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- [00:00]
A
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C
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B
The Internet is wildly divided this week because of Ballerina Farm is having nine kids. Way too many. We're discussing today. Good news everyone. My time machine worked.
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C
My time machine works.
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B
We're back in 2024 it seems, because everyone is out to get Ballerina Farm Hannah Neeleman all over again for basically the exact same reason as we are always attacking Hannah Neeleman from society because she's having another baby. First, let me just say huge congratulations to the Neeleman family and to the Queen Ballerina Farm herself. Their family just recently announced that she is expecting their ninth baby and her business has been absolutely thriving over the past couple of years. She is truly one of my favorite people to follow on the Internet. And the aesthetic that she creates in help for traditional American values of returning to our roots of agriculture, of homeschooling children to know and love the Lord. Absolutely stunning. Literally. Life goals could not have asked for a better role model for women in this generation. To her now more than 10 million Instagram followers and followers across tons of other platforms as well. If you guys Remember, back in 2024, a journalist from the UK who writes for the Times was invited to come do a huge profile piece on Hannah Neeleman Ballerina Farm and her family and spent a few days out there in Utah before writing what can described as a horrifying hit piece against this beautiful family, to smear her and paint her as this horrible, submissive, abused, innocent flower from her evil husband and the evil impulse of her eight evil children who just wouldn't stop talking over her all the time. And there was a huge component of this article that basically said she was being physically abused. I'm paraphrasing, but like that's literally what you're reading between the lines here. Because she wanted to give unmedicated births to her children in her home instead of having a medicated hospital birth, that she never gets time to herself. And so this journalist who went there with a very clear agenda said, I never got to ask her about birth control or her sex life or any of these crazy things because instead her eight kids were just climbing all over her all the time and demanding all of her attention. Like, yeah, you don't say that Shocked you as an unmarried, childless woman writing from the UK with no sense of understanding of the beauty of this family and how quintessential it is to American culture. Fast forward now the Internet is mad at Hannah Neeleman all over again. Because their company just recently announced a new protein powder with a beautiful short film that they shot over the past few that now has millions of views on the Internet in which Hannah also announces that she's pregnant with her ninth child. If you haven't seen this video, it is spectacularly done. No notes. Absolutely perfect. No notes. No notes. No notes.
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C
No notes.
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B
No notes, no notes. Let's watch it together.
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D
As a ballerina, you are associated with many things. Elegance, grace, boys. But a term not often associated enough. Strength. Before the curtain rose, there existed discipline, sweat, blistered feet. Behind every point, every turn, every place. Plie is a muscle. Twisting, straining, growing. Catch your breath, stay on beat. Repeat, repeat, repeat. On this stage, I learned to be strong. And despite what some people think,
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B
that
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strength never leaves you. It prepares you. The stage is different, but the strength is the same.
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B
Oh, so good. Still no notes. So the film obviously is called Strength at Every Stage. And the message generally is that Hannah used to be a professional ballerina herself. Now she is a mom and is pregnant with her ninth baby and is a full time entrepreneur CEO. She's running a ranch with her husband and their children in Utah. And I love the message at the end. The stage is different, literally like the stage of life and the stage that you're performing on. But the strength it takes is the same. Love. Love. Especially when you consider that article that came out a few years ago that literally was saying, her life is so horrible and she'll never be the same again because she doesn't get to be a ballerina anymore. And her evil husband took that dream away from her. In reality, what she said to me, to this journalist in 2024 was that she decided to leave professional ballet so that she could have children, and the dreams of her life were changing. That's okay. It's actually beautiful. It's more than okay. But I don't know if the ballet video resurfaced all of the feelings about how she's no longer a ballerina or whether it was the announcement of her ninth pregnancy. The Internet is not happy with this video. When are they happy with anything, though, to be honest? And one tweet in particular has been breaking my feed over and over and over again for the last several days from a woman named Rebecca Reed, a playwright, a journalist, also from the uk what is it with Brits who have such a severe problem with Ballerina Farm? I don't get it. Maybe they're just still unhappy that it's been 250 years since we destroyed the British Empire.
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E
Boom. Roasted.
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B
But, you know, losers are gonna complain about these things for the rest of eternity, I suppose. We will accept you as the 51st state if you are interested. I hear you could use some freedom over there these days in their misery, British women just slinging stuff at Ballerina Farm. And Rebecca Reed tweeted a few days ago a tweet that now has over 3 million views. You cannot give nine children adequate time, attention, and connection. You are unquestionably, with nine children, spending less time with your children than a working parent with two kids. Now I'm a new mom. I don't have nine kids. Maybe someday, by the grace of God, I might have nine kids, which will take a lot of grace. Let's be honest. I have one baby, and she is very demanding. The time that I have to devote to her is extreme intense. I don't sleep a lot at night. I am also still trying to run a business and run a show every day. It takes a lot of extra hands. What we often have been calling over the last few months, your team to raise a beautiful baby, even just one baby. So I can't imagine the dedication that it takes to raise nine beautiful, healthy children. But I do know a lot of people who do come from big families like this. And as I'm reading this tweet, I started to think to myself that I know one family here in Washington, D.C. in particular, who does have nine kids? Our secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy and his beautiful wife, who has become a wonderful friend and mentor to me over the years, who is a Fox News hosting contributor, Rachel Campos Duffy. Their family has nine beautiful children and are often photographed here in D.C. with their kids running around the U.S. senate for his confirmation hearing or climbing on laps during Cabinet meetings, running around the White House. They are absolutely a beautiful family. It's been a privilege to get to know them. And I figured maybe, just maybe, instead of listening to this Rebecca Reed character who I looked at her website. She's basically just a complaining feminist journalist. What else is new? Recently appearing on podcasts with titles like Will Taylor Swift Spell Doom for Sex Therapy for the Modern World? Don't Love where that's Probably Going. Or author of the Power of Rude yeah, rude is an understatement from this woman.
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E
How rude?
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B
Maybe instead of listening to her, we should ask someone who actually has nine kids if this hypothesis is true. Can you give nine kids adequate time? Do you find yourself spread too thin? Are your kids going to be set up to fail? Or maybe is this yet another example of miserable childless women screaming at everyone with kids to say, your life is so horrible? That's actually coming from a place of deep insecurity. And on the note of momhood and parenting, I have a quick message for you from our friends at Instagram. If you are anything like me, you love the good parts of the Internet, but you probably also side eye what is out there on the Internet for teenagers. I've got a little girl at home now, and even though she is light years away from having her own phone, I'm already thinking about what it's going to look like when she eventually asks, mom, can I have an Instagram? That's why I'm really glad Instagram teen accounts now build in automatic protections from day one for teenagers. By default, teen accounts limit who can contact teens so that they're getting messages from people they actually know, not just random strangers who are sliding into their DMs. And it's also designed to keep their content experience positive and age appropriate. And for younger teenagers under age 16, they can't loosen those default safety settings without a parent's approval, which means you get to stay involved in all of the big decisions about how your teen is using Instagram. As a mom, I want to actually guide my daughter's online life instead of just reacting after something goes horribly wrong. And and these teen accounts give us more tools to do exactly that. So if you've got a teenager in your life or a future teenager like I do, check out Instagram teen accounts and see how these automatic protections can help them connect more safely online. Learn more@instagram.com teenaccounts so I saw this tweet. It's breaking the Internet. Everyone has something to say about it. And as I'm reading it the first time, I'm thinking to myself, nine kids. I know someone who has some expertise raising nine children. Rachel Campos Duffy joins us today to give her take as a mom of nine. Rachel, I sent you this tweet for you to look at before you jumped on. But I'm curious if you agree, can you give nine children, and I'll quote the author here, adequate time, attention and connection? And why do you think people are demonizing big families so much this week?
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E
Well, the demonization of big families has been going on for a long time and it's only intensified with this whole like weird Christian nationalism and this idea that somehow, you know, there's some, something very political about having kids and enjoying it. And everyone thinks you're like, you must be faking it, you must be lying to us that, you know, having nine kids is wonderful. So first of all, when you have nine kids, I mean, unless you're the, you know, you're having nine kids at one time, which would be very difficult, you're having nine kids over, you know, I have nine kids over a 20 year period. So most of my kids are spaced two years apart. I have one, two kids are four years apart, another one with three years apart. But most of them are all two years apart. And so you have older kids helping out with younger kids. You, you have a team, you have a tribe and you all sort of work together. And it's actually very similar to the way humans have always operated on farms and on, you know, in feudal times. I mean, people just were a big family and they worked together and they made it work. And so that's sort of what happens in, in a big family. Kids learn to be very independent and they learn to cooperate. Now, did Evita, who's my oldest, get more attention than my youngest? Yes, of course she did. She was an only child. And I, you know, doted on her. And literally when her sibling came two years later, my, my oldest son, we literally like, thank God Jack came because Evita was turning into a diva because she was getting so much undivided attention. And, you know, the more kids I had, the more actually responsible and interesting she became. And so I think there's that part as well. When you sent me this earlier, this topic earlier and told me to join you yesterday, I read the tweet to all my kids. And, of course, this is the ballerina farm mom, which we all know. My kids all know who she is, and she presents this very beautiful image. She's obviously wealthy, and she's gorgeous. She's a ballerina. You know, having kids doesn't seem to have changed her figure at all. And so there's going to be people that are very jealous of that, that want it to look like you're. You know, they. They want you. If you're gonna have nine kids, they want you to fit that image of somebody who doesn't take care of themselves and, you know, maybe looks like you're a Branch Davidian and you're wearing some, you know, prairie dress and you never wear makeup, and you don't have jewelry, and I don't know what they're thinking. This girl makes motherhood look good, but she does, let's be honest, have a lot of help. She has great genetics, and she has a lot of money. Frankly, if I could do it that way, I would. I would love to be her. But I do try hard to keep myself together and to. And to try and make sure that my children have as much attention as I can give them. But I also. When I brought this up to the kids, what was really interesting, Isabelle, was they. I. I said to them, you know, all the studies I've seen have said that a person's personality is more shaped by their siblings than by their parents. And without missing a beat, all of them said, oh, yeah, that's true.
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B
That.
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E
That has to be true. That has to be true. It's just intuitively they get that. And so I'll leave you with this. What? We have friends who have only children. Those only children love coming to our house. My sister has four kids, and she said that they had a neighbor who had one child, and that child loved to come to her house. And when the mother would try and pull the child, you know, we got to go home. We got to go home. After the play date, the little girl would say, no, I want to be part of them. So I think what you're missing, what this person is missing, is that siblings is the greatest gift you can give your children. My children love their siblings. They have. They fight with their siblings. The alliances among the siblings changes, you know, almost daily, depending on who stole what outfit. It's fun, it's messy, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. And even though the, the younger ones maybe get less attention than the older ones, I don't think they would trade it. And I will add this too. I had, I have more money now that I have nine kids and that's sort of nice too. So there's, there's pros and cons. You know, we go on nicer vacations now that, you know, I have nine kids than we did when we had one or two. They all are great experiences. There are pros and cons.
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B
Yeah, totally. 100%. And I think what's frustrating me is that there is this one sided narrative not just about having nine kids, but about even having one kid on the Internet today. So before we let you go, do you have a message of encouragement and support for young women that are just constantly hearing this negative message about pregnancy, about childbirth, about motherhood? There's this huge trend on TikTok called the girl with the list that's literally just racking up the hundreds to thousands of reasons never to want to have babies. You've done it nine times over. And I'll never forget being in the Fox Green room with you a few months ago around Christmas time. And I said, oh my gosh, I got a jet. I gotta go feed my baby or pump or do something. And you looked at me dead in the face and you said, don't give up on that because I breastfed all of my children. And it was such a beautiful journey just to know that there is such a community of amazing moms and dads out there. Encouraging that for the next generation is so helpful for me. So do you have anything to say to others who might be discerning motherhood?
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E
Well, first of all, you really should focus on the things that last. Right. The things that really matter at the end of life. Nobody is, you know, your corporation is not going to hold your hand on your deathbed. The people that are going to be around you as you pass from this life into the next are your family, are your children, are your grandchildren. These are the things that really matter. And I have a friend who is a cardiologist and he asked, also has nine children, ironically. And I asked him once, I said, you're around people who are, you know, dying or on the verge of dying all the time. What is the biggest regret that people have at the end of life? That's the question I asked him. And he said, without missing a beat, he said, hands down, number one regret was, I wish I'd had more kids. And so what I tell people, especially young moms, as their, you know, it's because it's busy. When I see you, Isabel, I know exactly. I, I just feel like going, I see you, I know what you're doing. I know what you're going through. You're trying to take, you know, take care of these children, be there for your husband. You have this wonderful podcast. You're reaching. You have this mission and this ministry to, to other young moms. I see what you're doing. I know how hard it is. And so what I would say to young women, I say this as a 54 year old woman who has nine children. When you're in your 20s and you're having these babies. And by the way, the beautiful thing about being Catholic is I never felt like I had a choice. I was never making a decision. I was just never on birth control and I just had the babies God gave me. But a lot of people don't think that way. And they're like, you know, I'm planning this out. I always say, don't think about what your, how many kids you want right now. Because if you think right now, you're so busy and so crazy, you can't imagine, you know, having another child. I remember every time I would have get, you know, another pregnancy test, saying, oh, my God, I'm pregnant. Always seem to be in the middle of a campaign at the worst time. Always seemed like it was the worst time. But what I would say to them is, don't think about how many kids you want in this moment when it's busy. Think about how many children you would like to have around the Thanksgiving table 20 years from now. That's how you have to think. Because this crazy baby phase and all those negative things on the list that, that, you know, very negative lady put out, all of that will pass. And in the end, your only legacy is your family. And big families are a big blessing.
- [19:41]
B
Oh, so beautifully said, Rachel. Thank you so much for your family and your family's story. I can't wait to see you again so soon. I feel like I'm bumping into you every couple days. You're doing great work.
- [19:52]
E
I'm so following you all the time. My girls, when I told them I had an interview with you this morning, oh my God. With Isabel Brown, I'm like, don't you know I know her? And they're like, you know her that well? I'm like, yeah, I know Isabelle Brown. So you're doing great stuff and you're an encouragement to so many and you're doing great. Great work. Love you. Love your family.
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B
Love you, too. Rachel, we'll be sure to have you back on for a much longer interview very soon.
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E
Can I give you. Can I say one last thing, Isabelle, before I go?
- [20:19]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [20:20]
E
To all you young moms out there, you don't have to be look as perfect as the ballerina mom, but you do need to keep it together. Take care of yourself. Make that time for yourself. Whether it's going to the gym if you can, or working out at home or finding a little time to put on a little makeup once, get your hair done when it needs to get done, and cut. Take care of yourself. You'll feel better through the process. That's it.
- [20:48]
B
Amen. You just inspired me to go get a workout in today. We'll see you soon, Rachel.
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E
You got it. Bye.
- [20:54]
B
If you're a mom, you will totally understand that in the last few months, everyone has started to ask me, so, when are you guys thinking about having your next baby? Isla is not even one yet. She's 10 months old. I'm just now starting to plan her first birthday, which is ripping my soul out. Nobody prepared me for how fast this year was going to go. It's true what they say. The days are so long, the months and years are so short. And I'm so devastated that my baby isn't really gonna be a baby anymore. But people are already asking, so when are you guys thinking about having baby number two? Not yet is the answer. Maybe in the next couple of months, it'll start crossing our mind. But I find so much joy in hearing that question from so many of our friends with kids. Because it's not childless women that are asking me that question. Childless women typically just stare at me and are angry and don't love that I'm bringing my baby everywhere. I'm the annoying lady sitting in business class on a flight to Nashville, and I have my baby sitting in the seat next to me. And everyone goes, ugh. You're that person who brings your baby on the plane. I'm the annoying lady who brought her baby to dinner and parks the stroller next to the table at the restaurant. And everyone's like, ugh, so annoying. Why would you do that? In reality, everyone I know with kids is already like, so when do you guys want another kid? So when do you guys want another kid? And it's been this beautiful journey over the last year to realize kids are never a burden. They are always a blessing, whether you have one or you have nine. I still am so wildly inspired by the Neeleman family and hope one day to meet Hannah. I know you guys are begging for us to have her on the show. We are working on that hopefully here in the next couple of months, but she is absolutely incredible. True definition of an it girl in my opinion. Pageant queen, beauty queen, professional ballerina, mom of the year, entrepreneur, farmer and rancher and still has time to make her own sourdough at the end of the day. Meanwhile, I've started my sourdough starter three separate times and then I forget to feed it on one of the days so I've had to throw it away many, many times over. I can't even get past the starter phase so that's embarrassing. My husband says we should just buy the loaves at this point, honey. Not worth the continued investment. And I can't even keep plants Al so maybe it's not surprising I can't keep my sourdough starter alive. I will tell you, this also is making me excited about maybe taking an adult ballet class. I miss my ballet. My ballet years. Oh so fun. Are you guys upset with Hannah Neeleman for having yet another baby and continuing to grow her business? Or is this literally definition of new life goals for the new American dream in our generation? Let me know in the comments.
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Experian.