FOr, people who don’t have a marble kitchen island spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at their marble kitchen island, slack-jawed and half-out of their minds. This is because they consume a lot of videos from mom bloggers, mom influencers, etc. In the kitchen’s ‘Closing Shift’ video, they reset by wiping the island clean and lighting some fancy candles. The glow highlights their excellent cosmetic procedures. Other times, we watch her waltz through her morning routine: getting the kids out of the house, sweating it out in a boutique fitness class, showcasing Amazon products, and explaining the kids’ appropriate holiday photo shoot outfits.
For better or worse, this is how I have chosen to spend my wild and precious life. That means consuming happy, low-pressure motherhood content on your phone. It’s an ASMR made in Korea that satisfies everyone’s desire to take a peek at their bathroom cabinets. I nodded in unwanted approval as TikTok moms I follow shared their green juice orders. charming. I need to drink something like that. Another post posted a timestamp of the baby’s nightly sleep schedule. As I live between walls I have never heard of, the sound of a child crying drowns out the entire video.
But sometimes, anxiety starts to creep in when my cerebrum isn’t completely softened by the words of a beautiful woman beckoning me to join her in saying, “Get ready.” What exactly is this woman’s politics? Did she ever give us a hint? Is she registered to vote? Is it possible that she, like me, is outraged by the ICE raids, the book ban, our government’s relatively poor maternal support system, and its slide toward fascism? Does she know there are midterms this year? Mom, blink twice!
In my ideal algorithm, posts will be provided to clear your doubts. I used to watch my mother raise her children, which was undoubtedly progressive. I get that she fears the reality of the climate crisis. As I listened to one parent describe preparing weekly meals for a family of four, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was politically aligned with the men in the government who are abolishing food safety regulations. Maybe your tips on how to start a routine with a newborn include attending a protest or delivering mutual aid groceries. Because in real life, I was raised by a mother who was adept at living a chaotic and comfortable home, angry at the system that destroyed and destroyed families and livelihoods, and I aspire to become a mother. i just can’t see that That’s true for a lot of my online stuff.
Instead, the most popular motherhood and lifestyle content falls somewhere on the short spectrum between conservative denial propaganda and the extremely apolitical, given the paralyzing pluralistic crisis we find ourselves in. I am becoming more and more suspicious. Are these sourdough starter “how-to” videos actually funded by the LDS Church? One of the most followed maternal lifestyle content creators across multiple platforms, Hannah Neeleman (aka Ballerina Farm) has never explicitly stated her political views. But did her followers know that she graced the cover of a magazine described by one of the founders of Evie magazine as “conservative cosmo”?
“America’s rights really got a family,” said content creator Kate Glavan. Last summer, Glavan said on TikTok that she would “enjoy watching ‘stay-at-home mom’ content that highlights the realities of being a mother in America.” More than 1,200 commenters agreed with her video, captioning it: “We need leftist mom blogger content.” Some have politely promoted their own accounts or given reasons why they think left-wing mom blogger content doesn’t go viral. One netizen wrote, “Leftist mothers often work.” “Every time I hint about my true political beliefs here, I get completely trashed in the comments section,” wrote another. Many also say they are reluctant to have their children on camera due to privacy concerns and distrust of big tech, which no doubt does not please the algorithm gods.
I asked Glavan, who has no children, what prompted him to make this video. “I don’t see enough examples of how I can do it. [motherhood] “Someone who strays from the middle and advocates a certain politics,” she said. She thinks “being a mom is too political,” and says the realities of motherhood in America are overwhelming even for childless influencers in their 20s. “You’re navigating the health care system and you’re probably not going to get paid leave. “I don’t think I will receive any benefits, including the cost of diapers.” She lamented and then paused.
Glavan is almost right. The Venn diagram of anti-feminist Trump administration officials and supporters and prenatalism enthusiasts (a movement concerned with women having more children) has a worryingly fat midsection. In an NBC poll last summer, 18- to 29-year-old women who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 ranked “having children” as a priority in their definition of personal success, with 6 in 13 doing so. Women her age who voted for Kamala Harris ranked 12th out of 13, prioritizing specific financial goals, community building, and emotional stability.
The left’s skepticism or outright rejection of the traditional nuclear family – white picket fence, two-and-a-half children, and general suburban fantasies – is not limited to this presidency. Throughout history, women’s domestic life has maintained tensions against their autonomy. In the 1970s, Marxist feminists called for the ‘abolition of the family’, arguing that the bourgeois family structure supported patriarchy and exploited wives as ‘tools of production’. Around the same time, grassroots campaigns Wages for Housework and Black Women for Wages for Housework aimed to increase the visibility of the economic contribution of women’s domestic work, with the latter movement arguing that welfare was a wage, not a charity.
But there is no need to dive into complex social theory. All you have to do is visit the gift shop and pick up a magnet, greeting card, or wine glass satirizing a lobotomy housewife to get the gist. But because motherhood content is at the center of family life, gender politics, and consumerism (many creators aim to monetize it through sponsorships and paid product placement), it’s not an ideal breeding ground for leftist thought leaders. (But could it be argued that today’s monetization of labor performance in mom influence is an extension of these mid-20th century feminist crusades? Perhaps!)
Should we consider the reality that good politics and a Pilates exercise routine may be at odds with each other? Motherhood content can be, and often is, aesthetically aspirational, but can it also be ideologically so?
If you ignore the algorithms and search, you’ll find queer moms, solo moms by choice, blended families, and creators with identities outside the stereotypical content farms of the material world. Moms like She Is a Paige Turner who focus on gender imbalanced workloads, like Eres_rara on how special needs parenting is influenced by politics, and moms like Bri’s who focus on the dissonance of parenting during a time when ICE is separating children from their families and communities. YouTuber Tiffany Ferg runs a vlog titled Why Motherhood Should Radicalize You. It’s all informative and engaging, and it doesn’t scratch the itch because it can feel more like a lecture than the habitual mom content I’m looking for (although that’s something I fully support).
My early attempts to ideologically curate my feed and weed out conservatively coded creators also led me to follow my mother’s romanticization of a modest but committedly aesthetic, home- and natural-textile-oriented lifestyle in realistic settings like Mendocino or the central coast of Maine. But I was surprised to see their Democratic zip codes and neat curtain bangs. A fancy walnut cutting board may have replaced the embalmed marble island, but I was watching more and more videos of people transporting raw milk to treat preventable diseases, not Costco-sized cans of Tylenol. What did I expect? There is Maha-mania out there, and all the mom influencers are in it.
Around the time I watched Glavan’s video, I also watched TikTok, where fashion and trend analyst Mandy Lee felt the need to make it clear to her followers that the preconceived health journey she chose to discuss online would not lead her down the Maha or “alt-right” pipeline. She later revealed that she planned to rely on ‘real science, not Facebook science’ during the birth process. She said, “The idea of having children and having a family makes people [she is] “Conservative”, “We can no longer escape the truth”.
Her disclaimer reminded me of yet another motherhood movement that has turned toxic. The forum Mumsnet provided community and support for mothers in the UK, but quickly veered into anti-transgender rhetoric and turmoil.
Last year, motherhood and lifestyle content creator Lisa Miller began incorporating her political beliefs into her videos after moving from East Tennessee to Brooklyn with her family of five. “With the current political climate and having such a major platform that I do, it’s not really a major platform compared to some creators, but for me it is, and it’s very important for me to speak out about things that I’m passionate about and that are important,” she said. That wasn’t always the case. Miller was raised by a Mexican-American mother with left-wing views in Detroit before being placed in foster care in a conservative part of Virginia. “I learned very early on to keep my opinions to myself and not want conflict.”
But the thought of conflict became less daunting as she witnessed a handful of parent creators, like New York dad Jose Rolon (who describes his content in his bio as “parenting for all families”) seamlessly integrate politics into their platforms. In between family vacation vlogs and recaps of your kids’ sports games, there are videos supporting Zohran Mamdani and urging fellow Latinx creators to speak out against ICE raids.
Now Miller posts a video that begins with the words, “Get ready to lose followers with me.” Here, she performs a multi-step makeup routine and does her hair while discussing gun violence in RFK Jr’s America, ICE raids, and her thoughts on raising a child on the autism spectrum. I think this series is a unique blend of the comfortable everyday rituals of a typical mommy influencer video with honest political candor. Itch – I scratched it!
Miller’s rebellious stance is common among a small number of left-leaning mom creators. This acknowledges the non-political or conservative mom content they are competing with. Many people use the meme format to make it clear that they are not a Tradwife SAHM (stay at home mom), but rather a “household that believes in science and equal rights” type of SAHM. (The bread and cross emojis represent the former, while the microscope and rainbow flag represent the latter.) I’ve also seen a lot of videos saying things like: “POV You are a progressive mom trying to find out what someone is thinking. [presumably a new mom friend’s] atmosphere.” (Another way to check the politics of TikTok creators is to take a peek at who they support digitally in the “Reposts” tab.) I might not get invited back to “Book Club,” but at least they know where I stand on Palestine. “I scrolled past many people sharing their sentiments along the lines of: Since federal agents shot and killed VA nurse Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three, and detained 5-year-old Liam Ramos in Minneapolis, my feed has seen an increase in videos from moms who call themselves “wine moms” posting about how they relate to their children and protect them from the enormity of these insults.
It’s a cliché, but there’s a certain pride in being a conscious consumer of content. “When I find out that someone is not a Trump supporter, I say, ‘Okay, now I trust you. I support your paid brand deal and I want to comment on it and tell you to get the bag,’” Glavan said. It goes two ways. For Miller, making it clear where she stands politically has helped find her a new and appreciative audience. “I found it really freeing and healing to find like-minded people,” she said. “It was definitely empowering to connect with a community that believes in human rights and equality, women’s rights and black lives matter.”
Miller, who has worked with several lifestyle brands popular among moms, has not seen a decline in business with them since sharing her political views. “I don’t use my platform in a negative way. I think it would be different if I were negative or ugly or hateful,” she said.
I know that watching the “A Day in the Life” routine and hoping it reflects how you care about your neighbors or oppose the current administration is akin to hoping that the NFL can pause the Super Bowl to meaningfully address violence against women. But sometimes you stumble upon something close by. And while it may not be as aspirational as a perfectly cut baby snack plate, it is aspirational in the sense that it shows my reality. Not only do maternal love and leftist anger coexist, but the former often informs the latter.
There may be no ethical consumption of maternal content to loosely and lazily (my favorite way to scroll) disparage Marxist theory, but there are definitely some creators who want me to “take their bag.”