It only took a few minutes before my breath tightened and my shoulders started to slump.
This mother was scoring a sourdough loaf with picture-perfect rise.
That mother was walking through her ten-step checklist for a tidy house, framed by cathedral ceilings and on-trend furnishings.
Those mothers 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 dialled.
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.
The Good and Bad of Momfluencer Culture
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 mothers 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 mothers 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 recognising 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 favourite 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:
- Speaking the truth to your children (Deuteronomy 6:7; Proverbs 22:6)
- Disciplining in love (Proverbs 13:24; Ephesians 6:4)
- Praying over your family (Ephesians 6:18; James 5:16)
- Providing for your household (1 Timothy 5:8)
When we take general truths like these from God’s Word and filter them through the unique circumstances where God has appointed us, we 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, and so on.
One thing to discern with our favourite follows is whether they are promoting principles or preferences.
It’s important to note that forming such preferences is a privilege unafforded to many mothers because of their 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.
Look for momfluencers that differentiate between gospel principles and personal preferences. 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” mother (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 mothers 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 cars. 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 mother’s 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).
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.
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 favourite 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 (Hebrews 4:13).
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.”
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 can be.
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, “I have called you friends, for everything that I learned 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 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 mothers are homeschooling, doing fancy craftwork with their children, and cooking organic homecooked meals daily—because that’s what the algorithm is feeding you. The opinions and messaging shown become increasingly polarising 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 neighbours, 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 mother 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 playground, the swim class, the supermarket—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.
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.
It’s a gift to have access to so many mothers 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.
