Momfluenced
And "The Constant Vacillation Between Despising Domestic Drudgery and Aspiring to Domestic Bliss" (51)
(Screenshot from Bookshop)
Last week I finished the book Momfluenced and I am obsessed. I am now in a deep dive into the fascinating history of blogging and influencing and now have Popcorn Brain as:
1) I learn something new.
2) It’s giving me language to things I’ve wrestled with.
3) It’s helping me as I continually interrogate and work through my own internalized misogyny when it comes to motherhood.
I want to write A LOT about this but I’m trying to limit posts to approximately 500 words so I’m going to give just a brief summary of the book, and why I’m just so fired up about this.
Mothering/parenting is essential labor; I hate to posit it in capitalistic terms (because children are not commodities!) but it’s literally the foundation of our economy and without people reproducing and raising kids, we won’t have our replacements in the marketplace. Without the free labor a parent (generally the mother) provides we wouldn't have adults who are doing the good and important work that needs to be done (everything from service work to teaching to medical care to engineering). I have LOTS more thoughts on this that I might sketch out someday because I’m curious about others thoughts, but for now I’m trying to stay focused on convincing you to read this book.
Momfluencing is a billion dollar industry. Moms arguably have their spending hands in every niche—sports, arts, books, food, entertainment, travel, clothing, housing; I mean really—where isn’t a mom spending money? Sara Peterson makes the (what seems so obvious to me now) point that momfluencers, these mothers whose labor is unpaid and undervalued, found a way to be paid for this work.
They made it aesthetically beautiful and appealing and, through pictures, they made it shoppable.
And they reclaimed identity and power in a season of life when you lose both. She says on page 30,
Many people have asked me why this book is focused on momfluencer culture…the primary answer is that motherhood renders all mothers powerless to an extent, and momfluencer culture offers us power and control. We cannot control our bodies…who our children will be…who we will turn out to be as mothers.
Motherhood can hurt us just as deeply as it can bring us joy; it is a role defined by vulnerability.
Ultimately, momfluencer culture allows us to control—at least to an extent—the mythology of our own motherhood.
The book is also about attention and idealism. One of the things I most appreciated about this book was that it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Yes, she does a deep dive into what it can do to our psyches, and yes, she discusses the “Q-a-mom” pipeline but she also has in-depth chapter on how momfluencers use IG as disruption and activism. Momfluencing is very white but because social media democratizes content, there are more and more POC influencers. There are trans and nonbinary mothers showing their mothering. These are all women that are creating content, not just for themselves, but for others who have historically not seen themselves reflected in the American Motherhood Myth.
One of the most HOPEFUL things I read about was the evolution of MomsRising in which she talks about the Bingo card. When MomsRising started in the aughts, they used Bingo cards to track how many times things like paid family leave and childcare came up. At the time it hardly ever did and now it comes up all the time. There is so much power in the collective!
Here’s a truth about me—I’m still not comfortable with having “mom” be a part of my identity. For ten years I had two desires that conflicted:
1) To experience pregnancy and giving birth** and the transformative power of parenting and caregiving
2) To live a life unburdened by the “drudgery of domesticity” so that I could focus solely on writing.
But I know this discomfort with the “mom identity” is most likely internalized misogyny because I don’t want to be known as a mom. I don’t want to be known as a “mommy writer” or a woman who writes about motherhood. And I think this book helped me realize, that DUH, moms are fucking powerful and ALSO DUH my own misogyny and my complicity in perpetrating misogyny. It’s so much to unpack!
Anyway, if this sounds interesting or compelling, read the book. Then message me so we can talk more about how we can leverage the capitalistic power that moms have to make this world a much better place. For all.
Links:
Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture
In Pursuit of Clean Countertops Sara Petersen’s newsletter
Under the Influence a podcast that covers a lot of these issues. It’s funny and irreverent in a way that makes me feel like Jo Piazza is my cool older sister’s coolest friend.
Over the Influence: Jo Piazza’s newsletter
*Popcorn Brain is what I call that feeling when your brain is lighting up over and over, so quickly it feels like dormant corn kernels popping into popcorn.
**Yes, pregnancy and giving birth was an experience I wanted. I used to feel guilty about it and that I should be above that desire but also—it’s pretty freaking primal and if it’s something I *want* I shouldn’t feel bad about it.