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>> inside the picture perfect world of mommy influence culture she has written about motherhood and feminism for "the new york times," harper's bazaar, the "washington post" andnd elsewhe. she also writes in pursuit of clean countertops where she explores the idea of motherhood. she lives in new hampshire. adrienne is a humorist and podcast are obsessed with pop culture. where's my happy ending. and find her podcast don't ruin thisst for me on your favorite podcast app. she received an msa from the creative writing in oregon and her first novel's from grand central publishing in the summer of 2025. you can also purchase her book outside from the bookseller and we will be doing a signing after the event. take it away. [applause]

hello. welcome to chicago. i'm so excited to talk to you. i've spent a lot of time with your book. and you are everywhere right now. they put you out of this week so you are everywhere. why don't we start by talking what is a mom influencer. >> the simplest definition i would say as somebody that has utilized their motherhood to monetize, the social media platform. in my book i focus primarily on instagram but it could be youtube, tick-tock, whatever so that is the simplest definition. >> one thing i wanted to start with is if you could give a sense of how big this industry is and how much money is coming inhi and out of it because we

think t they are posting mom stf it's no big deal but it's actually a lot of money. >> it's a multibillion dollar industry. it's largely taking the place of traditional advertising on both tv and women's magazines. it's where mothers are learning about new sleep sacks come best ways to sleep train your baby, maternity wear, home decor. anything and hand it to somebody's motherhood which is one of the reasons it is such a lucrative industry. >> so how much why does someone get paid for a post? and there is obviously different tiers of influencers and we can talk about some of them that you get into in this book. if you are a top tier influencer how much are you getting paid to post? >> it does very widely.

there's an estimation that only 9% of influencers primarily female influencers make enough to live on. it is i similar to the structurs like there are a few at the top that make a ton of money and could make $50,000 for one reel to stories post and an amazon product for example like if you are partnering with amazon you are more likely to be in the top tier. but if you have 30,000 followers and you partner with a start upp essential oil company it really does vary quite widely. >> why don't you give us a picture like i've been telling my friends which influencer accountsrm do you follow.

i think it's because their kids little bit too old. it's like they had kids a little too early. >> does anyone here follow, anyone familiar? okay. >> you can now. >> when i first started researching this industry a couple years ago, she had 100,000 followers and she now has 6.3 million. shea is a mormon, seven childre, she lives on a ranch in utah and is married to one of the children of the founder of jetblue so she comes from enormous wealth and privilege but this isn't a big part of her platform. her platform is homestead pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, home school the kids, view to the kids homemade meals, make my own a sourdough and she recently won the ms. america beauty

pageant which is an interesting little twist in the narrative. but yes, she has risen astronomically and i think that it points to our persistent expectation that a good mother be rooted in the domestic sphere, that she be thin, nondisabled, adheres to conventional beauty standards. so, yes, i think the popularity shows we still are living in a sort of midcentury maternal ideology era. >> can you tell also the whole genre of content that you could beri following. >> you could describe that essentiallyna it's someone that adheres to traditional gender norms,s so she could be someboy that goes to target and drives a

minivan and prioritizes having the house clean and when her husband gets home from work and making all his meals were she could be somebody that i covered in the book who if you look at her photos they look like they could be taken in 1872. she wears floral dresses and espouses evangelical christians, christianity. they are people that denounce them and argue that a woman's natural place is in the home being led by her husband. [laughter] do you have a sense of how these accounts grew so quickly and so big? i think during the pandemic a lot of mom's became quickly

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

about media not to shaming other mothers but there is an aspect that is aspirational and if you are not like these things and you are not doing motherhood right, so in the way people interact in this context, can you talk a little bit about that and how it affects our own ideas of what being a mother is? >> i first started researching this because of my own personal relationship to the culture. i followed somebody named naomi davis. i don't know if anybody remembers her. she had one, she looked in the upper west side of new york. all of her photos were bright and vibrant colors and she performed a fun and joyful type of motherhood that i at the time was failing to find within myself. i do think many of us perceive those to be succeeding in ways

that we perceive ourselves to be failing. and again i think that is a symptom of the cultural pressures we put on mothers specifically. as long as there is any notion of an ideal way to be as a mother i think the industry and marketing towards mothers in general will prosper. >> yes, there's this weird thing that is about sort of like masochism like moms searching out content that would make them feel bad about themselves. like what's that about? >> you could call it masochism. i think also it comes from a sense of hope. i know for myself i was consuming that kind of looking for a way to end body motherhood that made me feel better. like maybe if i buy the products she recommends for flying with

toddlers i would be checking some sort of good mom box and be able to sleep better at night. it's noten intellectually when u tear it apart it doesn't make sense but it operates on a more subconscious level. and i think again we are conditioned to believe that i deal motherhood is attainable when of course it's not and it's not really and it doesn't exist and there is no such thing as an idealll mother but we are culturally conditioned to believe that it's possible and we should aspire to it. >> when did you realize when you were looking at these accounts that perhaps they were affecting you and were not making you feel better or giving you solutions to some of your mom problems? >> i think i had a second kid and was thoroughly disabused of any motion that motherhood could be this magical identity that completely transformed me. i think once i had my second kid i knewly intellectually that tht

was not the case. i also carried a lot of rage about the state of institutional motherhood t in this country. and yet i found myself gravitating towards these really archaic notions steeped in traditional f femininity and that's where i was' like what is this disconnect? i know better on paper, and yet i'm still feeling this poll. >> obviously there's a lot of racial issues at hand here. can you maybe talk a little bit about you talk about michelle obama in your book and the sort of way that she presented herself and how still the way that she was received was different. i would love if you would just talk about that a little bit. >> i owe all of that an analysis to mitchell that wrote a a book called from slave cabins to the white house. and in that book, she analyzes how the public received michelle obama. she should have -- she checks

off as ideal motherhood. she is thin and adheres to traditional beauty standards, is in a heterosexual marriage, but she's black. and motherhood in america has really been defined by whiteness for hundreds of years. and in her book she points to the massive popularity of the movie the help that came out when michelle obama was first lady. she really posits about many americans, white americans, you know, because of racism were uncomfortable with the idea of a black first lady raining over as a domestic sphere and in the help of course the black women in that movie are upholding a wide woman's domestic space so she posited that because of this racist discomfort with a black woman in the nation indivisible domestic space, the help provided a sort of relief valve

for that backlash against michelle obama so that's all her analysts and i just included it in theas book. >> it was interesting in the way that she called herself and still the culture was not as accepting as it should have been and then there's still in this space it's the biggest accounts that are dominated by white women. youu talk about the domesticity. can you talk about that and tell everybody what that is? >> in the late 19th century, after the postindustrial revolution, pre- industrial revolution both women and men worked both inside the home and outside of the home. but once there was a move toward factory work there was a sort of moral panic. we really wanted to preserve the moral center within the home and so the construct of the ideal woman was created and was

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

lucrative accounts are very much rooted in domesticity rooted in whiteness, rooted in traditional tenants of femininity and i talked to several black mom influencers specifically who said when we are making deals with brands and companies, these brands and companies at their homes by white people are imagining the ideal customer as white and so there's several corners of the market that they are just not considering when they go to partner with a mom influence or. and there is no oversight in this industry, there's no human resource department. so, pay disparity and inequity is a huge issue. >> and on the walk over here we were talking about joe jonas and sophie turner who are getting divorced i don't know if you know, but all the headlines immediately were about sophie turner having a cocktail in

london and what a terrible mother she was. tell me your reaction to that. >> i talked to somebody from the "washington post" two days about this and she asked me the same question and i was like that's bull. first of all there's only a few specific quotes one of them is something like he's a homebody she likes to party they have different lifestyles. what does that mean? what does that mean. it's completely ludicrous the idea somebody socializing with friends would prevent them from making their children feel loved and respected and supported and cared for. like they had nothing to do with each other but because she's a mother she supposed to be home doting on her children and completely self sacrificial. >> all their reactions are immediately his pr team is involved but are like

specifically that she was a bad momm and she likes to party and he is at home taking care of his children when in reality she's 'doing a movie and he's on a tor so someonet. is caring for the children. she was vilified for having a cocktail. it's a bummer obviously. >> i mean,, i am a bad mom. i had a cocktail last night. >> i did. from your book i understand you don't mind traveling and not being with your children. >> i amot also not with my children right now. how about that? >> i'm not either. >> they might arrest us and kick us out. [laughter] another thing that i think is interesting about your book and the work that you do is this social relationship which i noted that i was in a very

intense social relationship with the gals from sex in the city. every time i watch and just like that, i was getting very upset. it's because i feel that these are my friends. but can you talk a little bit about these para- social relationships and that is fascinating. >> i thought so too. so, yes, it mimics psychologically how we feel with our and real-life relationships except of course we don't know these people so we can form emotional attachments to mom influencers or celebrities. i know i've dreamt about mom influencers before as they occupy my real life, which they don't. but of course it's a one-sided relationship. but it does have a powerful affect on our consumer habits because if we follow a mom influencers were seven years and we saw her wedding video, we saw herho give birth in a tub at her house, we have all these

pictures of her life and it makes us feel like we know her so when she recommends the best way to wean him a baby, we are more likely to trust her and by into her 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've bought. [laughter] do you have like can you tell us some of the things you felt like you about things on instagram at 4 a.m. and then go back to sleep for about an hour? >> i am more like a 6 a.m. purchaser before i've been fully caffeinated. i bought a wooden marble run for my children because rudy jude had one, overwork who i covered in the book. she's really got me. but, yes, i bought a 72-dollar marble run. i boughtbe so many beauty produs and skincare products.

but i think the marble run sticks out as may be the most ridiculous. because you don't want a a plasc one. >> of courseou not. again, sad mom. >> that. wouldn't be good. [laughter] when you were receiving products in the mail, were you having conflicted emotions about it? >> when i receive products i t bought off instagram a lot of times it was like this is not a great. like that was a mistake. thenmy i feel like i go throughy life thinking i am smarter than instagram, but then in reality, i'm not necessarily at all. >> i wish i could say that i felt more of a well i should have done this, but i also do think that is just the way we shop now. it's so enmeshed in how we shop. i think the marble run zone. i set it up for my kids and i'm like now is the magic, to take

place. they played with it maybe once and were not into it. >> speaking of magic, i don't think wee did the mirror. it's really interesting talking about consuming other people's magical moments versus making sure we are on the floor during the marble run having our own magic. >> right. the marble run is a perfect example of that. i talked to a psychologist about why it was that i was so eager to consume a stranger's tender moments rather than create those tender moments in my own life and she talked about the mirrored neurons which basically harken back to missing limb syndrome. so when they were studying missing limb syndrome, it felt like tingling or itching so essentially they found out that if they held up a mirror and

handed the patient itch this arm but held the mirror in a way that looks like this that the itching would go away so she posited that maybe when you are buying the marble run, you psychologically are saying to yourself like you are a good mom because you bought this thing evenay though the kids didn't py with it, you didn't see them play with it and didn't laugh with them whilet they played wh it you didn't experience the moment in your real life but after purchasing the marble run, you told your subconscious that you did something good for your kids or you enacted the role of a good mother for a moment. and i think the same she also said the same could go over looking at somebody's newborn photos or looking atth a photo f 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 that we are looking at this image and we are saying this is a good image and it checks the box for us in our own lives even

though we didn't experience it. >> so when you recognize that consuming other people's kind of joyful moments was kind of giving you this sense that fulfilling you in a way, did you pick this where you made a judgment to make those moments with your? kids instead? >> i don't think i ever consciously thought like i am really nailing motherhood because i bought marble run. i do think more holistically after researching the book i am not as attracted to other performances of motherhood. it doesn't hold the same emotional power as it once did. i think i just -- when you know the sort of dirty roots of the maternal ideal and in this country it is hard to continue to romanticize that ideal and it just doesn't feel fun to me. it doesn't, it's not something that i aspire to anymore i guess

and that was the piece that sort of losing its grip on me. >> you do talk about and maybe you can talk a little bit about this yearon like there are spacs on social media and on instagram that are serving why men and marginalized communities. >> yes. i have a whole chapter in the t book about many incredible accounts that are featuring maternal advocacy, activism that are speaking to mothers real needs, thinking of people like casey davis. her whole account is basically getting people through the slog of every day in the home so if you are drowning in dishes or laundry, something you can't get through that. had like practical step-by-step guides. she talks about things like creating a beautiful laundry room as not an act of good

motherhood but anesthetic hobby and sort of making the connection between aesthetic hobbies and actual mothering. it's like a really useful mark but she's one of the many small influencers. but there's so many mom influencers providingg resources where otherwise they would be hard to come by. mia o'malley is a mom influencer and crowd sourced hundreds of positive health care providers, which is a huge problem especially when it comes to fertility treatments and birth trauma. these are real concrete ways to make mothers lives better that wouldn't be easily acceptable were it not for social media. >> yeah. i love that. can you talk a little bit about the ethics of commodified and youand your children on the internet? it's a pretty broad topic.

>> yeah. i didn't cover it a ton in the book because i was more interested in the maternal experience, but i do interview, i talked to every mom influencer in the book about how they felt about it. almost every single one of them has thought about it quite deeply. many of them explicitly ask their kids if it is still fun for you and when there could say no, that's it. they don't include their kids anymore. i was really hard tend to see illinois passed one of the first bills to protect children of influencers to legally require that parents to put a certain amounts into savings accounts. there's o other laws in other countries it's called the right to be forgotten. if a kid grows up and wants everythingue deleted, they can legally request that. but i think consent is almost impossible because how can a

5-year-old meaningfully consent to having her likeness broadcast to a million people on youtube, like she doesn't know what that means and what the ramifications could be. so i think it's a really ethically murky area for sure. >> yeah, my kid is 14 and only just now like don't post that. [laughter] and you talk about really how anygr mom on instagram as a mom influencer into sort of performing motherhood. what do you mean by that? >> i think every facet of our identity all the time for various audiences. you know, i perform a version of myself at preschool pick up that's very different from the version of myself that had cocktails last night for example. but i think when we are immersed in the mom influencer culture, we are absorbing so many aesthetic images about how to look into present as a mother

that it's impossible not to replicate that on our own feed. andd i think particularly for millennialea mothers, we've been taught to equate our value with our ability to aesthetically curate a life, so i think that becomes complicated when it comes to motherhood. >> yeah. i want issave a time for questi, and you will be able to come up to the microphone, but i have one pretty important question i need to ask you which is i love in this book how you really contextualizeu' the ways that you're doing these interviews, like mom's are hiding in the bathroom to get on the phone. you are driving to play dates, people are trying to get their kids to watch a show. so, how are you managing your own writing life and time to do this? you have three kids, like, it's difficult. ..ah

providing that transparency. every mother io talked to for e book, we were all doing our own version of trying to work while also raising our kids. it became like a clear through light as i was writing it. bucks now the pandemic is sort of ain waning, do you find it is easier for you to carve out your time? do you have a schedule where you are writing or how do you manage it? next i don't have a system. i am kind of a chaotic worker. i can only actually write and use my brain when kids are not around me.

it has to do and they are at school or at the babysitter protects but also impossible. i also wrote a book during the pandemic zoom classes are happening it's a nightmare. [background noises] cringed. >> do we have questions about momfluenced we've got to have some moms in here. you have a question? the norm to think people are w tired at looking at. [inaudible] at some point you're like oh my gosh. >> want to know if there's a bubble of working rich white women has the bubble burst yet, sarah? >> unfortunately there will always be an audience for that. because the rich white thin mom

is what consumers think. it's what marketers think is a typical mother. it's what media thanks is a prototypical mother. there will always be an audience for that fantasy. that being said there is so much fatigue with the pretty white mom and her pretty white house particular post pandemic it does not feel like a escapist fun in a way pre-pandemic. the film the great account you can f follow. i do think the bubble has burst a little. >> there is a company genre. >> if you talk about this in the book. but sad, beige. >> it so great. totally making fun of that aesthetic.

i don't make it into anything else to say about that? on-site interview hazy for mike newsletter not for the book. there are so many satirical accounts. like the crunchy. it is supposedly bad to breathe your mouth at night. there's tons of hysterical parity accounts tody follow thaa very satisfying. >> why don't you tell us about the napa dress now that you brought up the beige? people like what does the nap address? [brexit kind of looks like a less structured dress use young bridger or in a jane austin novel.ki it's like elastics mocking here. i think it again tapsta into nostalgia for a time when gender roles were sharply delineated. taps into the fantasy of

domestic earth goddess, flowing, easy motherhood. record the nap part come from questioning your, bed nap in i? it's so versatile? >> it started out as a nightgown. they tried pajamas and then it took office address. it does look comfortable at. [laughter] lectured in by one question it shockingly ' haven't and i am shocked. [laughter] what does much taller person? this is very aluminate i have to say i destined for earthy crunchy people are they getting corporate support to? are they making money? rex yes. yes. i. >> i'm just curious for. >> yes any type of mother can partner with a brand and make

money. maybe a company selling a linen at baby slings wants to partner with the mom influencer who lives in the foothills of california and only wears shades of oatmeal. there is a type from his every product so for sure. >> hi. i'm going to be a grandmother in three months of his my daughter. i remember from when i was first among the things you feel bad the ideals they had a c-section, i did not breast-feed perfectly, blah, blah, blah. i was social media portable. she has the standards i know she wants to do a good job. she's nesting right now and all of this. makes you think about it from different angles will relieve her.

i'm going to be the best, i'm going to be good and then oh my god i failed. >> it really did want to write the book for that purpose. so people would feel freed from the unrealistic standards. and feel free to create their own maternal values according to themselves and not somebody else's idea of perfect. that was my goal b in the book. >> could you mention this when you were talking about in the beginning. as explore roles of religion like the more of a church with the utah mom being perfect, blonde, millions of kids? did you talk about that at all? rex i don't talk about a ton.

i will say mormonism sets the perfect stage. they really prioritize motherhood and wife hood. they prioritize their bodies being a reflection of god. so they are more likely to look a certain way. to record keeper is a big part of their faith. they are taught to journal, taught to scrapbook so blogging became a natural offshoot of that. that's one of the reason so many mormons populate the state and the back they have so many kids every pregnancy and newborn engagement goes way out. i do talk a bit about evangelical christianity in the e book though. sue have any other questions? i have one last question.

i have to ask you what are you reading? what are you excited about? obviously no one should follow ballerina foreign spread what should they follow? what are you liking right now? >> am currently reading a book about the history of j.crew. >> i am obsessed. ob[laughter] and i just read a book about the cultural legacy of the american girl dolls. girlhood was marketed towards millennial's. and yes what is a book i really, really loved recently? the circle, the great circle. i loved it so much. that's something i really relat, really love to be. >> thank you so much for being here. it's going to be right over there signing books for you. enjoy the rest of your time in chicago away from your children.

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