From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Trad Wife Vs. Girl Boss: Unpacking the Ballerina Farm Scandal

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

The 2010s have seen the rise of "the girl boss," a term championed by feminists encouraging women to strive for their dream careers while breaking glass ceilings. As a result, many women who began dedicating their lives to intense careers started looking down on stay-at-home moms or homemakers. Well, until now.   Daily Mail columnist & New York Times bestselling author Maureen Callahan joins the Duffys to discuss how 18+ million people's fascination with Hannah Neeleman, known online as Ballerina Farm, and her "trad wife" lifestyle shows that many young people may be yearning to trade in their high rise apartments and grueling jobs for families, farmland, and traditional values — a trend that could, in turn, impact the 2024 election.   Follow Sean & Rachel on X: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's great to be back at the kitchen table. And today we have with us today someone we had on a few weeks back. And we couldn't wait to figure out another topic that we could have her back for because we so enjoyed the conversation. And, of course, that's the amazing Daily Mail columnist, Maureen Callahan. We had her on to talk about her new book, Ask Not, The Kennedys and the Women They Destroy, which is like the summer read that everybody's picking

up um and it's not too late to to grab it it's doing incredible on all the charts including at amazon where it's number one today on the women in history category amazing figure maureen i know by the way i learned something about maureen sean that i didn't know until now. It's something you're going to be very jealous of. Maureen was actually on like a list of the most powerful Irish Americans. You've never been on a list like that. I haven't come close to that list. Here's to you, Maureen. Thanks.

Thanks, Sean. From one Irish person to another. He's going to spend the rest of his month trying to figure out what he has to do to get on this list. Damn it. I didn't know what existed. So today we're going to have Maureen. Welcome, by the way. Welcome back. Thanks, Rachel.

Thanks, Sean, for having me. Well, this thing erupted in culture. And I mean, it's been brewing, but it's kind of had a new eruption. This is the whole idea of trad wives. And we're going to break down what a trad wife is and who these trad wife influencers and for those of you who don't understand this concept, but it's a big deal right now. Young women are following these Instagram influencers who have sort of said so long to the feminist script of what it means to be a woman today. Goodbye, girl boss. Hello, I'm going to live on a farm, on a homestead. And then they end up documenting it on Instagram and other sort of social media platforms in a very attractive way. And they're making a lot of money. The one that we're going

to talk about now, she has over 9 million followers. I think she has like 40 or 35, I think 35 people that work for her both on the farm because the farm has to be run, but mostly in a warehouse because they end up selling products and they end up getting sponsored. And so there's a whole business and enterprise around it. The one that we're going to talk about is one of the most famous ones. She is named, her handle on Instagram is Ballerina Farm. And the reason she's Ballerina Farm is because she had gone to Juilliard. She was going to be a ballerina farm. And the reason she's ballerina farm is because she had gone to Juilliard. She was going to be a ballerina. She ended up meeting a,

another fellow Mormon who also came from a large family, but he happened to be rich, which is always a benefit. He was like, that's always helpful. He's the heir to jet blue. And they decided to go move onto a farm and she gave up ballet and this very promising career. And she's very young and already has eight children.

And people love watching her on Instagram. But other people love tearing it down. And so an author named Megan Agnew from the Times of London went to visit her and wrote an article that made it sound like this young woman, Hannah Nealon, ballerina farm lady, is sort of like held captive. She's a hostage on the farm. And then just to kind of set this up, you know, a lot of people responded to this saying she should, you know, we got to free her. She's trapped on this farm. Let's save her from her trad wife life. And then she responded to that article saying this was a very disingenuous article. This article, by the way, went viral. And here is her response, Hannah Nealman's response to the article written about her.

She invited this author or this writer, I should say, to her farm and was very disappointed with the results of the article. Listen. A couple of weeks ago, we had a reporter come into our home to learn more about our family and business. We thought the interview went really well, very similar to the dozens of interviews we had done in recent memory. We were taken back, however, when we saw the printed article, which shocked us and shocked the world by being an attack on our family and my marriage, portraying me as oppressed, with my husband being the culprit. This couldn't be further from the truth. Nothing we said in the interview implied this conclusion, which leads me to believe the angle taken was predetermined.

For Daniel and I, our priority in life is God and family. Everything else comes second. The greatest day of my life was when Daniel and I were married 13 years ago. Together we have built a business from scratch. We've brought eight children into this world and have prioritized our marriage all along the way. We are co-parents, co-CEOs, co-diaper changers, kitchen cleaners, and decision makers. We are one. And I love him more today than I did 13 years ago. We have many dreams still to accomplish.

We aren't done having babies. We are excited for our new farm store to open. And I can't wait to see what the future holds for the rest of it. But for now, I'm doing what I love most. holds for the rest of it. But for now, I'm doing what I love most, being a mother, wife, a businesswoman, a farmer, a lover of Jesus, and making meals from scratch. So, Maureen, I hope I tried to break down, you know, the story as well as I could. That's the response. What do you make of this? I mean, there's a lot of problems in the world,

and yet a lot of people are talking about this because I think there's a lot of cultural things brewing beneath the surface of Ballerina Farm and this controversy. Oh, yeah, I think you're exactly right, Rachel. When something like this reverberates in the culture, it's definitely getting at larger themes and things that people are worried about or thinking about, even if they're not aware. I read that piece, that Tradwife piece in the Times, and I agree with Hannah. I am sure that that angle was taken before that writer ever stepped foot on that farm. The Tradwife thing is interesting to me, especially in this moment where we're post Roe v. Wade. We have a female candidate for president. And there is a backlash, I think, to what feminism had traditionally promised women, which is that you can have it all. which is that you can have it all. You can have a career, you can have a marriage,

you can have a children, sorry, you can have children. If only you sort of lean in hard enough. Right. I think that what's going on with trad wives and the sort of backlash to it that we're seeing is kind of similar to the backlash we saw to lean in about five years ago. And I'll never forget Michelle Obama when she was out promoting her own book, told a crowd in Brooklyn that lean in is a lie, that that S doesn't work, that the idea that women can have it all at the same time is pernicious and unhelpful. and unhelpful. And when you look at the trad wife column, what I found disingenuous about it is that this woman is clearly brilliant. She is marketing herself into outer space. She has like 9 million followers, a million brands. She's employing at least 40 people. This, this article is like a springboard for the inevitable reality show. She's a genius. She's no sort of helpless woman being chained up on the farm,

milking organic, you know, substances into her iced coffee and mason jars. It's hilarious. Yes. So you mentioned the article, and we all think the same thing, that it was predetermined. Again, this lifestyle, the trad wife, the trad husband, is an affront to this liberal idea that, you know what, you shouldn't actually take a traditional role, maybe modified in the sense that, yeah, we can have a career and, you know, we can still have babies.

We can still be, you know, a wife and a husband. But why do you think this is such a threat to the left and to feminism and those who want to say there's no other way but to lean in, to put your whole heart and soul into your work and your education, forget love, forget family? Why is this such an affront to them? You know, the trad wife or the trad dad, you know, it really is. It's staking an oppositional position to everything that is orthodoxy on the left, right? So on the left, you are whatever gender you proclaim. You use whatever bathroom you like. You box in whatever Olympic boxing match you like. And the trad positions, I think, are in defiant contrast, that there is worth, there is

value in the home and the hearth. And I think you're just seeing like a bit of a culture war really play out and it's probably very necessary. So I think you're just seeing like a bit of a culture war really play out and it's probably very necessary. So I think you hit on something really important because there's there's two angles to this. I want to hit on the. So I think there's some like really macro issues about like, you know, what is a woman? What is a man? I mean, and I think that these battles are actually being played out in the current presidential election. And we can talk about that right now. I mean, a little later, but on the sort of micro level. So my girls follow ballerina farm. They're fully aware of like the fake part of it, right? Just like when you watch a reality show, you know, you, you sort of organically understand that there are some things that aren't like real life.

So they get like this woman gets to live this life because she's married to the heir of JetBlue and they're very rich. And, you know, so everything is super aesthetic. You know, if she makes sourdough, it's in a really beautiful bowl. You know, it's not very realistic. I also grew up, my kids also grew up at a school when we lived in Wisconsin with real farm girls, like real girls who worked on dairy farms. And I was talking to my oldest daughter about that because she's still in touch with some of these girls. And they were very resentful of ballerina farm girl because they're like, listen,

it's not like that. It's not glamorous. And by the way, the government has made it really hard to have a farm like this. The only way to have a farm in the aesthetic way that this girl has it is, you know, to be rich. But the government is doing everything it can to, you know, push small farmers off. So there was all that. But the other part of it was both of my girls, actually all three of my oldest daughters, are very attracted to the aesthetic of it. And you mentioned trad husbands, there are trad husbands too. And I think the bottom line is that as much as our culture is trying to push us into these urban settings, there's something very American.

And maybe it came from like, you know, the way we pioneered the West. We all want a homestead. I mean, we, Sean and I talk about home. We live in New Jersey. We live, we live in the countryside of New Jersey, but we live in a suburban type house. Our dream, Sean's dream is to be a farmer. Our dream is to have a homestead where all of our kids live on it. And I think as much as like modern society has tried to tamp that down in all these different ways, this is where our heart is. And I think that what Tradwives and the whole sort of homesteading Instagram influencer thing that's happening right now is it's reflecting the true desire of people to live in that way on some way. And maybe the fantasy is crazy,

right? Like very few people will be able to, you know, hobby farm and influence, but we all have a desire to do that. Am I crazy? Marie? I think you really hit on something really profound there. Number one, which hadn't occurred to me, but you're right. The whole sort of the part of the American DNA, that's the pioneer people and the self-reliance that's very much with us. I also think in listening to you, this occurred to me. I think the pandemic profoundly shifted a lot of things for a lot of people. And what happened at the height of lockdown? There was a flight from urban centers, from living and working in major cities, which now all around the country are failing under

these soft on crime liberal policies. And there's been this retrenchment to a so-called sort of easier way of living, where like places where you and Sean are or where I'm at where there's a lot of land the air is clean you have access to food that has been caught nearby fished or farmed that's very very appealing and you're also so right about the instagrammable part of someone like ballerina farm I mean if you go through her Instagram, you're like, come on, she's got eight children. Not one has like a skinned knee or a stained article of clothing. Nobody's like wrestling each other to the ground. You know, the, the scenes of her sort of meeting the sourdough leisurely, you know, in the same article, her husband says there are weeks where she can't get out of bed she's so wiped out so this too is like there's a dark side to the always the instagram life and like women

especially have to keep our antenna up that's not real life that is a very curated brand that she is marketing to her millions of followers and i can just say i don't think our girls are stupid like the i think everyone gets the joke but i think feminine hardcore feminists it's like they want to say she's lying to them no it's like no i think these girls get the joke they're like i can't i love that life looks cool if i don't have a rich husband it's not gonna happen for me um i get it but so but i think you mentioned the pandemic. And I think that really, because if you look back, and maybe this is just my life experience, but I think this is true. If you looked at the small farm, the homestead, the organic farm, 25 years ago, it was all granola, crunchy liberals who had

those farms. And in the pandemic, you saw conservatives join the movement. And so you have this left and right movement trying to homestead. And I think a lot of people, especially on the conservative side, looked at the pandemic. And it wasn't just you had the pandemic in cities where people were living close together. I think a lot of people realize that the government doesn't tell me the truth. Oftentimes, they're lying to me. And if they'll lie to me and tell me that there was a vaccine that's going to stop me from getting COVID, but it actually doesn't stop me from getting COVID. It's a vaccine that doesn't work, but I have to take it to go on an airplane or go to work. I think that was the start.

And then they looked at the food maybe that the government says is really good for them to eat. it's really good for them to eat. And they're like, well, maybe actually this highly processed food, or even not highly processed foods, but whether they're meats or vegetables that are full of hormones and pesticides, maybe there's a better way to do this. And I think there was a rejection of what people have been told from the government and society. And they're charting the course back to where they know where their food comes from. And I think not only that, when you look at the feminist sales pitch that's been made, I think a lot of young women and men have said, well, that might be a lie as well. And maybe there's some medium ground in here that I can actually go back and maybe I can't be the ballerina farm and live the ballerina life because I don't have a billionaire husband. And as a husband, I'm not a

billionaire myself. And we probably can't make this farm go, but we actually can give our kids a different lifestyle that's maybe a little more like what we had in the 70s or 80s or early 90s, where they do have space to run. They can be free range kids, which would be pretty cool. And we can grow a few of the things that we eat on our farm. I think that has become really attractive to so many more people. So attractive that what does she have? Is it five or 11 million followers that she has on Instagram? She has, I think nine, but that's just one platform. Nine million followers is all you need to know that,

that there's a rejection of what young girls have been told. And they're like, you know what? This is attractive. And yes, it might be curated, but they're like this, there's something about this that touches my heart that I might want a slice of what she has in my own life. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're 100% right. It's so interesting too, that like ballerina farm is, is the sort of female icon of this summer. Last summer, it was Barbie. You know?

This summer, it's Ballerina Farm. We're back at Barbie. Yeah, but it's this sort of embrace of things that feel traditional and safe and secure. And your land is your land. Your animals are your animals. you're growing your food, you're self-sustaining as a family organism. All of these things, I think, are feeling very refreshing at this cultural political moment. I think what you just said is so smart and so insightful. And think about the millions of corporate dollars it took to create the Barbie

movie that, by the way, was trying to undo Barbie. Barbie was like, in the end, you know, didn't want Ken and, you know, didn't get married and, and, and, you know, rejected everything that was, I wanted, I loved Barbie. Um, and then the movie, I love the first third of the movie and then it ruined it for me, ruined Barbie for me. But the message is, is there's millions and millions of dollars going behind selling women this one thing. And this girl just puts up videos from her house and millions of girls go, Oh, I didn't know I could live like that. And again, we probably said it so many times. I get it.

Our husband's a millionaire. But you can have, you know, you can live in a more rural setting. You can grow, Sean grows tomatoes and vegetables outside. He has bees. You know, there is a way for us to sort of, I think, get more in touch with what's real. And nothing gets you in touch with what's real more than having kids, by the way. And regarding the comment that you made about her husband saying there are, there are days where she, you know, times where she has to be in bed for a week.

So I have nine kids and I remember going to my hairdresser once and she said, I just don't know how you do it, Rachel. This is my, my hairdresser was in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And I said, you know, every few months I just have a really good cry. And she goes, thank you for telling the truth, Rachel. And I'm like, yeah, it's hard. And after, you know, everyone has to have an outlet of some sort because, you know, it's hard being, you know, raising kids and, and especially that number of kids and you're trying to cook and clean and you know as I've gotten older and he's made more money and I got a little more money I've gotten a little bit more

help but you know when we were in the thick of it it was not easy the most rewarding thing in the world I wake up the one thing I have no regrets about and I have many regrets in life having kids was the one thing I have no regrets about, and I have many regrets in life, having kids was the one thing I don't regret. And the older I get, the more I double down on that.

Maureen, you might relate to this. Sean has a very large Irish family. He's the 10th of 11 kids. And his mom recently passed away. I'm so sorry. I know, it was sad. But, you know, it was so beautiful to see this large Irish Catholic family come together to help in these final days. And I think in the end, that's the thing. When Sean said, we can't depend on the government. They lie to us. And, boy, you hit it on the head with COVID.

I mean, everything fell apart. The supply chains fell apart. Our trusted institutions fell apart. And now all of a sudden, the one thing we know we can rely on is our families. And I think that's really what she's selling. She may be selling copper measuring cups and beeswax candles, but in the end, I think what this girl is selling is family.

I agree with you 100%. And that's why I really think this woman is a star. This woman will be getting her own show. I have no doubt. I hope she doesn't do that. Maureen. I just think that will ruin her family. It might. You're right. You're absolutely right. But she is tapping into something very, very profound.

And I think she's going to stick around for a very long time. And I think it's a very healthy shift in the culture. I really do. I think the idea that she's telling women and young girls, there is another way. Do not believe everything that modern American feminism has promised you. And she's doing it in a very subversive way. She's it's so subversive Because she's completely embracing this identity. As a trad wife. And yes we've said it many times.

Her husband is the heir to the JetBlue fortune. Makes it a lot easier. When you don't have to go shopping around for seed money. But she's also running. A small corporation. And she is the face of it. So there is also a lesson in there about soft power for women. Agreed.

We'll be right back with much more after this. Fox News Radio On Demand on the Fox News app. Download the app and just click listen. When you swipe left, you can listen to your favorite Fox News talk shows live. Swipe right for the latest Fox News Radio newscasts on demand. Fox News Radio on the Fox News app. Download it today. I think we have to look at the choices that these two have made. Because if you have an heir to a billionaire fortune, you have enough money.

You can make whatever choice you want, right? You can live in the city. You could live in Europe. You could pick the place. Live on a yacht. That's right. Private jet travel on any weekend, any weekday, wherever you want to go. You can make that choice with that kind of money. And with that kind of money, the choice that these two have made is to buy a farm. And actually, and again, we acknowledge it's easier, To buy a farm and to actually, and again, we acknowledge it's easier, but to buy a farm and to raise animals and not to have no kids, not two kids, but to have eight kids in this marriage and show the beauty and the joy of having that family.

Again, I think sometimes there's this viewpoint that people are forced into having kids or you're not smart enough because you don't know how birth control works and you, or you don't know how you have access to an abortion. You don't have to have that many kids. And here you're like, actually, she chose to have that many children and she chose to live on this farm and then to share that story with the rest of the world. I think the purity of that is a really cool message as well. I don't have to do it, but I really have enjoyed living my life in this style. Yes, I have a small enterprise and I'm probably making good money. I'm really good money off of this small enterprise, but it's, it's, it's, it's when you have a choice that the trad wife choice was made by this family

and to present it as well as they have i think makes the message that much more powerful yeah and there's women by the way who are working from home doing you know creating products for etsy and there are lots of ways that p women are as as you said that soft power um they're finding ways to make money and balance sort of this the the family part of their life in a way that's not like sending your kids off with a nanny all day and then you go in a cubicle and then come home and you're not happy, you know? So I think COVID gave people that space to say, what could life be like if we weren't tied to an office? In Sean's hometown, Maureen, it's a small resort

town in northern Wisconsin on beautiful lakes. We have a little cabin by one of those lakes. And during COVID, people were escaping that hellscape that Tim Waltz created in Minnesota, in Minneapolis. And they would come to this northern Wisconsin town and they were renting and Airbnb-ing and they were like, oh my God, this is what it's like to live here. And a lot of them ended up buying property there, which is of course raised the prices of real estate. But there's a lot of people who rethought life and family and work-life balance because of COVID. This brings me to the next topic, which I'd love to get your opinion on, because I think the whole idea of these two things we're talking about, but also what is a woman, what is a man,

I feel like there's so many gender things getting played out in this election cycle. So you have alpha male Trump, right? You have tampon Tim, who's like, you know, the vice presidential pick of Kamala Harris, who, you know, is, you know, he, you know, said we should have tampons in male bathrooms. This is somebody who clearly doesn't believe in biology and super liberal, along with Kamala, who sort of is the ultimate girl boss, right? And then you have, you know, what the left would perceive as toxic masculinity, fight, fight, fight, right? The guy who stands up after being shot, the vision of courage, masculine courage, really. I think there's a lot getting played out in these gender roles here.

Oh, I think so, too. I think so, too. And as a woman, I am offended, too. I think so, too. And as a woman, I am offended by the candidacy of Kamala Harris. I am offended. She is not there because of her intellect, her political savvy, her grit, her strongly held beliefs in any given policy. She was a DEI hire. Biden was forced into saying, I will appoint a black woman to be my running mate. There was Kamala right there on the stage. And now look at what we've got. We didn't even get an open primary on the Democratic side. You know, so this versus, you know, when Trump got shot and he got up and raised his fist and yelled, fight, fight, fight.

I don't care if you're pro Trump or anti Trump. That was a moment of just visceral a defiance and courage and B shows you just his under what he's such a showman. He understands political imagery like nobody else he knew that image would live on and he's so right about that and so you have on the one side to your point rachel by the way with jd vance that childless cat lady's comment is sticking to him he cannot shake it and it's so It says something again, what people are really worried about the things that stick in the culture. He cannot shake that. And he's now, so now we're going to see Trump go up against Kamala. Also to your point about toxic masculinity,

what we learned about her husband this weekend, standing up as like this he stayed he he posits himself as like I am I am the epitome of what it is to be a masculine man in the modern world as a liberal example and he cheated on his first wife with the nanny and got her pregnant I I love it. It's like, so neither side can go after each other on sort of sexual integrity, right? It's going to be, it's going to be hopefully more about the issues, but gender and biology definitely are going to be at the forefront. I think it will too. And I look at this and to put these two topics together, there truly is a fracturing in America where you have, you know, Tampon Tim, which by the way, yesterday I'm like, what is that? What happened with that, Rachel? It is a devastating nickname to get. I think no man wants to vote

for Tampon Tim. It it's terrible whoever came up with it because i think it was trending on twitter i'm like this is so like if you're if you're a guy you're like can i pull the trigger for tampon exactly but but again you have you have you know one side that believes in traditional normal humanity with gender roles a distinction between men and women and the other side is like there, a distinction between men and women. And the other side is like, there's no difference between men and women. If you want to be a woman and you're born a man, that's okay. And vice versa, and we'll meet late children.

And we're so far apart. And even on the idea, we're talking about Trump and Trump is very masculine, you're right. And I think it was a knee-jerk reaction that he couldn't plan for when he stood up and put his fists in the air and was chanting, fight, fight, fight. It's just who he is to the core. And you know what he believes. Whether you like it or not, Donald Trump tells you what he thinks on every issue. We talked about this on a previous podcast.

It doesn't matter where he's at. He could be in Texas talking about the border know, he could be in Texas talking about the border or he could be in the Bronx talking about the border. And the message is the same to everybody. And you compare that to the Democrats who talk about democracy, but had a primary and they pushed Joe Biden out. And they're in a place where they now have their their nominee who could never win a primary. Even the Democrat voters would not vote for her because, to your point, she's not the smartest candidate or the smartest human being. She was not the smartest prosecutor. She was out of the race before Iowa. She hasn't done an interview in 17 days with all that's going on. No interview from the press for 17 days because they're afraid she can't do an

interview. She won't be able to answer the questions. She'll be exposed. And I think when you're an empty suit, we all have to sit back and go, well, if we're running just a vessel in Kamala Harris, who actually is the, who are the people behind the scenes that are going to pull the strings that are going to actually run the administration? Because we thought in America we elect a president to make those decisions. But with Kamala Harris, we know that it's not going to be her. We know it's not been Joe Biden. Somebody else is going to do it that we don't know who it is. And we never elected them.

And I think this divide that's happened on gender and politics is so extreme. I truly think that the country is fracturing in a way that makes it really hard to put it back together. I think that's so right, Sean. And it also loops back to the pandemic and what you were saying about the loss of faith in the government and institutions who are meant to ostensibly protect us. who are meant to ostensibly protect us. What we've seen since that debate in June is that every American knows that Joe Biden is not running the country and hasn't been for a very long time. And he's allowed to still sit in the Oval Office as war with Iran looms. And we're supposed to be fine with this.

And the media is covering for him just as they're covering for Kamala. If you put side by side the way the mainstream media treated Sarah Palin versus the way they're covering for a candidate who is running for president, not Veep, but president, who cannot speak extemporaneously. No. Who, when you saw her on the tarmac this weekend when the Russian hostages came home, another word salad spinning about diplomacy and the importance of diplomacy and the strength of diplomacy while her boss stares vacantly ahead. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. And I really think this is not going

to end well for the Dems. They're having their honeymoon period now. It is not going to last. We went for a walk this morning, Maureen, with two of our daughters, and one is 20, the other is 16. And when we were talking, we were talking about, you know, when we were talking, we were talking about, you know, staff politics, blah, blah, blah. And they said, well, who is the president? Like who is running the country? And it's like, we didn't have an answer. And you know what I said to them? I said, you know, honey, I want you to understand this. It's really important you understand. Everything that's happened in America since COVID is not normal. Your dad and I have never experienced this. This may seem like the normal to all of you guys, because that's all you've known.

I'm telling you, this is not normal. And the next election is our last chance to get back to normal. And, and, and, and even if, if Donald Trump wins, I don't know if they'll let him win. I don't know what's going to happen because I don't know. I do know who's running the country. It's obviously Obama. It's obviously Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett, who I think is probably one of the most sinister figures in our politics that we never see or talk enough about. But it's Eric Holder. It's all these people. And it is scary because we're we're in war.

We have money being laundered in Ukraine. We have ActBlue and we don't know where the money is coming from. We have all kinds of of of fraud and abuse happening already with illegals and voting. And it's just crazy right now. I want to before we go, I want to ask you one last thing because you brought up cat lady and I want to know what your thoughts are on you know obviously they've been trying to present JD Vance is weird Tim Waltz brought up that weird couch thing during his acceptance or announcement speech that he was going to be the VP pick talk to me about Cat Lady and talk to me about whether you think this weird thing is going to stick to him, if this has been an effective line of attack on J.D. Vance. This has fascinated me since the story broke. And it's also fascinating

to me that both sides are using weird as the ultimate epithet, right? Like it's the right's talking point about the left and vice versa. And like, let's face it, anybody who wants that amount of power has to be a little weird. You have to be. I think the childless cat lady thing is sticking, though, because reproductive rights are a major voting issue this year. rights are a major voting issue this year. I think if this had come out and if that statement had come out and let's say Roe had remained intact during this election cycle, it just wouldn't be a big deal. And now I think for the female swing voter, that sort of top of mind, I think the left sees it as a very, as a sort of self-inflicted wound that they can just continue to open up and pour salt into. But we're going to move on. And I think that he's been playing it pretty smart in just

going after the left on policy. I think you make a good point. And I think also, you know, when you talk about women, you know, you hear people say, well, women are having less children. It's actually not true. It's that there are more women who are married who have no children. There are more single women, you know, not getting married. I think once people get married, they'll have two or three, sometimes four, rarely nine. We're considered weird by a lot of people. I'm used to being called weird. I have full tolerance of that. But I think that it's going to continue to be hard to,

and the reason why, by the way, the right is saying weird is they're trying to throw it back at them, right, Maureen? They're saying, oh, if you think men should have tampons in the bathroom, you're weird. If you think, you know, you know, I think Tim Waltz's wife had an interview after the Black Lives Matter, in the middle of the Black Lives Matter Summer of Love. And she said, we kept our windows open because we wanted to smell the burning and be reminded of, you know, all the social justice that was happening out there. Well, those were businesses. Those were people's American dreams that were burning.

So there's a lot of weird stuff going on over there as well, including what you brought up with Doug, you know, sleeping with the nanny, who was also, also I guess a school teacher of one of the kids as well so that's weird so I think the weird thing is like you think I'm weird well this this is weird but I do think you're right about about abortion rights I think a lot of conservatives underestimated in the midterms how much that was going to play into the election. I think Trump's playing it safe and well, but I think you're right that abortion is going to be a big topic that is going to be pushed on the left, even though illegal immigration and the economy are the top issues.

Yeah, I agree. The only issue the Dems have is abortion and reproductive rights. That's it. And women can hold more than one thought in their head at the same time. We can also be concerned with the border and the economy and our foreign policy and our standing in the world and how seriously our enemies no longer take us because they see that we're on the teetering edge of a banana republic installing these figureheads while the rest of us don't know who's really running the show so that's not going to be enough for them. But it is the only reason I think that that comment is really sticking to Vance. And he's just got to let enough daylight get in between that coverage and the news cycle, which we'll just...

Did you see Usha's interview with Ainsley Earhart on Fox & Friends? I didn't. Okay. She tried to defend him. But again, I think it's interesting that the liberal media is smart, right? There's all kinds of questions you could ask Kamala Harris, whether it's about fracking, drilling, borders, crime, foreign policy, transgender, you know, boys and girls sports. I mean, the list is incredibly long of issues to ask Kamala Harris. But the one thing that we focused on is cat ladies. Right.

And I think you're I didn't think of it the way you presented it, which is it comes into reproductive rights. But you're right. The liberal media and the Democrats want to talk about the cat lady comment. They don't want to talk about the actual issues that are impacting American lives on a daily basis. And here's what's different, though, I think. In 2012, there was an anticipation that Republicans were going to have a red wave and that red wave did not materialize. And the inflation was high in 2022. You said 2012. I was going to go back. Yeah, two years ago. That wave did not materialize. However, we're two years beyond that. And yes, inflation's come down. But if you add all the inflation together over the Kamala Harris and Joe Biden presidency, you're at over 20% of price increases. That doesn't include how much more you're paying on your credit card debt or

for your car payment. If you've got a new home, what you're paying and a new mortgage rate, those things don't factor in to the calculation of the 20%. And if you did, it'd be much higher. So I think, to your point, women can think, as men can think about a number of different issues that impact their lives, and they'll think about abortion, but they'll also think about the grocery store and the gas station and their kids. We're about to go back to school. And I don't know how old your kids are, Marie, but I get a list like this long of like stuff I'm supposed to get for my kids to go to school, right? And if you have a couple of kids, you go to the store and you're like, it's expensive. And a lot of families right now are foregoing the grocery store or medicine to actually afford to buy their kids the necessary things to go back to school. And so when you're in

that environment- There was an article about that, that they were either foregoing groceries, like cutting back on groceries, or going into debt just to afford back to school items. We covered on the bottom line yesterday. Yes, that's, I mean, it's- From six to seven, right? It's a great show on Fox Business.

But that's the reality. And I think two years in, they're like, yay, and Roe v. Wade had just been overturned. I do think abortion is going to be a backdrop issue, but I think the economy is going to be on the forefront. Am I wrong? You're not wrong at all. I think you're 100 percent right, Sean. And it's even James Carville, the top Democratic strategist, has said this.

He's been banging the drum repeatedly. has said this. He's been banging the drum repeatedly. But the Dems, Harris now as the nominee, need to talk about kitchen table issues that affect the average American voter, not these highfalutin ideas about gender ideology and whatever. It's about the people, the pain they are feeling in their wallet, the pain they are feeling in their wallet. The pain they are feeling over whether they can feed their kids or gas up the car, but it can't be both. That feels extremely unfair in an economy that, as usual, is serving the richest while the middle class and everyone below suffers. Yep. A hundred, a hundred percent. You are, you are so smart. And by the way, Democrats can't change that before November. So can I tell you one last, one last, so,

so Rachel mentioned my mother passed away a couple of weeks ago and we had planned a birthday party for her. She was going to turn 90 and she died the week before. And so we decided planned a birthday party for her. She was going to turn 90. And she died the week before. And so we decided as a family to still get together as a family to celebrate her life. Yeah. And as my whole family came together, I walked into a conversation between my sister and my sister-in-law. And they were talking about this great book that they were reading about JFK, Ask Not. And I'm like, no! I didn't even read it on a podcast!

No! And they were like, no, you did not. And I'm like, yes, we did. And they're like, they absolutely were loving on- It's the summer read. It's the summer read. Your book. It was Barbie last year.

It's your, that was the hot ticket last year. It's your book this summer. Ask Not, this summer. not oh my god you guys thank you oh my god i feel like i feel so honored like my name came up at your mother's celebration of life you totally did you get out and they were summer read of the summer i mean everyone's got it everyone's talking about it everyone's like You don't listen to my podcast? Yeah, that's how we found out. It's always the family members. They don't care.

They don't care, Sean. Jesus always said he was never a prophet in his own town. You know? So it's true. Well, Maureen, you are a prophet on our podcast. We love having you on. We love your insights.

We encourage everyone to get your latest book, which is so great. You have other books. You've written on Lady Gaga and other things. And, of course, you have the best column along with our friend Kennedy, the two must-read columns of the Daily Mail, which is my favorite. Guilty Pleasure in the Morning is the Daily Mail. So make sure you catch her columns there. They're always on point.

She's always talking about the latest, best cultural issues, and she always has the best takes. So always worth a read with a nice cup of coffee. Maureen Callahan, one of the most influential Irish folks in America. I'm so jealous. The jealousy keeps coming from him. He's so jealous. Sean, I have a shortcut for you. Identify as a female and you'll get on the Irish woman power list. What if you were a trans Irish American?

Would you definitely get on? Yes. Yes, I would get there, Maureen. I'm going to take that under advisement. All right. Maureen, so great having you on. Thank you. So great to be here.

Thank you guys for having me. All right. Take care. You too. All right. All right. It's so great having you on. Thank you. So great to be here. Thank you guys for having me. All right. Take care. You too. Bye. Bye-bye. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Listen, great conversation with Maureen.

You know what I love about her? She's so insightful. Even at the point, she starts pulling from all these different things. We're talking about Ballerina Farm. And then she brings it back to Barbie from last summer. And she's right. That was a conversation last summer. That's what the establishment, that's what the corporate feminists were pushing.

And they made sure that that just sickening, awful speech by America um, America Ferreira, um, the feminist rally car. I think, I think America Ferreira might've even got an Oscar for it. She was definitely nominated. It was just so insufferable of, you know, how difficult it is to be a woman and this big feminist rant. And, and they just elevated this movie, uh, because that's what they're pushing. And yet organically, you see that women are, are, are drawn. Listen, there are going to be women who want to be corporate girl bosses and all to it. But like there is the pendulum swung so far to the other side where, you know, at-home moms.

And I was, I was an at-home mom for 14 years. Um, when women were really being told, uh, that you A, betraying the sisterhood, right? You were throwing away your degrees and your life by pouring it into your family. And it was a really demoralizing message. It's why I wrote the book I wrote about stay-at-home motherhood. And I have so much respect for women who make that choice. And I think the bottom line, as you said, Sean, so well, is that it is a choice. This is actually a very wealthy woman who has the choice to live whatever life she wants.

And her and her husband chose to have eight kids and live on a farm. the London Times, uh, or the Times of London, who has no children, wanted to make this story about her being this oppressed farm girl, um, and her husband being so awful, um, and, and her kids, you know, interrupting her. And look, of course it's hard to be a mom. Of course it's hard to manage all the things she's managing, but she's doing it beautifully. Literally, she's gorgeous and beautiful. And I think we all get the joke, Sean. We've all, you know, you and I are part of reality TV. The kids today have grown up on Instagram. They make Instagram reels. They make TikTok reels. They know that there's an element of fantasy and visual aesthetics to it, that it's not all real. Yeah. She's stirring sourdough, um, and making sourdough with the baby on her hip and

the kids around the table. Um, it's probably not like that all the time, but she's selling a theme just like Barbie was selling their stuff. And they're just mad on the left, then there's a competition for what do you want to do? And they can't push their monopoly. They can't monopolize or have a monopoly on what it means to be a woman, what it means and the desires of your heart. And I think ultimately, Sean, this isn't about, you know, what a trad wife, girl boss. This is really about what kind of family do you want to have? Do you want to live in a high rise or in a soulless suburb?

Or is your heart's desire that American sort of dream of living on a homestead? And I think a lot of people, as she said, because of COVID, just had a tiny taste of it. And that is their aspiration. So I'm going to say a story. I know a woman who is wildly successful. Some, I would not say this about her, but some might say she's a girl boss, right? Very successful in her field. And I was having a conversation with her and she had a few kids and she said, I would have never dreamt as I was going through my career that if I had a choice between family and career that I would pick family over career. Has a couple of kids and is like, there is nothing, there is nothing that will come between me and my role to be a mother to

these children. And she was readily admitting this was kind of shocking to her, that this was, this is where her heart was at. And again, I think biologically, men and women were made differently, but our hearts are the same to reproduce and raise good kids and to love our families and love our children and to raise them well. And no promise of a corporation or a paycheck or a career can take the place of that really important part of our lives. And again, that's why I think a lot of culture says, we don't want you even to test it. We don't want you to be confronted with a choice of career versus family because a lot of a lot of women might go you know what i want to balance of a career and a family

but i want the family i want that that that needs to be part of biology says if you don't start the family you won't have a choice and i think they want to make sure you don't have a choice don't start your family don't find love don't have those kids and that's why i think the ballerina farm love don't have those kids and that's why i think the ballerina farm you know controversy and the cat lady controversy are actually they dovetail um they are one and and of of of the whole because here's what's happened there are a lot of women who bought into the feminist lie of what sick what cheryl Sandberg was selling, which was, she said to a graduating class, around the time that her book Lean In came in,

she said to them, as they were graduating, put your foot on the career gas pedal and don't let go. And so if you took that advice, and to its full extent, you might wake up at 38 or 40 or 43 and realize, I don't have a husband. I don't have a baby. And now all of these, these, these goals are a lot harder to achieve. And so when you hear someone like ballerina farm, you see her showing what a family life could be, or you hear J.D. Vance, a clip of J.D. Vance criticizing angry cat women who he say are running the country and running corporations,

that could make you angry. And the person you should be angry with is not J.D. Vance or ballerina farm, but maybe those feminists like Sheryl Sandberg, all the way back to Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan and the whole abortion movement that masqueraded as a women's movement that told women that family was not the way to go, that being equal to men was what the goal was. And so you should actually be angry at that lie that was told to you instead of the people who are showing a different way. And I think that's really what's brewing beneath the surface.

I actually think that's what's brewing underneath this election cycle. And again, it doesn't mean you have to, you know, go live in the mountains and away from civilization. Which I like that, by the way. I know you would like that. But there is this happy medium. But you can't get the family if you don't prioritize your love life, which almost is the theme of our podcast. If you are young and you are listening to us,

you cannot listen to the Sheryl Sandberg. Your career will happen. It can happen. It will happen. You won't be Barbara Walters. You may not be Sheryl Sandberg. But you can have a fulfilling career of some sort, but you can get that later or at a lower level at the same time. You cannot wake up at 43 and decide now you want to have a husband and a family because the stats will tell you that a tiny percentage of people will do that. So if you're in your 20s, prioritize your love life. Don't take a job that means you can't ever go out and meet people. Well, a lot of the good men are gone and a lot of the good women are gone at 43.

The selection is really good at 23, right? 43 is a little different. We got married at 28. I was probably more ready to be married at 28 than you were. Probably. But I pushed you into it, and I'm really glad I did. I'm glad you did, too. Sometimes you get kicked.

Sometimes when Sean is being very romantic with me, he'll say, I'm so glad you forced me to marry you. That's the height of my romanticism. I do have nine kids, though. But anyway, prioritize your love life because careers can happen, but in the end, careers will never, your job, your boss, your co-workers will never fulfill you the way your family can and they will never hold your hand as your mom's hand was held at the end of her life. There were no corporations coming in to help out and hold her hand. The people who loved her were her family and that's what you have to build. And at this time in America, there's so many more opportunities to live the life that you want. You're not tied to a city oftentimes or to a job.

Because of remote work and the ability to travel and go to different places, you can actually still have a family, still have a job. You can live in places that you want. You can still have a farm. You probably can't feed your family off that farm, sadly, because you mentioned all the regulations on the family farm. We can change that in this next election, by the way. But you can actually, you can have a dream of what you want your life to look like, whether it's family and a career and a place you want to live and a husband you want to have or a wife you want to have. And you can actually accomplish that because 30 years ago,

that was not possible. But today it really is. And so don't be limited by your imagination of what you can achieve and what you can have in your life and with that one last thought can i say there is a war on small farms and there is only one candidate who has promised to take on the war on ranchers the war on small farms you know there's a reason why it can only be done in this sort of aesthetic curated you know millionaire hobby farm way where you sort of have a farm and live that life that other people work it. There is a way to do it and bring back farms.

There's a way to vote for it. There's a war on food. There is a war. We brought a farmer on the bottom line from the Central Valley of California. If you don't know this area of California, it truly is the bed basket. The bed basket. Basket. bed basket. The bed basket. Basket, thank you. The bread basket.

Yes, of America. I mean, the amount of fruits and vegetables that they grow there is remarkable. The liberals are trying to shut off the water. So they can't farm in the Central Valley of California. There's a war on food and a war on energy, right? If you don't have food and you don't have energy, I mean, you're living in caveman land. I just read an article about in Ireland and things that happen in Europe are on their way here.

They had an Irish farmer said he had to kill off 25% of his herd of sheep, I believe. It could have been cows, but I believe it was sheep because his carbon imprint was too much. So he had to kill them and have a smaller herd. Stupid people, stupid ideas in California. They were the first state to ban plastic bags and the grocery store in New Jersey is there now. And so they started selling these more heavy-d duty plastic bags that you could buy at checkout. What they found is

the plastic in the landfills in California has increased by 50% over the 10 years since this plan has been implemented because one, you can't recycle the big plastic bags that you buy in the store that are supposed to be reused. They're supposed to be cleaner. And people throw them away. And so, again, these great liberal ideas to save the planet actually hurt people and hurt the planet. And make the lives of moms who forgot their bags who go to the grocery store way worse. By the way, I recycle those plastic bags. I use them for poopy diapers.

The individual bags you get at the store. The individual plastic bags that you use them for poopy diapers. Um, the individual bags, individual plastic bags that you get at Walmart. I mean, I use them to line my trash, my, my little trash bags in my bathroom. I use them, you know, when, when Valentina was not potty trained, I would use them for, you know, to put her poopy diapers in. I mean, in the stupid, in the stupid, uh, a dollar 50 bags you buy at the grocery store that are heavier duty and they are heavy duty. We have like 150 of them. I think we them. Somebody probably is getting a kickback on making those eggs. They're all getting rich.

Somebody's getting rich off of them. Somebody's getting money off of them. Well, with that full-ranging conversation. It was a full-ranging. From Family Farms to... Ballerina Farms. Ballerina Farms. Thanks for being with us on the podcast.

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