Ballerina Farm cofounder Hannah Neeleman was not pleased by the recent Sunday Times profile of her business and lifestyle.
“A couple of weeks ago, we had a reporter come into our home to learn more about our family and business [and] we thought the interview went really well,” Neeleman, 34, said in a Wednesday, July 31, Instagram video. “We were taken [aback] however, when we saw the printed article — which shocked us and shocked the world by it being an attack on my family and my marriage.”
Hannah and her husband, Daniel Neeleman, were interviewed by U.K.’s Sunday Times newspaper in an article titled, “Meet the Queen of the ‘Trad Wives’ and Her 8 Children.” The profile highlighted Hannah and Daniel’s rural life with their young children and insinuated the former ballerina was a “trad wife,” a term referring to women who act as submissive stay-at-home spouses and mothers.
“[The article portrayed] me as oppressed, with my husband being the culprit. This couldn’t be further from the truth,” Hannah stressed. “Nothing we said in the interview implied this conclusion, which leads me to believe that the angle taken was predetermined.”
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According to Hannah, she and Daniel, 35, prioritize God and family, with “everything else [coming] second.”
“The greatest day of my life was when Daniel and I were married 13 years ago,” Hannah said in the video, which included snippets of her daily life on the homestead. “Together we have built a business from scratch. We’ve brought eight children into this world, and have prioritized our marriage all along the way.”
She continued, “We are coparents, co-CEOs, co-diaper changers, kitchen cleaners and decision-makers. We are one [and] I love him more today than I did 13 years ago. We have many dreams still to accomplish. We aren’t done having babies, we are excited for our new farm story to open and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the rest of it.”
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While the future is open for the Neelemans, Hannah is currently focused on “doing what [she] loves most” as a wife, mother, businesswoman and a farmer.
In the July 20 Sunday Times profile, of which Hannah did not mention by name on Wednesday, she claimed she doesn’t “necessarily identify” with the trad wife label.
“We are traditional in the sense that it’s a man and a woman, we have children, but I do feel like we’re paving a lot of paths that haven’t been paved before,” the influencer said at the time. “For me to have the label of a traditional woman, I’m kinda, like, I don’t know if I identify with that.”
