Trad Wives: Perplexing And Enthralling Modern Women

This summer, the very earth we stand on was rattled by a particularly shocking Sunday Times article, composed by witty journalist Megan Adnew: “Meet the queen of the ‘trad wives’ (and her eight children)”. This article details the very controversial life of Hannah Neeleman, a former ballerina who now lives on a farm in Utah with her husband Daniel. She is a tried and true traditional woman, giving birth to eight children without pain relief and living a devoted Mormon lifestyle. Previously, this woman was a Juilliard student studying to be a professional ballerina.

This article blew up for countless reasons. For one, half of the interview was spear-headed by her husband, who would often take control of the questions. This left the journalist and the reader alike feeling dissatisfied. Another detail of the interview that floored me was Neeleman casually mentioning that with raising eight children, she has week-long depressive spells in which she cannot leave her bed. However, she is the happiest she has ever felt. On her birthday, her husband bought her an egg apron instead of tickets to Greece like she wanted, yet she smiled gratefully and said thank you. The open space on their expansive property became a school house for her children instead of her dance studio, but now her children have a better space to learn in. Her former career is reduced to a framed photo of a ballerina that sits above the stove – where she cooks from-scratch meals for her family.

There has been speculation about Hannah Neeleman’s life since the article in lieu of her active social media presence. Is she happy? Is she brainwashed? Did she give up her dream for a man? Is she trapped? The answer is almost as dissatisfying as the interview: we will probably never know. And maybe it is better that way.

So, what is a Trad Wife?

Well, Trad Wives are women who adhere to traditional gender roles and typically act as homemakers, supporting their breadwinning husbands while they take on more domestic responsibilities such as childcare and kitchen duties – Neeleman herself does not identify as a Trad Wife, but I digress. Most women are influenced by Christianity or their own conservative beliefs to become Trad Wives. With the perennial presence of social media, many now have a platform to share their beliefs and lifestyles with vulnerable women everywhere.

With that being said, I do not use the term “vulnerable” in a derogatory nature. In fact, I believe that a lot of women share similar feelings of wanting to be submissive, to be told what to do, and to live a less secular life. I’m not saying it’s primal. This belief comes from my own experience, and my experiences with –albeit young– women in my life. Sometimes, it would just be easier to live a “quieter” life. Subscribing to an idea, a religion, or even a person is far more enticing than a potentially misguided adulthood. As humans, we seek comfort. Our definitions of comfort vary, but nonetheless, we are seeking.

One of the rare representations of this struggle is in the television dramedy series Fleabag, with British actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge acting and directing herself as Fleabag, a vulgar, grief-ridden, misguided modern woman. Season one follows her rebellious misfortunes with random men whom she is generally apathetic towards, while season two features a great love – who is most ironically a priest. 

In the iconic “confession” scene prior to inarguably one of the spiciest make-out scenes of all time, Fleabag laments these same feelings I and many other modern women identify with: 

This is the ongoing struggle modern women face today: wondering if they are bad feminists for seeking comfort from this idea. Is a domestic life enticing because you are less burdened by the compulsion to make your own decisions? Or is the decision to live a domestic life just that: a decision, and a noble one at that? 

I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning. No, I want someone to tell me what to wear every morning. I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like. What to hate. What to rage about. What to listen to. What band to like. What to buy tickets for. What to joke about. What not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in. Who to vote for and who to love and how to…tell them. I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far, I think I’ve been getting it wrong. And I know that’s why people want someone like you in their lives, because you just tell them how to do it. You just tell them what to do and what they’ll get out of the end of it, even though I don’t believe your bull**** and I know that scientifically nothing that I do makes any difference in the end, anyway, I’m still scared. Why am I still scared? So just tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do, Father.

Fleabag, 2019

it’s not all black and white.

I believe it is the latter. In a situation where men are the sole provider, women undeniably lose some semblance of social mobility. If things go awry, they could face financial trouble. Some extreme Trad Wife situations hint at a loss of body autonomy – four kids in four years is sunshine and rainbows for a man, but for a woman, it can be brutal. Michigan Daily Newspaper student writer Bela Kelogg summarizes this perfectly in her article “The Tradwife Trilogy Part 3: The Real Women Behind The Tradwife Movement”. This piece honed in on the Facebook groups in which Trad Wives created for each other, uncovering the inner workings — and the unpleasant symptoms — of this seemingly peaceful Trad Wife life: “In a vast majority of posts, these women reckon with their fiscal unworthiness, their apprehension to ask their husbands for help, their unfulfilling housework and their indignation at caring for their partners like mothers instead of wives. The more I scrolled, the more I began to notice that each of these emotions arose from the same anxiety — the anxiety of being inferior to one’s partner” (Kelogg). The “quiet life” that many of us long for is not as quiet as we would hope, and those same feelings of inadequacy that plague us likewise plague Trad Wives. Setting and meeting high-expectations are two things women are highly familiar with, and only some of us can do it successfully. Formidable women like Neeleman seem to do it with a smile. 

On a deeper level, if a Trad Wife is so subscribed to these ideas to not pay mind to the possibly unequal power dynamics and questionable levels of autonomy, can ignorance be bliss? This train of thought prompted me to hit the books, books I never thought I would comb through as a firm atheist. In the Hebrew Bible, King Solomon wrote “Ecclesiastes”, a teaching that essentially illustrates that life is meaningless. As of yet, we have no tried-and-true method that is able to tell us how to live. No matter how many ancient theories we read or life experiences we piece through to try to discern the world around us, we will never truly know anything. This work reiterates that ignorance can, in a twisted sense, be bliss. While this passage was crafted to instill fear in a higher power, I do believe that it is reassuring to hear outside of the realm of religion. We will never know how to live to the fullest, but we are trying our best.

We must have dignity in our own decisions.

We assume entire lives based on cultivated, often dressed-up videos of Trad Wives sharing their lives. These videos can often spread rhetoric that teeters on judgmental, bringing forth the religious guilt many of us know too well. Others are made innocently, only to be used to reinforce the wrong narrative with an unintended audience. With all of this in mind, I think back to that interview. Who am I, or better yet, who are we, as the media, to yuck other people’s yum? In reality, we know virtually nothing about these people.

That does not change the sadness we may feel towards a Juilliard student leaving a successful ballerina career to raise a giant family in Utah, or the resentment we feel towards her husband for not buying her a plane ticket to Greece. But the unique thing about womanhood is that we cried and empathized with a woman, despite her claiming she is not a feminist. We can identify similarities in people who do not even identify with us. The paths we choose may be vastly different, but our motivations are the same: comfort, belonging, and happiness. 

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