The millennial mom is a master of juggling, up on all the trends, and totally exhausted – expected to be a superwoman as the bare minimum. Onscreen and in real life she’s balancing a lot and shaped by a permanently online culture of anxiety, appearance, and parenting-as-achievement. The millennial figure of the shiny Momfluencer doesn’t choose between work and motherhood – she combines the two. But her rise has established new higher-than-ever standards for the average millennial mom, even when that’s not her paying job. Millennial moms have access to more enlightened resources and products than ever – and endless role models for raising their kids any way they might choose – so why do they seem so overwhelmingly stressed out and time-starved?
Transcript
The millennial mom is a master of juggling, up on all the trends, and totally exhausted – expected to be a superwoman as the bare minimum. So who is this modern mother, onscreen and in real life?
She’s balancing a lot: the millennial mom is more likely to be in the workplace, and to have lots of demands on her in addition to basic mom tasks. But this means she’s working at least two full-time jobs – because stats show that even working moms today spend more time with their kids than previous generations of stay-at-home moms ever used to.
“I don’t wanna be seen as just a Mom. I want a career. I want a life. I wanna be seen as a person.”
- Jane The Virgin
Even so, she feels guilty – half of US moms say working makes it harder for them to be good parents. She’s more likely to be single: single moms used to carry an unfair stigma, but a 2016 census revealed there were more single, or unmarried Moms than ever. She has fewer kids – so more time to obsess about how she’s raising each one. And she’s generally nurturing and attentive to her kids’ emotions (because “gentle parenting” is in). But she’s also nervous – shaped by a permanently online culture of anxiety, appearance and parenting-as-achievement.
“No baby, oh no! You have completely spiked their blood sugar Love.”
- You
Most strikingly, compared to generations past, she’s a brand. The millennial figure of the shiny Momfluencer doesn’t choose between work and motherhood – she combines the two.
But her rise has established new higher-than-ever standards for the average millennial mom, even when that’s not her paying job.
Millennial moms have access to more enlightened resources and products than ever – and endless role models for raising their kids any way they might choose. So why do they seem so overwhelmingly stressed out and time-starved? Here’s our take on the Millennial Mom, and how today’s film and TV portrayals capture an image-obsessed and fear-based parenting culture that’s making her life miserable.
CHAPTER ONE: THE MIXED BLESSING OF THE MOMFLUENCER
Our image of the Millennial Mom is almost indistinguishable from a quintessential figure of our era: the Momfluencer. The runaway popularity of figures like Louise Pentland, Amber Fillerup Clark, Naomi Davis (or “Taza”) and Heather B. Armstrong has led to generation of non-famous young Moms determined to get everything right – and make raising kids look beautifully Instagram-worthy in the process.
“It was pretty difficult to film and be taking care of a newborn, but I tried to do my best to share the real hour to hour.”
- But First, Coffee
At first, momfluencer culture felt like a gift to many. The internet is teeming with personalities who can offer relatable tips, introduce moms to new parenting approaches that resonate for them, sell products for literally any issue, and open up discussions with other moms who can honestly answer questions for each other.
“Since this literal two-year-old now has a brand and aesthetic, if she breaks from that her mom is going to lose profit.”
- @walmart.jenny.humprey, Tiktok
In 2021, Sarah Peterson wrote an article for Harpers called “Momfluencer Content Enrages Me. Why Can’t I Look Away?” about the way momfluencer content is woefully out of touch with what early motherhood is really like.
In 2022, The Guardian’s Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett wrote about the inescapable “toxic pull” of the momfluencer and how the highly curated ideal of these accounts is damaging to the mental health of moms who feel inadequate for not living up to it.
There’s also the important question of whether many momfluencers are even truly good moms or qualified in any way to be dishing out expert-like advise. Today the first wave of momfluencer kids — so called “Truman Babies” — are getting older, and not all are so happy about being brought up in the public eye. Mommy blogger Christie Tate courted huge controversy when she revealed that she refused her daughter’s request to have content written about her taken down.
One teenager objected so much to being part of her parents’ YouTube channel that she got it demonetized, while others have spoken out on how being turned into content affected their upbringing.
“As a kid, there was no sense of privacy in the home.”
- @throughandlou, Tiktok
So while in recent years many aspects of momfluencer culture have been assumed to be aspirational, a lot of these ethical and developmental questions are only just starting to get answered. And it’s important to remember that just because someone on instagram is popular and sounds authoritative, doesn’t mean their parenting advice is truly proven in the long-term. In Snatched From Mommy, it’s this perception of the influencer as being a bad mom that makes her a target, and leads to her daughter being kidnapped. In 2018’s A Simple Favor, Stephanie’s cutesy, perfect mommy vlog doesn’t line up at all with her lonely, less-than-exciting day-to-day. And in researching the role, Anna Kendrick talked about finding mommy vloggers creepy, because of how artificial the depiction of motherhood seemed.
“I have never understood these silly, hurtful divisions between working moms and stay at home moms, honestly I have found it difficult to make friends with either.”
- A Simple Favor
Most centrally, the whole mindset of being too oriented around what’s picture-worthy or shareable about your parenting can get in the way of your ability to give your children what they need most: undivided attention. there’s growing research on the negative impact that permanently online moms are having on their kids. Erika Christakis writes that while parents are more physically present than ever before, they’re less “emotionally attuned”. In a sense, the momfluencer grows out of today’s achievement-oriented parenting on overdrive – and the need to turn every moment into positive feedback that you’re doing it right.
CHAPTER TWO: MILLENNIAL MOMS NEED TO CHILL
So, zooming out, do millennial moms just need to relax?
The ‘helicopter parenting’ concept has been around since the 80s, to describe how many millennials themselves were raised with hovering, protective parents. millennial parents take this approach to a whole new extreme. As Laura Norkin notes, millennials widely get roasted for being too intense and “tryhard but this blaming tone ignores the fear-based online ecosystem and capitalist factors that are constantly pushing millennial parents to worry about everything, and telling them they’re doing something wrong if they don’t. Alarmist articles highlight the most unlikely freak accidents as risks to fear online discussion forums are dominated by self-righteous or paranoid voices; a financially incentivized medical system tests pregnant women for an ever-expanding array of problems before the baby’s even here; and every product you can buy is covered with legal disclaimers about why it shouldn’t be considered safe for a baby to ever be around. All of this benefits companies who want to sell scared parents on tons of products they don’t actually need. But it undermines parents’ crucial ability to trust themselves and tap into their own instincts about what’s right for their kids.
“You’re weird, Alicia, with your homemade diaper bag.”
“Baby Mabel likes her bag.”
“Baby Mabel does not like her bag, she doesn’t like anything yet, because she’s a baby.”
- Workin Moms
Some argue that this whole atmosphere of fear is truly rooted in a deeper economic anxiety, too – because, in our world, financial stability is becoming ever more competitive to achieve
You looks at how the shiny momfluencer and fear-based parenting culture are actually connected through the character of Sherry, who’s built her brand on being a perfect Mom who has all the answers on how to raise kids. But on closer inspection, Sherry’s seemingly poised and unflappable perfection comes from a place of fear. She does things like monitor her kids’ vital signs via an app – something that ostensibly should give more peace of mind, yet in fact creates more anxiety. New mother (and serial killer) Love is openly disdainful of Sherry’s fake brand, and hardly seems like the kind of person who’d get sucked into that whole culture
Still, immediately after seeing Sherry, Love is infected with seeds of self-doubt – and when she comes home to a messy kitchen and her baby’s crying, she lashes out. Since there’s inherently so much anxiety in being a first-time mom, even small signals that you’re failing to measure up can be powerful triggers of stress.
“Her blog slash podcast slash brand heartshaped mistakes kill me is a mecca of humblebragging superiority fronting as hard earned wisdom”
- You
On Film and TV, momfluencer portrayals can capture how the fear-based, perfection-seeking version of this figure is pretty joyless. In Lena Dunham’s 2018 series Camping, minor Instagram personality Kathryn’s obsessive worry and need for control makes her a miserable presence for her child and pretty much everyone else around her. Meanwhile, Dunham’s more famous show, Girls, explored how cultural anxiety infects women even before motherhood begins. When Hannah tells people she’s pregnant in the final season, she’s not greeted with congratulations and excitement, but instead with questions about whether or not she’ll be any good at it.
“I’m gonna say this to your face, because nobody else will have the guts to: you’re gonna be a terrible mother.”
- Girls
In Trying, this millennial mom anxiety is thrown into sharper focus given the more relaxed attitude displayed by a certain type of millennial dad. When the couple is trying to have a child, and then adopt, Jason deals with everything calmly. Esther meanwhile can be like a coiled spring, constantly expecting failure or worrying about how she’ll be as a mother. There’s a similar dynamic between Haley and Dylan in Modern Family. While she’s the frightened, expectant mother, wrestling with these questions of whether she’ll be good, he gets to be the excited puppy-dog, eager to throw himself into parenting and see what happens.
Certainly, today, we have more high-profile examples of dads who take a more detail-oriented, organized and hands-on approach to parenting, but the reality is still that moms are overwhelmingly doing more of the domestic and childcare work. All this perpetuates longstanding clichés of the mom as the anxious, serious one stuck with the boring jobs, and the dad (who has someone else to do the worrying for him) as the fun parent swooping in for playtime.
Overall, the picture explains why some of the most popular rising mom content on Tiktok and Youtube is funny – helping moms relieve their stress through relatable jokes about how hard mom life is, how it’s an experience of constant failure and mess, and how hilarious kids actually are if you calm down and enjoy the ride.
“Don’t spend two hours on an activity that your two year old won’t give a shit about at all. Give them one of your Amazon boxes, it’ll be a two for one. Something for mom, something for baby”
- @britt.ostofe, Tiktok
CHAPTER THREE: Why Not Get Over “Having It All” - And Have More Fun
Motherhood used to be seen as the beginning of something, but for some millennials it feels like an ending: an end of youth, freedom, and any dreams you may have had that now seem incompatible with having a kid. A lot of the anxieties felt by millennial moms are linked to identity. If I’m a mother now, does that mean I can’t be something else? Society is telling me that I can and even should – but that feels like another impossible pressure when I have no support and no time?
“What’s the trick to making all this work? I’m trying to stay positive but having it all seems a little…impossible?”
- Workin Moms
In Workin’ Moms, the feeling seems to be that while you can be both a mother and have a job, you also have to be realistic about your limitations and time. When Kate goes back to work as a high powered PR executive, she’s both distracted at work, and missing important moments from her child’s life. So rather than lying to herself that she can have it all – and excel at everything simultaneously – she has to make sacrifices. For Audrey in The Letdown, it’s not so much work that she struggles to return to, but the previous normalcy of her life. Simple things like drinking caffeine or having a social life are now not as available to her as they once were, and that’s where her anxiety and frustration stem from. All this is tied up with the recurring theme of being confronted with other young mothers who seem far more on top of their motherhood than she is. So again, it feels like the key for the Millennial Mom relaxing into her full self is to let go of the idealized image that doesn’t match the difficult reality.
“I don’t actually express.”
“How do you know she’s getting her 60mls with each feed?”
“You must be exhausted darling, you’ve never done the pump and dump?”
“The what?!”
- The Letdown
A more positive look at the millennial mom experiences comes in Jane the Virgin. Jane’s life is changed overnight by the arrival of a child, but she approaches the journey with optimism and positivity. And while she still has to work at balancing her other life with her duties as a mom, she doesn’t give up on her dreams and continues to pursue them. Rather than being a distraction, her baby becomes an inspiration, another reason to live the life she’s always wanted to.
“We’re delighted to inform you that you’ve been accepted into our graduate writing program, and now we’re dancing! Because Mommy got into grad school!”
- Jane The Virgin
OUTRO
Instead of perpetuating the pressures to be a great or perfect mom, perhaps more millennials should focus on being the good enough mom – a term coined by British pediatrician Donald Winnicott all the way back in 1953. Not only does this lower impossible standards for moms, but Winnicott also found it benefits the child – including by helping them shed the initial perception of the mom as faultless. Ultimately, kids absorb what their parents feel and model – and infecting young people with an attitude of constant fear and avoiding mistakes at all costs isn’t really the end goal most of today’s moms truly want. So maybe cutting herself some slack is the best thing the millennial mom could do — for her and her kids.
“Any way that I think about it, I just get this feeling.” “That this is your baby.” “This is my baby.”
- Girls