Motherhood Is in a Political Spotlight, but the Moms Are Shaking It Off

The swimming pool at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, cerulean and shaped somewhat like a poodle, was not an obvious place for a baptism. Yet on Saturday morning, before the workshops on health and Bible basics, before the D.J. started spinning Disney tracks, a smattering of the women of Momcon put on bathing suits and went outside to be symbolically purified.

By 9 a.m., they had changed back into dry clothes and filled a hotel ballroom with 3,000 others, many sporting T-shirts that distilled their maternal creeds into brassy slogans like “I have OCD: Obsessive Coffee Disorder,” or “I have it all together, I just don’t know where I put it.” This was the annual convention of the MomCo, a Christian-focused nonprofit for mothers with 3,500 chapters in the United States and 150,000 American members, many of whom pay a $37 annual subscription and then about $227 to attend the convention, which has been going for more than 30 years.

“I heard someone at the hotel describe this as a church-lady gathering,” said Shannon Locke, a 34-year-old mother of three with another on the way, adding that she overheard the stranger’s friend reply: “At least the bar will be empty.”

Into this moment of chaotic change around the politics and political power of motherhood — moms are used to chaos, the saucy T-shirts proclaim — comes Momcon. It is billed as “a festival, a revival, and the most honest girls’ weekend you’ve ever had.” There were workshops about scripture, self-care, parenting and the toxins found in common cleaning supplies.

Across nearly two dozen interviews at the convention, a set of common experiences emerged. Women across the country — in Dayton, Colo., and Denver, in Greensboro, N.C., and Atlanta — found new motherhood isolating, desperately lonely. They grasped for some sense of connection and the MomCo was the first to offer it, many of them learning about the group on Facebook or through neighbors.

“There’s always voices in the back of your head — am I doing something wrong with vaccines, with Tylenol?” said Lindsay Luebke, 28, from St. Louis, reflecting on some of the angst now facing moms as she cradled her own 3-month-old baby. “There’s mixed messages — people are either super for it or they’re saying, ‘If you have kids you’re going to lose your own identity or place in the career ladder.’”

If motherhood was the primary focus of the gathering, the layer right underneath it was Christian faith.

“The mission is to reach outside the church on the topic of mothering and build a bridge for women to come into the church,” said Cathy Penshorn, 65, a longtime leader in the MomCo from the San Antonio area, said at a Bible Basics session. “The mission is not to be a social group.”

The group is unusual because every chapter welcomes mothers from across the political spectrum. Some are supporters of President Trump and some are critics of him; some are Republicans and some are Democrats; some are working mothers and others stay at home. Plenty of MomCo members are happy to show up and politely disagree with their fellow chapter members. Others find themselves slowly converging views.

“We might come in with different politics or views on vaccines,” said Mandy Arioto, 47, the president and chief executive, a mother of three who lives in Denver. “Our community transcends that.”

Some women in local chapters of the MomCo noted that on rare occasions, they’re reminded of their partisan differences. Like Catherine Green, 28, a mother of two in upstate New York, who shifted from identifying as a Republican to a Democrat during the pandemic. She attributed her shifting allegiance partly to having time during lockdown to reflect on the killing of George Floyd, the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and other political tumult. She is now in a local MomCo group, in her rural area, which skews conservative.

“There’s one mom — her and I will make eye contact and be like, ‘We’ll chat later,’” Ms. Green said, laughing. But, she added: “It’s amazing that even if I know I don’t align politically with a lot of these women I find myself surrounded with, motherhood being a singularly unifying situation that we’re all experiencing, that’s enough for me to feel good about locking in with these ladies.”

What Grandma Did

There is a long history informing the group, in which women hungry for community find a sense of collective identity through motherhood.

In 1996, the Republican strategist Alex Castellanos suggested that Bill Clinton’s campaign was targeting “soccer moms,” those harried middle-class mothers shepherding their children from “soccer practice to scouts to school.” That prompted pollsters and pundits to fixate on the political power wielded by moms. A few years later, the sociologist Robert Putnam described the withering of social groups like women’s clubs and Parent-Teacher Associations in his 2000 book “Bowling Alone,” about America’s loneliness crisis. That nudged Americans, including the moms, to recognize their oft-ignored sense of isolation.

Momcon is providing a balloon-bedecked, neon-lit space that draws on more than two decades of unease around the category of motherhood, including these turning points in moms seeing themselves as political subjects. The organization acknowledges the seclusion that moms feel and tries to offer a sense of purpose and agency — though Momcon tries to steer clear of the nettlesome politicization of so-called soccer moms.

During lunch hour at Momcon, four women doing arts and crafts explained that they have their share of disagreements about the ever knottier web of scientific and social decisions that are part of modern motherhood. .

“Our friendship is very interesting — she’s a little more crunchy and natural, and I’m a nurse so I’m more into medicine and trusting of that system,” said Alyssa Wells, gesturing toward Casey Walters, who is skeptical of many pharmaceuticals. “She goes for a natural remedy before she goes for an Ibuprofen.”

“I’m going to try the oregano oil before I’m going to try to take them to the doctor,” Ms. Walters, 34, agreed.

“She gives me ideas for natural remedies to try with my little ones,” said Ms. Wells, 29, who has two children. “Being a mom is hard enough without drawing strict lines to cut the community you could have down.”

But there are also values they tend to share — especially where it comes to simmering political debates about gender roles. The women reflected on this as they crafted, surrounded by kiosks advertising supplements and cookbooks.

They agreed that were it not for their financial situations they would not work outside the home. “I feel like my role is to be in the home,” Ms. Wells said. “In a perfect world I wouldn’t have to work.”

“In a perfect world I wouldn’t work either,” added another friend, Melissa Santos.

“It’s everywhere right now that birthrates are falling,” Ms. Wells continued. “Charlie Kirk told people to go have kids. The Bible tells us to go forth and multiply.”

Wandering the crowds were women who celebrated the sense that traditional values about motherhood and gender were being more widely embraced. Some pointed to the rising rates of home-schooling. Nearly 6 percent of America’s school-age children were being home-schooled in the 2022-2023 school year, compared with 2.8 percent before the pandemic, according to census data.

Jenn Meeks, a mother of five from the Orlando, Fla., area, said she had recently begun homesteading and has home-schooled for just over three years. Having grown up in Indiana farm country, Ms. Meeks says she feels a sense of peace farming with her own children — growing herbs, blueberries and daisies, gathering eggs from their chickens.

“I’ve seen so many women go, ‘My grandma was a homesteader, let’s do this,’” she said. “There’s a dynamic of people wanting to be self-sufficient.”

“This is going to make me sound like Martha Stewart, but for the morning MomCo group my go-to is to make French toast casserole,” said Katie Patel, 41, who lives in Atlanta.

Ms. Patel, like many of the women around her, felt a loneliness associated with new motherhood when she adopted a son seven years ago. Once she started attending the gatherings, the MomCo chapter became a core part of her social life. Some of her friends in the group also started attending church more regularly.

“The thing that unites us primarily is that we’re moms,” Ms. Patel said, adding that her group has drawn the partners together, citing her own husband: “He’s like ‘We need a group like this for dads.’”