Sarah, I really appreciate your take on this debate and I think you have put into words a lot of the ideas that I've been grappling with for a while. It has been really hard for me personally as a highly educated liberal woman to come to terms with my own life /choice to be a homemaker at this stage of my life. Instead of embracing it and enjoying it, I feel wracked with judgement and guilt for not doing something "more" with my life/education/intellect.
So interesting, this idea of "more" – what is "more," anyway, when you put it in the larger scheme of things? Even if you wrote a Nobel Prize-winning book, how many people would actually care in 100 years, 200? That's not to trivialize that work. Just to say that the concept of "more" can actually also be really relative, and if you put the "more" in a much larger framework, it can help prioritize what matters. I say that, though, as someone who really struggles to balance motherhood and work. My work matters to me very much, and yet more and more I'm constantly reminded how little it matters, if that makes sense...it's a paradox I don't know if I'll ever shake.
I have the same struggle. I constantly feel the need for others to "know" I'm not "just a mom," that I once had a successful career, as if being "just a mom" isn't enough. Why have we agreed as a culture that this most necessary labor has so little value? I guess because value is synonymous with money in the US. (The book Essential Labor helped me reframe this when an online unpaid labor calculator revealed that the work I perform for "free" is worth $140,000 -- more than my husband makes!)
Totally agree that there is a connotation of weakness and lack of seriousness associated with femininity, child rearing, “domestic tasks.” And I think it’s very fair to point out that this is an unfair element in the (very big!!) reaction to BF Times article. It’s been refreshing to see some books (recently, Boymom and When You Care— and would count Ordinary Insanity among these too ☺️) tackle these topics that the left has abandoned/avoided.
A pain point for me with BF - in a time when JD Vance and his ilk - is that it glamorizes a lifestyle and type of family that the right weaponizes on the country as a whole. Does BF have a responsibility to grapple with that? My definition of feminism- which includes an expansive care for others, particularly the marginalized, that looks out for more than your right to individual choice- would say yes.
Thanks for bringing this up. It's a really good point. I can see the argument about weaponization, but I am also a bit wary of it. Have you read Doppelganger, by Naomi Klein? She talks a lot about this – how once an issue (like the "lab leak" theory, for example) is touched by one political "side," the other refuses to even look at it. I see a bit of this going on here. As Klein argues, I think this can be a way to let the "other" dictate the political discourse – if "they" claim "family values" or "women at home" or whatever, then "we" are automatically suspicious of it or feel the need to qualify it. I think this can lead to a zero-sum game – we can't ever question any vaccine or scientific development because that's "their" issue, and they won't ever consider supporting immigrant rights or what have you because it's "ours." I know these are oversimplifications but you get the idea. At the same time, as someone married to an indigenous Mexican man with a mixed-race child, I very much understand what you're saying here, and I see ideals of the white American family in Ballerina Farm that I'm uncomfortable with. What should she do about that? I'm not sure. That's a really good question. I really wish this profile – or another – would have addressed that in a nuanced way instead of resorted to the same sort of us/them oversimplifications.
I'm so glad you wrote this. I haven't read anything on this discourse (and I've been reading) that so well articulates my gripes. I subscribed simply so I could comment and have sent this piece to a handful of friends. It is so good, thank you.
As an outsider to white feminism (I'm a biracial, Millennial Catholic mother to four young children, and a stay at home mom), I'm disturbed by the lack of respect and charity towards women who simply enjoy and have chosen a more traditional path. The biggest critics in my own personal life have always been disregulated, resentful fellow women who claim feminism, but seem to always have an axe to grind with other women.
The piece Agnew published, in my opinion, had more to do with her own insecurities and frankly ignorance. I found myself asking multiple times while reading-- has this woman never been around a larger family or even a young baby? Ultimately Hannah is not a place where she needs media outlets to grow or advance her brand. She is successful in her own right. The granting of an interview was an act of hospitality, a kind gesture, but the idea that it would warrant getting her alone is strange and ultimately unrealistic.
Thank you so much for your support and for this note, Katherine. This question really resonated with me: "I found myself asking multiple times while reading-- has this woman never been around a larger family or even a young baby?" It's interesting to me that this writer has no children and is not married. It seems that to even raise that point is contentious – and yet the subject of this profile is largely marriage and motherhood. The writer seems not to understand how conversations between women when young children are around often work, or to even understand that getting 2.5 seconds of time as a mother to talk freely can be, well, a significant issue. At the same time, I can see how she would have the expectation of being able to speak more freely with Neeleman. I can see how this might have been surprising or concerning – however, I think if it was, she should have brought this up directly with her subject, at the time, or afterwards, in follow up. Instead, she chooses to use it as framing. Thanks again for the note and for joining the conversation.
So glad to be here-- I really appreciate what you're putting out there in the world. It's a needed and refreshing voice.
I think it's easy for different kinds of women to get sioled-- without trying to generalize too much I imagine a large family may be expensive in a place like London/among Agnew's peers. In my own life, leaving the city (Minneapolis) and moving to a smaller community and then proceeding to have three more children within four years not only physically isolated me in some ways, but ideologically made me unsavory to some lefty friends who didn't understand or frankly respect my lifestyle. Admittedly, most of my dearest friends are other stay-at-home-mothers with multiple children.
When you're constantly reading think pieces about how awful these homemakers are, how everyone is in some sort of abusive marriage (Sara Peterson and Jo Piazza make this claim in their lauded work), making weird leaps between baking and racism (lol)-- why would you ever want to get to know or even spend time with a woman who is more traditional?
My generalization is Agnew is both fascinated by and desiring of these traditional lifestyles.
Interesting take! I found a similar response when I homeschooled this year. We pulled our daughter out of school because my husband had a fellowship and we’d be traveling around Mexico, and I found myself continually feeling the need to justify the decision as “just this year” or “just because we’re traveling,” because I just felt so much judgement seething beneath the surface – not even so much for not choosing public school or school at all, but because homeschool is really confronting to a lot of our understandings about motherhood, parenthood, career, the meaning of life, etc etc. This is a subject so rarely talked about between women. I have gotten so many fascinating comments from homeschooling mothers about how radically it has shifted their perspective on life. Women have so much to say and the conversation I feel gets dominated by a few very strong voices kind of regurgitating the same orthodoxies. Thanks for sharing!
Interesting take. I read the profile second, and was all ready to assign it as an instance of "what not to do," but I found it much more effective than you did. The author makes clear to me that she *couldn't* ask Neeleman questions directly. "I can’t, it seems, get an answer out of Neeleman without her being corrected, interrupted or answered for by either her husband or a child." I thought she showed this effectively through scene & dialogue. She seems largely disempowered by her husband, based on actions in-scene.
I can see this argument, but to me, it doesn't hold water. She's a journalist – she can figure out a way to ask this woman questions. She spent 4 hours in her house. That's nothing. I've interviewed people 3, 4, 5 times. She could have called, followed up. She could have asked later, if this was really a significant theme: what's your relationship with your husband. Here's what I saw. There are a million ways, as a journalist, she could have approached this to clarify these questions – at the very least she owes this integrity to her subject. She doesn't need to paint a rosy picture, but to go for one visit and conclude this woman is disempowered without any follow-up, any direct questions, any addressing of the issue with the subject herself, is really problematic for me just as a journalist. I think it's unfair and sloppy work. Also, every single scene she includes frames some sort of central feminist issue, but she never asks Neeleman a single curious question. She could also have followed up here – again, one day is nothing for a profile. But she doesn't. All of these are strategic choices. Nothing here to me suggests much curiosity at all, much genuine interest in really understanding this person or her point of view.
Thank you for this piece!! Such a good addition to the conversation that needs to happen. It is all fascinating, but the part feels especially timely is I think the politicization of the choice.
Thank you so much for this take. The overall narrative on the Neeleman piece that I’ve been coming across is the critical one you, well, critique. It reminds me a bit of the ideological creep I’m seeing coming into some feminist circles as viewing heterosexual marriage as inherently patriarchal and anti-feminist - both motherhood and marriage only contributing to the annihilation of the poor women suckered into these institutions. Don’t get me wrong - my accumulated frustrations as a wife/mother do find some relief in a good damn-the-patriarchy story. However, the reality of our individual lives and choices is much more nuanced than many
“reminds me a bit of the ideological creep I’m seeing coming into some feminist circles as viewing heterosexual marriage as inherently patriarchal and anti-feminist” – yes, ugh. And I think the tricky question here is: even IF motherhood has historically been an experience dominated or appropriated by patriarchy, do we then just reject it entirely or diminish its significance, as second wave feminists in particular were wont to do? Or is there a way to reclaim it FOR women? There’s a sense of just, “Well, that’s patriarchy,” so it’s unacceptable – and it really shuts off an entire realm of experience that women can claim for themselves. It’s also just depressing – many women will become mothers, and are deprived of meaningful and beautiful art and literature and culture on this experience because of this simplistic knee-jerk rejection.
Oh wow this is such an amazing piece, straight down the line - read in one swoop at my kitchen after breakfast - that I need to read it again before commenting. In the meantime I will definitely share it. Just one thought. When I first read the name Ballerina Farm, I immediately thought of Gloop. But by the end of your piece I was thinking 'Good on them for standing up for themselves with the name of their farm'.
Sarah, I really appreciate your take on this debate and I think you have put into words a lot of the ideas that I've been grappling with for a while. It has been really hard for me personally as a highly educated liberal woman to come to terms with my own life /choice to be a homemaker at this stage of my life. Instead of embracing it and enjoying it, I feel wracked with judgement and guilt for not doing something "more" with my life/education/intellect.
So interesting, this idea of "more" – what is "more," anyway, when you put it in the larger scheme of things? Even if you wrote a Nobel Prize-winning book, how many people would actually care in 100 years, 200? That's not to trivialize that work. Just to say that the concept of "more" can actually also be really relative, and if you put the "more" in a much larger framework, it can help prioritize what matters. I say that, though, as someone who really struggles to balance motherhood and work. My work matters to me very much, and yet more and more I'm constantly reminded how little it matters, if that makes sense...it's a paradox I don't know if I'll ever shake.
I have the same struggle. I constantly feel the need for others to "know" I'm not "just a mom," that I once had a successful career, as if being "just a mom" isn't enough. Why have we agreed as a culture that this most necessary labor has so little value? I guess because value is synonymous with money in the US. (The book Essential Labor helped me reframe this when an online unpaid labor calculator revealed that the work I perform for "free" is worth $140,000 -- more than my husband makes!)
Totally agree that there is a connotation of weakness and lack of seriousness associated with femininity, child rearing, “domestic tasks.” And I think it’s very fair to point out that this is an unfair element in the (very big!!) reaction to BF Times article. It’s been refreshing to see some books (recently, Boymom and When You Care— and would count Ordinary Insanity among these too ☺️) tackle these topics that the left has abandoned/avoided.
A pain point for me with BF - in a time when JD Vance and his ilk - is that it glamorizes a lifestyle and type of family that the right weaponizes on the country as a whole. Does BF have a responsibility to grapple with that? My definition of feminism- which includes an expansive care for others, particularly the marginalized, that looks out for more than your right to individual choice- would say yes.
Thanks for bringing this up. It's a really good point. I can see the argument about weaponization, but I am also a bit wary of it. Have you read Doppelganger, by Naomi Klein? She talks a lot about this – how once an issue (like the "lab leak" theory, for example) is touched by one political "side," the other refuses to even look at it. I see a bit of this going on here. As Klein argues, I think this can be a way to let the "other" dictate the political discourse – if "they" claim "family values" or "women at home" or whatever, then "we" are automatically suspicious of it or feel the need to qualify it. I think this can lead to a zero-sum game – we can't ever question any vaccine or scientific development because that's "their" issue, and they won't ever consider supporting immigrant rights or what have you because it's "ours." I know these are oversimplifications but you get the idea. At the same time, as someone married to an indigenous Mexican man with a mixed-race child, I very much understand what you're saying here, and I see ideals of the white American family in Ballerina Farm that I'm uncomfortable with. What should she do about that? I'm not sure. That's a really good question. I really wish this profile – or another – would have addressed that in a nuanced way instead of resorted to the same sort of us/them oversimplifications.
I'm so glad you wrote this. I haven't read anything on this discourse (and I've been reading) that so well articulates my gripes. I subscribed simply so I could comment and have sent this piece to a handful of friends. It is so good, thank you.
As an outsider to white feminism (I'm a biracial, Millennial Catholic mother to four young children, and a stay at home mom), I'm disturbed by the lack of respect and charity towards women who simply enjoy and have chosen a more traditional path. The biggest critics in my own personal life have always been disregulated, resentful fellow women who claim feminism, but seem to always have an axe to grind with other women.
The piece Agnew published, in my opinion, had more to do with her own insecurities and frankly ignorance. I found myself asking multiple times while reading-- has this woman never been around a larger family or even a young baby? Ultimately Hannah is not a place where she needs media outlets to grow or advance her brand. She is successful in her own right. The granting of an interview was an act of hospitality, a kind gesture, but the idea that it would warrant getting her alone is strange and ultimately unrealistic.
Thank you so much for your support and for this note, Katherine. This question really resonated with me: "I found myself asking multiple times while reading-- has this woman never been around a larger family or even a young baby?" It's interesting to me that this writer has no children and is not married. It seems that to even raise that point is contentious – and yet the subject of this profile is largely marriage and motherhood. The writer seems not to understand how conversations between women when young children are around often work, or to even understand that getting 2.5 seconds of time as a mother to talk freely can be, well, a significant issue. At the same time, I can see how she would have the expectation of being able to speak more freely with Neeleman. I can see how this might have been surprising or concerning – however, I think if it was, she should have brought this up directly with her subject, at the time, or afterwards, in follow up. Instead, she chooses to use it as framing. Thanks again for the note and for joining the conversation.
So glad to be here-- I really appreciate what you're putting out there in the world. It's a needed and refreshing voice.
I think it's easy for different kinds of women to get sioled-- without trying to generalize too much I imagine a large family may be expensive in a place like London/among Agnew's peers. In my own life, leaving the city (Minneapolis) and moving to a smaller community and then proceeding to have three more children within four years not only physically isolated me in some ways, but ideologically made me unsavory to some lefty friends who didn't understand or frankly respect my lifestyle. Admittedly, most of my dearest friends are other stay-at-home-mothers with multiple children.
When you're constantly reading think pieces about how awful these homemakers are, how everyone is in some sort of abusive marriage (Sara Peterson and Jo Piazza make this claim in their lauded work), making weird leaps between baking and racism (lol)-- why would you ever want to get to know or even spend time with a woman who is more traditional?
My generalization is Agnew is both fascinated by and desiring of these traditional lifestyles.
Interesting take! I found a similar response when I homeschooled this year. We pulled our daughter out of school because my husband had a fellowship and we’d be traveling around Mexico, and I found myself continually feeling the need to justify the decision as “just this year” or “just because we’re traveling,” because I just felt so much judgement seething beneath the surface – not even so much for not choosing public school or school at all, but because homeschool is really confronting to a lot of our understandings about motherhood, parenthood, career, the meaning of life, etc etc. This is a subject so rarely talked about between women. I have gotten so many fascinating comments from homeschooling mothers about how radically it has shifted their perspective on life. Women have so much to say and the conversation I feel gets dominated by a few very strong voices kind of regurgitating the same orthodoxies. Thanks for sharing!
Excellent pushback against those who continue to criticize/control women’s choices.
Interesting take. I read the profile second, and was all ready to assign it as an instance of "what not to do," but I found it much more effective than you did. The author makes clear to me that she *couldn't* ask Neeleman questions directly. "I can’t, it seems, get an answer out of Neeleman without her being corrected, interrupted or answered for by either her husband or a child." I thought she showed this effectively through scene & dialogue. She seems largely disempowered by her husband, based on actions in-scene.
I can see this argument, but to me, it doesn't hold water. She's a journalist – she can figure out a way to ask this woman questions. She spent 4 hours in her house. That's nothing. I've interviewed people 3, 4, 5 times. She could have called, followed up. She could have asked later, if this was really a significant theme: what's your relationship with your husband. Here's what I saw. There are a million ways, as a journalist, she could have approached this to clarify these questions – at the very least she owes this integrity to her subject. She doesn't need to paint a rosy picture, but to go for one visit and conclude this woman is disempowered without any follow-up, any direct questions, any addressing of the issue with the subject herself, is really problematic for me just as a journalist. I think it's unfair and sloppy work. Also, every single scene she includes frames some sort of central feminist issue, but she never asks Neeleman a single curious question. She could also have followed up here – again, one day is nothing for a profile. But she doesn't. All of these are strategic choices. Nothing here to me suggests much curiosity at all, much genuine interest in really understanding this person or her point of view.
Thank you for this piece!! Such a good addition to the conversation that needs to happen. It is all fascinating, but the part feels especially timely is I think the politicization of the choice.
Thank you so much for this take. The overall narrative on the Neeleman piece that I’ve been coming across is the critical one you, well, critique. It reminds me a bit of the ideological creep I’m seeing coming into some feminist circles as viewing heterosexual marriage as inherently patriarchal and anti-feminist - both motherhood and marriage only contributing to the annihilation of the poor women suckered into these institutions. Don’t get me wrong - my accumulated frustrations as a wife/mother do find some relief in a good damn-the-patriarchy story. However, the reality of our individual lives and choices is much more nuanced than many
“reminds me a bit of the ideological creep I’m seeing coming into some feminist circles as viewing heterosexual marriage as inherently patriarchal and anti-feminist” – yes, ugh. And I think the tricky question here is: even IF motherhood has historically been an experience dominated or appropriated by patriarchy, do we then just reject it entirely or diminish its significance, as second wave feminists in particular were wont to do? Or is there a way to reclaim it FOR women? There’s a sense of just, “Well, that’s patriarchy,” so it’s unacceptable – and it really shuts off an entire realm of experience that women can claim for themselves. It’s also just depressing – many women will become mothers, and are deprived of meaningful and beautiful art and literature and culture on this experience because of this simplistic knee-jerk rejection.
…than many stories suggest. Sorry, hit post button before finishing my sentence!
Oh wow this is such an amazing piece, straight down the line - read in one swoop at my kitchen after breakfast - that I need to read it again before commenting. In the meantime I will definitely share it. Just one thought. When I first read the name Ballerina Farm, I immediately thought of Gloop. But by the end of your piece I was thinking 'Good on them for standing up for themselves with the name of their farm'.