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Sarah Petersen on white momfluencer culture

On EXTRA UNLADYLIKE episode #106, writer Sara Petersen shares how disillusionment with new motherhood led to her fascination with momfluencers and breaks down the aesthetics, branding and unspoken politics of white momfluencer culture. She analyzes all of it on her excellent substack In Pursuit of Clean Countertops, and her book Momfluencer comes out in 2023.

This is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity, or you can listen on Patreon.

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“Sometimes I just wonder, is all of this messaging to prevent women from having the time or mental capacity to consider their entrapment, you know what I mean?”

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Cristen: Well to start, could you just introduce yourself and share who you are, what you do and why?

Sara: My name is Sarah Peterson. I've been writing about motherhood and feminism for like five or six years now. And I write about motherhood and feminism because since becoming a mom, I was really disillusioned and radicalized by motherhood.

So yeah, I really wanted to put my angst out there and I'm writing a book about momfluencer culture, or mommy Instagram culture, called Momfluenced, and that is coming out next spring. And I also have a substack called In Pursuit of Clean Countertops, which sort of unpacks the various layers of momfluencer culture, and what it reveals about how we treat mothers in this country.

Cristen: So you mentioned the the disillusionment and radicalization of motherhood, And that brings me to matrescence?

Sara: Yeah.

Cristen: Yeah. Okay. So, I learned that term thanks to you, and I was so excited to run across this term. I do not have kids. However, I'm in my late thirties and have been, in the past five years or so, watching literally every single one of my friends (with kids) experiencing matrescence, blindsided in one way or another by the whole thing.

So, what was your experience of matrescence like?

Sara: It was bad. It was really bad. For various reasons, I sort of unthinkingly pursued motherhood, very unthinkingly and uncritically as sort of like a pathway to self-actualization, which really, really, it's not a good idea. I had like a really shaky sense of my own identity going into motherhood.

I kind of thought motherhood was like going to make me a person, and it didn't. It just created a lot of domestic labor and a lot of responsibilities that, if anything, erased my identity. And so I really struggled to hold on to any sense of self within that experience.

At the same time, I was very much actively trying and figure out, like, what do I want out of life? What do I want to do for work? So trying to figure those things out while also having thought the motherhood was going to be that thing was just really, really, really rough. I also had postpartum depression, which I think I would've had regardless of the psychic adjustment that motherhood entails.

But yeah, the first year I was just constantly mad and constantly like, this is a scam. I mean, obviously motherhood is beautiful in many ways, but why is it upheld as this identity marker that we should all aspire to and that's going to make us somehow more noble and more full? I just spent so many of those first years trying to figure out, like, what is going on with the institution of motherhood as we've been fed since birth, basically?

Cristen: This might be way too big of a follow-up question to ask. Why do you think it is so relentlessly idealized?

Sara: I think it needs to be for our capitalist structure to survive.

I think girls and female identifying people need to be fed this myth that motherhood will complete you.

Because if we go into motherhood with eyes wide open, knowing that you're not going to be structurally or systemically supported, you're not going to have much respect or financial remuneration for your labor. You're going to be forced to make really shitty choices and really shitty sacrifices. If you know all these things going into it, I think a lot more people would a) advocate for policy changes and b) maybe opt out altogether, because the way it's set up in our country specifically is really, it just hurts caregivers constantly.

Cristen: It seems like the knee-jerk, dead-end counter-argument to that is [that] having children, motherhood, it's the best job that you could have. It's like the joys of motherhood should outweigh all of the negatives.

Sara: Right. And what other jobs in our culture do we look at like that? I mean, if it's the most important job, then it should be treated as such. We should treat caregivers a lot better than we do.

And it also reminds me of like the fucking crime of how little teachers are respected or paid for their work. I mean, I have a friend who teaches third grade, and she has a kindergartener and a second grader to come home to every day. And I'm just like, you deserve a million dollars a day—a day! It just reflects how little we venerate care work in general, I feel like.

Cristen: So getting into the momfluencer space, what is the difference between a mom and a momfluencer?

Sara: The traditional definition of a momfluencer is someone who has monetized their performance of motherhood on social media. So whether that is spon con or brand partnerships, or maybe they're using their platform to sell a book that they've written about parenting or about kid nutrition or whatever, but in some way they're using their identity as a mother to sell something.

But for my research and for the purposes of my book, I'm kind of expanding it to look at how we all perform motherhood in some way, regardless of our platform, or even regardless of whether or not we're on social media. We are forced to perform our identities as mothers in various contexts. So I think that's really interesting to look at, especially on social media. Like some of the momfluencers that most sort of get into my psyche, I'm not clicking on any of their links necessarily, I'm not buying any of the sponsored products, but I'm internalizing how they're performing motherhood, and it's impacting how I see my own motherhood.

sara petersen @slouisepetersen

Just stumbled across a momfluencer reel vilifying (among other things), Lucky Charms, iPads, and DAYCARE and I hate it so much.

Cristen: Tell me how you became kind of obsessed with this particular culture.

Sara: Oh, gosh. I had my first kid in 2012, so momfluencer culture was not really what it is now. And then I had my daughter in 2014, and that's when I started getting into blogs. So like, Love Taza was probably my gateway, and that's Naomi Davis. So at the time, she was in the Upper West Side, I think at the time she had three kids, and like her feed is super bright, bold, colorful, lots of close-ups of kids freckles and just lots of toothy grins and red lipstick and just, it looked so joyful. And it really looked like she loved being a mom so much. And this is right when I had a newborn, I had a two year old and I was still struggling with, I kind of hate a lot of aspects of motherhood. Sometimes I'd rather vacuum than read a book to them, you know what I mean?

So I just felt sort of obsessed with figuring out what I might be doing wrong, or what she was doing right to have such a joyful experience. And yeah, so that was sort of, I think, the gateway, and then I just kept falling down more and more rabbit holes. It was part and parcel of me trying to figure out why I felt so stuck in motherhood so much at the time and why so many of these moms apparently didn't

Cristen: Would you say that today's Instagram momfluencers, is it sort of just the next generation of the mommy bloggers of the early 2000s, but maybe more visual and aesthetic forward?

Sara: Yeah. And I also think the, like, o.g. mommy bloggers really paved the way to important conversations being normalized. Like, we didn't talk about postpartum depression nearly as much as we do now. We didn't talk about stuff like clogged milk ducks as much as we do now. And I really think those mommy bloggers are part of why so many of those conversations have been normalized and, you know, put it on a mainstream stage. And this current iteration of momfluencers, they're certainly talking about those things, but it's so much more wrapped up in shopping and in performance and aesthetics in a way that it wasn't for the original mommy bloggers.

Cristen: I have to ask you about Ballerina Farm. What slash who is Ballerina Farm?

Sara: So Ballerina Farm is an actual farm in Utah, and it's run by Hannah Neelemen who went to Julliard to train as a ballerina. She's also a pageant queen, and her husband Daniel Neelemen, who is one of the heirs, or at least is one of the children, of the founder of Jet Blue.

Hannah and Daniel Neeleman and six of their seven kids.

This is becoming more widely known that like, he obviously comes from a ton of money, but it's not part of their branding at all. Their branding is very much focused on we're first-generation ranchers, we're learning as we go, you know, we're up all night, milking cows and fixing fences, while also raising seven children who are homeschooled, and we do it all with a smile on our face.

It's a lot of idealization of fresh air and free roaming children and a lot of idealization of the nuclear family and traditional gender roles and domesticity and hearth and home as both the center of family and the center of the nation. So, it's a really rich text.

I keep thinking like, okay, they're going to stop providing fodder for cultural critiques eventually, but they just don't seem to. They keep finding something new to sort of dig into.

Cristen: Tell me a little bit more about how and why it is such a rich text.

Sara: I mean, I have three kids and I tried to garden the other day. My husband was gone the whole day. So I was trying to garden with a three-year-old, a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old. You'd think that would be reasonably doable, but really within 15 minutes, it's lord of the flies. Like, somebody hitting somebody else, everybody's screaming, I've lost my temper. It's like a complete shit show. And Ballerinafarm, Hannah Neelemen, has seven children and is just like baking sourdough constantly, dancing, smiling constantly, and makes it all look as though it's not intense grueling labor. And care work and domestic work is intense, sometimes grueling, labor, especially if you have seven kids.

I think it's just the implausibility of it all that a lot of followers keep coming back to time and time again. I mean, she just had her seventh kid, like less than two weeks ago, and I think within a week was planning a birthday party for one of her other kids and hanging up streamers and cleaning the house and posting a time-lapse video.

And I've just heard from so many people that are just like, I want her to rest. I want her to show herself in bed healing from childbirth. And I think so many of us, especially post pandemic, are beyond burnt out from ignoring the realities, the hard realities of motherhood, that this account taps into a lot of our frustrations and anxieties in a way it's hard to quantify.

Cristen: Are her fans just looking, do you think, just for escapism?

Sara: Yeah, for sure. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I mean, I certainly use social media sometimes to escape, and I think moms especially have every reason to want to escape and we shouldn't begrudge them that.

I think it can get tricky if it's uncritical escapism, if we're not sort of constantly assessing, like, how is this impacting me subconsciously in ways that I might not even recognize initially? And like what does it say about our culture that one million people follow this person?

And what does it say about us that we want this mother to be a quote unquote "supermom"? I guess I get a little stuck, concerned, whatever, when I see the plethora of comments just praising, I didn't look like that when I was pregnant, and oh, you've already lost the baby weight and how do you do it all, you make it look so easy! And just all of these toxic, toxic, toxic narratives of motherhood that like needed to be retired. It's just, I think so many people are so tired of celebrating this impossible to attain ideal.

The @ballerinafarm comment sections are a rich text as well…

Cristen: Ballerina Farm, like in what ways do you think is it representative of current momfluencer culture?

Sara: I mean, there's definitely a thriving subset of momfluencers who would probably identify as tradwife momfluencers who grow their own food, weave their own linen or whatever, and celebrate like a back-to-basics version of motherhood—

Cristen: Which also sounds inherently white supremacist?

Sara: Yes. Thank you for bringing that up because it's nostalgia for a time and a type of womanhood and motherhood that never existed for anyone, even rich white upper-class people. Even they never had true power in, you know, the "good old days", or true agency, and idealizing a time when so many marginalized people were oppressed, and so many marginalized people, and Black and brown people specifically, were working in white women's homes to put the white woman on this angel of the house stage, it's just inherently problematic, and you can't be nostalgic for a time like that without considering the implications of that nostalgia.

Cristen: Well, and it also seems like a challenging time perhaps to be a momfluencer. You know, how does Ballerina Farm feel about Roe v Wade being overturned?

Sara: I mean, I don't think she'll ever speak up about politics ever. I think she'll be neutral until her account is dead and buried. And I talk about this a lot, but claiming to be politically neutral is a political stance, and she and a lot of white tradwife momfluencers do speak volumes when they choose not to speak up about reproductive rights, about the formula shortage, about the way that Black mothers still die at a rate three times that of white mothers. And yeah, it's a challenging time to be a mom or a momfluencer. But especially when you have a platform of one million, I really can't envision a world where you don't have some sort of responsibility to talk about your beliefs.

Cristen: Well, and it also made me wonder, what topics are off the table for momfluencers?

Sara: I mean, depending on the type of momfluencer, reproductive rights, for sure. There's been a couple of pieces written recently about which momfluencers spoke up. Stephanie McNeal did a piece sort of highlighting the stance of various Mormon momfluencers who at least said something about reproductive rights.

But a lot of them, especially ones with over like a hundred thousand followers, they have to sort of consider brand partnerships. They have to consider, like, if I say this, how many followers will it alienate? If I say it in this way, can I claim some sort of both sides, as if that will keep more followers, which will then ultimately impact my revenue? So there's all these ideological considerations they have to think about before speaking up on really anything that is deemed political.

They can talk about like, oh, I'm so tired because my kids are driving me crazy because that's not going to touch any bottom line, you know what I mean? But they can't speak openly about, yeah, I had an abortion and I think everybody has the right to a safe and successful abortion. Because then it's going to alienate some of their potential followers, which is going to alienate sponsorships, and brand partnerships, and the way everything is wrapped up in each other in itself is just not great.

Cristen: Well, what do you think that reflects about American motherhood culture at large that the politics of motherhood seems so incompatible with this? There's a strange disconnect there to me.

Sara: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it has to do with essentialist gender norms. Like, a good mother should naturally be a good mother, and to be a good mother means not to complain and to be selfless and to be gentle and to be nurturing, and all of these things should come naturally. They should all be inherent. And if you start speaking up about being dissatisfied with the status quo of motherhood, if you start saying that maternal rights matter just as much as fetuses' rights, then you're breaking the rules of good motherhood.

The myth and the cult of good motherhood is what makes it easy for legislators to continuously not support mothers in any real meaningful, systemic ways.

Cristen: Do you think it's possible for us to ever bust that myth?

Sara: I think it's going to take a long ass time, but there's so many people that are angry. We're not gonna become un-angry, you know? People are going to keep thinking about this and talking about this and advocating for advances in maternal rights. I do think it's going to take a long time though, because the archetype of mother, in all caps, does have so much power over us as a culture in a way that the archetype of father does not. And I think it's so wrapped up in just aesthetics and ideals of home, even ideals of the nation. It's so inherently political that it's going to be tricky to dismantle.

Cristen: As you've been writing and working on your book, has anything especially surprised you?

Sara: Hmm. That's a good question.

I mean, I think I'm surprised and sort of energized by how many people and activists have been thinking about this way longer than I have, and it's almost like the more work they've done in terms of activism and advocacy, the more hopeful they are in a way that would seem counterintuitive. But I think it's because they can see in real ways, like we've been working towards x for 20 years and we accomplished this thing that, you know, maybe a lot of the public doesn't know about, but we accomplished x because of these strategies. We know that like incremental change is happening in a way that the general public probably doesn't, and we know that incremental change will keep happening, and ultimately those incremental changes will add to larger changes that everyone can see. So that's been surprising in a good way.

I think I have been maybe a little surprised at how the idea of political neutrality is still out there. Especially just given the hellscape of the last, like five years, it's kind of stunning to me that people can still say, like, what's wrong with her just loving motherhood and posting about it? She's not hurting anyone!

I don't think these women are out to hurt anyone at all, but I think what we see every day and the messages we consume every day impact us consciously and unconsciously. And yeah, I guess I am surprised that people can still just look at a happy mom on Instagram and think that that's totally neutral and totally devoid of assumed value judgements.

Cristen: Which is also fascinating because in just thinking about the past century of white women's history and politics, and especially conservative politics, the ways that motherhood as an identity can be such a powerful political tool and identity to use.

I was thinking last night, like, shit. Maybe it's a good thing in a way that some of these momfluencers aren't leaning so far into it?

Sara: Well it's true! And that's such a good point. Like, one of the things that I had known going into researching this, but did not know the full extent of, was just how much white motherhood specifically has been weaponized in so many ways and in so many different situations. I was talking to academic Elizabeth McRae, and she was talking about how the way we teach sex education is completely linked to racial segregation. And she was telling me about how white mothers banded together, and their main opposition to segregation was that their white children might become romantically involved with Black children, and the white race would be in jeopardy, or whatever.

And so these facets and the ways that these white mothers were able to weaponize they're mothers and claim they were just trying to protect their children and just trying to protect their schools very much connects to current iterations of white mothers obsessed with the cult of optimization and just trying to feed my kid the right food, educate my kids in the right way while totally remaining impervious and not speaking up about the vast, vast number of kids who are not getting enough to eat, who don't have safe places to live, the vast amount of moms who are harmed by our healthcare policies, that are like taken away from their children for bullshit reasons.

The way that we in our culture can look at a white mom, just quote unquote "minding her own business" and focusing on her insular family without looking at the greater good or collective community concerns, is kind of staggering. The way that we don't factor in looking out for the community as part of being a good mother is bizarre if you really think about it.

Cristen: It also makes me wonder like, well, what can be done? Can anything be done about that? Is it yet another symptom of full blown, white supremacist culture, dismantle all of the systems and tear the whole thing down?

Sara: Yeah, I mean, basically I think it is.

Motherhood is so wrapped up in whiteness and white supremacy, which is also so wrapped up in capitalism, which is so wrapped up in toxic masculinity. All of these things are intrinsically connected. So like, you can't just remove one part of that equation. You have to consider each part in how it's feeding into and perpetuating and the other part.

Cristen: How has all of your writing and reporting and research affected your own motherhood identity?

Sara: I used to feel way more guilt than I do now about not enjoying aspects of motherhood, and I feel so much more empowered to not enjoy some aspects of motherhood. Like, you don't enjoy all aspects of any pursuit or job. And I feel so much more empowered to say that I don't enjoy aspects of motherhood for very good reasons, most of which have nothing to do with me as an individual and everything to do with the system in which I live and the culture in which I live.

Even though I'm following so many momfluencers "just for research," I'm so wary of how it's bleeding into my psyche in ways that I can't control. I do think when the book is out and once I moved on to a new project, I do think I am going to have to do some of cleansing of the old timeline. I talked to so many psychologists and people that study the brain, and we just have no way of knowing how the shit is impacting us subconsciously, and that kind of scares me.

Cristen: Could you give me any examples of the kinds of things that you might be internalizing?

Sara: I mean, I named my substack In Pursuit of Clean Countertops because I think I've really internalized the message that like cleanliness and organization and a calm living space means that your interior, your life will reflect all of those things. And that is hard to shake. I know there's research that says, like, being in a "clean space", I don't know, it's good for your mental health, or it could be calming. But I also think it's really tied up in moral imperatives about motherhood and domesticity and who does the cleaning and why they do the cleaning, and that one's tricky for me, for sure.

Sometimes I just wonder, is all of this messaging to prevent women from having the time or mental capacity to consider their entrapment, you know what I mean? Not to seem like totally conspiracy theorist, but this shit does take up so much time and mental space that it's just, I don't know. I think it's worth considering all the ways in which women and mothers could have rebelled had they not been constantly cleaning and taking care of kids.

Cristen: Are there any major myths or misperceptions about momfluencers or momfluencer culture that need busting?

Sara: I mean, certainly that it's easy. Like, it is not easy. It requires so much time, so much skill, so much business savvy. You have to wear so many hats. I also think it requires a ton of emotional labor. The effort of performing relatability and authenticity is just so psychically fraught. I think the misconception that it's easy and that these moms are just like posting a few pretty pictures is absurd and I think misogynistic.

I also think I've heard from a few people that say, like, it's awesome that they're able to monetize the labor of motherhood, and I think that's kind of overly simplistic because they're not monetizing the diaper changing or the reading to their kids before nap time or kissing their kids scraped knee. They're monetizing their performance of motherhood, which is a totally different. So they're still doing all of the maternal labor and the domestic labor, in addition to performing the maternal and domestic labor. So, when you think about it that way, it's, again, the only word I can come up with is fraught.

Cristen: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about momfluencers or your work that you want to make sure your listeners know?

Sara: I wrote about this recently in the newsletter, but I do continuously struggle with the role of cultural criticism. I think cultural criticism is so integral integral to understanding the world we live in, and I think we need it. But it is often difficult for me to separate my own personhood and my own personal experiences from cultural criticism, which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing, but it's just something I'm continuously aware of and working really hard to be mindful of because I think it's completely counterproductive and harmful, if under the guides of cultural criticism, people are just tearing down other people, or specifically women tearing down other women, or mothers tearing down the mothers. So I'm always really careful, or at least I try to be, to say like, here's a case study of a person. This is a real person. But what she's doing can reveal X, Y, and Z about our culture of motherhood in this country. Not to say, like, this person sucks or whatever, but to underscore what it is revealing about the institution of motherhood.

Cristen: I just have one last question for you that we ask all of our guests. Sarah, what is the most unladylike thing about you?

Sara: The first thing that came to mind is spitting.

Cristen: Oh, I like that.

Sara: Like, anytime I walk or run or whatever, I just need to spit a lot. It's like really disgusting and like guttural, like gross, phlegmy spitting. So, I mean, I feel like that's pretty unladylike in terms of how we view ladies.

Cristen: It is extremely satisfying. You know, if you need to spit, you've gotta spit.

Sara: You've gotta do it! Gotta get that shit out.