Mommy influencers: Helpful or harmful? The relationship between exposure to mommy influencers and perceived parental self-efficacy among mothers and primigravida

Abstract

Questions are raised about the potential effects of (future) mothers’ regular exposure to the perfect representations of motherhood by mommy influencers. Due to the regular exposure, mothers might see these images as the norm but are not always able to meet with these standards themselves. Based on a survey among mothers and primigravida this study analyzed the association between visiting mommy influencer profiles on Instagram, comparing oneself with these online mothers and perceived parental self-efficacy. For mothers, it was found that both exposure to the content and comparison with the mommy influencers were related to lower perceived parental self-efficacy. For primigravida, the direction of the relationship was different: Regular exposure to mommy influencer content was related to higher parental self-efficacy, meaning that this exposure was helpful. The implications of this study for (future) mothers, mommy influencers, and practitioners who guide mothers through the transition to motherhood will be discussed.

Shifting toward intensive parenting culture? A comparative analysis of top mommy blogs and dad blogs

“…Building such bridges may help to reduce the commercialization of this media in favor of mobilizing family life education and improving parental well‐being through this mobilization. Indeed, some recent work has found that exposure to online parenting media was related to higher perceived parental self‐efficacy among pregnant women (Ouvrein, 2022). Lastly, we note that blogs are but one form of social media and newer platforms—like TikTok—may show more radical pushback against parenting norms and different gendered messages.…”

‘My Mom Got Influenced by Yours’: The persuasiveness of mom influencers in relation to mothers' food assessments and decisions

“…Previous research argues that parents respond best to nutrition messages on platforms that are engaging, personalized and interactive (Zarnowiecki et al, 2020), whereby social media could represent a promising format to effectively mothers with food promotions. One specific type of social media users that have a strong impact on the opinions of mothers are 'mom influencers' (Ouvrein, 2022). These niche influencers are mothers with kids who accumulated a large following base and became micro-celebrities on their social network profiles by sharing information about their lives, children and family, and often engage in sponsored partnerships with brands (Abidin & Ots, 2015;Abidin, 2015;Archer, 2019;Jorge et al, 2021).…”

On Digital Reproductive Labor and the “Mother Commodity”

“…A more recent study by Ouvrein (2022) uses social learning theory to argue that people have always learned how to cope with identity change via multidirectional observation: one observes images of mothers to learn how to enact this role oneself, and in turn one is monitored, and rewarded and punished depending on one's skill in internalizing the witnessed properties. This becomes problematic for Ouvrein because when one observes images of motherhood on Instagram, one consumes curated images of somebody's "best life," so that mothers scroll through these images and feel low levels of self-efficacy when looking from the screen to their own "real life" (Ouvrein 2022).…”

“…Thus, while this paper agrees with Jarett (2014) that capitalism is based on formally free labor that is disciplined into making free and spontaneous “choices” that benefit capital, it disagrees with her regarding the strength of the call to conformity, and the extent of the consequences for answering. The mother commodity is the being who learns from the Internet that she ought to have children, be feminine, and have her own money/independence/work identity—and present images of success of this “trifecta” to be publicly policed (Duffy et al 2022; Ouvrein 2022). When she finds this to be virtually impossible, her primary means of coping and attempting to regain self-esteem is additional labor on the Internet (van Kleaf 2017).…”

“…It is now established in a growing body of literature that there has been a “momification” of the Internet, and that in most cases pregnancy and motherhood leads to higher social media use, with mothers being prolific users of YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram (Archer and Kao 2018; Dewey 2016; Lupton et al 2016; Ouvrein 2022; Schoppe-Sullivan et al 2017; van Kleaf 2017). Where there is academic interest in this topic, two interrelated questions are usually asked: (1) does it help, or does it harm them?…”