When I first saw the cover of Sara Petersen’s new book, Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture, I felt an uncanny recognition. I had seen the image before, it seemed; it had hovered around me like a specter during my own children’s infancy. In warm, saturated tones, it depicts in silhouette a particular kind of maternal figure. Her soft hair flows over her shoulders to frame her delicate features; a contented infant nestles close to her chest.
At once intimate and abstract, this idealized version of motherhood is one we’ve all been taught to recognize. We may never have met anyone like her in real life. But for nearly two centuries, American marketing has cultivated an attraction to her enduring qualities—care, calm, pleasure in her children’s delight.
Momfluenced offers a deeply researched account of how this ideal emerges today: through the content churned out by image-driven social media platforms. On Instagram, so-called “momfluencers”—ranging from women like @kellyhavensohio (with 56.6 thousand followers) to @ballerinafarms (a Julliard-trained dancer and daughter-in-law of JetBlue’s founder, with 4.6 million followers)—post photographs of themselves savoring the daily joys of life with their children, indicating through cutesy captions that their happiness comes not from their marked social privilege but a kind of maternal bliss. They stand in flowering yards smiling serenely at their kids’ soft faces; they sprawl next to their babies on extremely soft rugs. Via sponsored content, brand partnerships, and these beaming smiles, they have positioned themselves at the vanguard of a long American tradition of linking maternal love to a booming consumer market.
Petersen, using historical scholarship and feminist theory, writes with a keen awareness of how Instagram’s momfluencer economy perpetuates long-standing biases in American attitudes toward motherhood. Over and over we see the emotional and moral ideal attached to mothers who are able-bodied, who are straight; who are wealthy, who are white; who live in particular kinds of houses, which are painted in particular colors. Through this ideal, motherhood is imagined as a universal experience. Then that experience is put up for sale in the form of exclusive domestic trappings—woven laundry baskets, costly baby slings—that many women will never be able to access.
In an era when mothers are increasingly expected to compensate for failures in the public safety net, these desires have only intensified. Even Petersen is drawn to the screen, tempted by lives where the children always look loved, the dirty dishes aren’t a breakdown waiting to happen, and the resources are copious enough to keep everyone safe. As she writes with a deeply felt ambivalence: “Away from the scroll, I’m just me.” In talking with Petersen, I found an intimate connection between this performative virtual world and some of our era’s most urgent concerns: the boundaries of feminism and family, and what both mean in an era of widespread, but very unequally distributed, public catastrophe.
—Sarah Mesle for Guernica
Guernica: When my kid was born in 2006 and I was home writing my dissertation with a baby, I definitely read a ton of “baby blogs” and kept one myself—that was a big part of my life. How do you think me being home with a baby and the blogosphere was different from you, just a few years later, being home with a baby and Instagram?
Sara Petersen: From what I understand, those early blogs were really vital in terms of starting conversations that might not have been mainstream before—particularly in talking about maternal mental health issues. They were real sources of community and real sources of validation and empathy.
Instagram feels more insidious to me because it’s so image-focused. Those early blogs were very much like personal essaying, and the aesthetics were not a critical component of what made them compelling. And now it’s all aesthetics, really. Of course, there’s storytelling and there’s narrative, but it’s all so centered on imagery. The all-white homes, the abundance of shell pink, beige, and the occasional hint of ochre. The pretty white mama wearing her floral Nap dress as she hangs her laundry outside, among apple trees and daisies. The baby nestled against the pretty white mama’s chest as they rock in a tastefully appointed nursery. The clean countertops! I think images get into our psyches in ways that we don’t and can’t fully understand. We can’t fully assess what they’re doing to us. Once you see something, you’ve seen it, and it’s in you. These images quietly uphold the status quo. Like, “Oh, a beautiful mama in her beautiful home,” and the subtext is “exactly how she should be, exactly where she should be.”
Guernica: Did you struggle with wanting to pay this universe serious attention while also not wanting—personally or politically—to give it more time than it had already absorbed?
Peterson: Until we understand why something doesn’t feel great or why it’s quietly insidious, it has more power. Unpacking the cultural ideals of motherhood really freed me in so many ways from my own learned desire to adhere to those ideals. And once you know where they come from and who created them and why they were created, it becomes almost ludicrous to find yourself desiring them. I never worried about feeding the beast or adding to the shock and awe of this whole thing because the more I researched, the less power all of it held over me.
I have bought vitamin C serums because of momfluencers. I’ve bought crib sheets. I’ve bought water bottles. I’ve bought linen handkerchiefs printed with words because of one momfluencer and then had them framed by Framebridge using a discount code provided by another momfluencer. And while I bought all of these things fully aware that pinker cheeks by way of a crème blush would not likely make the day-to-day experience of motherhood meaningfully better, I think I believed the effort was somehow noble. As in, if I put effort into my skincare routine and my home décor, maybe I’ll more easily melt into what I imagine a good mom should be—“natural,” joyful, aesthetically pleasing. To an extent, I think this is true of any lifestyle or habit shift; we imagine a domino effect. “If I’m the type of mom whose cheeks are rosy, maybe I’ll become the type of mom who’s happier or more chill, simply by osmosis.” I’ve always gravitated toward the supposedly effortlessly joyful moms, like Naomi Davis or, in a slightly different vein, Amanda Watters, whose account is very much about locating meaning and beauty in domestic spaces.
I’ve aspired to be a modern-day “Angel in the House” as long as I can remember. I also blame my girlhood obsession with Lucy Maud Montgomery books here a bit. But, of course, the ideal Victorian wife and mother—a white upper-class woman who reigned supreme as the moral center of the home—was radically oppressed, and her cultural centrality ensured that Black mothers, working-class mothers, and other marginalized mothers were made more vulnerable, and often actively harmed. I think it’s easier to loosen the grip of idealized motherhood when we better understand its roots.
Guernica: After writing this book, do you have a sense of who constitutes the “we” or the “us” that this sphere of the Internet targets?
Peterson: Mothers can be sold almost anything if it’s implicitly or explicitly tied to their goodness as mothers. I mean, “Choosy Moms Choose Jiff,” right? A momfluencer selling a gentle parenting book or set of courses is selling maternal patience and warmth. The Honest Company is selling maternal morality via “non-toxic” body washes and diapers. We’re trained to shop for our motherhood, in a way. There was an Instagram ad that was like, Give Mom the gift this Mother’s Day, and it was for a clothes subscription box, and you basically had to choose what kind of mama you were: trendy mama, comfy chic mama, sporty mama. It was Mama Barbies, essentially. I do think mothers specifically are taught to buy things to mold our own maternal identities according to someone else’s standards. The fact that mothers and women make up something like 85 percent of household expenditures is a clear way to understand why we are being compelled to look at this stuff.
I often think that the momfluencers are included in the “us,” and that the “them” is really the tech companies and the white men in power at those companies. You know, capitalism. Because the momfluencers also have to play according to these rules. I read a criticism of my book recently that said that I was too easy on the momfluencers, that I didn’t directly critique the monetization of motherhood and the inclusion of children [in momfluencer content], children’s consent being a murky thing. Children’s consent was never going to be a part of the book because that’s a whole other can of worms. But I do think that the momfluencers themselves are also at the mercy of systems that are bigger than them. The momfluencers are not ultimately holding all the power here; they’re not the ones who created the ideal of the domestic goddess in her home, selflessly and joyfully raising her kids. They did not come up with that.
Guernica: A dangerous thing that I sometimes see happening is that your identity as a mother forms under the sign of martyrdom, and then you’re attached to it. Organizing for political change—or even imagining it—often gets left behind.
Peterson: Have you seen the TV show Fleishman Is in Trouble? There’s this incredible scene where one of the characters is bitching about “mommy’s night out.” She’s moved to the suburbs and is feeling very much like an outsider observing the inner workings of a cult. Look at this language we’re using! We’re constantly referencing our own entrapment and giggling about it. And cheers-ing each other over mimosas.
This very much shows up in “wine mommy” accounts, which point to husbands who are unable to change diapers, or to maternal burnout or gendered inequity within the home. And often these accounts are humor-centric, so, like, a reel will compare the mom’s typical Saturday morning routine to the dad’s typical Saturday morning routine. The mom will be doing everything and the dad will be asking for coffee and watching sports. The comments are typically ablaze with “OMG, yes” or “Lol exactly!” But there’s no direct critique of the power systems that make these inequitable relationships possible—common, even. There’s not usually a call to action.
Guernica: So what does feminism resemble in these spaces?
Peterson: In one of the chapters I write about how commodified white feminism really flourishes in many of these accounts. Often the most lucrative momfluencers inhabit a version of badass-boss-babe white feminism. So, think of Rachel Hollis, who made a name for herself by creating this lifestyle brand that hinged on her relatability and her adherence to a hustle-and-grind culture. Hashtag no excuses! She wrote several self-help books promoting this idea that anyone can become happy, wealthy, and self-actualized if they just, like, wake up at 4AM, meditate, and “choose joy,” but, of course, her success was directly related to her privilege. This type of white feminism is all about self-optimization and aspiring to modes of power often held by white men, not disrupting the systems of power themselves. I would not say that I see the momfluencer space as being particularly intersectional. The people earning the most money are still white cis-het able-bodied thin moms with generational wealth.
Brands still see the default mother as being a white mother. And they equate good motherhood with white motherhood. I interviewed author Angela Garbes for a piece in The Cut and we were talking about this whole chasing of maternal ideals and she was saying that she felt much less burdened by them because as a mother of color there was that one box she could never check. And because she could never get there, it didn’t torture her. I think I did go into this book naively, centering my own experience: Poor me, wanting to be the perfect white mommy. And that is not a universal longing, by any stretch of the imagination.
Angela is among the many mothers and writers actively challenging the ideals of whiteness baked into the ideal of American motherhood. In her book Essential Labor, she writes beautifully and urgently about the need for collectivity and community in our reconsideration of care work and those doing care work. I’m also so indebted to Koa Beck’s must-read history White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind. Dani McClain’s We Live for the We is another indispensable resource that underscores the revolutionary power of Black motherhood. And there is the work of Shishi Rose, Rebekah Taussig, Ashley Simpo, Jennifer Marie White-Johnson, Andrea Landry, Mia O’Malley, and others on Instagram and elsewhere online who are pushing back against the white maternal ideal through representation, and leading much-needed conversations about the many different ways to mother and inhabit that role.
Guernica: Choice feminism—the belief that any choice a woman makes is inherently feminist—is prevalent in the momfluencer universe. The idea that “I’m a woman and I’m making choices, and thus they’re feminist and you can’t criticize them.” In that way feminism is…
Peterson: …weaponized.
Guernica: Yes. It’s used as a defense of resource hoarding. Rather than advocating for the collective good, this “feminism” stays privatized.
Peterson: The whole idea of choice feminism is especially present in “trad” momfluencer accounts. Trad moms are basically women devoted to upholding traditional gender ideals. So whether it’s a mom churning her own butter and embroidering her own aprons and taking photos of herself looking rapt in a field without any clear indicators that it’s 2023 not 1823, or whether it’s a suburban mom driving a minivan who prioritizes making her husband sandwiches and “being led” by him, the message is the same: “A mother’s natural place is in the home as the nurturer and a father’s natural place is outside of the home as the provider.” “It’s my choice to be led” is a line I see over and over again. “It’s my choice to be led by this strong provider, and because I’m making the choice, and I’m a woman, it’s an inherently feminist act.” I think this notion of choosing retrograde gender roles is particularly intoxicating to white mothers because white mothers are really the only mothers who can be “apolitical” and tap into this idea of the “good old days” when things were “simpler.” I think it’s also compelling to mothers drowning in overwhelm to latch onto this misguided idea that following a strict, gendered script will make their lives less confounding, less noisy, and more fulfilling. These trad mom accounts present the gender binary as an antidote to the relentless striving toward “balance.”
Guernica: In the book you quote Koritha Mitchell, who points out that being “apolitical” is just a way of supporting the status quo—and the status quo is not only racially unjust but cumulatively bad for women, if beneficial to a few particular women.
Peterson: Mitchell’s chapter, in her book From Slave Cabins to the White House, about Michelle Obama — I just want everyone to read that so badly. If you’re thinking about the cultural ideal of a good mother, Michelle Obama is everything — except she’s Black. So she cannot be America’s ideal mother. Her motherhood was specifically not praised, not upheld as an example of implicit maternal morality, the way the motherhood of white first ladies is.
Guernica: You also quote Lauren Berlant’s idea of “cruel optimism,” which she describes as the feeling “when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing.” Do you see momfluencer accounts as a meaningful kind of escapism? Or is the fantasy they offer, in Berlant’s terms, an obstacle to flourishing?
Petersen: There’s this Betty Crocker ad I talk about. It’s something to the effect of: The world is burning, but I can’t do anything about it, so I guess I better bake a cake instead. It feels very human to want to zero in on your immediate surroundings and what you can control in the midst of chaos. But I think you’re way more likely to be prone to that if your basic needs are already being met, if you have the time and resources. I found myself flailing during lockdown and really falling prey to that toxic desire to control my domestic space, make my insular space as tight and perfect as it could be, which is helping no one, including myself. It almost always feels counterproductive and like an epic waste of energy. I think that’s why Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism was so revelatory for me.
Berlant posited that women, in particular, are taught to center their lives on these archetypal life moments or milestones, which makes us fans of affective texts like rom-coms, “chick-lit,” and, of course, momfluencer culture, because these texts often follow a clear narrative arc. We know what to expect, and that’s comforting. The momfluencer arc, typically, is one of relentless upwards momentum, which isn’t reflective of real life. It starts with a love story. Then a baby. Then a house remodel. Then another baby. Then a birthday party. Then another baby. Then a puppy. It’s always: and then, and then, and then.