It is time to unfollow social-media motherhood

Parenting isn’t hell, but people click on it.

“All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I actually don’t know anyone who’s happy and has children at this age … I’ve literally not met anyone who’s happy, anyone who has light in their eyes, who has slept.”

This quote by Chappell Roan on the Call Her Daddy podcast is spreading like wildfire on the internet. Mothers and child-free women are at each other’s throats to prove to each other who made the right choice. Many are saying that if you are a happy mother this shouldn’t bother you — and I agree. But there are many things the discourse is missing:

• Negativity spreads faster and performs better, positivity doesn’t.

• Women are fighting each other and killing feminism in the process.

• Motherhood has a huge PR problem.

• Motherhood is treated as a performance and a profession.

• Women wanting to be mothers are completely left alone.

Ever since the podcast first aired and the outrage started, I’ve paid special attention to the world on- and offline: How women treat each other in the comments, how people react to kids in a public space, how parents talk about parenting when the cameras aren’t rolling — and it is nothing like social media makes you believe.

Negativity sells, joy doesn’t

The internet thrives on strong reactions — rage, fear, and resentment spread like wildfire, while quieter emotions, like contentment or satisfaction, barely make a dent in the algorithm. A mother posting about feeling fulfilled? That’s met with skepticism, or worse, outright hostility. But a mother venting about exhaustion, regret, or burnout? That gets traction.

Because negativity sells.

Joy, in its purest form, doesn’t demand a response. It doesn’t require justification or debate. But outrage? That keeps people talking. It keeps them engaged. And engagement is the currency of the internet. So it’s no wonder that on the internet motherhood feels so bleak.

And there is another reason negative content thrives: people bond over hardship.

Vulnerability is powerful. It’s comforting to see someone say, “This is hard for me too.” It builds solidarity. And in places where mothers may lack strong community support, those moments of shared struggle can feel like a lifeline.

But there’s a fine line between solidarity and an echo chamber of negativity. Because somewhere along the way, the narrative online shifted from “motherhood is hard, and we need support” to “motherhood is hard, and if you don’t admit it’s awful, you’re lying.”

And that’s where things start to get toxic.

Scrolling through the comments section of content where mothers do express joy, you see how bad things have become. Comments like “Just wait until they’re older”, “You must have a lot of help”, or “You’re in the honeymoon phase, talk to me in five years.” are everywhere. As if happiness in motherhood is an illusion. As if enjoying it is naïve.

Meanwhile, those who speak about regret, exhaustion, or frustration are met with validation. Their feelings are real, their words are important, their experiences are necessary. And they are! But why isn’t the same energy extended to mothers who love it?

It creates an imbalance. The voices of struggle are amplified, while the voices of joy are dismissed as gloating.

Unsplash, by Ivan Radulovich

A war between women: A battle no one asked for

If social media has proven anything, it’s that the so-called “mommy wars” never ended — they just evolved. It is no longer just about breastfeeding vs. formula or working moms vs. stay-at-home moms. Now, the battle is between mothers and child-free women, a war no one really asked for, but one that seems to be raging louder than ever.

It plays out the same way every time: Someone shares an experience, good or bad, about motherhood, and within minutes, the comment section transforms into a battlefield. If a mother talks about how difficult it is, she’s met with, “Well, you chose to have kids. Stop complaining.” If she shares something joyful, she risks being called smug, out of touch, or even a liar. On the other side, if a child-free woman expresses her contentment, she’s bombarded with “You’ll regret it when you’re old.” or “That’s selfish.”

It’s as if the existence of one life choice threatens the validity of the other.

And yet, when I look at the real world around me, this divide doesn’t feel nearly as deep. Most people are too busy living their lives to police other women’s decisions. The hostility seems to thrive in the performative space of the internet, where every life choice must be justified, debated, and defended in a never-ending loop.

This culture of extremes turns motherhood into an all-or-nothing proposition. Online, the message often boils down to this: Either your life is ruined by children, or it is fulfilled by them — there’s no in-between. But anyone who has spent time around actual families knows that reality is far more complex. Motherhood is not a singular experience, and it doesn’t cancel out a woman’s identity, ambitions, or ability to think critically.

If you imagine anything that brings true, lifelong satisfaction, it’s not characterised by short-term happiness. You sacrifice ease and your own comfort and pleasure in order to focus on something greater. Is that what parenthood is? I don’t know.

by Clare Stepehens

With this war going on I began to wonder where all this emancipation we fought for, all of our feminism, has gone. Is it even possible to love motherhood and be a feminist?

For years, feminism fought to push back against the idea that a woman’s highest calling was to be a mother. And for good reason — society often used that expectation to limit women’s opportunities. But now, in some corners of the internet, that pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that openly enjoying motherhood can feel like a betrayal of feminist ideals.

The reality is, feminism was never about telling women what they should or shouldn’t do — it was about giving them the freedom to choose. The choice to have children should be just as valid as the choice not to, without shame, judgment, or defensiveness attached to either.

Yet here we are, pitted against each other, forced to prove that our lives are just as valuable as the alternative. It’s a game no one wins.

It almost feels as if “feminism, because of social media, has kind of digressed in a way. [How] there always has to be a discourse about everything [ … ] other than just validating the many experiences of women.”

But we seem to have forgotten how diverse the female experience can be. Online there seems to be two versions only: The one with and the one without children.

Sometimes I hear stories about child-free women not even wanting to interact with children. To that I’d like to ask how is that feminist? Because if child-free women “don’t include kids in their space they are isolating women”. (The TikTok I linked here is a really good one and this is just one short quote from it, I highly recommend watching it in its entirety!)

But it is not just child-free women who might have to rethink their attitude towards children. If mothers (and those wanting to be one) want society to be better for their children, they have to make society better for every child. Just focusing on their own won't do them any good and won't give them the type of society we want. Pitting women against each other, mothers vs. child-free women, or mothers vs. mothers, certainly won't get us there.

Motherhood has a PR problem

There’s a strange thing that happens when mothers share their struggles online. They often say, “No one talks about how hard motherhood is.” It’s almost as if they feel the need to justify their negative stories by pointing out that no one is talking about it — when in fact everyone is talking about it. From what I’ve seen, women talk about it all the time. In fact, it often feels like that’s all they talk about.

But it wasn’t always like that.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve moved from one extreme to another. A few decades ago, motherhood was glorified — always painted as a selfless, beautiful, and all-consuming experience. Now, we’re bombarded with a very different narrative: motherhood as an exhausting, soul-sucking, thankless job. Both extremes are, as all extremes are, incomplete and neither tells the full story.

One of the strangest things about this shift is the way mothers talk about their own experiences. It’s almost like there’s a script: “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but of course, I love my child.” It’s always that same line — like the love needs to be stated so no one gets the wrong idea. But why? No one expects a person with a demanding job to constantly say, “It’s exhausting, but of course, I love my career.” We assume they love it, or at least, that they have their reasons for doing it.

So why do mothers have to clarify that their love outweighs the hardship? Maybe it’s because they know how people will react if they don’t. If a mother complains too much, she’s ungrateful. If she enjoys it too much, she’s unrealistic. If she shares both, the good and the bad, she’s confusing.

And how did it become normal to completely trashtalk motherhood? How has it been normalized to describe children as these little disruptive monsters who only make our lives harder? Have we all forgotten that we once were children too? We all need to vent sometimes, sure, but this new extreme that we’ve reached is concerning.

And as someone who had to listen to her own mother complain about motherhood I have a bit of a darker take on it: Kids listen and they do feel the negativity.

My mother thought I couldn’t hear her talking to her friends, constantly emphasizing how challenging everything is, how difficult it was to raise a child.

But I did! I heard every single word.

The negativity she carried around towards me, her own child, and motherhood were constant companions in our relationship. Until her death, she and I never overcame that — and to this day her words are a constant in my head. Words of self-doubt because “I was difficult”.

So, it’s no wonder motherhood has a PR problem. The internet has turned it into something extreme: Either it ruins your life, or it is your life. But in reality, it’s just life: full of highs and lows, like anything else.

Be a professional mother or none at all!

In this day and age motherhood is no longer just parenting — it is a performance or a profession. And often, it is both.

The first is a social-media problem: everything is content. The nursery must fit an aesthetic and spending the morning with your kids can’t be chaos, it must be a routine. Everything should be camera-ready or turned into content.

The second is also a social-media problem: you have to be the most perfect mother or none at all. The internet is one of the greatest things ever invented, never did we have access to that much information. How cruel would it be to not use this wealth of information to improve our parenting? But what started as sharing useful information has turned into a profession. There are thousands of theories (many of them unproven and never studied) and schools of thought on parenting. Not following the latest “parenting trend” equals being a horrible mother.

Sounds like a lot of pressure? It is.

And often it is too much, as comments under a TikTok about “professional motherhood” show:

• “Yes!!! It’s information overload that has tainted motherhood I think — instead of trusting your guts and our children we let the noise get to us! Motherhood can and should be so much simpler.”

• “This outlook can also take away a mother’s ability to rely on her maternal instincts.”

• “It’s all too much. Too much pressure and too much information. If you need to understand or know something, look it up. Apart from that, tune out the noise. You won’t enjoy the experience otherwise … it’s too comparative and it’s too easy to miss out on enjoying it by focusing on the next always. And always follow your instincts!”

Unfortunately, this pressure doesn’t just exist online, it has infiltrated our real lives too. Only a few weeks ago, during a prenatal yoga class, a woman came up to me and asked what my “parenting style” will look like. I hadn’t given that any kind of thought, so I said: “Lots of love, respect, and a good sense of humor.” Her face spoke volumes: She not only disliked my answer, she downright pitied me for not having a professional response.

What about women wanting to be mothers?

There is one group in this entire “parents are in hell”-discourse that is completely ignored: Women wanting to be mothers or soon-to-be mothers — all of them observing, absorbing, and trying to make sense of it all.

For many (me included), the scariest voices in the conversation aren’t the people who reject motherhood entirely — it’s the mothers themselves. As this TikToker bluntly put it: “The people who made me the most scared to become a mother are mothers … they are the most competitive, judgmental, nasty group of people.”

Of course, that’s just one opinion (and a harsh one at that). But there’s something to be said about how motherhood is portrayed, policed, and even weaponized in conversations. It’s often not the reality of being a parent that pushes some women away; it’s the way motherhood is spoken about online. The constant performance of exhaustion, the unsolicited advice, the competitive suffering — these things make motherhood feel less like a personal journey and more like an initiation into a miserable, judgmental club.

It’s not motherhood that repels them, but the way it is portrayed, policed, and weaponized in peer-to-peer conversations. Rather than offering support or solidarity, some women seem to double down on judgment and comparison.

by Summer

And the advice! The endless, suffocating advice. On pregnancy. On postpartum. On breastfeeding. On when to go back to work, how long to stay home, how to sleep train, how to discipline, how to do everything exactly right or risk ruining your child forever.

I’d love, just once, to experience a conversation about motherhood that doesn’t feel like an avalanche of instructions and warnings. I’d love to say, “I’m pregnant,” and not immediately hear about how I should prepare for the worst.

Online motherhood ≠ real motherhood

A little bit over three months ago a plus appeared on the third pregnancy test I ever took in my entire life. And I knew that from now on, social media would never be the same for me. I deleted it all and created a new Instagram account to only follow my favorite creators (some artists, some book people, favorite sports team, etc.). The rest of the apps were thrown out. Social media and I have had a difficult relationship for years, but with this new chapter, I knew that it would become even more problematic.

I had to remind myself that negativity sells and that the internet amplifies extremes. That the 5% most outraged are always going to be pushed to the top where we think that it represents 100% of people. And as life often works in mysterious ways, it reminded me of exactly that just a few days ago. During my lunch break I decided to get myself a treat and went to the supermarket close by. A group of kindergarten kids and their teacher were walking through the aisles. All of them cheerfully chatting about the muffins they were going to bake later. I looked around and only saw smiling faces and people adoring the innocence and joyfulness of these little humans. Not one person complained, rolled their eyes, or hated the kids for being there. I am sure that online this scene would have been portrayed drastically different.

The thing is, it isn’t even the content itself that is problematic, as divisive as it is, it is how we react (or not react) to it. We consume so much content that we never actually form our own opinions anymore. I saw this happening with the US election and then the German election in February. People in the comments and friends in real life simply repeated what they’ve seen online. No one took the time to sit with the opinions they’ve consumed to form their own. Often people simply repeated (sometimes even word for word) the opinions they’d consumed, making our real life simulate the online world and not (how it should be) the other way around.

Because this is the key for me: the online world should (for the most part) simulate the real world I live in. Of course, I want to see different experiences, different ways of living, but when 90% of the content that the algorithm shows me doesn’t apply to the very life I live, it becomes difficult to deal with. What I mean here is that I am not from the US, I am from Germany, but I consume most of my content in English which happens to be predominantly from US creators (the TikTok ban was a lovely reprieve for a hot second). It is somehow fascinating, yet often challenging, how US narratives dominate the conversation.

And this is particularly true for motherhood.

I feel for the mothers in the US who have no paid maternity or parental leave, very little affordable support (if any) from their health insurance, and having a village is not something that seems culturally normalized in the US. But I don’t live there, I live in Germany where I get up to a year of paid parental leave, where my health insurance covers a postpartum midwife and pelvic floor therapy. Where having family dinners is normal and building a village seems easier. But with so much content being centered around US-creators it makes it seem as if these fears, this discourse around “motherhood is hell” is universal.

I found two studies that highlight this divide:

• Parenting in America Today (Pew Research Center)

• The Parenting Index (Kantar and Nestlé)

The Pew Research study says that over half of US parents (62%) said that being a parent has been at least somewhat harder than they expected, with about a quarter (26%) saying it’s been a lot harder.

And in Germany — every US parent or wanting-to-be a parent has to take a deep breath now — the study (Kantar/Nestlé) shows that only 22% of parents in Germany report that becoming a parent was more difficult than they thought it would be. Overall Germans and Swedes show some of the lowest rates of parenting stress.

Before I was even pregnant, I had unknowingly subscribed to the mentality that “motherhood is hell”. The internet made sure of that. I absorbed the warnings, the horror stories, the daily reminders that life as I knew it would soon be over. And for a while, I believed it.

But I realized that if I wanted to be in this for the long haul, I couldn’t keep thinking this way. I couldn’t let an algorithm dictate how I felt about my own life. I stopped letting other people’s opinions shape my expectations. Without all that noise, I am starting to look forward to motherhood, think my own thoughts, feel my own feelings, and (most importantly) decide for myself what motherhood would mean to me.

The way we talk about motherhood needs to change. We need space for struggle and joy. For exhaustion and delight. For mothers who find it difficult, and mothers who love it, and everyone in between.

And we need to stop letting the internet define motherhood for us.

Because the truth is, it’s different for everyone. And I’d rather find out for myself than let an algorithm decide for me.

I don’t know exactly what kind of mother I’ll be. But I know this: I want to experience it for myself. Not through the lens of social media. Not filtered through someone else’s regret or resentment. I want to enjoy motherhood, as I have the right to. Just as it is — messy, challenging, and mine.

XOXO
Annika