Apparently, as Your Survival Guy recently learned from his daughter, “Trad Wives” are a thing. Then, coincidentally, I read this in the WSJ yesterday. Are we coming full circle? Matthew Hennessey writes:
I was told social conservatism was dead and buried—that Obergefell v. Hodges and “Modern Family” drove a stake through the heart of traditional values in America. Yet a Gallup poll last year found that the percentage of Americans who said they were conservative or very conservative on social issues was at the highest level in a decade. Like zombies and the mullet hairstyle, social conservatism won’t stay dead.
Take Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance. He presents himself as a classic social conservative. He opposes abortion, believes marriage is between a man and a woman, and frequently says things that you aren’t supposed to say about the family and sex roles. He is easily caricatured by Democratic political operatives and MSNBC panelists as an old-fashioned sexist. “We are not going back,” they say.
But some are. If you haven’t heard of Ballerina Farm, I apologize for interrupting your idyll. That’s the social-media handle of Hannah Neeleman, a 34-year-old influencer who has gained significant online fame as a so-called trad wife—an old-fashioned homemaker with a pie in the oven and a warm smile on her face. Mrs. Neeleman and her seemingly perfect domestic arrangement were the subject of a media minicontroversy last week suggesting that the culture wars are far from over.
A photogenic former Juilliard dancer, Mrs. Neeleman is a mother of eight. She lives in Utah with her husband, Daniel. They are faithful Mormon home-schoolers living in wholesome family style on a working farm in Middle America. Mrs. Neelman is June Cleaver in an apron on the open range, if June Cleaver had married into serious money and looked like Margot Robbie. She makes dinner, milks the cows and chronicles it all for her social-media followers, topping nine million on both TikTok and Instagram.
