Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - The Evangelical Christians Are Coming in Hot on Instagram

00:00:00.000 you know who is alive and well on instagram jesus and i say that without judgment but it is true

00:00:15.720 it's true whether you realize it or not religion namely christianity is being packaged in a variety

00:00:24.140 of ways, usually through beautiful images of motherhood and parenthood, and it is being

00:00:30.240 rebranded for a new generation on social media. We talked a lot in the first episode of this series

00:00:38.440 about how the early mom bloggers and influencers were Mormon women, and how their faith encouraged

00:00:45.240 blogging and social media in order to spread the word of their faith. I want to go back to that

00:00:52.300 for a second. Mormon moms are encouraged to keep a lot of records of their families' growth and, 0.97

00:00:59.200 you know, just milestones and all that scrapbooking type thing. So there was always a practice within 0.81

00:01:04.680 Mormon domesticity of like taking pictures and making these special documents. So blogging was

00:01:11.440 really like a natural next step when blogs became accessible. Like Mormon moms were like, sweet, 1.00

00:01:17.360 we're going to blog now. So that's how they started. It was an outgrowth of existing practices

00:01:21.460 that the community had certain corners of the internet refer to the mormon mom blogging and

00:01:26.400 influencing community by the nickname the blogger knackle and it has been encouraged from on high

00:01:32.580 let's rewind a little bit to april 6th 1830 this is when members of the church of jesus christ of

00:01:42.540 latter-day saints believed that the lord gave a command to one of their founders joseph smith

00:01:47.900 behold there shall be a record kept among you now fast forward a 2007 commencement address to

00:01:57.060 the graduating class of brigham young's hawaii campus it's by church elder m russell ballard

00:02:02.780 he's the acting president of the mormon church's quorum of 12 apostles may i ask you to join the

00:02:10.060 conversation by participating on the internet particularly the new media to share the gospel

00:02:17.580 Most of you already know that if you have access to the internet,

00:02:21.540 you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true. 1.00

00:02:28.600 I think a lot of these moms are like, 0.98

00:02:30.520 okay, well, I'll just tone down the religious dimension

00:02:32.280 so that, you know, I appeal to more people.

00:02:34.840 Because people were there for the aesthetic.

00:02:36.100 They loved the kind of, I guess, the cuteness.

00:02:41.440 What we haven't talked about yet

00:02:43.280 is the rise of evangelical Christians on Instagram, and the messages they're sending

00:02:49.500 without you realizing it. I also want to dig into whether or not they're using social media

00:02:54.880 as a platform to proselytize. Today's guest is Kelsey Kramer McGinnis, and she's a correspondent

00:03:01.660 for Christianity Today. She's also a professor, and she's working on a book about the history

00:03:06.700 of Christian parenting literature. She's recently been doing a deep dive into Christian parents on

00:03:13.160 social media. And she has a lot to say on this subject. So my name is Kelsey Kramer McGinnis,

00:03:20.720 and I am a correspondent for Christianity Today. I write about music and culture, but I'm also

00:03:27.980 working on a book about the history of Christian parenting literature since the 70s or so. And

00:03:35.300 so I write in a variety of subjects. I also teach at Grandview University in Des Moines, Iowa,

00:03:41.520 where I live. So I wear a bunch of different hats and started diving into trad wife content

00:03:48.500 sort of by way of my research on Christian parenting writing. It's sort of part of the

00:03:55.300 same pipeline, I suppose. I've been covering trad wives on this podcast and in my sub stack

00:04:01.920 over the influence. And I know that there's a lot of crossover between Christian influencers

00:04:09.020 influencers and trad wives but when you emailed me you made me realize that christian instagram

00:04:16.120 is also its its whole own beast i would love you as an expert in this world to kind of walk me

00:04:23.860 through it to just you know lead me down the primrose path uh and also and actually before

00:04:30.780 we get to that are you christian yes i am yes i am i am christian like many writers and academics

00:04:38.680 Like now I have a complicated relationship with the label evangelical, but there is an element of like subculture that is very hard to shake when you grow up in a faith tradition.

00:04:54.240 That's a long winded answer to say, yes, I am still Christian.

00:04:57.000 I write for a pretty mainstream evangelical publication.

00:05:01.620 So, yeah, very much still in that world.

00:05:03.600 yeah and christianity today is is a mainstream christian publication i actually weirdly have

00:05:11.500 a master's in religious studies and i spent a lot of time at religion writing conferences

00:05:16.460 with editors of christianity today i do think it's important just to you know identify where

00:05:24.740 we're coming from when we talk about religion especially as someone who's studied religion in

00:05:31.740 a past life. I mean, I'm very agnostic. And a lot of times I think that I weren't. I think I'd be

00:05:39.060 happier if I had a more robust belief system. I don't seem to have the God gene, which some people

00:05:46.080 believe is an actual thing. I love the community aspects of religion. I love the idea of belief

00:05:54.780 and and and hope infused in so many religions my issue is always the patriarchy with every religion

00:06:02.000 on earth that is what ends up just just just getting me each time i'm behind the patriarchy 0.78

00:06:08.600 sneaks in and i'm like ah fuck not for me we got all of our stuff on the table talk to me about the 0.93

00:06:15.140 world of christian mom influencers like what what do you see in that landscape yeah so i i sort of 0.98

00:06:23.180 fell down this rabbit hole maybe six months ago because I started researching for this book

00:06:27.860 and it is not about influencers specifically. It's not about tradwives specifically. It is a

00:06:35.300 history of Christian parenting literature because I have for a long time wanted to

00:06:40.780 write about some of the really problematic ideologies underneath just very popular

00:06:46.700 Christian parenting teaching. So I, for the first time in a long time, made my Instagram

00:06:52.100 public and started poking around online just to see what was out there. And it took maybe a couple

00:06:58.840 days for all of a sudden my feed to just be filled with Tradwife content. Like I started out looking

00:07:05.320 for kind of normie Christian parenting accounts that I figured were out there and around just to

00:07:10.980 see where we worked and fell down this like rabbit hole of Tradwife content, specifically

00:07:18.900 christian tried wife content so um there is like you said there's a whole almost separate ecosystem

00:07:26.420 what i find interesting about it is i think that a lot of the christian influencer content has bled

00:07:34.120 over into the mainstream world without people even realizing that a lot of it is christian

00:07:41.240 Yeah, I think that's true. And when I read Sarah Peterson's book, Momfluenced, which I love and reference all the time, she has a chapter where she talks about some Christian nationalism and white supremacist underpinnings of trad wife content and mentions a couple of main characters of Christian Instagram trad wife content.

00:08:11.240 And it's always interesting to me when I read an article or something about tradwives that doesn't foreground the faith content, because in my mind, that's like the headline here.

00:08:25.980 When I think about the reasons why TradWife content has become so popular, I do not see that happening without the kind of support and fervent support of Christian creators and followers.

00:08:45.100 I think it's very much tied together, but I think that there are savvy creators who maybe don't foreground that to sort of reach a broader audience.

00:08:54.040 I think there are creators who probably are agnostic, but recognize that this is a place where there is some resonance and overlap and they want to capture both audiences, both little ecosystems.

00:09:05.980 So I think that's happening, too.

00:09:08.820 Yeah, absolutely. And you wrote in your email to me that you think that the Christian influencers are supercharging the Tradwife movement. How so?

00:09:18.780 well I think it has a lot to do with fundamentalism and the psychology of fundamentalism so

00:09:27.340 recently someone shared a definition with me of fundamentalism that kind of defines it as

00:09:35.740 a psychology that involves certainty ferocity and solidarity

00:09:43.160 um i think i think david french who's a more conservative columnist for the new york times

00:09:50.200 recently shared that definition in a column of his um and i think that that that psychology

00:09:56.860 that way of seeing the world fundamentalist thinking is what's driving trad wife content

00:10:03.920 and it is a way of thinking and seeing the world that evangelicals are very

00:10:08.380 rhymed for and familiar with and sometimes even encouraged to take as a worldview.

00:10:16.560 The certainty that comes with this isn't just a lifestyle choice. This is God's intention for me

00:10:24.540 and for women. I mean, that's a level of certainty that has profound implications for how you view

00:10:30.800 yourselves and other women, other people. And if you really believe that, that lends a sense of

00:10:39.140 righteous purpose that I think can really like up the stakes and up like the fervor of your devotion

00:10:47.080 to this idea, right? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, what else would up the stakes higher

00:10:55.440 than saying well you know this is just about your eternal soul

00:10:59.580 that's all versus just you know just you know this model is just about salvation or health

00:11:07.920 yeah yeah it's the same reason why like christian parenting content gets the same kind of devotion

00:11:17.600 because it's like it's your children's eternal souls right like that that might even be higher

00:11:22.300 stakes in your eternal soul it's your children's eternal souls um and so yeah it's just it's this

00:11:28.300 really like striking way of upping the stakes of every claim every claim about you know this

00:11:36.740 is god's design for women this is god's best for women um gosh that just if you really internalize

00:11:44.840 that that does a number on how you perceive yourself of course it does of course it does

00:11:51.360 And I think it adds a whole other layer of this is what you should be doing.

00:11:56.820 This is your purpose when it is God's divine plan. 0.99

00:12:01.120 And I think that's where it starts to get a little bit dangerous into territory of, you know, prescribing things for women. 0.82

00:12:12.000 Again, I say I always rub up against the patriarchy problem of religion.

00:12:17.180 when these influencers are saying whether they're you know talking about their rules for being a

00:12:24.780 wife or their rules for parenting but when they're backing that up by saying but i'm doing this

00:12:30.100 because it's what god wants i think that makes it a lot more dangerous for vulnerable followers

00:12:38.260 who are susceptible to that i mean essentially it's kind of like proselytizing through social

00:12:45.080 media. Oh, 100%. Yes. Do you think that in some ways these influencers are proselytizing through

00:12:52.380 social media? Absolutely. Yes. There is an evangelistic impulse here, partly driven by

00:13:03.600 this fundamentalist view of the world. That's part of why Instagram is so effective. I mean,

00:13:12.860 the whole point of adopting this aesthetic, this beautiful, curated, desirable, unattainable

00:13:19.440 aesthetic is to cast this aspirational vision, right? And what could be a more winsome tool than

00:13:28.960 projecting this image of a peaceful life, a beautiful life where you live out the ideal

00:13:40.520 version of femininity not just the ideal but like god's ideal what he's created you to do

00:13:47.100 you know putting beautiful music under it having full control over that message

00:13:52.420 of what's being put out there it's really really powerful um and i think that there is absolutely

00:13:59.660 an interest in putting that out there as as kind of an evangelistic tool of trying to bring people

00:14:07.300 into that, encouraging people to share that vision of the world, to share that vision of

00:14:12.900 what family looks like, what womanhood looks like, what family life looks like.

00:14:19.920 Do you think that evangelical leaders in various, various parts of evangelicalism

00:14:27.900 have gotten wise to the fact that influencers can go out there and possibly bring in new converts,

00:14:35.280 new recruits?

00:14:37.300 That's a good question.

00:14:39.240 Look, I know the Mormon churches.

00:14:40.740 The Mormon church knows that their influencers are doing exactly what it wants to bring more Mormons in.

00:14:48.060 And I'm curious if the evangelical church is wise to the edge that influencers could have for them.

00:14:58.160 Yes, I think that's definitely growing for a long time.

00:15:03.760 I mean, evangelicalism in the U.S. has a long track record of being very eager to adopt media and technology as evangelistic tools.

00:15:12.500 So like Billy Graham is like the quintessential example, right?

00:15:15.260 He was super effective because he was able to use radio and TV.

00:15:19.720 And, you know, it's all about reaching as big an audience as possible with a winsome, attractive message.

00:15:26.200 and you know evangelical leaders today are are just as eager to adopt new technologies new

00:15:35.700 platforms use them to to reach an audience so that is definitely happening and that's part of

00:15:42.420 the recipe for for success here um for outreach anyway so i think um i think that is definitely

00:15:51.540 happening. One of the things that you mentioned is that content from very conservative religious

00:15:58.120 creators can go viral with non-religious followers just because of the aesthetics and the reactionary

00:16:06.700 ideology. Talk to me a little bit about that. Well, I think it's, I think, again, it requires

00:16:13.720 is this fundamentalist way of thinking. I see the most resonance when I look at secular content in

00:16:22.360 wellness spaces. You see very similar framing and appeals to goodness, to nature, to counter

00:16:35.840 culturalism. I think that the pandemic really fertilized the ground for there to be some

00:16:46.600 real interest in alternative wellness, alternative medicine, some conspiratorial thinking.

00:16:55.040 And I see echoes of that in some Tradwife content. And I think this return to nature or return to

00:17:04.820 the natural idea is something that like can become a common ground, even though it's not

00:17:11.200 really a common ground, right? Because if you're saying that we need to return to the sacred

00:17:17.360 feminine, we need to return to our natural role as women, as child bearers, as mothers,

00:17:27.000 evangelicals can say a similar thing or conservative Christians can say a similar

00:17:31.180 thing but sort of add the god ordained and even if you don't believe that it's god ordained you

00:17:39.280 believe it's sort of this naturalist vision it kind of gets you to the same place in some cases

00:17:45.820 and so there's this weird and it gets in your head all this you know these ideas because of

00:17:52.980 the way they're being presented these ideas of what is quote-unquote good motherhood and because

00:17:59.720 they look so beautiful and so aesthetically pleasing they lodged our brains and we may not

00:18:05.240 come we and we many times will not know what kind of an ideological place they're coming from

00:18:11.820 right right and i think in some cases it you almost don't care where they're coming from

00:18:19.820 if you like the aspirational vision and you like the aesthetic result i think that makes it easy

00:18:28.440 to co-sign content with a creator that you might not share a worldview with.

00:18:37.340 Well, absolutely. So I've recently been served this one influencer who is full-on, anti-vax,

00:18:47.220 just like live off the earth. And she is the antithesis of what I am from a worldview.

00:18:56.340 you and yet it's all these videos of her just nursing a baby in the jungle you know that looks 0.99

00:19:03.580 nice i'd be in the jungle with my i really wouldn't let's be honest fucking jungle look 0.94

00:19:10.080 and like it's itchy and like these are things that look so much better on instagram than in 0.98

00:19:16.700 real life it's like the idea of sex on the beach at the end of the day they all stand in uncomfortable

00:19:21.020 places okay oh my gosh right yeah but but i could look at these videos all day long and they're very

00:19:27.020 soothing and then i read the caption and she's she's telling me not to vaccinate my children

00:19:31.100 amidst a measles outbreak oh gosh that brings me to the next thing i want us to talk about which is

00:19:40.700 christian parenting influencers but let's take a quick break and we'll we'll get to that when we

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00:24:40.920 we're back hi kelsey hi now i want to get into we talked we talked about traditional christian

00:24:55.800 wife influencers i want to talk about the parenting influencing world

00:25:01.640 in the christian influencer sphere give me the lay of the land here so we have that world of

00:25:09.100 Christian parenting books up through the 2000s. And then social media comes around

00:25:15.440 and millennial parents now are getting most of their parenting advice and content from

00:25:23.420 Instagram and TikTok and Facebook. And so you can see how the power has shifted from this group of

00:25:35.500 authors that were self-credentialed to begin with, claiming this level of knowledge about

00:25:40.980 what God wants for your children. Now that's shifted to influencers and content creators

00:25:47.160 online. But what's interesting about it is they sort of use the same toolbox that James

00:25:54.980 Dobson used, but now just sort of adopted for a new generation of millennial evangelical

00:26:01.740 christians tell me about that how has it how has it adapted to the influencer generation i'll talk

00:26:08.960 about two different camps so one thing that made james dobson and his peers kind of particularly

00:26:16.360 stand out as part of a christian parenting influencer author um is this commitment to

00:26:24.880 the idea of discipline, of corporal discipline, of foregrounding parental authority in the home.

00:26:34.000 The problem that they are trying to address in so much of their advice is that parents are not

00:26:39.640 disciplining their children well enough, that children are not growing up with respect for

00:26:44.620 authority. There is still a strong contingent of American Christians that think that is a problem.

00:26:50.880 so there is a strong reaction in conservative christianity in some places to things like

00:26:57.600 gentle parenting respectful parenting even a book like becky kennedy's good inside are you

00:27:03.700 familiar with that book oh yeah yeah yeah so like that book for a lot of christians is like a red

00:27:10.260 flag because to suggest that your child is good inside is to suggest that they don't have sin

00:27:17.360 right this is a sin this is a sin issue um and so much parenting literature is concerned with

00:27:23.840 how do we deal with the sin of our children um again huge eternal theological states right in

00:27:31.180 your face huge stakes and these huge stakes are now playing out on instagram yeah yes um

00:27:37.540 so that's still there um the content of like the most mainstream christian parenting influencers

00:27:46.820 now, I think really downplays the discipline issue and really plays up what it means to be

00:27:55.080 a parent. It's much more parent focused or it's more focused on protecting your children from

00:28:02.760 the outside world. I think creators are savvy enough to know that talking about corporal

00:28:12.400 discipline on social media is going to make you a lightning rod um unless you're ribby frankie

00:28:18.420 but she's right i just that's talk about a story i just could barely bring myself to

00:28:25.360 even think about it i know i'm like um but yeah i think most most influencers who talk about

00:28:36.580 parenting on Instagram, avoid the topic of corporal discipline, even though I'm sure that

00:28:44.580 a good number of them do kind of adhere to the, like, you know, the rod of discipline will drive

00:28:51.200 folly from a child, this whole idea. But instead, a more popular message is, you know, protect your

00:29:01.160 children from the outside world. Don't vaccinate your children. Homeschool your children. This is

00:29:08.920 where it starts to intersect with the trad wife stuff, by the way. There's this separatist

00:29:12.740 cultural impulse that really plays into some of these strains in evangelicalism. And it

00:29:23.240 provides this new orientation that on its face sounds quite different than what you would hear

00:29:30.660 from someone like a James Dobson who really focused on sort of behaviorism. And now the

00:29:36.200 focus has shifted to a real like kind of almost fear of the world. You know, someone think of the

00:29:45.440 children kind of thing. Right, right. Of course. And that does intersect with another category

00:29:52.520 that's incredibly popular on Instagram. And I think that most of our listeners have been served

00:29:57.460 this it's the homeschooling instagram the beautiful pictures of homeschooling your children

00:30:04.340 which makes us all feel terrible for sending our god forbid public school and it really that

00:30:11.240 content really is shaming and what you're saying is that a lot of that is rooted in this christian

00:30:17.120 ideology of protecting our children from the outside world yep yep absolutely and i so i have

00:30:24.660 to tell you the story now that you've brought that up, because it's just, it's happening to me

00:30:28.180 right now. Today was supposed to be my six-year-old's first day of kindergarten.

00:30:34.780 She started kindergarten this year. And I don't know if it's influencer content that really

00:30:42.480 steered me in this direction. I don't know. But we started this year. So I, you know what,

00:30:46.240 I'm going to, I'm going to homeschool my kindergartner. I can provide this like lovely

00:30:51.300 free learning environment. I can protect her from this environment where she might be lost in the 0.63

00:31:00.520 shuffle or there are too many kids or she won't get as much rest. She won't get as much free time.

00:31:06.300 I don't know what it was that planted this in my brain so, so strongly. But as the semester went on,

00:31:13.740 I just was like, why am I doing this? What is making me feel so strongly that this is the best

00:31:20.600 and the right thing for my child when she is a social butterfly who wants nothing more than to

00:31:26.340 be with her neighborhood friends at school, to be going to art class and music class.

00:31:33.000 And I just, my husband and I looked at each other and we were like, are we part of the

00:31:37.440 problem here? What are we doing? And so we made the decision halfway through the year to

00:31:42.420 enroll her in school. And she is so excited. Did not start this week because we got a snowstorm

00:31:49.360 and are snowed in. But yeah, the homeschool influencer space is really winsome and really

00:32:00.480 effective. They got you. They totally got me. They got me. They sucked you in. And I think

00:32:05.780 they've sucked a lot of people in. I've heard from a lot of listeners who were sucked in by

00:32:11.120 homeschool influencers. By the way, homeschool Christian influencers and homeschool influencers

00:32:17.660 will not speak to me they're the one group that just refuse them and the diaper free movement

00:32:24.020 lady they will not they will not talk to me they are i was really hoping you would get a hold of

00:32:29.980 the diaper free lady i would love to hear a conversation with her i can't get past her 0.91

00:32:33.820 assistant and you know i'm still bitter i'm still bitter that diaper free lady has an assistant and

00:32:38.900 i don't know that are over here but yeah they just they see no benefit in talking to the press 0.83

00:32:46.580 they're like nope i do my thing i don't need you nada nada but but a lot of people have been sucked

00:32:53.940 in to this homeschooling idea and then they do it and they're like this is nothing like the pictures

00:32:59.180 i've been served this is terrible i'll be paying teachers a hundred thousand dollars an hour

00:33:07.700 yes yes yes and it really this is like so when i talk about how christian parenting content is

00:33:15.880 very parent centric it this is one way that that is tricky because the vision of homeschooling is

00:33:23.260 like all about the parent it's all about like the parents experience what the parent can provide

00:33:29.180 the environment the parent is able to cultivate what do the kids want to be doing what you know

00:33:39.400 So I just looked at my daughter was like, yeah, she's six. Six is so young. And in my head, I would think, oh, that is too long to be away from me. That is too long for her to be away from her home. But she wants to be doing a million different things with a bunch of different friends, getting to try things, read things, do different projects that I cannot do at home, especially because I also have a four year old and a two year old. It's just not possible.

00:34:06.320 No, we and I are in the same boat, right?

00:34:08.900 We've got kids that are almost the same age.

00:34:10.980 Are they really?

00:34:12.260 And it's wonderful, but I cannot give her what I think she wants and needs.

00:34:20.700 And gosh, the homeschool influencer space did such a great job of convincing me that what she needs is to be home with me above all else.

00:34:32.220 Even if I even if I don't teach her much of anything ever, what she needs is to be home where she's safe, where she is free to have self-directed learning, you know, all of this.

00:34:45.920 It was so convincing to me.

00:34:48.600 And I feel like that just was me listening to like my desires and not not what she needs.

00:34:57.540 And not what she needs. And listening to this intense influence that we see on this weird

00:35:05.560 device that we hold in our hand and put in our pocket and take into the bathroom with us all

00:35:10.020 the time. It is persuasive. And make no mistake, it is convincing us to do things that I don't

00:35:17.220 think we would have otherwise done. Yeah. Yeah. And I always want to tell people,

00:35:22.800 When I talk about influencer content, I'm not accusing anyone of being stupid or being easily fooled.

00:35:30.560 Like, we're all impacted by it in different ways at different times, depending on where we're at and what decisions we're considering making.

00:35:40.940 and um you know none of us is like this passive um you know viewer of information that is

00:35:50.060 you know that has no control over what we think that's not that's not it but um but i think we're

00:35:57.000 all susceptible and not as aware of how we're susceptible as we'd like to think we are um

00:36:04.240 absolutely and we're also we're also vulnerable we're vulnerable as mothers who feel guilt a lot

00:36:11.700 and so we're looking for answers to how not to feel guilty or constantly trying to figure out

00:36:18.120 how to be quote-unquote good like good mother but what the hell does that mean and so we're

00:36:23.800 vulnerable to this content that is telling us how to do that absolutely yeah we are all

00:36:30.800 vulnerable to it. And I, my, my dissertation was on propaganda. And so I've done a lot of thinking

00:36:38.140 about how media shapes hearts, minds, feelings, thoughts. And it's not simple. It's not

00:36:46.800 straightforward, but it's very human. And it's a good thing, right? Like, I mean, I think any artist

00:36:53.760 would say they want what they create to be able to move people and influence people. So,

00:37:00.060 So, but it's complicated and we're all, yeah, we're all vulnerable.

00:37:05.360 We're all vulnerable.

00:37:06.380 We really, really are.

00:37:08.800 One last thing that I want to talk to you a little bit about is we say, we talk a lot

00:37:14.100 about bump engagement on this show and how creators often experience a bump in their

00:37:22.460 engagement from their literal baby bumps.

00:37:26.920 Yes.

00:37:28.020 Yes.

00:37:28.620 and and you had told me that there is something called the quote open womb group of influencers

00:37:35.960 who talk about expanding their families and you know who who talk about how and i think that they

00:37:44.040 also a lot of these influencers make having a very large family look easy which is the biggest lie

00:37:50.560 known to man yes yes yes so open womb i mean you can probably just search it on instagram and

00:38:00.600 you'll find a number of posts about christian women who talk about usually it's framed as

00:38:07.700 trusting god with the size of my family some of them engage in natural family planning and they

00:38:14.660 post quite a bit about that and will even like market tools for natural family planning

00:38:19.100 many of them are a lot of a lot of them are now selling you tools yeah for natural family planning

00:38:25.180 selling you selling you their guide to natural family planning yep and many of them are very

00:38:34.800 vocal about being anti-hormonal birth control there's a lot of there's a lot of content out

00:38:40.980 there right now in christian spaces about how hormonal birth control you know hurts your body

00:38:46.840 and also is not trusting God with the size of your family.

00:38:52.060 And so you'll find, you know, snarky posts like a video of a woman saying, you know,

00:39:00.340 reasons why I regret having an open womb.

00:39:02.720 And then like, there's nothing, you know, like you'll see stuff like that. 0.97

00:39:06.000 And, um, and it's very much encouraging women to think about just, you know, trying to relinquish

00:39:18.760 control of how many children you have, because how many children you end up having is how many

00:39:24.180 you are supposed to have, or God is going to basically, um, ordain for you how many children

00:39:29.200 you should have. It could be four, it could be nine, it could be one, you know? Um, and that

00:39:34.180 is that is framed as, again, like not just like a preference thing, but as a like, how much do you

00:39:40.220 trust God? Do you really trust God? Do you really trust God with this part of your life or do you

00:39:44.740 not? When I see posts like that, those really, you know, rub me the wrong way because that is

00:39:52.800 that's a kind of like psychological attack on women. It's sort of calling into question the

00:39:58.640 nature of your faith. It calls into question the strengths of your faith. Like, how strong

00:40:05.120 of a Christian are you? How much of a believer are you? And that is, to me, just so toxic and

00:40:13.380 destructive. And when you consider that in light of the fact that influencers get a bump in

00:40:23.800 engagement from children, that together does, you know, raises all kinds of just like icky

00:40:30.680 kinds of questions, right? Right, exactly, exactly. And I think, again, we're going back to it creates

00:40:38.960 fear and shame and guilt, even in women who are not Christian, who are just viewing this content

00:40:47.100 and not knowing that it is based in Christian philosophy. You see these women with their

00:40:52.680 massive soccer teams of children and they do make it look so easy and you're like why do I feel like

00:40:59.960 I'm failing all the time when I've got one over here or two over here or three over here right

00:41:05.340 because we're also always playing this comparison game and so I think that that is also what makes

00:41:12.500 it what makes it so dangerous because parenting is hard and when no one shows the mess of parenting

00:41:19.880 and the difficulties of parenting, then we're doing all parents a disservice and we're just

00:41:26.920 making them all feel bad about themselves. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Do you run across the

00:41:32.800 content from like, I mean, a lot of it comes from Christian Tradwise, others not, but the like,

00:41:38.220 you don't have to, you don't have to be part of hot mess mom culture. Have you seen those?

00:41:44.760 Yes, I do see that. I do see that. You know, I have my own thoughts on hot mess mom culture too.

00:41:49.200 i think the majority of us fall in the middle yes most of us are just trying to live our lives

00:41:54.200 my house is messy right now sometimes it's not sometimes i don't like my husband sometimes i

00:41:59.100 want to do it with him but you know i never see that middle ground because instagram loves extremes

00:42:05.220 and so it's either hot mess i hate my husband i hate my kids i'm gonna get hammered in the bathroom

00:42:10.980 alone or it's everything is perfect all the time i have 19 children my husband and my house is 0.60

00:42:20.020 perfect we just we don't see normal people because normal people don't sell products to people on

00:42:25.120 instagram sadly like i'm just i'm too normie to be an influencer i guess yeah most people are not

00:42:33.440 i mean most normal parents are just not that online and don't have the time or the interest

00:42:41.920 in putting their life online i think i think there's something very healthy about that you

00:42:46.880 know to not have the impulse to like broadcast what your day looks like um but yeah it really

00:42:53.560 there really is this like either you're a domestic goddess or you were i don't know

00:42:59.760 like a bottom dweller you know it's it's just yes and but it is yeah this whole like you know

00:43:08.360 you don't need to be a part of hot mess mom culture putting yourself together in the morning

00:43:12.780 is you know is a joy and will change your outlook there's this like this weird reaction to

00:43:20.120 i don't even think it's a reaction to like really the really extreme hot mess mom culture it's like

00:43:26.160 a reaction to like women with no makeup and mom buns, which is me most days, you know.

00:43:33.660 And instead, you know, it's not it's not hard to put on a dress. This is an easy dress to wear.

00:43:38.980 It's not hard to put on a little makeup before your husband gets home. You know, it's just all

00:43:43.220 this guilt and shame, really. You know what? It's not that hard to do the bare minimum, you know.

00:43:49.240 it's all of this is about unrealistic expectations for mothers and i'm so glad we had you here to

00:43:56.620 talk about how a lot of this is coming from very evangelical points of view and we're not even

00:44:03.520 realizing it yeah yeah i think once you see it though you you won't unsee it because it's and i

00:44:13.800 think to to people who are in that world it's very obvious to us because we're so used to that and

00:44:20.120 there is such a long-standing interest in strengthening the gender binary and traditional

00:44:26.960 gender roles in evangelicalism the first time i saw trad wife content i was like oh that person

00:44:32.860 is either mormon or they're they're an evangelical i know it you know um and because that's you know

00:44:39.380 There's so much, yeah, just this long-standing interest in that.

00:44:45.980 That's all we've got for today.

00:44:47.640 Thank you, as always, for being here.

00:44:49.920 If you love us, leave us a review, tell a friend.

00:44:54.060 You can always DM me with ideas for this show.

00:44:58.100 Because I've gotten so many DMs, I'm now working on an episode about menopause influencers.

00:45:04.660 Also, I think the meno is coming for me.

00:45:07.360 I think it's coming real quick. 0.99

00:45:09.380 real just just just hitting me in the vagina right now also just one last note if you pre-order my 0.97

00:45:17.020 novel the sicilian inheritance which will be out in april and will be the best thing to read while 0.99

00:45:22.840 you ignore your kids on spring break you will get a lifetime paid subscription to our newsletter

00:45:28.520 over the influence so i mean it's a great deal that could be hundreds hundreds or even thousands

00:45:34.700 of dollars if I keep doing this until I die. Truth. Truth. All right, now go have a day.

00:45:43.260 Like a good day. You deserve it.

00:46:04.700 Thank you.

00:46:34.700 You

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - January 16, 2024

The Evangelical Christians Are Coming in Hot on Instagram

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