Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture by Sara Petersen | April 2023
Reviewed by: Liz Nolan Brown in the June 2023 issue of Reclaim
Momfluenced, by Sara Petersen, takes a critical look at motherhood influencer culture on Instagram. While the author admits she’s an avid consumer of “momfluencer” culture—and has even bought some things (overpriced wooden toys and tastefully beige cable knit sweaters, most likely) because of them—she’s also skeptical of the underlying messages that it sells and painfully aware of how these carefully curated depictions can make mothers in the real world feel like failures.
This dichotomy within Petersen—fascination and repulsion, identification and condemnation—makes a rich background for exploring the good and the bad sides of all these people performing and often commodifying motherhood online.
The book is marred at times by shallow social-justice theorizing and rote nods to progressive orthodoxies. But overall, it presents an interesting and nuanced picture of momfluencers and their audiences, as well as the dynamics of modern motherhood and online identity that bring the two together.
My one major complaint is Petersen’s tendency to fault many momfluencers for not being political enough (or at least not political in the right ways). Not only could we all use more breaks from politics, but this criticism seems at odds with Petersen’s larger points about the unrealistic and often conflicting demands that society places on mothers and motherhood. Faulting the book’s subjects—many of whom are thriving entrepreneurs in addition to the parents of young children—for not being sufficiently involved in political activism seems like setting yet one more match to this inferno of impossible-to-meet expectations.
