Soon, social media may be banned for under-16s. But the real addicts are mums. I was a sitting duck for the doomscroll as I fed my baby through the day and night. I was firmly pulled into the orbit of the ‘mumfluencers’: content created by and for mothers.
Instagram has been a faithful companion through my whole pregnancy, birth and post-partum period. The algorithmic gods sent me helpful videos for late-pregnancy back pain, which were sorely needed, and less helpful videos of eight-week-olds sleeping through the night, which sent me into despair. At every stage, mumfluencers offer an endless loop of advice, warning and encouragement — difficult to resist when you are tired, isolated and up at 3am.
The popularity of mumfluencing reveals how poorly the modern economy still accommodates the realities of motherhood and work
Instagram clearly knows my maternity leave is coming to an end, so the latest offering of the mumfluencers is their attempt to recruit me to join their ranks. Videos ask me if I want to extend my maternity leave indefinitely. I don’t. But clearly many do. I am being flooded with content promising to train me to become a content creator: a multi-level marketing scheme with no Tupperware in sight.
Content creation is a growing industry. Research from Adobe found that the number of content creators in the UK doubled to around 16 million between 2020 and 2022. Although 65 per cent also had other full-time employment some were able to make it their primary source of income. Influencer advertising expenditure was projected to exceed £1 billion by the end of last year.
In the world of mumfluencing there is no natural limit to the content generated and therefore consumed. There are accounts promising to boost your child’s vocabulary, help you find daily adventure on your doorstep, curate a broad book collection and, of course, thousands dedicated to getting your baby to sleep. If there’s a niche left untapped, a mum has likely found it, made a reel about it and dreamt of turning it into an income stream.
It isn’t just pristine babies bounced by blow-dried mothers either. The real currency of virality is not perfection but authenticity. People film the moment they find out they are pregnant – or devastatingly not. Tearful confessions of breakdowns perform as well as aspirational lifestyles. People create whatever is needed to coax the algorithm to bequeath them engagement, or, in other words, more minutes of mums doomscrolling.
I frequently see reels from aspiring mumfluencers begging me to watch just nine seconds of their video to help them stay at home with their babies. Aspiring creators know that keeping viewers lingering tickles the algorithm and increases the chances of going viral. I’ve guiltily scrolled past videos where mums openly admit they are trying to turn content creation into an income stream so they don’t have to return to work. I’d like to help but there are too many to count.
Katie, of newly viral Instagram account Upgrading Katie and a mother of two, has turned her scrolling into income. Her account went from zero to over 100,000 followers in just over 100 days by documenting how she uses ChatGPT to make life as a stay-at-home mother more efficient. Her success has sparked a chain reaction of other mums following suit. Her background in recruitment meant she spotted the opportunity to equip mothers to harness AI to energise their mothering and also avoid being left behind by a changing workforce if they return to work. Katie is unabashed about wanting to generate income for her family and has already achieved her first goal: earning enough through her account to take them on holiday.
Content creation may feel like a new way for mothers to earn money, but its methods are anything but modern. My generation rocks babies while earning money by tapping phones, but women have always combined paid work with childcare. For much of history all women save the aristocracy worked and they did so in and around the home. Textile production, as the historian Elizabeth Wayland Barber shows, was largely female until the industrial revolution. Cottage industries were structured around caring responsibilities, with tools such as the loom conveniently out of the reach of grubby toddlers. It was the industrial revolution that shifted work decisively outside the home creating the tension between economic participation and caring for small children.
The popularity of mumfluencing reveals how poorly the modern economy still accommodates the realities of motherhood and work. In resurrecting a form of cottage industry, content creator mothers are organising their labour in a way far closer to most of human history than to the relatively brief interlude since the industrial revolution. Turning compulsive screen time into income may look like the embodiment of modernity, but, like most good ideas, it resurrects a deep tradition.
Sophia Worringer is the Deputy Policy Director at the Centre for Social Justice
