A history of momfluencing is also a history of online culture. In 2004, dooce.com, a blog about motherhood, mental health, and mundane life struggles, reached its peak at about 8.5 million readers worldwide. For its founder, Heather Armstrong, what started as a hobby now comprised her entire income stream thanks to banner ads. Mommyblogging can be seen as the precedent of contemporary influencing. With the advent of blogging, one didnât need to code oneâs own website to be able to share thoughts online. Taking this opportunity, moms wrote about the messy sides of parenting, their personal struggles, and offered tips and advice. At the time, this was the opposite of how mainstream media portrayed family life, with its romanticised and pressure-inducing images of motherhood. For many mothers, the blogosphere became a support network. But looking at the mom-o-sphere today, it seems that things have taken a turn for some. News reports that online channels catering to mothers can make them more anxious than reassured1. What once started as raw and unfiltered spaces to make mistakesâwhere looking for help while not looking your best was encouraged and celebratedâhas spawned feeds with perfect images of idyllic families, that cater to some desires and feed other anxieties. Have we really reverted to this nuclear media landscape, and where do we go from here?
Why Momfluencing?
You might be wondering why The Hmm decided to explore what could be seen as a superfluous topic. Funnily enough, mommy bloggers were subjected to similar critique from the very beginning. Despite their success, these blogs were seen as inferior to their male-dominated counterparts, who chose to focus on âimportant stuffâ. At this time, media outlets still relied heavily on separating private and public, as described by this 2009 article on blogging as a radical act: âThe public sphereâa place that men inhabit and women desire to belong to âconsists of the working world, politics, economics, the law and mainstream discourseâ2. Doing laundry or dealing with screaming babies wasn’t deemed on par. Therefore, you can see how the mommy blog was a transgressive âgenreâ in the early 2000s: mothers publishing their struggles and raising questions about workplace equity and childcare access, inhabiting the online space through womenâs writing (diminished as melodramatic diaries since early Western publishing), and then monetising that very writing. Generating income and public influence from labor and practices often framed as inconsequential and unproductive3 is how momfluencing can be understood as subversion, and a key example of the shifts in how we publish ourselves online. But as our online spaces are dominated by algorithmic platforms, can momfluencers who upcycle toxic colonial standards still be seen as upending the status quo, or have they just become mainstream media figures of our time?
Since time immemorial, it takes a village to raise a child. Considering the shifts and turns that online âvillagesâ have been through, and where we still go to find community and support, The Hmm aims to uncover and map the points of friction that arise in relation to momfluencing â for instance, where do we find parenthood healthily represented and can that ever be through momfluencing? Is criticism of momfluencer content helping to protect children, or another form of misogynistic pushback? Are tradwives actually traditional or a product of the content economy? And last but not least, in mapping out contemporary momfluencers, where do we find existing support networks and radical movements of collective care?
Mapping Momfluencers
For this dossier, weâre diving into our digital anthropologist role to investigate the momfluencing phenomenon, from viral American videos to broader perspectives on parent-fluencing that donât fit the algorithm. We also aim to highlight the ever-blurring borders between online and offline, and the intertwining of online and in-person support networks raising todayâs children.
In mapping these villages, we took a deep dive into both social media platforms and physical support networks around us, as can be seen in digital and accompanying community maps created in a workshop with a multiplicity of women and mothers at Vrouw aan het IJ (Amsterdam-Noord). They also hosted the physical side of our hybrid focus event, Mommy or Foe? Mapping Momfluencers â which gathered different perspectives and audiences around this trend’s origins, lived experiences, and critiques.
Dreaming beyond the algorithm, this dossier features an article by Sarah Khandra on how Black and Brown women are judged differently in the public eye, especially when it comes to motherhood and social media.
And coming back to our initial question of how to foster networks of support and sense of community? Yu Zhangâs image contribution shows how mothers in China use streaming and publishing as ways to fight loneliness.
References
- Hoorntje, Rolinde, and Isa Huizing. 2023. âHoe beĂŻnvloedt de âmomfluencerâ ons moederbeeld?â 1
NOS, May 14, 2023. https://nos.nl/artikel/2475033-hoe-beinvloedt-de-momfluencer-onsmoederbeeld. - Lopez, Lori Kido. 2009. âThe Radical Act of âMommy Bloggingâ: Redefining Motherhood through 2
the Blogosphere.â New Media & Society 11 (5): 729â47. https://doi.org/
10.1177/1461444809105349. - Abidin, Crystal. 2016. ââArenât These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?â: 3
Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity.â Social Media + Society 2 (2): 205630511664134.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305116641342.