Reflecting on (almost) a year!

Cheers to banishing the Ideal Mother™ from 2023

I famously started this newsletter on a whim. As I wrote a feverish response to a certain rancher’s Instagram post about “diurnal creatures,” the oddity of something I guess I’ll call “the husband gaze,” and of course one very polarizing window, I texted friends on the side with questions like:

“Does Substack save drafts automatically?”

“Is referencing countertops in the title of a newsletter primarily about motherhood a bad idea?”

“Will anyone want to read this seriously?”

“Do I just hit publish?”

When I published that first piece, I had no logo, no ideas for a second piece, and certainly no grand plans for how this would all play out. And to be honest, I’m still working out how best to utilize this newsletter so that it serves a real need in people’s lives. It’s so important to me that I’m offering readers something of value: whether it’s of comedic value, viewpoint-shifting value, or maybe just the value of feeling seen.

Substack offers writers some helpful tools to assess how one’s work is reaching people (or not), which include metrics about email opens, post popularity (how many times people have commented, read, shared, or “liked” a post), and also which posts convert most people to paid subscriptions. As a person with very thin skin, I tend to avoid Substack’s analytics tab (primarily out of fear that a post I worked really hard on and felt really committed to, bombed, for example). I’m also wary of becoming too rigid in my thought process about future posts. While I certainly want to know what’s resonating with readers, I don’t want to get trapped in a mindset where I’m deliberately trying to create content to fit into what I imagine will best please readers, you know? Often, I’ve found, the pieces that resonate most with readers are pieces I needed to write simply because they made me feel big feelings and I wanted to better understand those feelings and where they were stemming from. You can’t really manufacture that sort of narrative compulsion.

But I do think it’s important to check in on the analytics tab from time to take stock of what seems to be landing with folks and what maybe isn’t. So to celebrate almost a year of In Pursuit (!), I’m highlighting the post that generated the most love via likes, shares, and comments (deemed the “most popular” by Substack); which post was opened the most times as an email; and which post converted the largest amount of paid subscribers. My hope is that analysis of these three posts will reveal trends and themes central to In Pursuit’s mission.

Most opened email

The post that was opened the most times as an email was an interview I did with the very smart, very funny, very insightful author of The Mamas, Helen Andrews-Dyer. One of the absolute best parts of this job is getting to talk to so many brilliant thinkers, and I’ll certainly be thinking about my conversation with Helena (and her book) for years to come, so I was really happy to see that this one resonated. We talked about mom groups (the good and the bad), race, class, and the infinitely complex work of carving out one’s maternal identity amidst the noise of social media and external expectations of mothers. Here’s a quote from Helena via the interview:

I think it does feel fresh to point out that maternal identity is not a one-size-fits-all identity, and we have to keep talking about it, because there's still one predominant maternal image for every generation. Whether it's, you know, the 1950s housewife, right, or like Claire Huxtable or Michelle Obama. There's always a prototype.

And too often the default good mother prototype is a white woman. Whether it's what we see in real life, or whether it’s celebrities, or cultural conversations about moms “bouncing” back” or whatever.

Much of what generates email opens surely must be a snappy headline, right? The headline of this post is “Your authentic self doesn’t arrive via stork,” which is a quote from The Mamas, and the subhed is “Helena Andrews-Dyer on race, class, mom groups, and discovering your maternal identity.” While I don’t think the the headline is particularly polarizing, juicy, or whatever else gets people to click on emails, I do think many moms are eternally hungry for any consideration of maternal identity (I know I am). I also think widespread cultural conversations about motherhood are becoming more and more invested in analysis of race and class (which is awesome), and I think mom groups are perennially fascinating!

Which In Pursuit themes does this post consider?

For far too long, maternal ideals have been rooted in whiteness and class-specific mores, and one of the central motivating factors in writing In Pursuit has been a desire to explode the myth of the Ideal Mother™ and to better understand which systems and power structures erected so many of our maternal ideals in the first place. My interview with Helena (plus her book, which you really must read - it’s so, so, so good!) breaks down what race, class, gentrification, and even the search for a kids’ dance class can teach us about our expectations of “good” motherhood.

The “Most Popular” post

Most of my “most popular” posts were read/opened somewhere in the 7k-9k range, but my deep-dive into why Catherine Newman’s house tour (which was featured originally on Cup of Jo) made me cry was opened/read a whopping 17,423 times! I published it in August and it has yet to be supplanted in popularity. Cocomelon’s Mommy is Not Ok came close, being opened/read 15,747 times which fucking DELIGHTS me because I had way too much fun excoriating the infuriating gender norms at play there. Your girl loves to snark!

In the piece about Catherine’s house tour, I reflect on my personal reaction to things like the clothes chair, Catherine’s exuberant use of color, and of course, the shoe-tray. I also share interviews from beloved writers like Kate Baer; the creator of Cup of Jo, Joanna Goddard; and Catherine herself.

Which In Pursuit themes does this post consider?

Maybe the simplest explanation that this piece resonated is that it was written in response to an already popular piece published on Cup of Jo. But I think there’s more to it. Just like my interview with Helena Andrews-Dyer tapped into a theme important to In Pursuit (a consideration of how intersecting, sometimes marginalized identities inform our ideals and beliefs about motherhood), “This House Tour Made me Cry” focused on domesticity, performative femininity, and the assumed aesthetic truths of “good” motherhood. These are themes near and dear to me as a writer, and definitely themes important to In Pursuit. I also think this piece made a lot of people feel seen in their beautiful imperfections, which makes me so, so happy.

The post that converted the most paid subscribers

I recently had an absolute blast creating An Unaesthetically Pleasing Gift Guide. In it, I shared my product recs for the ugly items in my life I truly would not want to live without (and misspelled “unaesthetically” at least three times). The piece is a nod to the season’s preoccupation with aspirational gift guides and an acknowledgment that aesthetics can only go so far in terms of relieving plantar fasciitis!

Which In Pursuit themes does this post consider?

I was absolutely flabbergasted to see that this piece converted at least 50 of you to paid subscriptions, and I like to think it was so successful not only because people are eager to learn about purple earplugs (lol), but maybe because you appreciated the humorous vibes of the piece as well. As a writer who covers the sometimes very unfunny beat of American motherhood, I really do try to inject as much humor as possible into pieces when appropriate, because momfluencer culture, consumerist culture, and parenting culture in general, while certainly depressing, enraging, and exhausting, can also be fucking hilarious.

Substack’s metrics aren’t perfect, nor do they tell the whole story (the post that converted the most people to free subscriptions, for example, was my first post ever, which makes total sense but doesn’t necessarily reflect what people value the most in this newsletter), but this evaluation of the the three most popular posts of the year reveals the following themes as consistent through-lines important to me as a writer and to you as beloved readers.

• Analysis of momfluencer culture

• Analysis of the Ideal Mother™

• Analysis of how race and class impact our cultural understandings of motherhood and mothering.

• Analysis of how domesticity, performative femininity, and essentialist beliefs about motherhood impact mothers’ lived experiences of mothering.

• Cathartic humor! Because honestly, if we live in a world where Cocomelon has to exist, goddammit we need to laugh about it.

In 2023, I’ll continue to interview people smarter than me so that we can all learn something from them. I’ll continue to mock what is worthy of mockery. I’ll continue drawing attention to some of the more disturbing trends in the mamasphere. I’ll continue to explore my own fraught relationship to momfluencer culture and social media.

Thank you to each and everyone of you who has emailed, messaged, paid for subscriptions, or simply read my words. I appreciate you all more than I can say, and because I’m failing to find the words to express my deep gratitude for this community, I’m going to quote Anne Helen Petersen instead.

But what an online community can do is model a way of caring for one another that makes its existence offline feel possible. It can encourage and scheme and troubleshoot our attempts at building communities of care — in friendship, in our neighborhoods, with both loose and strong ties. It can be the springboard, the wellspring, the snack closet, the trail mix, the aid station, the lighthouse, the thing that reminds us, again and again, that the work is hard — and I believe this more than ever — because the work is worth doing.

Thank you for being here, and if this newsletter has been valuable to you this year, here’s my humble ask that you consider supporting it with a paid subscription. If a paid newsletter is not in the budget for any reason, just respond to this email, and I’ll send one your way, no questions asked.

I have big ambitions for 2023, including a very cool collaboration with Virginia Sole-Smith of Burnt Toast fame, book events (you can still preorder a signed copy of Momfluenced here - preorders make great gifts!), maybe a podcast (!), and generally ensuring that In Pursuit continues to be an inclusive, expansive, exciting newsletter for folks. Paid subscriptions go a long way towards not only helping me realize those goals, but to ensure that the bulk of In Pursuit content remains free so that we can reach as many people as possible. The myth of the Ideal Mother™ continues to loom large on social media and beyond. This newsletter is one small way to voice dissent.

Take care everyone, and see you in January. I’ll be deleting all social media apps from my phone shortly after publishing this piece (I’ve written about how glorious this is before - 10 out of 10 recommend it!)

Cheers from my countertops (which are sometimes clean, and sometimes not) to yours.

In the meantime, please share what has been most enjoyable, eye-opening, or valuable to you from this newsletter, and I’d absolutely love to hear any and all suggestions for 2023 (including WTF noms or AMA questions). I’m opening comments up to everyone!