more of a celebrity than if she’d stayed with just dancing. Of course she has some type of autonomy in how she is presented online. I later wondered online “Valid convo to have: who do you think erased Hannah Neeleman’s voice more: husband Daniel, reporter, herself, or a combination?” I had prepared myself to chalk the Times interview to a one-off, a bit upset that I will never know the truth.


And then the next day, low and behold, this video goes viral. I will tell you this: forget the article completely. If I had been asking for a trip to Greece for my birthday and you filmed me (even as a joke) opening an unwrapped gift of an egg apron (which I’m sure she likes just fine for gathering eggs—I want one of those cool $80 Hedley & Bennet aprons IG keeps pitching to me–the issue is not the apron) and then you rudely say “you’re welcome” because I was insufficiently grateful to you …. Lord Baby Jesus they would never be able to find your body.

I showed my moderate-conservative, still benevolent-patriarchal-but-baby-feminist husband this video last night. He was shocked. That video on it’s own isn’t great.

The *seeming* Daniel-Neeleman-type LDS patriarchs were taught to be so by their fathers and their fathers’ fathers. It’s the “I just kept pursuing her until she finally gave in and said yes” vibes we don’t want for our daughters. And these dynamics won’t fly much longer, folks. To LDS young women: Be domestic. Knit, sew, and bake! Have your babies. (Have a way to escape, if necessary!) In fact, these days most women don’t have to “give up on their dreams,” most women if they have kids find some way to be mother AND ________. But by God do not stand to be treated like this by men in your life (what the video *appears* to show).



PS This is bad PR for the LDS church. The Neelemans were probably the shining jewel on their crown of LDS influencers. Their membership is featuring prominently in online discourse.

For an alternate pop-culture take on the “Free Hannah” response to the ~obviously biased article: LDS Changemakers on IG pointed out the Pop Apologists podcast covers a little bit of debunking of the view that was presented here: “is ballerina farm really ballerina prisoner? 🩰 ⛓️ pop apologists investigates 🕵🏼‍♀️🕵🏼‍♀️”