India has approximately 2 to 2.5 million influencers, and ‘mom influencers’ make up around 11 per cent of this segment. That is approximately 275,000 voices telling you how to be good mothers through our screens. And these voices have come to become the flag-bearers of the institution of motherhood.
This new digital army of mom influencers thrives on brand deals and user-generated content. They have effectively monetised the act of mothering and transformed it into a viable source of income. Their content fervently adds to the cultural narrative of the ‘ideal mother’ — a mother who packs aesthetically pleasing, home-cooked lunches; who buys the best products for her child; who shares her struggles with motherhood only to talk about a new product that made breastfeeding easier or made her postpartum experience more bearable; a mother who single-handedly nurtures her child while monetising that same child; a mother whose spouse only appears during holidays, festivals, or car rides; a mother whose entire personhood is defined by the caregiving tasks she undertakes and by how she shows up for her children.
The influencer and the capitalist machinery
Some mom influencers have close to half a million followers, while others are at the lower end, with 6,000–8,000 followers. However, one commonality that emerges is their willingness to capture and monetise their domestic identity and put it out for the world to see, comment on, like, and share.
Another troubling feature of these influencers is their identity. Most mom influencers with a high number of followers are able-bodied, affluent, live in metropolitan cities, belong to nuclear families, and are most often ‘upper’-caste. This singular narrative of what motherhood looks like erases millions of mothers — mothers living within and navigating largely patriarchal joint-family set-ups, single mothers, mothers with disabilities, and mothers from different class and caste backgrounds. It renders them invisible, as only one ‘right’ way of being a mother takes centre stage in the digital narrative, further reinforcing Brahminical patriarchy.
The tone of these accounts is that of a concerned friend, an agony aunt, a fellow traveller on the journey of motherhood. However, as with everything on social media, this is a carefully manufactured and perfected performance. Viewers scroll through these carefully designed feeds, hoping to feel understood, to learn how to be a better parent, to gaze aspirationally at this vision of the ideal mother, and, in doing so, they internalise a damaging message: your personal experience of parenting your child are somehow lacking.
Alongside picture-perfect moments, we see carefully and well-paced product placements for baby strollers, feeding pillows, tiffin boxes, nail trimmers, children’s films, sketch pens, children’s clothing, and schools. As a viewer, you are left wondering: should I, or do I need to, create the same experience for my child, lest my child grow up without it and, therefore, have an incomplete childhood?
Mothering thus becomes an activity closely tied to the capitalist machinery, which refuses to acknowledge mothers unless they are consumers of its products, and mom influencers become the chosen messengers of capitalism in this dynamic. Some influencers also sell their own meal plans, postpartum recovery and fitness plans, guides for purchasing baby products, and even workshops and courses. Whether these influencers have the right credentials to share this information is often not known to the viewer.
Reinforcing gender roles
Another thing that is glaringly obvious about these feeds is the lack of fathers in the entire narrative. One hardly sees the father, other than glimpses of him during car rides, holidays, or festivals. When the father is removed from the narrative, the role of mothers as primary caregivers is further cemented and glorified — a belief that has done nothing but harm mothers and even women who choose not to have children.
When the father is removed from the narrative, the role of mothers as primary caregivers is further cemented and glorified.
Adrienne Rich, in her book Of Woman Born, states how the institution of motherhood affects everyone in society — women who are mothers, women who are not mothers, fathers, and same-sex couples. By showcasing only mothers within the narrative of caregiving, it affects not only mothers but also fathers, who are either not seen and acknowledged or are given a free pass to not participate in the care work required to raise children.
On average, Indian women spend more than twice as much time on unpaid care work as Indian men. And the mom influencers of the social media world are pushing the narrative that this is precisely what it takes to be a great mother, while simultaneously monetising their own care work.
Digital rights and privacy of children
The most concerning element of mom influencer (and even the family influencer/vlogger) culture is the blatant disregard for their children’s privacy and digital rights. We are privy to most moments of a child’s life. One influencer even shared a picture of her child taking a bath in a tub.
The children featured in these pictures are usually infants, toddlers or preteens, and are far too young to give consent to being used as fodder on the internet to gain more followers, impress the algorithm, and, in turn, earn money.
The digital world poses risks 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 who are speaking 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 2:00 AM feedings to tantrums, have been shared across digital media without their consent.
The world of social media has been designed to compete for our attention, sell products, and show us one dominant narrative. The accounts of mom influencers do the same. Under the garb of sharing the realities of motherhood, they risk their children’s privacy and add to the burden on new and expectant mothers to keep doing more.
And with the fathers largely absent from the picture, this narrative reinforces gender roles and erases the struggles of countless mothers and women already burdened with unpaid labour and care work. And all of this is being done for ad revenue and to sell products. With the internet, motherhood has indeed been transformed into a paying career for women, but at what cost?
About the author(s)
Avni Vij is an educator and a storyteller. She writes about gender, the lived experiences of women, and the inner lives of ordinary people. She is currently completing her Master's in Literature. Her poem 'Patterns of Seven' was published in Beyond Zine by Farside Collective.
