'My life was the parallel of Ballerina Farm. This is why I'll never be a 'tradwife' again.'

We've all doom-scrolled Nara Smith's curated home life, where she makes toothpaste from scratch, or secretly lusted after Ballerina Farm's thirty grand AGA cooker, where she makes warm bread and prepares fresh mozzarella.

We've wondered if life wouldn't be easier if we lived the SAHM life (stay at home mum, for those not in the know).

The tradwife movement has taken the world by storm, showcasing mums who cook from their gardens, give up their careers and treat their husbands like another one of their children, but is it all 'slow life, no worries', or is it more 'repressed and sad'?

There is increasing controversy surrounding the tradwife movement, after Ballerina Farm's Hannah Neeleman did an interview with The Sunday Times where she admitted to trying an 'amazing' epidural for the first time with her sixth baby but not not doing it again for the next two pregnancies. She agreed to the epidural when her husband wasn't present, and only admitted to it in the interview while her husband elsewhere on the phone.

It painted a less-than-ideal picture of the tradwife lifestyle: a successful Juilliard scholarship ballerina who married a rich conservative and gave up her city dream for a Mormon existence where she pops out endless kids without pain relief.

Listen to this episode of Mamamia Out Loud on the tradwife conspiracy here. Post continues below.

While Hannah has since posted an Instagram, exclaiming how much she loves her life, People spoke to another tradwife whose experience of that lifestyle was similar to the Times' portrayal of it.

Enitza Templeton married her partner in 2009, when she was just 26. Raised in a religious family and community, being married meant embarking on a tradwife lifestyle, despite her having a degree in graphic design.

Enitza poses in some wedding photos that were photobombed. Image: Instagram/emergingmotherhood

The newlyweds didn't have much money and were largely living off her younger partner's student loan allowance, but she says she felt coerced into starting a family "trusting that the Lord would provide."

Soon, Enitza was in a rigid 'homemaker' routine, laid off from her job while pregnant, she would never return to work. Her life was cooking and cleaning while he went to an office job, and they planned to have "as many kids as we can."

He had control of their finances, including the money she had made in her previous employment.

"If [I] wanted to save up for something, like a trip to Greece or something, I didn't have the abilities to do that," she said. "It's not like I could be like, 'Oh, well I'm gonna transfer some money into my savings account.' That just wasn't a thing."

When her second child was born with Down syndrome, life got that little bit harder for Enitza, and she had absolutely no help.

"The minute we had the disabled child, it should have been like, 'I love you. I love our children. This is a lot. Let's pause as a family,'" she says.

Without contraception, the torrent of babies continued, with a fourth conceived as she finished nursing a third, and after a miscarriage she was pregnant again before she'd truly even processed her loss.

"I was having a baby that was having open heart surgery, but I was still pregnant with another one. And then pregnant with another one, and another open heart surgery," she told People. "And then trying to homeschool one of them and trying to keep this one alive with her oxygen and then pregnant with the next one."

Unlike a 9-5 job, Enitza worked around the clock to provide for her family, waking up at three to breastfeed, then up again around five to start making bread. She balanced early childhood care with homeschooling in the day and after making dinner from scratch, putting the kids to bed and doing the 'closing shift' would finally hop in bed, whether she was exhausted, sick or pregnant. 

"You can never reach perfection in the tradwife life. You just keep going deeper and deeper down rabbit holes. I feel like it's just to keep you busy and keep your wheels spinning," she says of this time, when she was spending any spare moment researching ways to 'mill flour'.

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A post shared by Enitza (@emergingmotherhood)

Like Neeleman, Enitza never used pain relief during her births until her husband stepped outside during one labour. 

"The midwife took her chance and said, 'Do you want the epidural now? Because I can call them right now' ... And she gave me a look like, 'Now's your f***ing chance.' And I understood," she said.

During her childbirth years, Enitza earnestly tried to be the best housewife she could. She even went on early forms of social media to share her perfectly baked cakes. However, as her children got older, and she mingled with other mums, she realised that her reality wasn't the only way. 

It was the first time she saw a light at the end of the tunnel, but she didn't think she could grasp it.

"I remember watching TV, folding the towels thinking, 'I wish anybody could help me out of this. If I had the money, if I had the means, if I had some way, I would not be married. I hate this. I don't want my daughters to be in a marriage like this."

She eventually took on nursing roles to 'bring income' into their struggling family, but after one explosive fight she decided that with the cash flow secured, she now had her chance at freedom.

Image: Instagram/emergingmotherhood

Five years on from ending her marriage, she says the support she received helped to lift her out of that situation. 

Now, watching Neeleman celebrate her birthday on social media, hoping for a trip to Greece only to be given an apron with special spots to hold eggs (and seeming happy about it) is triggering for Enitza, saying she can "hear the sadness" many tradwives' voices.

"I see their deep, deep, deep desire to validate the lifestyle and to be like, 'Look at me. I'm so perfect and beautiful, and I do all these things amazingly,' " Templeton explains. "It's super sad. It's also a little bit disingenuous. I know what it's like. You're not showing the full picture. There is a lot of ugliness behind the scenes."

Since leaving the tradwife life, Enitza has started her own podcast, Emerging Motherhood, designed to help women leave toxic relationships and trad marriages. 

"I was not raised to believe that women had a right to think and a right to ask questions. I thought if a woman didn't have a child, she was going to be miserable for her whole life. I did not understand there were women that were just happy to just live and be themselves," she says. 

"When you see a problem and you feel like you have a solution, it's your responsibility to do something."

Image: Instagram/emergingmotherhood