Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture

by Sara Petersen

How momfluencer culture impacts women psychologically as consumers, as performers of their stories, and as mothers

On Instagram, the private work of mothering is turned into a public performance, generating billions of dollars. The message is we’re all just a couple of clicks away from a better, more beautiful experience of motherhood.

Linen-clad momfluencers hawking essential oils, parenting manuals, baby slings, and sponsored content for Away suitcases make us want to forget that the reality of mothering in America is an isolating, exhausting, almost wholly unsupported endeavor. In a culture which denies mothers basic human rights, it feels good to click “purchase now” on whatever a momfluencer might be selling. It feels good to hope.

Momfluencers are just like us, except they aren’t. They are mothers, yes. They are also marketing strategists, content creators, lighting experts, advertising executives, and artists. They are businesswomen. The most successful momfluencers offer content that differs very little from what we used to find in glossy women’s magazines like Glamour and Real Simple, only they’re churning it out daily and that content is their lives.

We flock to momfluencers to learn about fashion, wellness, parenting, politics, and to find Brooklyn-designed crib sheets printed with radishes. Chances are, if you’re a mother reading this (and maybe even if you’re not!), you are an arm’s length away from something you’ve purchased because a momfluencer made it look good.

Drawing on her own fraught relationship to momfluencer culture, Sara Petersen incorporates pop culture analysis and interviews with prominent momfluencers and experts (psychologists, academics, technologists) to explore the glorification of the ideal mama online with both humor and empathy. At home on a bookshelf with Lyz Lenz’s Belabored and Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, Momfluenced argues that momfluencers don’t simply sell mothers on the benefits of bamboo diapers, they sell us the dream of motherhood itself, a dream tangled up in whiteness, capitalism, and the heteronormative nuclear family.

Momfluenced considers what it means to define motherhood for ourselves when society is determined to define motherhood for us.

Genres: Nonfiction, Parenting, Audiobook, Feminism, Adult, Cultural, Social Media

Audible Audio

First published April 25, 2023

Reviews

[Panda Incognito · Rating 1 out of 5]

This looked SO down my alley, and I was really excited for it, but I can't get through this. I won't even try. The author filters everything through the lens of her narrow political agenda, ignoring larger contexts, diverse worldviews, and more complex questions related to how mothers engage with social media. Nearly every page is CAPITALISM PATRIARCHY MALE GAZE UNPAID LABOR BLAH BLAH BLAH, and she only occasionally tries to make actual points with this. Normally, she's just throwing around buzz words to sound radical and profound, and to hide that she has nothing of substance to say.

Also, even though this book is supposedly a critique and an analysis, it feels more like an apologetic for why it's okay that the author enjoys following influencers as much as she does. She shares long-winded, repetitive, and fairly pointless information from her interviews with mommy influencers, and this feels more like she's kissing up to the popular girls than like she's trying to write a hard-hitting piece of journalism. She freely blasts and condemns traditional, conservative mothers who don't align with her political and social views, but she doesn't want to come down hard on anyone else, so anything wrong that they've ever done is because of the capitalist patriarchy, the male gaze, and unpaid labor, etc.

This book could have been an article, or maybe a series of three articles. It's way too long, and the occasional moments of genuine social critique are lost in a deluge of irrelevant details, political rants, and ridiculously specific information on a multitude of different influencers. This went into paragraphs of nitty-gritty details where a few sentences could have sufficed, over-stuffing the book with information that only an influencer's biggest fans would care about. Also, it's incredibly difficult to keep up with all of the different accounts and people that the author goes back and forth between.

But do you want to know what REALLY makes this book not worth the paper that it's printed on? The author pretty much ignores the fact that almost all mommy influencing involves exploiting one's children for personal gain. There are definitely ways that people can mitigate the risks and handle this more appropriately than others, but most mommy influencers create immense digital footprints for children who are too young to consent to their images, their stories and experiences, their private embarrassments, and usually their full names and birth dates being shared with the public.

The children of early social media stars are beginning to come of age, and some of them have started speaking out about the psychological and relational harm that they have suffered due to one or both of their parents exploiting them for Internet popularity and financial gain. Obviously, some cases are way more extreme than others, but it is a glaring, unbelievable oversight that this author didn't unpack the consequences for kids. Even if she wasn't going to interview any of the grown kids of mommy influencers, she could have written about how lots of kids have become advertising props, are exposed to public scrutiny and/or harassment, and are treated like fashion accessories and business opportunities instead of young, profoundly vulnerable people.

This is such a glaring oversight that I think it's an ethical problem. You cannot rightly talk about mommy influencers without being willing to delve into the harm online influencing can create when it shapes family life, controls what a parent wants and expects from their child, and invades children's privacy in ways that they cannot consent to. I am sure that the author's response to my critique would be CAPITALIST PATRIARCHY UNPAID LABOR, but what about the kid's unpaid labor? What about them, and their psychological needs? For all that the author harps on how women are subjugated to all kinds of harmful norms, she could have acknowledged that kids are in a far more vulnerable position, with a heck of a lot less social power.

[Jerilyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Have you ever been out to lunch with someone who keeps gossiping about people they went to high school with? And you try to follow along with their point, but because you didn't go to their high school, you lack the context and also by the time the check comes you realize that they didn't have a point at all and just wanted to gossip?

That's what reading this book was like.

I quit social media (besides GoodReads obv) about 3 years ago because I was getting swamped by mama culture and it led to depression and feelings of dysphoria. I never followed mommy influencers, but I was friends with women who did and I ended up absorbing the mommy influencing messaging vicariously. I was hoping this would be a book to help me understand more about that time in my life (I am not exaggerating when I say I was traumatized).

This was not that book.

There were some interesting bits, but overall this was too broad, too self indulgent, and... well... contradictory. I can't take seriously a person who calls themselves a feminist and then gossips and judges other women on page. I can't take seriously a person who calls themselves anticonsumerist but admits to buying a $400 sweater. I can't take seriously a person who claims their feminism is intersectional, but ignores large swaths of disenfranchised people.

Which brings me to the largest blindspot of this book. The kids.

Won't someone think of the children?

There is only a few small mentions of the role of children in mommy influencer culture, and that is in the very last chapter. It's basically nothing, though. While it was interesting to read about the economics of influencing, the unpaid labor the children do without consent and without protection goes ignored. I get that the scope of this book was about mothers and not children, but since you can't have mothers WITHOUT children I do not understand why this issue was ignored.

Spoiler Alert, but in the end Petersen does quit Instagram. That's nice and all, but the whole book she is defending her live of social media and her right to "cringe follow" these women and it makes her final sentiments seem like she's looking for praise. Like the whole book is a performance and since she no longer performs on social media, she had to perform her angry feminist anticapitalist social media free motherhood in book form. I am not impressed.

I also resent the idea that all motherhood is a performance. She talks about her own mother, who obviously mothered before Instagram, and equates her mother's actions as a performance. Look, sometimes I take my kid of picnics or play games or do science experiments with him. More than sometimes, actually. I do this stuff constantly. Is it a performance for him? For my husband? For society? For me? Maybe a little here and there, but mostly I do those things because I enjoy it and my kid enjoys it and I love him. That's the only reason I need.

Not all acts of mothering are performative. It's okay to enjoy mothering. It's okay not to enjoy it. But a person enthusiastically participating in the act of care giving isn't necessarily performing just because your experience with care giving is different.

I feel the author wanted to defend her own experience more than to elucidate the real problems with mommy influencer culture.

I don't know. There was some decent info and I have a few book and pod cast recs now, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. I would say it's a worthy topic but Petersen offers nothing to the conversation.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to explain why I found this book to be so disappointing. Maybe it was the innate tension of the author trying to turn a critical eye to these influencer while still being a fan of their content. Some of her descriptions of interviews with subjects sounded more like she was trying to befriend them than interview them. I just don't think she was nearly critical enough, and definitely did not engage with one of the biggest issues in the 'mommy-blogging' and 'mommy influencer' culture - which is the exploitation of children for money and content.

Also - lord deliver me from reading works bastardizing and collapsing academic gender studies theory. Such a complete oversimplification of Lauren Berlant's work and the term 'male gaze.' If I have to read one more piece that completely misunderstands, misappropriates, and completely defangs feminist critique....

[Charlotte (Romansdegare)]

This is not a book that I would ever have expected to pick up - being neither a mom nor an influencer - and I ended up being so engaged that I consumed the entire thing in a single weekend. I have not stopped talking to everyone I know about it. This is by no means a perfect book, but even its flaws and missteps I found incredibly generative: for thinking through my relationship to social media, to broader concepts of self-image and online selfhood, and even to mothering (as someone who has - somewhat complicatedly- opted out).

Momfluenced belongs to a genre of nonfiction that I deeply love, which is academic yet accessible analysis of pop-culture phenomena. In this case, the subject at hand is "momfluencers" - women who aestheticize and broadcast their identity as mothers over Instagram, often for monetary gain. I truly could not have anticipated how many interesting discussions this topic would give rise to. Like how the "domestic sphere" got separated from the "workplace" by the Industrial Revolution, and how sponsored momfluencer content is remaking the home as a new site of capitalist consumption. How parasociality plays a role in this new form of self-advertising. How looking at pretty moms in pretty houses makes us feel both superior and inferior - and how that tension might be subtly guiding an entire generation's decision-making around when, and how, and whether to mother. And how mainstream momfluencing extends and upholds white supremacist ideas about what makes a "good" mother - despite the many people trying to put different, more inclusive visions of parenting out in the world. 

The author does a really great job of engaging with the work of experts in a wide variety of domains, which means that the portrait she gives of "motherhood" is much broader than the (white, rich, able-bodied, cishet) stereotype we associate with momfluencers. She talks to, and about, disabled moms, trans moms, moms of color, moms across the class spectrum. She brings in knowledge from literary theory, neuroscience, cultural studies, and more. Overall, the book's capacious referentiality makes for a really well-rounded and multi-faceted approach: one that may not come to as many clear-cut conclusions as readers would like, but that considers almost every nuance of the question of mothering. 

This breadth of engagement, however, makes it all the more baffling to me that there remains a gigantic, gaping, and (frankly) inexcusable hole at the center of this book: the author NEVER, not once, talks about the ethics of putting a child's image online before they are able to meaningfully consent. I still, after a week of trying to think through this, cannot understand how this omission happened. 

Surely, it is not just that the topic didn't occur to the author. This book is nothing if not thorough in the avenues it explores. Petersen even gets close enough to the issue that she talks to at least one mom who decided to stop putting her child's face online after someone stole her photos and tried to impersonate her family online. But the thing is... "stranger danger" is far from the only issue around putting your child's face - and entire life - on the internet for people to see! Momfluencing raises so many questions around the autonomy of children, the control they deserve over their bodies and their persons, about consent and the demands of capitalism and... ARGH. I think this book would have been so much richer for exploring those questions. Or even just acknowledging they exist! That the author simply chose to pretend they don't strikes me as unethical.

To be honest, it felt almost to me like Petersen was afraid the entire project would crumble if she acknowledged the fundamental moral quandary at the heart of "momfluencing" - and instead of letting that quandary inform and push her to a deeper level of critical analysis, she instead decided to just close her eyes and cover her ears and pretend it wasn't there. Which is just deeply frustrating, because the book handled so many other thorny issues (gender! race! capitalism!) with such nuance and complexity. 

Anyway, I do still actually strongly recommend this book. I have not stopped thinking about it since I read it. It's made me a more thoughtful, conscious consumer of social media. It's also made me think a lot about how societal ideas about mothering have defined how I move through the world, even just by not participating in that supposedly-fundamental social performance of womanhood. If you like a book that makes you mad and makes you think, this one might be for you- even if, like me, you'd initially thought it wasn't. 

[Traci Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was sorta mixed on this one. Love the premise but was bored sometimes but what she chose to focus on. Shoulda been an essay/article in a lot of ways. Chapter 6 was fantastic (on whiteness in the performance of motherhood). The whole book could/should have been that.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can't do it yall. I thought this was about the negative affects of momfluencer culture, not a long-winded and COMPLETELY thoughtless justification and advertisement of it. My bad.

[Alyssa Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually enjoyed this book, but I do think the fact that there was NOTHING mentioned about the very real psychological impact of children being exploited for financial gain (whatever reason their mother has for wanting to be a momfluencer) is a big miss.

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Neither hard -hitting nor entertaining, neither a critical look nor an insider exposé; this book meandered and rambled and argued both sides of an issue without ever really drawing a conclusion. Being a momfluencer is bad, unless you're using it to be an activist, but then only if you're not doing it in a #activism way, but hashtags are super useful for activism... it's not okay to argue that motherhood should be enough on its own unless it is okay but only if you're meta about it...these influencers are so brave and vulnerable and don't important with but also vulnerability is all about the marketing...and so on. Petersen never really settles on what she's trying to say or what she wants to say about it. And as others point out, she misses some glaring issues, like the issue with monetizing one's children. It ended up feeling as though she really only feels that you probably shouldn't momfluence if you're white and enjoy parenting at all.

[Kinley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Promising book that I liked at first but the chapters were too long and rambling and it read a little like a momfluencer fan club book. I wanted more about the problematic fact that this industry is huge yet based on the free unconsenting labor of the kids and the false experts selling “parenting classes” and the physiological aspect of the influencer/follower pseudo-relationship.

[Abby · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book frustrated me so much that I wrote a thousand words ranting about it last night, but then I decided it was too mean for a goodreads review. But here’s the gist. This book has no thesis, and it doesn’t say anything that anyone with basic common sense doesn’t already know. It’s an ~exploration~ instead of a critical analysis. If anything, it’s influencer apologetics. The author is someone who genuinely enjoys consuming momfluencer content (and she even admits that she once bought a $460 sweater because a momfluencer advertised it, among other things), which makes her hesitant to critique momfluencing as a concept. Instead, she critiques things like racism and capitalism and fatphobia and shows how these bigger issues affect momfluencing. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to nothing but giving shoutouts to influencers who are having conversations about topics like trans parenting, racial bias in healthcare, etc. It’s just pages of “Here’s another issue facing mothers: [insert whatever]. But here’s an influencer who’s talking about it! She’s so cool!” But I didn’t open this book to read praise of influencers. I thought it was going to be an actual critique of the concept of momfluencers. But it was not! I am absolutely floored that she wrote over three hundred pages and completely ignored the child exploitation aspect of momfluencing (except to give one tiny example of a mom whose kids’ photos were stolen by child predators, and then she paints the mom as the victim??? Instead of exploring why it’s become normalized for moms to exploit their children for content in the first place??). I would read three hundred pages on that topic alone. But instead, all I got was a bunch of “Here’s another influencer I loooove and here’s all the details of the time I had a zoom call with her to talk about minimalist aesthetics.” I was going insane reading it. Also it’s a real insult to Jia Tolentino that Trick Mirror was used as a comp title for this book. The writing isn’t nearly in the same league. Waste of my time.

[Emily]

Felt weird that this book didn't dive into the obvious ethical concerns with sharing your child's life online. That should be a central element of this conversation.

[Babbity Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

I guess I'm the silly fool for expecting this book to be a deep critical analysis of "mommy influencer culture." This is a fan letter to the momfluencer industry, concerned above all with how unfair it feels when people are dismissive of it. It's definitely not a look "inside" this world, as the perspective is strictly that of a devoted (if conflicted) consumer of the final content. It's essentially a narrated scroll through the author's own Instagram feed, annotated with promotional interviews with influencers and superficial quotes from experts. It doesn't dig into anything outside this scope-- the book mostly ignores YouTube and TikTok parent influencing, which are arguably the center of the industry right now. It only brushes the surface of the economic machine behind influencing or the way the industry impacts people who are not the moms posting and scrolling.

I was shocked by the book's complete disinterest in the children who provide the content for most parenting accounts. This is the most unique and ethically significant aspect of the parenting content industry, and I think readers are desperate for a book that takes it seriously. But for all the ink spilled about the work-life balance, mental health, and (we are constantly reminded) unpaid labor of the moms running the accounts, there is barely an acknowledgment that the young faces on screen belong to actual human beings who did not ask to offer their childhoods up to their parent's Brand.

[Evvy F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to the author for sending me a copy of this book for review. All the views here are my own.

As a parent and primary caregiver of 5 kids, I'm only partially the target audience for Momfluenced. While I don't identify as a mother or with most mom influencers, I absolutely can relate to the feelings of inadequacy as a parent. Furthermore, I work in marketing and often with bloggers, so I have a nuanced understanding of just how much goes into creating this sort of content.

When I originally heard about this book, I assumed it was going to be a saucy exposé on influencer culture and child exploitation. Instead, Momfluenced discusses why we're drawn to influencer moms and how the it affects us on an emotional, capitalist, and social scale.

Without giving too much away, the need to know is that Petersen makes a strong attempt to present a variety of viewpoints throughout the book, essentially seesawing us with positive and negative feelings towards the topic. Part information, part personal essay, this book takes you through a journey of the author's own problematic social media use, followed by a look into mom influencer culture from both a victim and activism lens.

The good:

I want to be clear that I really enjoyed this book. I can't count how many times I felt I learned something new, highlighted a passage, or read something to my partner. The subject is good, the experts are interesting (for the most part), and, at least in my opinion, Petersen approached topics that are rarely discussed in the mainstream media (like moms being involved in QAnon).

Besides the actual content of the book, Petersen's writing is enjoyable and fun to read; something that can't be said for all nonfiction authors.

The bad:

It's important to note going in that this book becomes bogged down with too many shoutouts, references, or egregiously specific examples - especially into the later chapters. This wouldn't be an issue if the specific topics touched upon were longer, but there is, at times, a severe lack of information when a reference is brought up.

I believe this is the largest failing of the book. There are so many good ideas here - had the author dedicated a little more time to beefing up each topic with facts or legitimate expert weigh-ins (instead of just some), it would have been the difference between 4 and 5 stars for me.

Finally, while a lot can be said for Petersen's attempt to check her privilege and bring in diverse voices, certain parts of the book feel unrelatable from her lens. While this isn't a major issue due to it having little impact on the content presented, it's important going in to note that it's framed from the point of view of a white, married, straight/cis, middle class mother of 2.

That isn't to say that a range of folks, including childless women and men, won't get something out of Momfluenced. In fact, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who wants a better understanding of this culture, regardless of your background.

As a parent I determine whether a book was good based on whether I felt my limited time was well spent reading it. In this case, I'm glad I picked it up - and I hope you enjoy it too.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only thing this book is good for is starting a bonfire.

Sara is a bitter, resentful mother who has tried everything she can to be as cool as the momfluencer moms (even admitting she had a third baby to be more like them!), but can’t. So she either name drops the ones who speak to her or brutally rips apart the others. Mostly the ones who live life differently than she does.

Sara, I know you wrote this in 2020 (the amount of times she wrote “global pandemic” should be illegal), so I hope you realize how horribly wrong everything you said was. Kelly wasn’t a monster for being around other people without masks on. She was actually doing THE RIGHT THING. Yelling at your kids to keep staring at the computer screen is NOT homeschool. Zoom has no place in real homeschool and it’s developmentally cruel to expect them to be on computers all day. The science has shown you were dead wrong, despite creating a burn book of any mom more conservative than you are (which doesn’t sound hard to be). You are the Regina George of Mean Girls, eviscerating any mom who has different political views or makes different choices. Isn’t it the liberal camp that is obsessed with empowering women? This book does the opposite. It’s nothing but middle school gossip but written as dry as a chemistry textbook.

I quit halfway through when this well-off white woman whines about racism (did you know minimalism is racist because it centers around white paint? LOL) and a “capitalist patriarchal society.” The same society that lets her live the way she does. How oppressed she is, living in her nice New England home wearing her $400 sweater she bragged about buying. This is not a woman who has a real clue what she’s saying. This is not oppression.

The real clincher was when this mother, writing about other mothers, was weeping about the possible overturn of Roe. Because what is more depressing than being told you might not be allowed to brutally dismember and murder your child? With the way she talks about her own children, it’s almost not surprising. She clearly resents them and the role they take in her life.

Sara, I hope you find some help. You are wallowing in bitterness. I hope you learn how to enjoy your children and realize that a lot of us actually like being with our kids, as difficult as it is. I hope you learn to be a more entertaining writer instead of using quotes to fill up 75% of your book. Most of all, I hope you take a long social media break.

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded down.

The portions of this book that veered more towards personal essay were outstanding. I loved the parts where the author talked about her mother, about her struggles with motherhood, about how she interacted with and responded to momfluencers. Even when she brought in outside sources, those sections were lively and personal and engaging and interesting.

The book fell flat for me when the narrative drifted further from the author’s lived experience. The chapter about white supremacy among momfluencers, or the chapters about the experiences of Black mothers, fat mothers, etc. They were well-written and well-researched, but they primarily felt like summaries of someone else’s book or of an interview. They felt quite clinical.

I understand why the author felt the need to include these outside perspectives — if the goal is to write a book about momfluencer culture and impact, the scope is naturally larger than the lived experience of one upper middle class, thin, white woman.

But what we’re left with is two quite different books shoved together in one cover — a broad, researched book about different types of momfluencers and the communities they reach; and a collection of personal essays about the impact of social media on a woman already struggling with motherhood.

I greatly preferred the personal essays.

[Becky · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to reading a comprehensive, reflective book on the culture around mom influencers, but this book really bummed me out and wasn't really comprehensive or reflective in a way that resonated with me. The tone of the book was really weird to me, with the author coming across as extremely condescending and judgmental in the early parts of the book, depressed and kind of hating the fact that she has children in the middle, and kind of a virtue signally woke white woman vibe in the end. From what I understood, the whole point of this book was to talk about the ways in which we judge and vilify and glorify and aestheticize motherhood as a culture, but unfortunately the author also seemed to do all of these things to the various mothers she spoke about.
The way the author talked about the mommy influencers she follows felt downright obsessive and personally not relatable. I also just hate when books, especially non-fiction, are written in common American vernacular (saying I was like instead of I said, for example), and in this case, it actually made the book harder to follow in an audio format.

[erforscherin]

Abandoned at ~25%. I was excited about the concept, but cannot stand the author’s writing style — it’s just a giant wall of text that goes on and on, with no structure or organization or even chapter subheadings (come on!) Random people are introduced every few paragraphs, so I was constantly paging backwards to find who the heck they were, only to find little to no context.

In better hands this might have been a cool anthropological study: what started “momfluencers” on their paths, how do their personal ideals differ from their performative ones, WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS, how does the consumption of this content impact others’ own satisfaction/ideals/family life… but instead this is mostly just “look at all these people I love to hate” parasocial gossip. Disappointingly shallow.

[Hannah]

Listened to the audio, read for a buddy read. This is not a book or topic I would have gravitated to otherwise, but isn’t that what’s great about book clubs and similar? They can get a childfree single queer woman to read a book about moms on the internet.

Overall I found this to be interesting and well done, although I think at times it was obvious that the author was realizing how hard it is to tackle the subject in under 350 pages. As such, she doesn’t go as deep into some topics as they deserve and leaves a lot of other aspects of modern motherhood influencing out of it. But anyone who wants more has a plethora of references to pursue once they finish this.

[Rabbit · Rating 1 out of 5]

WOW, a rare DNF for me. It's weird and rambling and seems to be most interested in "explaining" this trend in a way that justifies it. Momfluencers are good actually because girlbossing! In the same breath the author acknowledges that everything is marketing but that's okay as long as the moms are doing the marketing but that's not okay because it makes other moms feel bad but that's fine actually because what moms want is to see a vision of perfection. I came here to read reviews when I was thinking of abandoning it, and the nail in the coffin is folks saying she doesn't even really get into the KIDS! The commodification of their LIVES, without their consent, is something I am desperate for books to dig the fuck into.

It honestly feels like it should have been a moderately long article, but if you're going to make it a book you'd better have some kind of point of view. It wasn't even fun gossip. It just does none of the options well.

[Leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

To me, this book wasn’t about the cultural significance & effects of momfluencers. It was about the author rationalizing why she feels a certain way. The book speaks heavily on capitalism & the patriarchy without adding to the conversation. Additionally, the book treated the kids as accessories to a lifestyle and didn’t address the exploitation & safety concerns that come with using your kids as content.

[Kimberly W · Rating 1 out of 5]

My god, this book is SO BAD! 2x speed wasn’t fast enough.

Interesting take-aways were few & far between; here are the only three I noted:
- “Not everybody can hire a…doula. But what is cheap is following a bunch of influencers on Instagram.”
- The rise of natural/all white aesthetic in home decor has to do with brands wanting a muted background for their products. The products being shilled by the influencer will stand out more than against a background of “mismatched kitchen cabinets and countertops.”
- Mentally ill people will copy & paste your family’s pictures onto their own accounts and “role play” with them.

[Katy O.]

DNF in Chapter 2. Really no fault of the book, but I’ve read and listened to so much on this topic that after skimming through the rest of the book, I can see it’s not offering me wildly new information. In addition, it's written in a more academic tone than I was anticipating. If you’re new to exploring the psychology and business behind momfluencers, though, definitely grab this one!

[Jess]

Listened to 4 hours of this audiobook. Literally cannot imagine what another 7 hours would have been about. It was enough content for about one hour, and then it was super boring.

[britt_brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per social media, the default symbol of a good mom is white/thin/pretty/cis. That combination is not indicative of the majority of American moms, so why do we care about these people? I generally don’t; at least not intentionally. Petersen takes a look at this bizarre industry. Smart and snarky.

PS. The takedown of Rachel Hollis gave me much pleasure. She’s awful.

[Lindsey Parrott · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up.

Not sure why I picked up this book (not a mom and I don’t have Instagram :) but it seemed like an interesting premise).

The book lost stars because it sometimes felt redundant/repetitive and I wished the author had touched more on the exploitation of kids in momfluencers’ usually very kid-centric content.

Overall this book definitely reaffirmed my desire NOT to have kids in my twenties. Sorry grandma.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was pregnant, the algorithms across all social media platforms started to push a crazy amount of content and products for moms. I began to see sooo many influencer accounts which often featured white moms with huge, perfectly aesthetic houses. So this book caught my eye because I often found myself trying to curate my feed away from all of the “mom” influencer content as I found it made me more anxious and even more confused than ever. It was also painfully clear the lack of representation on social media of moms who look like me.

I was so pleasantly surprised that this book turned out to be a very well researched account of how “momfluencer” culture has deep roots in white feminism and racism. When discussing the idealization of domesticity and its impact on current Momfluencer culture, Petersen writes “My purpose in outlining the racist underpinnings of the Cult of Domesticity is to point out that present-day idealization of domesticity and motherhood cannot be wholly divorced from its racist roots.”

She continues, “While many white middle- and upper-class women stayed home in the 1950s, and theoretically had the time to find “rewards” in homemaking and domestic work, many women of color and working-class women had been working outside of the home before, during, and after the mid-century revival of the Cult of Domesticity. And the women of color who did adhere to domestic ideals were precluded from gaining access to the type of respect and protection afforded to their white counterparts.”

She argues that these historical implications informed how we view and experience motherhood today and its impact on the culture of moms who are influencers on the internet.

Petersen even interviewed a diverse group of “momfluencers” who shared their experiences, thus continuing to shed light on challenges of motherhood and how social media has both been negative and positive for them.

I thought this was very good, insightful. Don’t be dismayed by the low reviews on Goodreads. The Conservative white women are mad! They are mad that the author brought up “political things” I.e.. they’re mad when racism and white privilege is acknowledged. If you wanted a Rachel Hollis figure to tell you “Girl tune out social media” this ain’t that book! Respectfully.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am afraid I probably came to this book because I wanted to feel superior to momfluencers in Instagram, but the more I read, not only didn’t I want to feel superior to any of them, but the less I felt like that world has anything to do with me, and I want to keep it that way. Seems like we could all internalise more of Brené Brown’s research on shame and guilt.
I would have liked to see her actually interview people in the groups of influencers she was most critical of. You could tell who she had actually talked to because she loved and celebrated their content. Her criticisms on the other hand came from perceptions of other moms’ content and the outrage it engendered, which although part of a lively brunch discussion, only scratches the surface of the potential critical awareness one could take.
Also, we definitely need an update because this book begins and ends with Naomi Davis, who has, since this book was released, deleted her blog and Instagram! (I don’t know if the events are connected, but I’m deeply curious what Peterson has to say about it.)

[Tessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I DNFed this pretty early, but skimmed through the rest. The author is SO pretentious. It appears that the entire book is about how she hate-follows conservative moms who love their kids so she can feel superior to them since she is an Enlightened Liberal.

[Tara Gold · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, thank you to Beacon Press and Penguin Random house for providing me with a physical ARC of this book when I found the digital version hard to read -- I was able to get so much more out of this when I was able to follow the text as the author intended!

Momfluenced is Sara Petersen's look into the world of Mommy Influencers on Instagram/Social Media. Admittedly, I do not spend a lot of time on Mommy Influencer spaces, I do spend a lot of time in influencer spaces more broadly and even wrote my doctoral dissertation on the subject...so I was intrigued by her analysis here.

Right off the bat, I want to say that one thing that would have made this book way easier for me would have been some sort of digital link to some of the very visual content Petersen references throughout the text. I would have liked to view these accounts and posts. I'm not sure what will be included with the final published copy, but even just a QR code to a website with links to some of this content would have gone a long way for me.

That being said, I did enjoy this book...despite my three star rating, which might look deceptively low here. This three star is a solid, "I liked it!" three star. I am endlessly fascinated by the way life is performed online, and Instagram is particularly notorious for being all about aesthetic over substance...and Petersen approaches this with both a clear appreciation for these spaces but also a solid critique of how they can be harmful or have negative influences on those striving for a perfection that can never be attained.

I particularly liked how Petersen took time to included discussions of marginalized voices in these spaces -- from those with less polished homes/feeds to mommy influencers who are Black, queer, disabled, or neurodivergent.

Petersen herself is very close to this world that she writes about, and she includes herself and her story in the text as she grapples with her own consumption and critique of this kind of content. While I appreciated this (for real, I didn't mind it), something about her writing did feel a bit awkward when it came to including the quotes and excerpts from her interviews with various influencers. I can't really put my finger on it, but it felt more like excert-dumping than seamless integration of the findings from her interviews. I can't help but think this is related to her closeness to the community, but it could just be my own personal quirk as a reader.

Overall, this was a delightful and robust look at an online community while also examining the complexities of motherhood in the digital age. It know it's not easy (as I currently have two under two myself), even if the internet can make it look so aesthetic and wholesome. I wish more books like this existed.

[Jessica Lee]

DNF - This book was not what I was expecting, and I chose not to continue reading it. I think it would have left me very frustrated for a number of reasons. From others' reviews on Goodreads, I don't think I'm alone in that feeling. Instead of being a commentary on how "momfluencers" influences motherhood, parenting, and affects their children who are growing up on social media without any oversight, it seemed like a political commentary. It was like the author hate-follows these influencers and wanted to talk about all the things she hates about them, mostly their differing belief systems from hers. The amount of times she brought up political things in just the first chapter to me completely set the tone for the book. It's okay to snark some, but this was a published book that read like a Reddit thread in my opinion.

I try to be open-minded and respectful of other people's beliefs, but I didn't appreciate the lack of respect this author had. It was clear she had no desire to give the benefit of the doubt or accept they had a different viewpoint or lifestyle; all she wanted to do was critique (disrespectfully) why they were wrong because they didn't believe what she did (all of which is her personal opinion).

Anyways, I won't comment more because I didn't finish it. It may have taken a turn for the better, but based on others' reviews, I didn't feel confident enough to stick it out. It sure seemed like a missed opportunity to talk about something huge that is impacting our current generation. This wasn't the book for me 💁‍♀️