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cable. >> sara peterson is the author of momfluenced inside the maddening picture perfect world of mom culture and written about feminism for new york times, harper bazaar and elsewhere. and the pursuit of clean counter tops and explores the cult of motherhood. she lives in new hampshire. >> and adrian is obsessed with pop culture, where the s is my happy ending. he edited and signed the podcast, don't ruin this for me on your fave podcast app. and creative writing from the university of oregon and the first novel is forth coming from grand central publishing in summer 2025 and also purchase the book outside from the book seller and they will be doing a brief signing after the event. so take it away. [applause] >> hello. no, we don't, they're ready.

they're live. hi. >> hi. >> hi, yeah, you're live. >> welcome to chicago. >> thank you, i'm so tighted to be here. >> i'm so excited to talk to you and excited about your book, you're everywhere, in the peterson sub stack, you're on lady-like and put you out and everywhere. and why don't we talk about what is a momfluencer? >> so the simplest definition i would say is somebody who has utilized their motherhood to monetize social immediate platforms. on my book i focus on instagram, but you could be on youtube, tik tok, whatever. that's the simplest definition. >> one they think i wanted to start with was if you could give us a sense of how big this industry really is, like how much money is coming in and out of it because i think you know, we think like moms are on

instagram posting mom stuff and that's that, no biggie, but actually, this is like a lot of money. >> yeah, it's a multi-billion dollar industry, it's really largely taking the place of traditional advertising on both tv and in, you know, glossy women's magazines. it's really where mothers are learning about, you know, new sleep sacks, best ways to sleep train baby, maternity wear, rugs, home decor, you can really buy anything to somebody's motherhood which is one of the reasons it's such a lucrative industry. >> so how much would someone get paid for a post? like, someone with a huge-- i mean, there's obviously different tiers of momfluencers and we can talk about some of those in the book. if you're a top tier momfluencer, how much are you getting paid to post a sleep sack? >> it does vary widely.

and there's an academic and estimated a couple of years ago, only 9% of influencers, primarily female influencers make enough to live on it. it's similar, i like to compare it to mlm's in terms of the structures, there are a few at the top that could make a ton of money and $50,000 for one reel, two stories and one post about, you know, an amazon product, for example. if you're partnering with amazon you're more likely to be in the top tier. but if you have 30,000 followers and you partner with, like a start-up, essential oil company, maybe you're getting paid $5,000 for those same things, so it really does vary quite widely. >> why don't you give us a picture of-- well, like i've been telling my friends and asking them, which momfluencers accounts do you follow? do you follow ballerina farm

and they don't and they're moms because i think their kids are a little bit too old. like, they had kids a little too early. >> yes. >> why don't you tell us who ballerina farms is. >> does anyone here follow ballerina farms, okay. >> you can now, ballerina farms. when i first started researching this industry a couple of years ago, she had like 100,000 followers. she now has 6.3 million. she is a more mormon, and she has seven children and is married to the founder of jetblue. she comes from enormous, and it's pull yourself up by the boot straps, and make the kids

homemade meals and won the mrs. america beauty pageant, a twist in the narrative and she has risen astronomically and points to our persistent expectation that a good mother be rooted in the domestic sphere, that she be thin, nondisabled, you know, adheres to conventional beauty standards, so, yeah, i think the popularity of ballerina farm shows that we really still be living in a mid century, you know, maternal ideal era. >> yeah. [laughter] >> all of these momfluencers really do, right? can you tell us what a trad wife is, a genre that you could be following. >> you could describe ballerina farm as a trad wife in that, essentially a trad wife is someone who adheres to traditional gender norms. somebody that goes to target

and drives a mini-van and prioritizes having the house clean and children quiet when her husband gets home from work and making all of his meals. or i cover somebody in the book, if you look at the photos they look like they could be taken in 1872. and you know, she wears floral dresses, she espouses evangelical christianism, that's not a word. christianity, but again, they are people who often denounce feminism and argue that a woman's natural place is in the home being led by her husband. >> right. [laughter] >> right. do you have a sense of how these accounts grew so quickly and so big? >> i mean, i do think that during the pandemic a lot of moms became quickly

radicalized. we became really angry, really fed up. the most privileged of us saw how unfairly the system is stacked against mothers. i think, you know, some of us are privileged, protected us from seeing the holes in the infrastructure. but, yeah, i think a lot of mothers became radicalized angry and outspoken about the systemic look of support for mothers and while that was happening he think we saw a backlash. a lot of the trad influencers say there's attack on the nuclear family, attack on traditional values so i think that anytime we see progressive steps forward, particularly when it comes to feminism, we will see those steps backward. >> yeah, so there's this interesting dichotomy, right, about this women-led industry making lots of money and monetizing motherhood, but then there's an aspect that's about,

maybe not shaming other mothers, but there's an aspect that it's like aspirational, right? and if you're not like these things, and you're not doing motherhood right. and so in the way that people interact with this content, can you talk about that, like how it affects our own idea of what being a mother is? >> yeah, i first started researching this because of my own personal relationship to the culture. i used to follow somebody named naomi davis, i don't know if anybody remembers her, she had a blog on the upper west side of new york, the posts were bright, vibrant colors and she performed a fun type of motherhood, a joyful type of motherhood that i at that time was failing to find within myself. and i do think many of us glom onto momfluencers who we

perceive to be succeeding in ways that we perceive ours selves to be failing and again, i think that's a symptom of the cultural pressures we put on mothers specifically. yeah, as long as there is any notion of an ideal way to be as a mother, i think momfluencers and the nom momfluencer-- >> there's moms searching out content that makes them feel bad about themselves? what's that about? >> you could call it masochism. i think also, it comes from a sense of hope, like you know, i know for myself, i was consuming that kind of looking for a way to embody motherhood that made me feel better. like, you know, maybe if i buy the products she recommends for

flying with toddlers, i will be checking some sort of good mom box, and i'll be able to sleep better at night. it's not intellectually when you tear it apart, it doesn't make any sense, but i think a lot of this operates on a more sub conscience level and again, we're looking at what is attainment, and it doesn't exist and there's no such thing as an ideal mother, but we're culturally to believe that it's possible and we should aspire to it. >> when did you realize when you're looking at the accounts as a new mother that perhaps they were affecting you in ways that weren't making you feel better or giving you solutions to some of your mom problems? >> i think once i had a second kid, and was thoroughly disabused of any notion that motherhood could be this magical identity that completely transformed me, i think--

yeah, once i had my second kid i knew intellectually that that was not the case and i carried a lot of rage with the institutional state of motherhood this this country and yet found myself gravitating towards these archaic notions steeped in femininity and what's the disconnect? i know better on paper and yet i'm still feeling this pull. >> right. able there's a lot of like racial issues at hand here. can you maybe talk a little bit about, you talk a lot about michelle obama in your book and the sort of the way that she presented herself and how still it-- the way that she was received was different. i would love if you just talk about that a little bit. >> yeah, so owe all of that analysis to coretha mitchell, who wrote from slave cabins to the white house. and she analyzes how the public

received michelle obama. she checks most boxes of ideal motherhood. she's thin, traditional beauty standards, she's in a heterosexual marriage, but she's black and motherhood in america has really been defined by whiteness for hundreds of years. and the book points to the massive popularity of the movie "the help", which came out when michelle obama was first lady and she really posits that many americans, white americans, because of racism were uncomfortable with the idea of a black first lady reigning over the domestic sphere. in "the help", the black women are upholding a white woman's domestic space and she posited because of this racist discomfort with a black woman in the most visible domestic space, "the help" provided a

sort of relief valve for that racist backlash against michelle obama. that's her analysis and i included it in the book. >> i felt it was interesting the way that michelle called herself like the mom in chief. >> yes. >> and still, we're like, you know, the culture was not as accepting as clearly it should have been and then there's still all of these, you know, in the momfluencer space, the biggest accounts are dominated by white women. >> right. >> and you talk about the cult of domesticity and can you talk about that, what that is. >> in the late 19th century, after the post industrial revolution, pre-industrial revolution, both women and men worked both inside the home and outside the home, but once there was a move toward factory work, there was a sort of moral panic, we really wanted to preserve like the moral center within the home, so the construct of the ideal woman was created.

and the ideal woman was pious, she was domestic. she was self-sacrificing and of course, this idea was only attainable for mostly wealthy white women, you know, enslaved women, being routinely sexually assaulted and raped. they were not pious. so they were not ideal women. working class women were working outside the home, which was unseemly, so they were not ideal women and really, the construction of this ideal also served to vilify anyone who didn't fit it. so, as much as it upheld a certain type of white woman, it also, you know, it was created just as much to marginalize and disempower women who did not fit that ideal. >> and do you feel like momfluencer culture has a pretty strong parallel? >> yeah, unfortunately, i do still see, like the most

popular, lucrative accounts are very much rooted in domesticity, rooted in whiteness, rooted in traditional tenets of femininity and i spoke to momfluencers when they said we when we make deals with companies, they're imagining them as white. and when they go to partner with a momfluencer. there's no oversight in in industry. no human resources department. so, pay disparity, inequity, really, is a huge issue. >> yeah, on our walk over here, we were talking about joe jonas and sophie turner who are getting divorced, i don't know if you know. all the headlines were immediately about sophie turner

were having a cocktail in london and what a terrible mother she was. >> right. >> tell me your reaction to that. >> so i talked to somebody from "the washington post" two days ago about this and she asked me the same question and i was like, it's bull-- the quotes, first of all, there's only a few specific quotes. one of them is something like he's a home body, she likes to party. they very different life styles. what does that mean? what does that mean? it's completely ludicrous the idea of somebody socializing with friends would prevent them from making their children feel loved and respected and supported and cared for. like, they have nothing to do with each other, but because she's a mother, she's supposed to be home doting on her children and you know, completely self-sacraficial. >> yeah, i mean, like all the reactions are immediately and the headlines, obviously his pr

team is involved. but specifically about that she was a bad mom and that she likes to party and that he's at home taking care of his children when in reality she's filming a movie and he's on a tour. so someone is caring for the children. >> right. >> so i don't know that it's joe, but still she was really vilified for having a cocktail. >> yeah. >> i mean, it's a bummer, obviously. >> it's a bummer, a big bummer, i'm a bad mom, i had a cocktail last night. >> you did? >> yes. >> wow. and from your book, i understand you don't mind travelling and not being with your children. do you feel bad right now? >> i'm also not with my children right now, bad, bad, bad. >> i'm not either. >> oh, my god. >> unseemly, they might arrest us (laughter) >> another thing interesting about your book and what you do, is the para-social relationships. i noted i was in a very intense

para-social relationship with the gals sex in the city and every time i watch "and just like that", i'm upset and i feel that they're my friends and can you talk about the para-social relationships and mirror norm. >> and the para-social relationships mimics psychologically how we feel with our irl relationships, in real lives, except we don't know these people and we can feel attachment to momfluencers and i've dreamt of momfluencers if they occupy my real life which they don't. it's a one-sided relationship, but it does have a powerful effect on our consumer habits because if we follow a momfluencer for seven years and we saw her wedding video, saw her give birth in a tub at her

house, like, we have these vulnerable pictures of her life and it makes us feel like we know her. so when she recommends, you know, the best way to wean baby, we're more likely to trust her and buy that baby weaning guidebook or whatever it is. so, it does have a real impact on how we spend money. >> you put in the book some of the things you bought. >> oh, god. [laughter] >> do you have like, can you tell us some of the things you felt like, oh, i bought things at 4 a.m. on instagram and then i go back to sleep for about an hour. >> yeah, yeah, i'm more like a 6 a.m. purchaser before i was fully caffeinated. and i bought a wooden marble run for my children because rudy jude had one. julie d o'rourke who i covered in the book. she's got me. a $72 marble run and i've bought so many beauty products

and skin care products. but i think the marble run sticks out as being the most ridiculous. >> because you don't want a plastic one. >> of course not, again, bad mom. >> that wouldn't be good. >> right. [laughter] >> when you were receiving products, were you having like conflicted emotions about it? when i received products that i've bought off instagram, a lot of times i was like, well, this is not great. that was a mistake. and then i feel like, i go through my life thinking i'm smarter than instagram, but then in reality, i'm not necessarily at all. >> right. >> i wish i could say that i felt more of a-- oh, i shouldn't have done this, but i also do think that that's just the way we shop now. it's so enmeshed in how we shop, yeah. i think the marble run though. i think the marble run was like, i set it up for my kids and i was like, now it's magic,

magic takes place. >> right. >> and they played with it maybe once. >> were not into it. >> no. speaking of magic, i don't think we did the mirror-- >> oh, yeah. >> it's interesting talking about like consuming other people's magical moments versus making sure we're on the floor doing the marble run, having our own magic. >> right. and the marble run is a perfect example of that. so, yeah, i talked to a psychologist why it was i was so eager to consume a strangers tender moments rather than croat the tender moments in my own life and she talked about mirror neurons which basically harkens back to missing limb syndrome. so, when they were studying missing limb syndrome, i didn't have this arm and felt tingling or itching. essentially if they held up a

mirror and had the person itch this arm, but held the mirror in a way that way, that the itching would go away. and posited maybe when you're buying the marble run, you psychologically are saying to yourself like you're a good mom because you bought this thing. even though the kids didn't play with it. you didn't see them play with it you didn't laugh with them while they played it. you didn't actually experience a moment in your real life, but the act of purchasing that marble run told your subconscious that you did something good for your kids. or you enacted the role of good mother for a moment. and i think the same-- and she said the same could go for looking at somebody's newborn photos or looking at a photo of a mother curled up reading to her children by candlelight or whatever it is. there's something that happens in the brain that convinces us, we are looking at this image

and this is a good moment and checks a box even though we didn't experience it. >> and other people's joyful moments giving you a senses, fulfilling you in a way. did you pivot or make adjustments to make those moments with your kids instead? >> i mean, i don't think i ever consciously thought like, oh, i'm really nailing motherhood because i bought a marble run. i do think just more hollows particularly after researching the book, i'm just not as attracted to other's performances of motherhood. it doesn't hold the same emotional power as it once did. i think i just-- when you know sort of the dirty roots of the maternal ideal in this country, it's hard to continue to romanticize that ideal. it doesn't feel fun to me, it's

not something that i aspire to anymore, i guess, and that's the piece that sort of loosened its grip on me. >> you can talk about it here, there are spaces on social media and on instagram that are really serving women in marginalized communities. >> yes, i have a whole chapter in book about many, many incredible accounts that are, you know, featuring maternity advocacy, activism, that are speaking to mothers real needs. i'm thinking of people like casey davis. her whole account is basically getting people through the slog of every day in the home. if you're drowning in dishes or laundry and something that you can't get through that, she has like practical, you know, step by step guides. she talks about things like, you know, creating a beautiful laundry room as not an act of

good motherhood, but as an aesthetic hobby and making the connection between aesthetic hobbies and actual mothering. it's like a really useful framework, but she's just one of the many momfluencers, but, yeah, there are so many momfluencers providing resources where otherwise they would be hard to come by. mia o'malley is a momfluencer and hundreds of fat care providers, and when it comes to fertility and birth trauma. these are like real, concrete ways to make mothers lives better that would not be easily accessible were it not for social media. >> yeah, i love that. can you talk a little bit, too, about the ethics of commodity

on your children on the internet? >> i didn't cover it a ton in the book because i was more interested about, you know, the maternal experience, but i do interview, you know, i talk to every momfluencer in the book how they felt about it? almost every single one of them has thought about it quite deeply. many of them explicitly asked their kids, is this still fun for you and when their kids say no, that's it. they don't include their kids anymore. i was really heartened to see illinois passed one of the first bills to protect child-- children of influencers to legally require the parents to put a certain amount of money into savings accounts and there are bills or laws in other countries, it's called the right to be forgotten, so if a kid grows up and wants, you know, everything deleted, they can legally request that. but, yeah, i think that consent is really almost impossible because how can a 5-year-old

meaningfully consent to having her likeness broadcast to two million people on youtube. she doesn't know what that means and what the ramifications could be. it's a murky area. >> and my kid 14 and he's only now, don't post that. >> and you talk about how any mom on instagram is a momfluencer and sort of performing motherhood. what do you mean by that? >> i think we're performing, you know, every facet of our identity all the time for various audiences. i perform a version of myself at pre-school pickup which is different from the version of myself that had cocktails last night, for example. but i think when we're immersed in momfluencer culture, we're absorbing so many aesthetic images about how to look and

present as a mother, that it's impossible not to replicate that on our own feeds. so i think that particularly for millennial mothers we have really been taught to equate our value with our ability to he is cure rate a life. >> and if you have a question come up to the mic, but an i have a question for you, you contextualize these interviews, moms are hiding in the bathroom to talk to you, and going to play dates and trying to get kids to watch a show. how are you managing your own writing life and time to do this. you have three kids, it's difficult. >> yeah, i always refer to kate

bayer, a poet. it's the same way anyone does any work. during the pandemic writing the book, there wasn't child care, when i was writing it, i couldn't conceive of writing it without just, i guess, providing that transparency. because every mother i talked to for the book, we were all doing our own version of evading our children and trying to work while also raising our kids. so it became like a clear through line as i was writing it. >> now that the pandemic is sort of waning, do you find like it's easier for you to carve out your time? do you have like a schedule where you're writing or how do you manage it? >> yeah, i'm like -- i don't have a system. i'm kind of a chaotic worker, but it's like, like i can only write and use my brain when the kids are not around me. so it has to be when they're at

school or, with the baby sitter. >> it's like impossible. i was also writing a book during the pandemic and like zoom class is happening, my job was happening, a total nightmare. >> yeah, yeah. >> it was awful, awful, cringe. >> do we have questions about momfluencing? we've got to have some moms in here. >> elizabeth, did you have a question? [laughter] >> do you think if there's-- people (inaudible). >> wants to know if there's a bubble looking at rich white women, has the bubble burst yet? will it ever? >> i mean, unfortunately, i think there will always be an audience for that because the rich, white, you know, thin

hetero mom is still what consumers think it's what marketers think is the prototypical mother, and media thinks is the prototypical mother. i think there will always be an audience for that. but i think there's so much fatigue for the pretty white mom in her pretty white house, particularly post pandemic. it doesn't feel like escapist fun like it did maybe pre-pandemic. i think for sure there's fatigue and there's just so many great accounts you can follow that don't make you feel as though you're failing. so, yeah, i do think maybe the bubble has burst a little. >> as a follow to that. there's a whole-- there's a comedy genre making fun of. i don't know if you talk about the book because i haven't read it, but sad beige. >> that's great.

>> totally making fun of that aesthetic. >> i interviewed haley for my newsletter, not for the book, but, yeah, there are so many satirical accounts. a ton of satirical, crunchy momfluencers, it's mouth tape, with the-- i don't know, bad at night. there's ton of hysterical parody accounts that are very satisfying. >> and why don't you tell us about the nap dress now that you've brought up the beige, people are like what the hell is the nap dress? >> it kind of looks like a less structured dress you would see like on bridgerton or in a jane austen novel. elastic smocking here. it taps into nostalgia for a time when gender roles were sharply delineated. taps into sort of the fantasy

of like, you know, domestic earth goddess, flowy, easy motherhood. >> and where did the nap part come from? because you could nap in it? it's so versatile? >> i mean, it started out as a nightgown for hill house home. they tried to sell pajamas and then it took off as a dress. so, you know. i mean, it does look comfortable. >> you didn't buy one? >> i shockingly haven't and i'm shocked. >> this is for a much taller person than me so i hope you can hear me. this is very illuminating and i have to say i've been out of this whole-- entirely the earthy crunchy people are they getting corporate support, too? they're making money? >> yeah, yeah, like serious-- >> yeah, yeah, any type of mother can, you know, partner with a brand and make money. you know, maybe a company

selling linen baby slings wants to partner with a momfluencer who, you know, lives in the foot hills of california and, you know, only wears shades of like oatmeal. there's a type of momfluencer for almost every type of product. so, yeah, for sure. >> hi. i'm going to be a grandmother in three months so i'm here for my daughter. >> oh. >> and i remember from when i was first a mom and the things you feel bad that the ideals, i had a c-section, i didn't breast-feed perfectly, mra blah, blah, blah. and the social media, it's horrible. and she has the standards and i know she cares, she wants to do a good job and nesting all this. i'm hoping that maybe reading a book like this makes you think about it from different angles will relieve her, although probably inevitably everybody has to go through that, i'm

going to be the best, good, and then i failed. and a human thing. maybe it will give her a little-- >> yeah, i really did want to right the book for that purpose so people would feel freed from these unrealistic standards, and feel free to create their own maternal values according to themselves. and not somebody else's, you know, idea of perfect. so that was my goal in the book, so-- >> hi. so i think you mentioned this a little bit when were you talking about ballerina farm in the beginning, but does the book explore roles of religion particularly like the mormon church, the utah mom being perfect, blond, like millions of kids, like and they're all like doing great. >> yeah. >> do you talk about that at all? >> i don't talk about it a ton.

i will say that mormonism sort of sets up the perfect stage for momfluencer culture, they prioritize family, prioritize motherhood and wifehood and they prioritize their bodies being a reflection of god so they're more likely to look a certain type of fem way and taught in the religion to record keep and that's a big part of their faith, taught to journal, taught to like scrapbook. so blogging really became like a natural off shoot of that. and so i think that's one of the main reasons that so many mormons populate the space and the fact that they have a lot of kids doesn't hurt because every pregnancy and newborn, engagement goes way up and that's definitely-- i do talk a little about evangelical christianity in the book. >> do we have any other

questions? i have one last question. >> yeah. >> i have to ask you what are you reading and what are you excited about, like, you know, obviously nobody should follow ballerina farm. what should they follow? what are you liking right now? >> i'm currently reading a book about the history of j-crew. >> i'm obsessed with -- obsessed. >> and i just read a book about the cultural legacy of the american girl dolls. interested how girlhood was marketed towards millennials and, yeah, what is a book though that i really, really loved recently? oh, maggie shipshead the circle, gray circle. >> the great circle. >> loved it so much. so that's what i really, really loved. >> thank you so much for being here. >> thank you. >> there's going to be right over there signing books for you, and, yeah, enjoy the rest of your time in chicago. >> thank you so much. >> away from your children.

[applause] >> live sunday december 3rd on in depth, author and uc berkeley law professor john yoo joins and takes calls about the suemcourt, the voice of power, therump administration and more, the book "crisis and command", donald trump's fight for power and published incorrect guide to the supreme court. and join with your phone calls, facebook comments and texts. in depth with john yoo, live december 3rd noon eastern on book tv on c-span2. ♪♪ >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's