These days my TikTok and Instagram algorithms are heavy on mom content. Model-esque women, mostly white, fill my phone screen with videos like “GRWM to Take My 5 Kids Under 5 to the Amalfi Coast” or “Watch My Triplets Collect Farm-Fresh Eggs on Our Family Homestead.”
I’m too broke for most of the products they sell in these posts, but they are successful at selling me on something I already have: motherhood.
As I weigh my desire for another child against my desperate need for a retreat from the deafening noise and unsustainably frantic pace of my current life as a working mom, I find myself compulsively scrolling through these visions of other moms’ lives. I’m fascinated by the perfect balance they seem to have struck, the ease they project, and the endless time and resources they seem to enjoy for social and creative pursuits. Meanwhile, my own child sleeps in brief and unpredictable spurts, my work buries me under piles of unfinished tasks and unanswered emails, and my house is a chaotic mess.
Why can’t I stop my thumb from driving through these perfect virtual neighborhoods, in which I will always be a tourist and never a resident? Why can’t I put my phone down and turn my focus to my own beautiful but cluttered life?
Enter Sara Petersen’s nonfiction debut, Momfluenced: Inside The Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture, to explain.
In chapters like “Performing Motherhood With a Hashtag,” “In Pursuit of Clean Countertops and a Shoppable Life,” and “Good (White) Moms,” Petersen—a writer for publications like The New York Times and InStyle and a mom of three herself—dives deep into the worlds of the influencers and the influenced, exploring the churches, social movements, and corporations from and through which these women reach our screens, our brains, and our wallets.
Reading Momfluenced feels like a conversation between friends on a front porch, with a bountiful cheese plate and a bottle of cold white wine. Petersen’s writing is dishy and curious about the inner workings of these influencers’ empires and lives, but not mean-spirited or superficial. Her deep respect and empathy for individual parents and women, including the ones she profiles in the book, make for a tone that is never cruel or mocking.
But she is also clear-eyed about the harms caused by the power some influencers hold over their followers. From QAnon conspiracy theories to implicitly (or explicitly) racist and classist visual and written content, to “hate-following” and toxic online and offline behavior, Petersen invites the reader to think critically about why individual women—and mothers in particular—are so desperately searching for community, identity, and a way to be seen by the world.
Momfluencers, Petersen argues, are looking to buy what they’re selling—just like the rest of us. They are also seeking safety, comfort, and health for their families in the form of paychecks and sponsorships gained via their mom content. They’re seeking external validation of their worth and humanity in the form of likes from admiring strangers. They’re seeking happiness and fulfillment, just as we are when we scroll through their carousels of photos.
Before reading Momfluenced, I was vaguely aware of the reasons I’m drawn into the pictures these women paint. After all, I’m not above posting dreamy images of my own life and family on social media, and I know that—despite my lack of sponsorship deals—the lines between my social media behavior and that of these professionals is blurry at best.
By laying out what these women lose and gain by documenting their bodies, children, homes, and lives for public consumption, and what we lose and gain by consuming them, Momfluenced compels us all to examine our most-followed accounts, and our ourselves. The book asks us to remember that it’s a lot more nuanced and complex than a good/bad or true/false binary.
What we seek can be found in connections we form online, if we can cultivate a healthy relationship to those connections. From the trans mom who has built the safe and affirming parenting village that she needed in order to thrive, to the online visibility project that celebrates postpartum bodies, and the constellations of support for drowning new parents in the most isolating and stressful time of their lives, Momfluenced holds space for everyone’s story.
Of course I want to retreat into a world of picture-perfect motherhood, Petersen tells me. No wonder I’m drawn into the ongoing celebration of an idyllic lifestyle which has never actually existed for any women, and which is increasingly antithetical to the experiences of marginalized women in the United States. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was real, and available to everyone if they desired it?
Momfluenced is the perfect spring book for anyone who has ever sought to untangle their own desires and experiences from those fed to us by our algorithms: perfectly curated social media feeds, family portraits sprinkled with ads, images of tiny bodies and reproductive lives edited and packaged for maximum profit. It’s a fun and informative read for anyone interested in the ways we all sell ourselves to one another.
