On April 2, Aubree Jones, a Mormon mom influencer with more than 4 million social media subscribers, posted a video in which she and her husband, Josh Jones, and their seven children stand together in the hallway of their house. Everyone is grinning. White text above them reads “We have an announcement… We’re expecting…” Josh lifts their little white dog into the air from where she was hidden behind the gaggle of humans; she kicks a little, clearly not thrilled at being airborne. “Puppies!!!” the final caption reads.
The short video may seem innocuous but, like so much family influencer content, it’s a rich text once you begin to dig into it. Until the reveal, for instance, the older kids hold their awkward poses, smiles rigid, while only the toddler at the bottom right seems free to look bored and distracted. What are they all thinking? What were they doing before being called in to help their parents earn a living by shooting the video? Then there’s the pregnancy announcement itself, which — along with birth, newborn, and baby news — is some of the most successful content you can post as a family influencer. Sure, it’s a pregnant dog, but you don’t know that until your view has already been captured and counted.
I learned about Jones and her family — specifically, about the sponcon she made preparing a “period kit” for her oldest daughter — in Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online by Fortesa Latifi. I’ve been following Latifi’s journalism for years in The Cut, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, and elsewhere, and have been fascinated by her coverage of the influencer sphere in particular. I devoured this book, her first, which is a must-read for anyone curious about the inner workings of influencerdom writ large and the family aspects of it in particular.
Latifi begins by taking a look at the precursor to the momfluencers: the mommy bloggers. In the mid-2000s, mothers took to the internet and “wrote long-form, heart-plundering reflections on pregnancy and motherhood and what their lives looked like after having children,” Latifi writes. “They were honest about topics that had only previously been discussed privately, in hushed tones. They wrote about hating their husbands and struggling with postpartum anxiety and the feeling that their lives were over. It was a revelation. More than that, it was a revolution. It’s not hyperbolic to say that mommy bloggers not only changed the way we talk about motherhood but also provided a career path for the influencers of today.”
But the internet evolved — it got faster and more accessible and as smartphones came around, visual media became prized above longform writing. At the same time, companies realized they could harness the popularity of these blogs and turn them into advertising real estate. Over the years, the community aspect of blogging gave way to the monetizable engagement-bait we see now. Where mom bloggers were writing about themselves, their own experiences, today’s family influencers are instead focused on their children, who are fundamental to their content.
