The baby product influencing sham
Excessive gifting of clothes, carriers and cots is making other mothers feel bad
When I had my baby almost three years ago I couldn’t believe how many companies offered me free things: clothes, toys, pushchairs. There in my Instagram DMs: “Hi Gillian! Congratulations on the birth of your child! We’d love to send you X, X, or X”. I was, at the time, the editor-in-chief of a publication, although it should be noted that we didn’t cover baby products whatsoever and we rarely even wrote about the subject of motherhood. And I wasn’t an influencer - I had 11,000 followers on Insta. OK technically this could mark me out as a “micro-influencer” but I wasn’t the sort of user who posted pictures of boots (#gifted) in my Stories, mainly because no one was sending me free boots. No shade to anyone who does this, by the way, I just want to be clear that this was not how I was using the platform. I wasn’t even sharing lots of pictures of my son. And yet suddenly I was being offered literally thousands of pounds worth of stuff. Baby stuff.
But we all like free things, right? And so, more often than not, I replied that I’d love to be sent the product. Thank you! One pram company (who also made everything from car seats to baby bouncers to high chairs) even sent me their catalogue and said to pick out anything that I wanted. Anything. I remember feeling annoyed that I’d already bought most of the things they were offering. But, sure, why not get a car seat even though we don’t have a car? We’ll probably need one at some point. And I suppose he’ll eventually require a high chair even though he can’t sit up yet. Thank you!
This is not supposed to sound ungrateful, or even worse, boastful. But the subject of gifting expensive baby products to new mums has been in my head for a while now. When I see photos of mothers who have a certain level of online, shall we say, fame, posing with a product - even if it’s not marked as #gifted - I generally think to myself, “I bet you didn’t pay for that.” That’s how widespread the practice is. Again no shade to whoever accepts these products. I did. But baby gifting, as I see it, is out of control. And it’s contributing to feelings of shame for other new mothers.