India has approx 2 to 2.5 million influencersand “mom influencers” get along 11 percent this segment. That’s approximately 275,000 voices telling you through our screens how to be good mothers. And these voices have become the standard bearers of the institution of motherhood.
This new digital army of mom influencers thrives on branded offers and user-generated content. They have effectively monetized the act of motherhood and turned it into a viable source of income. Her content contributes significantly to the cultural narrative of the “ideal mother” – a mother who packs aesthetically pleasing, home-cooked lunches; Who buys the best products for their child? who shares her struggles with motherhood, only to then talk about a new product that will make breastfeeding easier or make her postpartum experience more bearable; a mother who feeds her child alone make money from the same child; a mother whose spouse only appears during holidays, festivals or road trips; a mother whose entire personality is determined by the caregiving responsibilities she takes on and the way she shows herself to her children.
The influencer And The capitalist machine
Some mom influencers have close to half a million followers, while others are on the lower end with 6,000-8,000 followers. However, one similarity is evident in their willingness to capture and monetize their domestic identity, exposing it to the world to see, comment on, like and share.
Another worrying feature of these influencers is their identity. Most mom influencers with a high number of followers are physically fit, wealthy, live in big cities, belong to nuclear families and are most likely to be ‘upper’ caste. This singular narrative about what motherhood looks like erases millions of mothers – mothers living in and navigating largely patriarchal communal families, single mothers, mothers with disabilities, and mothers from diverse class and caste backgrounds. It renders her invisible as only one “correct” way of being a mother takes center stage in the digital narrative, further reinforcing Brahminical patriarchy.
The tone of these accounts is that of a worried friend, an anguished aunt, a fellow traveler on the journey of motherhood. However, like everything on social media, it is a carefully crafted and perfected effort. Viewers scroll through these carefully crafted feeds hoping to feel understood, learn how to be a better parent, and aspire to this vision of the ideal mother, and in doing so, they internalize a harmful message: your personal experiences raising your child are somehow lacking.
In addition to picture-perfect moments, we see careful and thoughtful product placements for strollers, baby pillows, tiffin boxes, nail cutters, children’s films, sketch pens, children’s clothing and schools. As a viewer, you ask yourself: Should or must I have the same experience for my child so that my child doesn’t grow up without it and therefore have an incomplete childhood?
Motherhood thus becomes an activity closely linked to the capitalist machine that refuses to recognize mothers unless they are consumers of their products, and mother influencers become capitalism’s chosen ambassadors in this dynamic. Some influencers also sell custom nutrition plans, postpartum recovery and fitness plans, baby product buying guides, and even workshops and courses. Whether these influencers have the right qualifications to pass on this information is often unknown to the viewer.
Strengthening gender roles
Another thing that is evident about these feeds is the absence of fathers throughout the narrative. You hardly see your father, except on car rides, on vacation or at festivals. Removing the father from the narrative further solidifies and glorifies the role of mothers as primary caregivers – a belief that has only done harm to mothers and even women who choose not to have children.
Removing the father from the narrative further solidifies and glorifies the role of mothers as primary caregivers.
In her book Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich illustrates how the institution of motherhood affects everyone in society – women who are mothers, women who are not mothers, fathers and same-sex couples. By foregrounding only mothers in the caregiving narrative, this affects not only mothers but also fathers, who are either not seen and acknowledged or given a free pass not to engage in the care work required to raise children.
On average, Indian women spend more than twice as much time about unpaid care work as Indian men. And the mom influencers of the social media world are pushing the narrative that this is exactly what it takes to be a great mom, all while monetizing their own care work.
Children’s digital rights and privacy
The most concerning element of mom influencer culture (and even family influencers/vloggers) is the blatant disregard for their children’s privacy and digital rights. We are privy to most moments in a child’s life. One influencer even shared a picture of her child bathing in a tub.
The children depicted in these images are usually infants, toddlers or teenagers far too young to give consent to be used as fodder on the internet to gain more followers, impress the algorithm and make money.
The digital world poses the risk of cyberbullying, misuse of children’s private information, exposure to pornographic content, deepfakes and other nefarious activities. There is also a growing number of children of influencers speak out against their parents in western countries. We cannot even begin to understand the psychological impact on these children as they grow up knowing that their entire lives, from 2 a.m. feedings to tantrums, have been shared via digital media without their consent.
The world of social media is designed to compete for our attention, sell products, and present us with a dominant narrative. The same goes for mom influencer accounts. Under the guise of sharing the realities of motherhood, they jeopardize their children’s privacy and increase the burden on new and expectant mothers to do more and more.
And as fathers largely disappear from the scene, this narrative reinforces gender roles and erases the problems of countless mothers and women already burdened with unpaid work and care work. And this is all done for advertising revenue and product sales. The internet has actually made motherhood a paid career for women, but at what cost?
Avni Vij is an educator and storyteller. She writes about gender, women’s lived experiences, and the inner lives of ordinary people. She is currently completing her master’s degree in literature. Her poem “Patterns of Seven” was published in Beyond Zine by Farside Collective.