The journalist’s Like, Follow, Subscribe investigates the inner workings and ethics of the family vlogger industry.
What initially drove you to report on family vloggers?
I started thinking about the differences between being a child actor, or even a child reality TV star, and a child influencer. With reality TV shows that I grew up watching, like 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, the cameras weren’t always running, there were some guardrails. With family vlogging, there’s none of that. So I wanted to hear from the kid influencers themselves.
How has your perspective changed?
People will be surprised at how much sympathy I end up having for the parents. Many started having kids really young. They didn’t go to college. They only had so many options to take care of their families. On the other hand, there are things I’ve seen—things I cannot understand how a parent would put that online.
You mention in particular the many popular videos of hurt or sick kids.
I started writing the book when I was two or three months postpartum, so suddenly I had this perspective as a mother, and some things came to seem inexcusable and unforgivable, especially those videos of hurt or sick children. I would look at my daughter when she was upset, teething, or had a cold, and I felt like I would burn the world down to make her feel better. I couldn’t imagine taking out my phone and recording her and then showing other people.
Yet you also write about how your experience as a new mom made you feel drawn to these videos.
For me, the family vloggers seemed like the only people talking about how tired they were from motherhood, or how difficult breastfeeding or healing from a C-section can be. When I was up at 3 a.m., feeding my daughter and hoping she would go back to sleep, who else was I going to hang out with except these momfluencers? They have a public utility. That’s why I don’t want to say you’re wrong if you put your kid online. I don’t believe that. Because it was so beneficial for me as a new mom to watch other mothers figure it out.
What do you think that attraction says about how American mothers are treated in general?
We are so alone as American mothers. We are so isolated. We have no social safety net. We don’t have federally mandated maternity leave. Women are back at work within weeks of giving birth. It’s insane the way we treat mothers in America. In fact, there is no job I can think of other than family vlogger where having a child is a bonus—where it’s good for your career. So it makes sense that women are looking around and seeing this other path they could take.
