Mommy Influencers and the Innocence of Children
Child Exploitation is bad, but why is it still normalized?
Howdy Y’all, and welcome back to Health in Context. Today, we are straying away from the typical public health woes of politics to talk about another public health issue: Family Influencers
Family vloggers are already their own special breed (hello again, Beverly Hall and Nika Diwa Fans). Still, there’s a different level of content creation that needs even more scrutiny: mommy vloggers. If family vloggers are filming a sitcom, mommy influencers are running the whole production. And their kids? They're the unpaid co-stars.
Today, let’s unpack mommy influencers, the real-life implications for their children, and focus on a case study you might recognize: Alyssa Fluellen.
Who Are Mommy Influencers, Anyway?
Let’s define what we’re talking about here. Mommy influencers are women, obviously mothers, who’ve turned their parenting journeys into full-time content. Think Instagram Reels, TikTok, “get ready with me” (GWRM) clips featuring toddlers, and family dance videos. Unlike “family vloggers” (where everyone shares the spotlight), mommy influencers are one-woman shows. They create the content, sign the contracts, and drive the narrative. Their partners and kids? Supporting cast and production crew.
An example I will be using today might ring a bell: Allyson Fluellen. Before she was a full-time mom influencer, Alyssa worked as a labor and delivery nurse in California. She’s built a large following by sharing aesthetically curated snippets of her family life, parenting routines, and brand partnerships. Her account is polished, relatable, and like many in her niche, it heavily features her children.
Now, don’t get me wrong, parents documenting their kids is nothing new. Think scrapbooks, home videos, or even the classic over-sharing baby book at family reunions. But what’s changed is scale, permanence, and especially money that comes with sharing your fondest family moments. These aren’t private moments anymore. They’re content being curated, monetized, and permanent.
Problem #1: Privacy and Consent
We’ve touched on this before on the channel, but it bears repeating: children featured in family content rarely have the ability to give informed consent. For those of you who are familiar with scientific terminology, informed consent is the consent given by participants when they sign up for a research activity. It generally involves a waiver detailing all the risks and purpose of the activity, a long conversation by the research associate about everything in the waiver, and usually ends with the associate asking “Do you understand everything presented to you” multiple times, with signatures. But informed consent extends beyond science; it should be the basis of how people make common decisions in their lives. Whether participating in intimate acts or whether children would like to be hugged by a family relative, informed consent is the foundation of boundaries.
Kids, by nature, cannot give informed consent for many reasons. Now, this is not me saying kids are inherently naive or not smart. I have met many emotionally and academically intelligent kids who understand the world around them. But kids cannot give informed consent around being used as content due to the fact that we do not know where this content will end up on the World Wide Web. It could stay on Instagram, or it could end up on the black market in God knows whose hands. And in the world of Diddy and Epstein, that should be an uncomfortable thought for any parent to think of.
There’s a fine line between sharing sweet family memories and filming your child like a full-time employee. Mommy influencers take this to another level because their content is fast-paced, constant, and optimized for engagement. It’s one thing to record a 30-minute family vlog once a week, often requiring hours of footage to make a quality video. It’s another to post 5+ short-form videos daily of your toddler dancing, unboxing toys, or reenacting trends. It is a constant production studio with lights and cameras around. And sure, shorter videos are easier to film—but they’re also more brand-friendly. Which brings us to Problem #2.
Problem #2: Sponsorships and Ethical Grey Areas
Mommy influencers are magnets for advertising deals. From hygiene products to children’s clothes, brands love tapping into the trust these influencers have with their (often female, often mom) audiences. It’s no surprise that mommy content often includes sponsored posts. Just think back to that Rocket Money Super Bowl ad featuring mommy influencers and their families singing to “Country Road, West Virginia." This explicitly changes from fun little content to kids being used as actors in million-dollar media campaigns. In Alyssa’s case, she uses every opportunity to film content for a company. On multiple occasions, she has used her children’s birthdays, sleepovers, vacations, and many events to promote brands.
This is another reason why informed consent is virtually impossible. Kids are regularly featured in this sponsored content without any agency or idea of what the economics are behind it. They don’t know what kind of promises their mom agreed to in a brand contract. They may understand basic economics like “I buy the stuff I want and sell stuff to get money,” but not the idea of contracts, brand deals, ad revenue, and so on. They have no idea that the toys they enjoy, the vacations they go on, the food they eat, and many things that seem magical to them are being paid for by a company in exchange for their videos. They don’t get to decide if they want to participate in an Aveeno skincare ad, or when they are going on a paid trip from the Kids’ Choice Awards, and frame it as a “vacation.”
All they know is: “Smile for the camera. Again.”
And companies know this because kids have been a marketing tool since the inception of advertising. And companies were willing to go to great lengths to profit off of children while not even giving child actors the bare minimum. That is how laws such as Coogan’s Bill were made to protect the earnings of children and establish them as not just minors but also workers. But social media? It’s still the wild west. And there’s no guarantee these kids are being paid—or if they are, that the money is being set aside for them. And that may seem small when you are getting a small check from Disney, but what about when they are being used for an entire business operation?
Problem 3: Personal Gain
Let’s bring this conversation down to Silks.
Silks is a pajama company started by Alyssa to create stylish, hair-friendly bonnets and sleepwear. The idea came from the struggles of keeping her daughters’ curly hair healthy with regular pillowcases and bonnets, and she built it into an entire company she runs seemingly out of her house. But to sell clothing, you need models, and guess who she picked as her models?
Alyssa has her kids modeling, filming in company-related content, and broadcasting them all across her website. She even filmed her newborn, right after she gave birth, in her SILK's pajamas to promote the business. And I will say this, there is nothing wrong with getting your kids involved in the family business, but it usually involves running the behind-the-scenes logistics of the company. Not plastering them on the web to sell your products. This is a clear ethical boundary being demolished because of conflicting interests: the children’s overall well-being, but also having your mom essentially be your employer. There is no boundary (if there was even a boundary to begin with) between “time for you to go to work” and “play time,” or what if the children do not want to film for their mother’s new pajama launch? They just cannot say no to their boss. It creates too much of a gray area of when work stops and childhood begins, when the primary marketing strategy for Alyssa’s company is her kids.
Final Thoughts
The rise of mommy influencers has brought visibility to the joys and struggles of parenting, but it's also opened up a box of ethical concerns. Privacy, consent, money, agency… These are big issues, and kids are at the center of them, with little to no one advocating on behalf of their needs.
As viewers, we need to think critically about the content we consume, and as platforms, there needs to be a crackdown on how children are used in online branding. Whether that be laws where companies ensure the influencers they are working with are setting money aside for the children or banning children from social media outright, I think it is past time to have that conversation.
This is just a piece of a series I am doing on Mommy Vloggers, Family Channels, and how Influencer culture harms children, especially as new social media platforms are being invented every year. If you’d like to see my full video on Alyssa, it is linked here.
And as always, let me know your thoughts in the comments. Should kids be featured on social media, even if not as marketing tools? Should platforms enforce more protections? Let's talk.