Her Children Arise and Call her #Blessed

Good news for complicated relationships

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I suppose most women have a bit of a complicated relationship to Mother’s Day. Some are estranged from their mothers. Some long to be mothers and aren’t. And some are mothers and are simply exhausted by the herculean task of mothering. Western cultural expectations about a woman who can do it all abound (and surely don’t help any actual mothers, daughters, or women). Take your pick of which avatar you could embody: the saintly mother, the homemaker mother, the socialite, the perpetually young/sexy mother, the #tradwife or more.

Mothers in the 21st century are expected to be soft and nurturing, tough as nails, a breadwinner, companion, and kick-butt career-woman.

I’ve written about Wendell Berry, affection, and the way the digital age is shifting our attention and affections here.

In my latest article at Christianity Today, I take up the topic again — about how our social media habits — what we pay for with our attention — does indeed change the economy and what we value:

Life as good and worthy per se is no longer key to our cultural thinking. Instead, children are signposts of one’s politics or used quite literally as accessories to lifestyle brands. In The Influencer Industry, Emily Hund explores the growth of the influencer industry (which Goldman Sachs estimates will grow from its current valued worth of $250 billion to $500 billion by 2027), particularly related to curated authenticity. Whether influencers sell goods via affiliate marketing, partner with brands, or simply monetize their feeds with advertising, everything is for sale.

While traditional societies may have regional and multigenerational safety nets, much of the Western world has turned to the internet in the past few decades for support. Back in 2002, when the internet felt like a free exchange of ideas and life stories, the mommy blogger was born out of a desire for community and potty-training advice. Over the years, what a mother went looking for online changed. As one former mommy blogger terms it, the writing of “gritty personal essays morphed into attractively staged, aspirational content.”

But the problem isn’t just the #tradwife.

While few of us are influencers, we’re all guilty of viewing what we do with our bodies—whether our fertility or our social media habits—as if we were our own. But we are not our own; we have been bought at a price (1 Cor. 6:20). If we’re parents, we’re likely guilty of wedding ourselves so tightly to the successes and failures of our children that we forget that children are not math equations where a particular input results in a specific output.

I’d love for you to read the whole thing at Christianity Today (and they’re running a sale to get $20 off for Mother’s Day too).

Share in the comments how an influencer economy and attention has affected you — your view of what is good, true and beautiful. (And maybe join my friend

Lore Wilbert

in her digital summer detox).