These women have built up a following being brutally honest about the realness, hilarity, and sometimes pitfalls of mothering through a global pandemic. One video from TikTik mom Micah Jeppesen (@mamamicahhh) has her sitting with her toddler while lip-syncing to a song by Steven Walker that goes, “I used to be so freaking cool now look at me. Now I have children running round I’m crazy—ahh.” Mom of four Tessa Marie Barrow recently shared a video of herself dancing to “Like a G6” in sweats in the bathroom, before switching to herself in going out clothes with her hair blown out and full makeup. “From a hot mess mom to a hot mom,” she wrote in the caption. And TikToker @s_demarkable has talked in several videos about her need to wear a “mom bun” on a regular basis. “I want to find the mom bun people. I just want to make sure that everyone else is…” she says in one video, before letting her hair—which is messy—down from a bun. “It’s not just me, right?” she says. Kelsi Twining decided to join TikTok in 2019 after having her son. “I needed some entertainment during middle of the night breastfeeding and pumping,” she says. Twining says she decided to post about her life as a mom “because I really didn’t know what else to post about.” Since then, Twining has earned more than 8,600 followers and even founded the Hot Mess Mom Club on TikTok. “We started off with only four people but, a few days later, two of us did another TikTok that got more views,” Twining says. Twining now shares hilarious TikToks like herself lip-synching along to Rihanna’s “Disturbia” under the words “having baby fever before I’ve gained my sanity back from the first one” and dancing and singing along to Paramore’s “Ain’t It Fun” by the text “New Stay at Home Mamas.” TikTok has built a reputation for being a go-to spot for teens and tweens. So, why are moms gaining a presence? Experts have some theories.
TikTok is messier—and sometimes more honest—than other social media platforms
Plenty of moms are on Facebook, but that’s often the spot where they connect with family and friends, too. As a result, they may not feel comfortable being as brutally honest as they might be on other platforms, says Thea Gallagher, Psy.D., clinic director at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perlman School of Medicine. While there’s a growing trend on Instagram of showing the unfiltered side of life, TikTok “is even more unedited,” Gallagher says, adding, “it really allows you to take parts of the mom experience that you’re not going to see in a curated photo.” TikTok also allows moms “interaction in a unique way because they can show themselves in more than a few characters, unlike Twitter or Instagram,” says Tamar Gur, M.D., Ph.D., a psychiatrist and women’s health expert at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. She adds, “It really does let moms get messy and create ‘real’ content.”
It’s a place to connect with like-minded moms
Whether moms are joking about the late nights trying to rock a baby to sleep or their love of parenting-friendly joggers, plenty have connected with other mothers who are also posting about the realities of mom life. “Posting about mother makes me feel great,” Twining says. “It’s such an outlet and I love being able to reach other moms.” “So many people can relate to these things,” Gallagher says. And, having content like this can be especially important during the pandemic when many people are isolated from their friends and family. “It can help people feel supported and not alone,” Gallagher says. “The pandemic has erased so many boundaries—work-life, parent-child,” Gur says. “Maybe some people who originally got on TikTok to monitor their kids are finding a home there because they see other parents who are authentic.”
It helps put things in perspective
Joking about the tough side of #momlife can be a coping mechanism for the very real stress of trying to raise happy, healthy, and well-adjusted kids during a global pandemic, says psychologistJohn Mayer, Ph.D., author of Family Fit: Find Your Balance in Life. These TikToks help “put stress in perspective,” he says, pointing out that “perspective is a very mature coping skill.” (Yup, even when you’re posting a TikTok about diaper explosions.) Mayer compares the motherhood TikToks to the more polished presentations many people like to share on other platforms. “Denial is what’s beneath posting the Instagram-perfect posts and persona that people portray on other social media sites,” he says. Twining says she’s created “so many new friendships” through the platform, and she hopes her posts help other women. “If I can reach out to just one mom and make her feel better, then I’ve done my job,” she says.
Fellow TikTok users love it
Not every mom feels comfortable sharing on TikTok about her life, but plenty seem to love the posts. TikTok mom Sarah Davis recently got 56,400 comments and more than 6 million likes after sharing a video of her toddler crying as soon as Davis put her down. Davis can then be seen pouring out half of her drink, before grabbing a bottle of vodka and filling her glass up with it. She wraps things up by handing her daughter a bottle and doing a silent cheers before drinking her own cocktail. “How’s your night going?” she wrote in the caption. The video, which has been viewed 28.4 million times, drew comments like “Girl, you should have saved the other half of the juice for another drink” and “Oooohh been there!” “So many women look around and think that everyone’s got it together except me,” Gallagher says. “It’s helpful to see that struggles are part of the process and normalizing the journey.” Sometimes seeing content like this can “help you feel like you can take a deep breath and know that others are going through this as well,” she says.
It’s even a way to bond with kids
Some moms are using TikTok as a way to create fun posts with their kids. TikTokker @runningmama14 has shared several, including a video of herself jokingly telling her daughter how to behave on the platform. “This is what you do when you TikTok, right?” she says, wiggling her butt and doing hip thrusts for the camera as her daughter begs her to stop. “That’s what everyone else is doing,” she says, as her daughter answers, “no, they’re not.” Mayer says that TikToking together can be a way to build “great family communication” and “bonding,” but, he says, there is a balance. “In another sense, it strips kids of their own private vehicle for social connection,” he says. Mayer warns that kids will leave the platform if too many parents join. “Mark my words: Like Facebook, if the moms, dads, grandmas, and grandpas dominate it, the kids will flee and find the next media platform independent of the older generation,” he says. Up next, the best TikTok food and drink trends to try at home.
