Former Tradwife Reveals 'Ugliness Behind the Scenes': Back to Back Babies, No Epidurals and Milled Flour (Exclusive)

In addition to her household duties of cleaning and baking, Enitza Templeton was the primary caretaker of four children, including a daughter with Down syndrome

• Former "tradwife" Enitza Templeton ended her 10-year marriage after welcoming four kids, acting as their caretaker as she balanced household duties, including baking from scratch

• The TikTok creator is pained to see her own experiences in the tradwife trend that's swept across social media, namely in videos created by the popular Ballerina Farm family

• Templeton spoke to PEOPLE about her daily duties as a tradwife, and how she broke out of the culture and started over with four kids, few funds and a 10-year gap in her resume

Enitza Templeton was doing laundry when she finally decided to end her marriage. The relationship stuck her in the role now known as "tradwife" while her husband acted as their family's sole provider. She had already started waking up to the reality of her situation, which saw her cleaning, cooking and caring for their baby son and three daughters.

"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,' " Templeton, now 41, recalls exclusively to PEOPLE.

She tried to banish the thoughts, but her dreams for her daughters' better lives struck a new chord, clipping any remaining attachment Templeton felt toward the "traditional" home and lifestyle she kept up for 10 years.

"If I want my daughters to do any different, I'm going to have to show them different," she says of her conclusion. "From that moment on, I started to make more and more changes in my life until I finally left."

Templeton committed to following stereotypical gender norms when she married in 2009, well before the tradwife lifestyle became a trend on social media. Today, the mom of four is disturbed to see so many TikTok videos of young women — many of whom are popular influencers — detailing their homemaking routines, which usually include making food from scratch and homeschooling their children.

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"It's just this little dangling carrot to keep you trying to be this perfect trophy wife. She's beautiful, she has the children, she does it unmedicated," says Templeton. "It's this stupid, stupid, stupid goalpost that's always moving. You can never reach it because if you bake the bread, well, did you use fresh yeast? Oh. Well, did you mill the flour? Oh. Well, did you grow the wheat that you milled the flour? They can keep pushing it back."

Responses to tradwife content oscillate between admiration and condemning criticism. Some appreciate the romanticized, bucolic approach to raising a family, while others see it as a regression in the women's rights movement. Many, like Templeton, maintain that tradwives are adopting outdated social standards that harmfully limit their control over their own lives.

The conversation recently seeped into the mainstream when The Times of London published a widely discussed profile of Hannah and Daniel Neeleman, who share eight children on their 328-acre farm in Utah.

The Juilliard-trained dancer and her husband, whose father founded multiple airlines, including JetBlue, post glimpses into their lives for an audience of around 20 million followers across platforms. The Neelemans also run their shared business Ballerina Farm, though much of their rural lifestyle content shows Hannah's day-to-day dedication as a farmer, baker, cook and mother.

Templeton points to one TikTok of Hannah opening her birthday present from her husband. While unboxing her surprise, the “queen of the tradwives,“ as she's called online, said she's "hoping they're tickets to Greece."

Related: Mom-of-8 Utah Influencer Hannah Neeleman Talks 'Trad Wife' Criticism, Her Ballerina Farm Business and More

She jokes about her desired vacation gift a few times in the video, which has since been reposted by a Ballerina Farm fan account, before it's revealed to be an apron with several pockets to hold multiple eggs. Hannah showed no disappointment as she tried on the gift from her husband.

"I'm glad that people are seeing it for what it is," says Templeton.

In general, tradwife lifestyle videos serve as an emotional trigger for Templeton. She sees "so many parallels between our lives and stories" and can "hear the sadness" in these creators' 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."

According to Templeton, most couples don't have access to that much money when they begin the tradwife lifestyle. When Templeton got married, she was a 26-year-old college graduate with a degree in graphic design. Her then-husband was younger, so they were making ends meet with the help of his student loans.

"We would say — and this is super common in the little Christian circles — we're living on loans and love right now until we can make it," she tells PEOPLE.

Tradwife culture is commonly based in faith, says Templeton, who was raised in a religious home and community. She and her now-ex felt compelled to start a family "just trusting that the Lord would provide." They both subscribed to a lifestyle with a set of rules declaring all they could and could not do, and eventually, these mandates structured Templeton's rigid daily routine.

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Even without the contemporary term newly popularized on social media, Templeton and her now-ex did discuss how they intended to participate in the marriage. They both agreed he would be the breadwinner and Templeton would cook and clean. Their common goal was to "have as many kids as we can," though it was also understood she would be their primary caretaker.

Initially, Templeton contributed to their finances working in graphic design and then in human resources. She says her husband was an aspiring entrepreneur and generated income in a "mishmash" of ways, dabbling in jobs like animal trapping, web design and working at a grocery store.

Templeton was laid off from her HR job while pregnant with their first child, which the couple took as a sign to settle into their gendered roles. They shared a bank account, but he had complete control over the money, per the principles of their tradwife marriage. That included the funds she brought in herself while employed.

"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 recalls. "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."

The tradwife way came with ample responsibilities. Whether she was exhausted, sick or pregnant, as she often was, Templeton consistently maintained both her home and her appearance. She put on makeup and nice dresses every day, and she fried her naturally curly hair by ironing it straight.

When the Denver resident was a "full-blown tradwife" — at her "apex," as she describes — with four kids to look after, she still searched for more to learn.

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"The next step would've been learning how to mill flour. Because I was like, 'Oh, I wonder if I could go that far,' " Templeton remembers. "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."

The day started around 3 a.m., when she would breastfeed her fourth baby, a son, for his early morning feed. She'd catch a few more hours of sleep before it was time to start the bread, which needed time to double-proof since she "wasn't allowed to use fast-acting yeast," per their lifestyle doctrine.

"By the time the bread was ready to start kneading, that's when all the kids would be getting up," says Templeton of her former day-to-day. "I would get them set up with breakfast and while they were eating breakfast, I would knead the dough and get it ready and split into loaves. The baby would be getting up, so I'd get him up and nurse him for the second time."

As the morning rolled on, Templeton balanced infant care with homeschool lessons. She read books to her older daughters and readied her youngest for the day.

"By the fourth baby I was allowed to use disposable diapers," she says, noting an exception they made while otherwise following their traditional rules. "But for the previous three babies, I clothed diapered them because we had to be as minimalist as we could, like back to nature crap."

The bread went into the oven and came out in time for lunch. A mid-day meal usually proceeded a group outing to someplace like the library before they picked up groceries for dinner. "I was really just trying to get out of the house," Templeton admits.

The kids played, Templeton cooked, her husband came home for dinner and they ate. Once the kids went to bed, the parents soon followed.

"That's it. Just cooking meals, taking care of kids and tending to everybody else's needs. That was the whole day," says Templeton.

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The routine became extremely complicated before she hit her tradwife peak as a mom of four. Templeton's second child was born with Down syndrome and a heart defect, but that didn't mean her responsibilities subsided — including the demand to have more children.

"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," Templeton tells 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."

At one point, Templeton was tasked with weighing her second daughter every day, as they needed her at an optimal weight to undergo an operation. She was "teetering between life and death," says Templeton, and her primary caretaker was expecting another baby.

"While I'm still pregnant with another one, I'm weighing this one, making sure she's okay, homeschooling the oldest one, making sure I'm cooking every meal from scratch and as organic as possible," says Templeton.

She continues, "I shouldn't have been 39 weeks pregnant, open heart surgery and then next week birthing another one, and then two years later, birthing another one while there's still another surgery because she's still struggling. That's so not sustainable. It's not appropriate."

Under such heightened expectations and even higher stakes, Templeton was left without any time for herself. There was no way to pause her family work, not for the most urgent emergencies nor for the most devastating heartbreaks. They conceived a fourth child right after she was done nursing the third. Templeton miscarried, but she was pregnant again before there was any time or space to grieve the loss, she says.

"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 reflects.

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Templeton recognizes the rush between Hannah and Daniel Neeleman of Ballerina Farm to bear more children. She was especially struck by a part of The Times profile when Daniel said they plan to eventually fill their 15-seat minibus.

"When you're pouring into that person, you don't get anything back," Templeton says. "They just keep taking."

The article also touches on common ground between Templeton and Hannah. Both women gave birth to most of their kids without pain relief, but they received the help of an epidural when their husbands were out of the rooms.

Templeton was 20 hours into labor when her husband stepped out. It was then, Templeton says, that her midwife suggested they tap medical resources to reduce the pain.

"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," Templeton tells PEOPLE of her fourth time giving birth. "Within 30 minutes I was able to push, and the baby came out just fine."

Templeton doesn't deny that she might've created tradwife content on TikTok if it was around in 2009. In fact, she says she "absolutely" would have joined the trend. She was on social media back then, and though the platforms weren't as large as they are today, she saw it as an escape.

"Once I started to realize, 'Oh, I can go on social media and pretend like my life is beautiful,' I started out," she says, explaining how she started an account called Sweet by the Slice. She'd post photos of the cakes she baked, but she'd stick to the rules by not letting social media distract her from the tradwife lifestyle — or at least she pretended to.

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"You can use social media to present how beautiful your life is, but you shouldn't be consuming it. But it is your little gateway," says Templeton. "You are seeing the other women who are posting about being a single mom ... It's like a little lifeline."

It took more than just online access to get Templeton to the point of her final epiphany to break out of tradwife culture. A few discussions with friends waved red flags about her lifestyle, but she never heard it so clearly until she spent time with moms so unlike herself at her daughter's Girl Scouts event.

"It was the first time I was hanging out with women that were a little bit above my socioeconomic class, women who did have businesses and who were told, 'You can do anything. You don't have to be a wife,' " Templeton says.

"They knew I had four kids and the baby was just now old enough to be home. I was like, 'Oh, I think we're going to start talking about having our next baby.' And they were like, 'No, no,' " the Colorado mom remembers. "They spoke to me so bluntly and honestly ... They were like, 'Aren't we having fun? You're going to put all this on pause again?' "

Once she realized she needed out of her marriage, Templeton started to get her “ducks in a row” before she left.

“I could see what was going on. I could see the writing on the wall and I wanted to be kind of prepared,” she tells PEOPLE.

She took on two nursing jobs, justifying the decision as a way to generate some necessary extra income for the bank account he controlled. She also sold her employment as a way to work on herself, and at first, she believed her own explanation too.

“It was just to help our family. Like, okay, it’s been enough time that I’ve been home. Maybe this will help my mental health, because of course, everything was me. I was the problem,” she recounts. “I mean if he would’ve been a good husband, I would’ve stayed and we would’ve had a decent income.”

It only took one explosive fight to blow up their marriage once Templeton had an exit route lined up with a cash flow of her own.

“It was kind of sudden,” Templeton adds of her departure. With new conviction, she insisted they get a divorce and told her ex to leave the home. He agreed and stayed with friends for about a month or two, then Templeton — who managed to get back on her feet in the time apart — decided to step onward into her next chapter.

“I moved out of our family house so that we could not reconcile at all,” she says.

Since ending her marriage five years ago, Templeton has been happily surprised by the resounding support she's received. "There are people in your life that are there to help you and support you, you got to just listen," says Templeton.

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Templeton had to rebuild and learn to be both mom and provider, which meant returning to the full-time workforce with a 10-year gap in her resume. Trying to find a job after years on the sidelines felt "embarrassing" at first, but now she's found her way back to graphic design work, and she's also a certified nurse assistant.

Templeton's also using social media to be a "lifeline" for someone else. She posts videos on TikTok and runs her Emerging Motherhood podcast in the hopes of reaching other moms and wives wanting the same change she did.

"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 tells PEOPLE of her motivation for speaking out online.

"When you see a problem and you feel like you have a solution, it's your responsibility to do something," she continues. "I felt like as a mom, it's my job to clear the path for my daughters. And I have to make as much of an impact as I can for them. I don't want them to grow up in a world like this."

Her daughters' futures feel especially precious when Templeton thinks of Hannah Neeleman. Templeton's eldest daughter's dream is to go to Juilliard, just like the tradwife influencer.

"If Ballerina Farms was my daughter, if I saw her give up Juilliard to live on the farm, I would probably cry a little bit every day knowing that's what she did," says Templeton.

Today, the mom of four lives with her boyfriend and co-parents with her ex-husband. She's unlearning the "traditional" standards she set in her marriage and trying to unravel the example she set for her kids when they were younger. The road here was years long, filled with therapy, challenges and exchanges of losses and gains, but Templeton says she's never felt so youthful, with so many opportunities waiting ahead.

"After I left the tradwife life ... all the energy that I was pouring into other people, I started to pour into myself. It started to make me feel younger, feel more regenerated," she tells PEOPLE. "The more I poured into myself, the more I was able to give to my children and to the people around me and have deeper, more meaningful relationships."

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