America’s Ballet Farmer: How JD Vance, Elon Musk and the entire Republican Party want to ignite mom mania

Don’t bother with dirt road pirates and Little egg apron scandal. Above all, Hannah Neeleman want us to know that life on Ballerina Farm make her happy. “The most important day of my life was when Daniel and I got married thirteen years ago,” she said in a July video. “We built a business together from the ground up, raised eight children, and prioritized our marriage along the way. We are co-parents, co-CEOs, co-diaper changers, co-kitchen cleaners and decision-makers. We are one and I love him more today than I did 13 years ago.”

To those who are just observers, Neeleman’s social media accounts may look like Little house on the prairie cosplay, highly appreciated aesthetics over ideology. Still, Megan Agnew, a British journalist with Sunday Times, went to the farm where Daniel and Hannah lived with their eight children and suggested in the report that Hannah’s options may be limited. (Neeleman did not respond Vanity fair‘ request for comment.) Agnew reports that Daniel pursued Hannah even though she wasn’t interested, and even the space she wanted to use as a dance studio became a children’s classroom. Daniel allegedly told Agnew that his wife sometimes had to go to bed for weeks at a time due to exhaustion. As in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s frontier world, a large portion of reality has been filtered out.

“she trades” the trend has become so political that Neeleman tries to distance himself from it when Agnew asks. But housewives are a useful fantasy for everyday conservatives who promote “family values,” intellectualized “birthers” (a The group sounds like the right technology to include Elon Musk and co-founder of Skype Jaan Tallinn) and fanatics who want (almost) everyone to have children. For a group of politicians, writers and activists, the clear idyll of Ballerina Farm and people like her is sending the right message at the right time. And some thinkers and writers have begun to become more vocal in their argument that pursuing those ideals – even if you get there out of shame or coercion – is a matter of freedom. . save Western civilization.

From a certain perspective, fertility fanatics are definitely killing it in 2024. Billionaires are on board, and even Musk says he now considers himself “Cultural Christianity.” Journalists, academics and researchers are proselytizing with books intended for the mainstream. Project 2025, the second term blueprint of the Heritage Foundation for Donald Trump, make “The well-being of the American family” is their number one priority, adding that “married men and women are the natural, ideal family structure because all children have the right to be raised by the men and women who gave birth to them.” And one of the biggest advocates for animal husbandry, the author became a senator J.D. Vance, are on the hunt for a great promotion.

It’s clear that these efforts are focused on raising certain kinds of babies raised by certain kinds of parents—they’re not trying to make life easier, for example, youngest immigrants. Vance’s companions might argue with that characterization, but by tying marriage to traditional gender roles, they achieve that result without having to say something too vulgar.

However, the great drive to have children is slowly failing in the broader culture. For one, Vance, one historically unpopular VP’s choice has caused everyone to back off because of his focus on “The cat lady has no children” and reflect on the purpose of “postmenopausal women.” The 2025 project is not popular with the people most people people who have heard of it. And there’s Neeleman. When a housewife who doesn’t call me a housewife isn’t interested in being a part of the public push to have children, you have a branding problem.

The contours of today’s motherhood craze have their roots in earlier American political trends. American news is available highest divorce rate in the world can be traced back to as early as 1889, and in 1987Evangelist Pat Robertson told his audience that the uncertain future of Social Security was reason to limit abortion rights. Although Vance isn’t really saying anything too different from his predecessors when he asserts that childless women are “miserable,” his views are rooted in a more contemporary vein, just as so many of today’s political divisions stem from the rubble of the Great Depression. In 2008, The birth rate began to decline And They still haven’t recovered. Scholars are in near-universal agreement on this fact, but whether it was a mistake or a tragedy remains controversial.

Some people might easily believe the latter because it would be good for the economy if our birth rate increased. But Vance’s basic argument – that women are making choices against their own best interests when they pursue childless lives, or even when raising children out of wedlock – makes him we become the ones delivering a bad message.

Republican vice presidential candidate U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) speaks to supporters during a campaign event at the Northwest Michigan Fairgrounds on September 25, 2024 in Traverse City, Michigan.Scott Olson/Getty Images.

The best birtherist arguments make some good points. IN Unfriendly Families: Our culture has made raising children much more difficult than it needs to be (April 2024), senior fellow and conservative columnist for the American Enterprise Institute Tim Carney presents the mildest case. He argues that the 21st century’s intensive approach to parenting has caused many people to avoid becoming parents when they might otherwise enjoy it. He also advocates for pro-parenting policy privileges, from zoning reform to expanded parental leave and an economic marketplace that promotes a family-friendly culture and supply. providing bonuses along with increased salaries for workers who are the breadwinners of the family.

Carney has a cheerful tone and offers advice to help make parenting less stressful, drawn from his own experiences as a father of six. “Overambitious parenting, often unchosen or unconsciously chosen, is a big reason why parenting seems so difficult and expensive,” he writes. “The first panacea to cure the nation’s parenting headaches and create a more family-friendly America, then, is to persuade people to temper their children’s ambitions. ”

He also examines motherhood culture, arguing that it can make parenthood seem scarier than it needs to be, citing Ballerina Farm videos as an example of this trend. “The cunning genius of a great mother,” he writes, “is the exquisitely crafted details that make the scene look less exquisite. “I call it the comfort effect.”