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While moms love to use social media as much as the next person, the culture for moms online is unique. Mommy bloggers and Facebook groups for mothers have dominated the internet, often making followers and members feel like their parenting skills are lacking if their homes aren’t always spotless and their children eat anything other than organic food. Kelsey Dallas wrote a piece for Deseret News last year describing an experience she had watching a popular “mom-fluencer” on Instagram comment on how messy her home was when there were only 2 bags on her countertop and a few baby bottles sitting in the sink. “Going into motherhood, I had vowed not to hold myself to other people’s standards,” Kelsey wrote. “Online, though, my guard was down, and photos and videos shared by lifestyle bloggers with kids regularly brought me to my knees. There must be something wrong, I thought, if I could barely handle a life they made look so easy.”
Kelsey wrote that despite understanding that everyone’s experience as a mother is unique, she had a hard time not comparing herself to mommy influencers online. “The most successful Instagram influencers, the ones with hundreds of thousands of followers and dozens of marketing deals, know how to strike a balance between being approachable and enviable,” she says. “They don’t want their lives to seem perfect, but they also don’t want you to know about the weak spots in their marriage or the time their baby cried through a work call.” Kelsey went on to say that eventually she just had to unfollow the moms causing her the most grief. “To be honest, I’m embarrassed I had to take such drastic steps, but also thankful I figured out what was causing me pain. Now, when my son or husband is driving me crazy, there’s no image in my head of how perfect things could be. Instead, my mind calls up my own flawed but precious moments, and I feel grateful for the real life I get to lead.”
There's no such thing as a perfect mother, and it's great that pages like Modern Mom Probs are shining a light on that. All moms just want the best for their littles ones, and it's nobody else's business how they decide to balance their lives. Enjoy checking out the rest of these posts from Modern Mom Probs, and don't forget to upvote all of your favorites. Then let us know in the comments if you have any "modern mom probs" you'd like to share; whatever they are, I'm sure you're not alone!
