The Myth of the Pinterest Mom
The lack of community and nature-based mom culture has created a monster.
Becoming a mother is about much more than giving birth to a child. It’s a paradigm shift, a gateway to a new phase of life where you’re no longer able to devote all your time and energy on self-discovery and acceptance. In a matter of months, you’ve transformed from independence to main caretaker of a being who is fully dependent on you.
And in this absence of cultural recognition, we’ve clung to false images of what successful motherhood should look like.
Enter the Pinterest mom. The mom blogger. The mom groups. With the rise of the internet, moms suddenly have places to gather, but the images we’re seeing and presenting to each other are no better than gauging our own beauty from fashion magazines.
My life is structured a bit differently than most. I can enjoy the privilege of working from home with my three-year-old nearby. I love my son. Between building a business and raising this bright little human, I started to crave support and connection. Instead of finding a safe-haven online, I found groups and posts and blogs about how beautiful and perfect motherhood was, or how annoying and time-consuming children were. Try as I might, in the limited time I had to seek such things, I could find little middle ground.
This is part of the extremist trend we’re careening toward culturally, a disregard of all neutrality. There is no grey anymore, only GREAT! or awful. While I value authenticity and distance myself from the perfect, shining Pinterest posts that give step-by-step instructions on how to be the perfect mom (with affiliate links!), I also can’t stomach the name-calling and child-bashing I see in other spaces.
Parenting is hard, and it’s made harder by the lack of support and honest dialog about the ups and downs. In the 9 months I spent preparing for delivery, I wish even one of the many people who gave me advice and well-wishes would have said, “hey, there are going to be really dark times. Keep going,”. Instead, it was, “make sure you buy this brand of wipes and don’t forget to take monthly photos and lose the baby weight fast or it’ll stay with you forever!”.
On paper, I’m a pretty damn good Pinterest mom. I’m actively homeschooling my son. He spends loosely supervised time in nature. We cook together and create, we love crafts. We read several books together each day. You know what I don’t do, though? Gather photographic evidence, and in missing this piece, I’ve failed the Pinterest mom test.
I understand the mom blogging (I’m here, aren’t I!?), but I can’t help but wish for a more realistic community around motherhood. A place where I could share my wins without it coming across as a humble-brag, and read about others’ trials just to witness and hold space. More than anything, I feel that this is what’s lacking from internet mom groups.
I want to tear down Pinterest mom culture, to ensure my friends understand that their worth as a parent isn’t based on whether or not you have a framed photo of footprints hanging somewhere in your house, but whether you’ve hugged your child today, told them you love them, and asked what’s on their mind. Our children need us to figure our own shit out, so that we can approach parenting as whole, integrated beings, not half-assedly trying to follow someone else’s tutorial. I understand the desire for a template (especially as someone who is determined not to replicate the parenting I had), but this isn’t it.
There’s a time and a place for pretty things, and that’s how we should view the standard bubbly mom blog. It’s a piece of art, a snapshot of a day that was probably followed by a huge mess and some self-doubt. It’s not reality, and we need to be exposed to what is real. I’m not sure how to create and moderate such a space, but if the desire is there for enough of us, I know we can make it happen.
