The way we're talking about motherhood is changing, says Miranda Brady, a professor of communication at Carleton University.
Brady is the author of the recent book "Mother Trouble: Mediations of White Maternal Angst after Second Wave Feminism," which examines media portrayals of "good" and "bad" motherhood over the last 50 years through a series of case studies that include HGTV home renovation shows, the 1975 film "Stepford Wives" and TV series "Modern Family."
She said political discourse south of the border combined with social media "trad-wives" and "trad-moms," who espouse traditional gender roles while they model motherhood, have led to a new era of natalism in which some populations are encouraged to go forth and multiply — with the role of "mother" treated as a moral imperative.
The Canadian Press spoke with Brady about how motherhood is being politicized in this moment — and what it's rooted in.
CP: Where is this coming from?
MB: There's a few different things at play. One is a pronatalist movement amongst people like Elon Musk and other (groups) coming out of Silicon Valley, which are concerned about demographic decline, and so they assume a kind of instrumentalist perspective on these declines which involves trying to promote procreation as much as possible. I think there's another kind of pronatalism being espoused, and coming out of the U.S., which is much more influenced by Christianity — by right-wing Christian lobbyists.
CP: The Quiverfull thing. (A Christian theological belief that suggests children are a blessing from God tantamount to arrows in a quiver: the more the better.)
MB: Yes, exactly. That is influenced by the same culture that produced the Duggars (of the TLC show "19 Kids And Counting"). And I think the Duggars had a big influence on this kind of prolific child-bearing amongst a right-wing conservative Christian base.
In some Christian circles and cultures, in particular the Church of Latter Day Saints, prolific child-rearing has always been part of the culture. But what's happening now is it's becoming much more mainstreamed through lobbying efforts by right-wing Christians, but I think also by influencer culture.
CP: Tell me about the influencers.
MB: It's a lot of influencers who assume either a trad-mom esthetic and who are overtly political — they're overtly espousing political views. But in some cases, they're more so just modelling prolific child-bearing and in particular in an agrarian, bucolic setting that seems like an ideal lifestyle. Unfortunately, it's one which (only) people who have the means can assume in many cases.
For example, Hannah Neeleman, Ballerina Farm, (a 34-year-old mother-of-eight with 10 million Instagram followers) — that kind of lifestyle is made possible by intergenerational family wealth, where their family was able to acquire a ranch and are able to live this life because they already had money to begin with.
CP: How is this trad-mom lifestyle mainstreamed by old-school, established media like HGTV?
MB: HGTV content esthetically matches a lot of the trad-life content we're seeing today. And even if it's not necessarily politicized, there's a similar kind of sentiment and esthetic. ...The kind of hyper-feminine esthetic where the host of an HGTV show or a trad-mom is usually conventionally heteronormative, attractive — usually with hair extensions, wearing makeup or in some cases have on a prairie dress, they're assuming kind of a homesteading esthetic.
CP: Can the esthetic be separated from the political? Can you just like your prairie dresses or your milkmaid dresses and cooking for your kids, or is the politics kind of baked in?
MB: A lot of people just stay at home with their kids and they don't call themselves trad-moms. It's what they do. It's their circumstances or their choice. And I do think that the trad-mom is a very highly estheticized version of this.
...Where it starts to get more moralistic is where it gets more problematic. The judgment of mothers who don't choose to stay home with their kids, those who work outside the home or those who choose not to have children. It's a decision that's very personal and in part motivated by economic circumstances.
...During the pandemic, for example, when I was in the midst of really messy parenthood and I was trying to do my job and all the stuff, sometimes I would turn to these highly esthetic, glossy images of people who just seem to have it figured out.... Sometimes there's a real attractiveness to these kinds of esthetics, because they do create a fantasy world where everything is neat and orderly and you can check out of your problems.
CP: Almost like propaganda?
MB: For anybody who knows their history, it really does look a lot like propaganda. For example, Nazi German propaganda in its promotion of the agrarian setting and the duty of the mother to reproduce the nation. The visuals look very similar to what we see now in trad-mom influencer content. There's a lot of historical patterns, and for people who have studied history, this rings a lot of alarm bells for them.
CP: And what about the language?
MB: There are a lot of historians of natalist movements who have studied both anti- and pronatalist policies and sentiment in various countries around the world. Richard Togman, for example, wrote about this and he talked about how in some forms of natalism there's both a policy toward trying to encourage population growth among some segments of the population while simultaneously trying to discourage other segments of the population. If we look at the U.S. now, this is pretty clear with a kind of white Christian push toward encouraging reproduction through things like, for example, the executive order around in vitro fertilization...encouraging citizens to have more babies. But then at the same time, there's a denial of birthright citizenship amongst other segments of the populations and mass deportation as well. So in particular Latinx populations are being targeted with an anti-natalist set of actions.
CP: You called it a pattern. How far back does the pattern go?
MB: It goes back further than Nazi Germany. In the U.S. in the early 20th century, there was a whole eugenics movement. There were a lot of prominent people in society, elites, who established eugenics as a way to try to grow the population in particular ways that were very ableist, excluding disabled people from society through institutionalization, and also wary of freed Black slaves, of migrant workers, of people who were generally not seen as more desirable parts of the population.
And even further back than that, Margaret Andersen wrote about the French Third Republic after the Franco-Prussian War (in 1871). There were very similar patterns there, too, with a movement toward pronatalism, but also increasing expansion through colonization and the effort to colonize new colonies with French populations, but also the treatment of colonized people as not necessarily French when they migrated to the metropole to fill labour shortages.
CP: What is it like to be a mom and see this facet of your identity being portrayed in this way — as a kind of moral imperative?
I find it incredible frustrating, because I'm a parent of two kids and one of my kids is disabled and autistic. And I find the sentiment toward women — or parents more generally — that they should just go out and have as many children as possible, unsupported, to be extremely dangerous. ...There's not enough supports for parents, but in particular mothers. So I think it's totally irresponsible to just encourage them to go out and have as many children as possible in a world where they are not supported.
Looking at these highly estheticized images, it does not match my reality.
— This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 9, 2025.
Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press
