Hannah Neeleman: Is ‘trade wife’ life really as perfect as Hannah lets on?

So intriguing is Hannah Neeleman’s life as a mother of eight — a mother who eschews help with childcare, cooks every meal from scratch with a baby on her hip, and entered a beauty pageant just 12 days after the birth of her youngest — that more than 18 million people follow her every move on social media. Queen among the so-called “trad Wives” (trad is short for “traditional”), Hannah is part of a movement with huge followings on TikTok and Instagram that rejects modern gender roles in favour of women being at the beck and call of their families. Sharing videos of herself at home on the family dairy farm in Utah, straining homemade yoghurt, rustling up lemon meringue pie and cookies made with freshly laid eggs, and baking sourdough bread, she appears to be the perfect antidote to more usual depictions of modern motherhood, especially for a generation which watched their own frazzled mums stick fish fingers and chips in the oven after a long day in the office.

However, among her army of fans, some are now raising concerns about the reality of Hannah’s life on a remote farm with her husband, creating their own posts highlighting what they believe to be glimpses of a less sunny side to the trad Wife movement. A magazine interview last month created a storm of comment and speculation, while a video of Hannah, 34, opening her birthday present from husband Daniel Neeleman, son of a billionaire airline founder, was viewed more than 40 million times. In this post, as .