Mothering in a Momfluencer World

It only took a few minutes before my breath tightened and my shoulders started to slump. This mom was scoring a sourdough loaf with picture-perfect rise. That mom was walking through her ten-step checklist for a tidy house, framed by cathedral ceilings and on-trend furnishings. Those moms floated along in smocked, floral dresses, rocking babies in one hand and homeschooling in the other. Everyone everywhere seemed to have this whole motherhood thing dialed.

I tossed my phone against a pillow and looked around my own living room, exhaling deep sighs of defeat. Tears lurked. Shame scolded. I’m a terrible mother. I’m failing at everything.

I know better. These judgments are extreme, and social media is one-sided. I know this, but I can’t help but be affected by what I scroll by. I feel the pressures stomp across my chest. And still . . . I benefit from many faithful moms whose lives I do get to peek into over the screen—sharing their discipleship rhythms, their Bible study routines, their time-saving tips and thoughtfully curated gift links. I’ve built connections across the interwebs with some of these same moms who I bemoan I can never be like.

How do we hold all of these things in tension? How do we mother faithfully in a momfluencer culture, taking what’s helpful and leaving the rest? While I don’t know the specifics for you (and continue to prayerfully evaluate them in my own life), I think we can all be helped by recognizing some particular limitations of social media and checking our hearts as we decide who to follow and where to invest our time: 

Principles vs. Preferences

One thing to discern with our favorite follows is whether they are promoting principles or preferences. Gospel principles are those clear-cut commands in Scripture that apply to all parents in all cultures for all time, such as: Speak the truth to your children.[1] Discipline in love.[2] Pray over your family.[3] Provide for your household.[4] We take general truths like these from God’s Word, filter them through the unique circumstances where God has appointed us, and then flesh those out into our personal preferences. These preferences might be the houses we live in, the parenting strategies we use, the clothes we buy, the schools and healthcare we choose, the foods we give our children, etc. 

It’s important to note that forming such preferences is a privilege unafforded to many moms because of their location, financial situation, physical limitations, or other factors. Not everyone can practically choose to live a certain lifestyle, or they may intentionally decide not to for a variety of good and God-glorifying reasons. This is why we want to prioritize principle-saturated resources, because they can exhort and encourage us no matter our unique preferences. 

Look for momfluencers that differentiate between the two. We can admire how a woman serves her family and uses her gifts (whether that’s homesteading or homeschooling or hairstyling), but if we’re feeling like we have to be just like her to be a “good” mom (whether or not that’s the overt messaging), it’s probably an indication that our heart would be better served elsewhere. 

Candid vs. Curated

When you meet moms in real life, you are getting a candid, well-rounded snapshot of them. And though we still often struggle to be transparent face-to-face, simply being in each other’s lives on a regular basis helps us see a fuller picture. We know that even our most put-together friends have shown up at church with a coffee stain on their pants or a hair out of place. We’ve seen the chips in their wall paint and the dings on their minivans. We’ve witnessed both their faithfulness and their failures. 

Momfluencer culture, on the other hand, curates reality. Some accounts hide anything unseemly, leaving you feeling like there is nothing but the designer house, the airbrushed makeup, the culinary triumphs, and the demure “mom voice.” Other influencers might purport to show #realmomlife, but it’s only a sliver that they’ve decided to share (and there may still be money or marketing motivations behind it). 

Curating on social media can certainly be a wise, responsible thing to do, but we also want to be critical consumers and remember what our favorite momfluencers might not be showing. If we’re comparing our candid to her curated and feeling like a failure, we aren’t working with all the facts. This is why we want to see and know others deeply face-to-face—and vice versa—so that we can speak into each other’s lives with truth and honesty. And ultimately, of course, we want to bring our raw, unfiltered messiness to the Lord—for whom all things already lay visible.[5]

Followers vs. Friends

Momfluencer culture lets us hold each other at a distance, amassing hundreds of thousands of followers that we can only really “know” at a surface level. For as kind and well-meaning as a DM or comment thread might be, that influencer we admire can’t meet us for coffee this week to chat through a struggle or deliver a meal when our whole family’s sick with the flu. So, though we might feel a sense of intimacy and connection with her, it’s naturally a more limited “like” relationship as opposed to multidimensioned, life-on-life “love.”

Think about Jesus, by contrast. In a pre-social-media world, he certainly collected a lot of “followers,” but he was on the hunt for something deeper—those who truly knew him. He tells his disciples, “But I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15, emphasis mine). He wanted men and women who walked by him, shared his burdens, ate with him, ministered alongside him, and accompanied him through the deepest, darkest valleys of suffering. If this was the focused pursuit of the only perfect man in history, how much more should we sinful, struggling people be seeking authentic friendship in our lives? Momfluencer culture can be “social” and supportive to some degree, but it’s not true gospel community in the sense that a local church and Christian sisters who live next door or down the street can be.

Silos vs. Societies

Another limitation of momfluencer culture is that your “community” tends to be built around your individual interests, driven by an impersonal algorithm. As you engage with certain accounts and the lifestyle they promote, your feed starts to narrow, reinforcing existing beliefs and filtering out opposing perspectives. Before long, it can seem like all good moms are building non-toxic pantries, voting for a certain party, or taking up a tradwife lifestyle—because that’s what the algorithm is feeding you. The opinions and messaging shown become increasingly polarizing because alarmism is what keeps us scrolling and interacting on the app. 

When we walk into a local church, though, what unites us with others isn’t primarily a set of preferences or personal convictions—it’s faith in Christ. We may look and dress and live similarly to many of our neighbors, but we also challenge each other’s perspectives in necessary ways. As we interact across the pew or share at a Bible study, we develop an empathy for and understanding of the mom who might do things very differently than us—and perhaps even soften or alter our own opinions as a result. And certainly, when we operate within the larger society where God has placed us—the carpool line, the sports team, the swim class, the grocery store—we’re forced out of our own echo chambers and called to love our fellow image bearers and take everything we experience back to Scripture (versus like-minded voices on social media) to gauge what’s true.

It’s a gift to have access to so many moms all around the world, and we can be helped and discipled on some level by many of them—just like reading a good book written centuries ago. We can learn from their hacks and how-tos, but we always want to guard against social media replacing true IRL community. God made us to flourish within a whole society—not an insulated silo on the internet.

So, as we discern how much time and attention to give certain momfluencers, let’s be aware of their limitations and keep first things first. Gospel motherhood is not Jesus plus [fill-in-the-blank lifestyle]. It’s not waiting to show up until we’re perfectly put together like an Instagram square. It’s not holding others at a distance or isolating ourselves from the larger diversity of Christ’s body. The gospel is bigger, truer, and more beautiful than anything else we let influence our motherhood online. So let’s keep digging deep in the Word and deep in the communities where we’ve been placed, taking or leaving the rest as our God leads. And perhaps in doing so, we might find a new sense of freedom and a little bit of weight lifted off our chest.

[1] Deuteronomy 6:7; Proverbs 22:6

[2] Proverbs 13:24; Proverbs 29:17; Ephesians 6:4

[3] Ephesians 6:18; James 5:16

[4] Proverbs 31; Matthew 7:9-11; 1 Timothy 5:8

[5] Hebrews 4:13