Perhaps the easiest way to start an argument online is to post a video of a mother raising her child. Within minutes, strangers will debate in the comments whether she is attentive enough, strict enough, patient enough or present enough, with some calling her irresponsible and others saying she’s controlling. Online and offline, motherhood has started to resemble a real-life Truman Show – a performance carried out under constant observation, where strangers across the country appoint themselves judge and jury.
As an older member of Generation Z, I’ve grown up scrolling past these character dissections and debates. Somewhere between the arguments about gentle parenting and working mothers, a quiet doubt began weighing on me: Do I even want to become a parent? Why step into a role where the standards seem impossible to meet?
A Pew Research Center study found that a majority of parents in the US say raising children today is harder than it was 20 years ago, with many pointing to technology and social media as contributing factors. The cost of raising a child to age 17, estimated to be US$310,605 (RM1.2mil) by Brookings, has steadily increased since the 1960s, with housing, health care and child care making up some of the largest expenses for families.
At the same time, the US remains the only high-income country without a federal paid parental leave policy, which places additional strains on parents from the very beginning.
Is it any wonder these conditions exist alongside a broader decline in birth rates globally?
President Donald Trump, at a White House Easter luncheon on April 1, stated that the US government does not have the capabilities to cover universal child care and instead needs to "take care of one thing, military protection.”
Expecting mothers to be present, attentive, financially stable and emotionally available amid increasing costs and eroding structural support creates a set of standards that are difficult, if not impossible, to meet individually.
Ej Dickson, author of One Bad Mother and senior culture writer at Wired, posits parenting today as a panopticon of social surveillance, much like the late 18th century circular prisons from which the term derives. Motherhood, once mostly private, now comes saddled with a wider audience. The norms of keeping to oneself, even as you quietly side-eye others’ parenting behaviour, have eroded. The result is a society that feels entitled to watch, record, post and judge in real time, be it in person or virtually.
"I wanted people to read the book and feel liberated from this idea that they had to internalise all of these tropes and all of these notions about what a good mother and bad mother looks like,” she tells me in an interview. (The book’s subtitle: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate.)
The types of mothers she’s talking about are instantly recognisable: the influencer who’s accused of exploiting her child for content, the mom called negligent for giving her child too much freedom, the mom who chooses to work her dream career while taking care of her child, and is often regarded as disengaged.
Dickson’s panopticon maps neatly onto the internet I’ve grown up with. She cites forums specifically dedicated to taking down mom-influencers, where people gather to report on what "problematic” thing they have done, and in some cases, to announce that they have reported the mother to Child Protective Services. "It’s literally a system that exists where women are surveying each other and reporting each other to the central guard tower, like on the suspicion of being a bad mother,” says Dickson. "There are real consequences to it.”
Of course, nobody has to post their parenting decisions, and not everyone who posts is necessarily inviting judgment. In many instances, it’s merely a reflection of how normal it has become to share one's life online. The same formats that dominate social media, like morning routines, "day in the life” videos, and small glimpses into everyday occurrences, naturally include children.
At the same time, for many parents, the internet has become a stand-in for the kind of support systems that are harder to find offline. Group chats, parent forums and online communities offer advice, reassurance and genuine connection. The same platforms that invite scrutiny can also provide a version of "the village” that many mothers have traditionally relied on. That both realities coexist, often in the same spaces, is where the tension lies, with the harshest critiques reserved for posts that feel performative, rather than reflective of the actual circumstances of mother and child.
Aside from influencers specifically peddling motherhood to make money, performative parenting is typically more implied – to be seen as doing it right or even doing it better than everyone else. Take Nara Smith, the model turned TikToker who often films herself making elaborate dishes and cosmetics for her family from scratch while wearing a posh outfit. Critics point out a vein of judgment between mothers who care to (or can) make things from scratch for their children in the name of health, and those who choose (or have) to buy things premade.
This is where the panopticon kicks in. It invites comparison, not just between different approaches but also between the people themselves, where being a "good” mother starts to feel like something you can achieve, show and be measured against, while at the same time, gleefully judged for doing it "wrong.”
"Because of how conservative the climate is now, I think that there is a huge resurgence of the appetite to see these women punished on a public stage,” says Dickson. At a certain point, it stops being about the child’s well-being and becomes about who is the "better” human being.
Yana Kuchirko, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Brooklyn College, and co-director of the Diversity Science Research Collective, says that being online and having the privilege of anonymity "means that people are much more comfortable and impulsive in sharing whatever stream of consciousness that they experience.” She goes on to explain that part of what drives this impulse to correct mothers is a broader social investment in how the next generation is raised.
"Society constructs children as not just young people who are developing, but like the future of society in a way. We socialise children to become adults who we envision as particular kinds of adults,” Kuchirko says. But with no clear consensus on society’s vision for the next generation, the same decision can be interpreted in completely different ways, depending on who is watching and what they believe children should be taught.
Not only does the responsibility for the well-being and growth of a tiny human feel daunting in and of itself, but the expectation that I would have to do it under the panopticon described by Dickson with conditions set by any random person on the street or internet – and be publicly shamed if I don’t meet them – is where the hesitation lies.
It becomes difficult for me – a woman who still calls my mom to ask if the meat that I let defrost two days ago in the refrigerator is safe to eat – to imagine stepping into a role with such convoluted guidance and risk of enormous backlash, to feel as if I need to immediately know how to raise the next great CEO.
The messiness of motherhood is unavoidable. The problem isn’t how mothers are parenting, but how little space they’re given to figure it out. I grew up hearing the phrase "It takes a village to raise a child,” but what happens when instead of a village that’s happy to help, you’re surrounded only by pitchfork-wielding watchers, waiting for you to mess up? – Bloomberg
