Ballerina farm - just fell down a rabbit hole

[Mamabear04]

Just fell down a rabbit hole looking at this Instagram account. Of course it can't be true or surely even close to it? I feel so sorry for her, she seems too tired to even smile most of the time. She prides herself on being a servant to her family but it doesn't look like she enjoys it. Also 8 kids by 34? Anyone from or have a ginormous family - what's your experience of living with so many kids/siblings? Does it look like this? Surely the woman has cleaners and although she "helps out" on the farm, they will have a huge amount of staff no? I don't know why I'm obsessed with this this morning...maybe I'm bored of the Kardashians now!

How can anyone pretend this is all sunshine and rainbows when her now husband, shortly after meeting inexplicably refused to wait a year or two so this talented woman could pursue her dreams, before getting married just so she could start having babies asap?

Exactly! Imagine if a woman wrote on here that she'd got into her dream school to pursue her dream career but her boyfriend of three months wanted her to quit and have a baby instead, even though that wasn't what she wanted?

Everyone would be telling her to run screaming for the hills, yet in this case, it's seen as some wonderfully good thing? I don't get it.

Oh please.

Make up your minds.

How many times on Mumsnet have I read GET MARRIED!! ARE YOU STUPID? WHY WOULD YOU LIVE WITH A MAN WITHOUT LEGAL.PROTECTION, WHO HOLDS ALL THE FINANCIAL CARDS, AT LEAST ENSURE YOU AND YOUR KIDS BE PROVIDED FOR

Double standards being put a spin on in order to prove a non-existent point.

She has years worth of viral content of her working, promoting their business, including her giving birth at home. She is the main reason for the business' success the very name of the Farm is reference to her. Not only would a divorce be MASSIVE NEWS there's no way a lawyer would have an easy ride depriving her of her dues in the very unlikely event of a divorce.

So what he owns most of it! They're married. What's his is technically hers. She gets some too in a divorce or if he drops dead she gets it all.

She also makes money from people subscribing to her account. If only a tiny proportion of her 9 million followers subscribe each month, she's making thousands each month. I doubt she doesn't have her own money put aside.

This is ho marrying a rich person works.
Unless she signed a prenup she would be entitled to half.

Yes just why would you do this to someone you loved?!

I feel it’s capitalism maybe - like people are so distracted by all the shiny sparkling stuff and dismissing the fact of him squashing her dreams by essentially saying “oh well she’s now married into a rich family so it’s fine” utterly depressing!

Yes this happened with all of mine. I actually said I refused to push baby can stay up there 😅 then my body just pushed him out on his own accord. No screaming or being told to push don’t push my body just did it. No stitches or anything as it forced enough for the crown to emerge then paused then full ejection on its second push.

With my second one involuntary push, out in the water sac and everything. Third two involuntary pushes again in the pool.

The problem is most of the money belongs to his family. Not him. There is no provision in law to require someone’s FIL (or a family trust or wherever the money is actually held) to provide a divorce settlement.

He’s a trust fund baby not a high earner. It makes a massive difference in any settlement.

Super depressing.

Hannah is white, beautiful and has married a rich man, and according to many people on here, that seems to mean she's immune to emotional abuse, coercive control and having her dreams squashed by a man.

I wonder if the posters defending her situation would be happy if their young adult daughters gave up their dreams of Juilliard (or wherever) to have a baby with a man they'd known for three months? I very much doubt it

Is that established medical wisdom that natural births are easier?

It's just that there are still 1000s of women who die in rural communities (usually black or brown in the global south, in response to that other poster) who may already have 3+ births who still have horrendous birth injuries

https://www.womenandchildrenfirst.org.uk/

What is the evidence that she didn’t want her home births? She describes her last one as a very easy and positive experience . When she did go overdue she was not prevented from going into hospital.

Espevially in the US , hospital births are really heavily medicalised and dangerous. There’s a good doco about it “ The business of being born”. They don’t have midwife led units like we do here and there’s no gas and air. So if you want natural birth with a pool then your options are quite limited.

Choosing a home birth can be a very rational, woman and child-centred decision. Plenty of non religious women make the same decision. I don’t see anything in the articles to suggest that this was her husbands decision.

I’m not disagreeing with you in my previous post. I agree that she is very financially privileged. However, it is all tied to her husband and in his control. She is not privileged because her freedom and options are very limited.

What would she do if they divorced? She might have plenty of money, but what will she do to fulfil herself and enjoy her life? Money is very, very important, but it’s not everything. What if she wants more options and she wants to work? She can’t. She certainly can’t go back to being a ballerina.

My point is this - I appreciate her financial circumstances are very impressive. However, she has paid the price of freedom and agency to have that. That wouldn’t suit me at all, personally. I never want to be in that position.

As @CandidHedgehog says, I think her husband’s family would do everything within their power to protect their money and not give it to her. In a way, they’re entitled to do that, as it’s their money. Although it seems cruel and mean and unfair.

What is the evidence that she didn’t want her home births?

I didn't say she didn't want them.

I said that one of the reasons she'll have had home births is because of her religion and her background, and also because it fits with the whole "tradwife" image - not because it's necessarily what she wanted.

I have no idea what she wanted, but I think it's foolish to pretend her upbringing and religion don't play a part in her "choices".

You're easily 'terrified!!' then.

Are you 'terrified' that there are women in this country struggling to feed their children? Poor women without a university education, never had the chance or experience of going to Julliard or any elite schools, married to broke Dave or worse not married, without any assets and no hope of ever getting them. Or baby no. 3 is coming and the child benefit wont stretch. Or they've been penalised and are at the food bank again to pick up non-nourishing, nutrient deprived, processed food that a shopper felt convenient to throw in the donation tray?

They can't go out in the morning and pick up their pasture raised eggs and feed their 3 let alone 8 children with ease. They get called selfish tramps (on MN even) for having any kids at all let alone 3.

No YOU'RE more concerned about one pretty, intelligent, business savvy woman, living the apex of the white Anglo-Saxon American dream. And the thing you're really terrified about is someone saying that she's at the very bottom of the victim hierarchy.

@DysonSphere please stop pushing some bizarre agenda onto me and my posts. You've done it multiple times now.

This post is about Hannah - if you want to start a thread about whatever other issues upset you or worry you, go right ahead.

I can’t answer for @sunsetsandboardwalks, but you can be concerned and worried and scared about all of these things. I am. I’m also scared and upset about what happened to Sonya Massey, for example (as someone mentioned her upthread). It’s entirely possible and understandable to feel upset, anxious or worried about these things and to want to do something about them.

But you are working from the wrong starting point.

You’ve assumed moving in with someone is non-negotiable.

It’s not. It’s a 2 stage issue:

1. Should the woman in question move in with a particular man and have his children?
2. If the answer to (1) is yes, should she get married first?

The ‘get married first’ threads address question 2 (and the answer is usually ‘yes’). This thread is looking at question 1.

There is no doubt Hannah N is better off married to her husband rather than having 8 children as a live in girlfriend if they ever separate. The point many people are making is that in light of the stalking, coercion and destruction of everything she wanted in her life, the answer to (1) should have been ‘hell, no’ followed by a quick exit from the relationship.

Also, just to note, most of the money comes from his family (not him directly). If the money never belonged to him (i.e. the farm was bought with trust money and is held by a family trust), she won’t get a penny if they split.

Thanks @Acapulco12 - apparently I shouldn't be concerned about Hannah because she's white, married and rich? Bizarre.

There is no doubt Hannah N is better off married to her husband rather than having 8 children as a live in girlfriend if they ever separate. The point many people are making is that in light of the stalking, coercion and destruction of everything she wanted in her life, the answer to (1) should have been ‘hell, no’ followed by a quick exit from the relationship.

Yes, this is exactly it.

As things stand now, of course she's better off with the protection of marriage, and of course she's better off with a rich husband than a poor one, but the point is that the whole marriage is built on some really fucked up foundations.

I have a really, really hard time believing that posters on here would genuinely be happy if their daughters' ended up in Hannah's shoes.

Though maybe they would - it takes all types!

The thing about ballerina farm reactions from people that really piss me off is people saying 'but she chose that' with complete ignorance.

People really need to start understanding how easily our minds can be manipulated. He love bombed her and then gave her an ultimatum. It's really a shame people can't grasp that.

Epidurals are associated with an increase in complications, instrumental deliveries, episiotomies, c sections, failure to progress, long pushing stage etc. Which carry increased risk factors for prolapse, bladder and bowel dysfunction etc or in the case of c section, increased risk of maternal death.

Any way you do it, giving birth carries risk. But it’s perfectly rational to want to avoid an epidural on those grounds. No belief in god required!

That doesn’t mean no medical attention at all.

Of course giving birth in a rural area of a disadvantaged country without access to a doctor for pre or postnatal care is going to be extremely dangerous. But that’s not the position this woman was in.

Someone mentioned this video earlier in the thread from an ex Mormon couple so I watched some of it. Not got to the end because it's quite long.

They haven't always been quite so extreme Mormon/tradwife lifestyle. A lot of this is purely curated content based on business and money.

There's definitely red flags in play but the entire of Mormonism is a red flag to me so I'm not sure how much this man stands out (or not?) against his male Mormon peers.

On the surface I think it's sad she didn't get to pursue her original ambition given she earned such a prestigious place. That level of ballet is also brutal and punishing though so I wonder if that wasn't all she thought it would be either? I've read horror stories about elite female ballet too.

I don't really know. I'm just surmising here because I've never had the ambition, talent nor stamina for elite ballet or wannabe homesteading! She seems like a driven, competitive ambitious personality in whatever she is doing.

About a third way through this video they make the good point that these are generationally wealthy people cosplaying at being pioneers so it's difficult to tell what is real. Did she really only get an apron for her birthday or did they go to Greece and we just never saw it? Her FIL owns an airline so they probably wouldn't have to fly commercial.

I think it's crappy that this mythologised tradwife stuff is being pumped out all over social media to girls who don't have a wealth safety net and won't ever achieve the massive acreage, farmhouse aesthetic. For whom the reality of a tradwife life with so many children would probably be a small, over crowded home, one income, poverty trap in a country that has few government safety nets.

I am sympathetic to Hannah but she also seems complicit too in aspects of it (probably not the getting pregnant part - that seems to be standard Mormonism) unless her husband forces her to make social media content. Based on the video I've linked her journey with social media content seems more organic than that and a direction she chose to take, even learning the skills needed to do it.

It sounds dreadful that she becomes so exhausted she has to take to bed for a week with frequency. It's easy to imagine that kind of exhaustion with many children plus potential hormone and vitamin deficiencies from many pregnancies.

That said I still have questions - they're not really rural, they live a short drive from a wealthy part of Utah. She has been to hospital when a pregnancy is complicated so they have health insurance, probably good health insurance. My guess is none of them go without decent healthcare checks as image is everything on social media.

Also if she's ill or depressed frequently enough to go to bed for a week who is caring for the children that week? Is it her husband? Probably not because that's not very trad husband so it suggests there's more help/support/childcare than the viewer gets to see. Which again would not be giving the whole truth to young girls aspiring to this. Unless the kids look after themselves which is veering into a whole other territory.

Anyway that all ended up being a longer ramble than I planned. I'd not heard of them until I saw this thread and watched this video. Just some initial thoughts I could be wrong about.

What would any woman do in the event of a divorce?

Why does it particularly matter what this particular woman would do in a divorce when she is canny enough to do well for herself in such an event and she is starting from a financial vantage point many times higher than the average woman? Why is there an entire hand wringing exercise over her in particular as opposed to anyone else?

She is never, I repeat NEVER going to walk away broke from that divorce should it ever happen.

Lets suspend belief and put aside her obvious social media talents and beauty bonus and lets say she did walk away with nothing. Abused etc.

She would still have a huge community, she has a big family, she has resources I am sure her Father and Mother have provided something for her too. They had a seemingly successful.flower business that she also has tagged onto BF.

Honestly. She is the least person to start a 'sorrow and concern' thread about.

The concern about her wellbeing is a red herring. It's what she does, what she represents and her religion. Its a sorrow and disdain thread.

And when such people fail in some way there is a sort of malicious crowing over them.

did you get married and have children young? that must make it difficult for many mormon women to extricate themselves from the church and the lifestyle.

Well this implies that there was something wrong or bad or irrational or strange about her choices.

Plenty of atheists and career women choose natural births and home births. If she was so constrained by image or religion then she wouldn’t have gone into hospital for any of them. It appears to me she was making these decisions with her own and her babies’ best interests at heart. Again, it’s insulting to her to assume that she had no agency in this and was incapable of making her own rational decision about where each of her babies would be born.

@Helar I'm just saying it's daft to deny the influence of a religious upbringing on things like family size, education and healthcare.

That doesn't mean I think Hannah made a stupid choice, just that it's likely that religion played a part in that choice.