A Brief History Of Moms And Memes: How Mothers Have Been Represented In Meme Culture Over The Years

Back when they were exclusive to only the most internet-savvy, memes were, in theory, a mom-free zone. With her outdated cultural references and inbuilt allergy to edginess, the stereotypical mother figure is the antithesis of memery — and yet, she can be found anywhere and everywhere across many different genres.

Over the past decade of memetic development, moms have time and again proved a content goldmine; sometimes in a starring role, sometimes just to set the scene and, occasionally, with their mother status merely implied, but integral to how we view the meme. Here's a brief history of how this theme has developed over the history of the internet.

The Early 2010s: The Overbearing Stereotype

When mom memes experienced their first surge in popularity, the challenge was how detailed concepts could be made to fit the still limited, imaginative boundaries of memes. The character-based memes of the time were created to explain and maintain designated archetypes, as can be seen in the different mom variations found in the Advice Animals formats.

To satirize every hypocritical, curtain-twitching McMansion housewife, there was the Sheltering Suburban Mom. For something darker, you had the emotional abuse and implied alcohol dependency of the Forever Resentful Mother. There was even a version pushing the overbearing, perfectionist Asian mother stereotype in the form of Tiger Mom. Although their messages differed, their main point was the same: all of them were looking to somehow control you, the only thing stopping their manipulative tactics is their entrapment in the brightly colored meme box.

With the mean-spirited attitude and sense of entitlement seen in Forever Resentful Mother and Sheltering Suburban Mom, we can see a proto-Karen forming. Arguably, Karen embodies everything she stands for in a similarly restricted way — an amalgamation of every middle-aged woman with a bad haircut that you’ve seen complain in Starbucks. However, she is afforded the freedom of an internet that can take her beyond the boundaries of a template, as well as coming at a time where conversations about everything from race relations to the minimum wage are becoming mainstays of public discussion. Where the older examples seek to minimize these identities by memeifying them, Karen is used to expose a "monster" to the world.

These Advice-Animals-style moms were not the only game in town — in this heyday of Rage Comics, they also had some badly drawn colleagues. As you might expect, the average rage comic mom usually acted as a one-dimensional narrative device, most often taking on a nagging shrew, sitcom trope role designed to provoke an eye roll from the protagonist. They offered a different take on the control dynamic, one in which they were usually the loser. While not as impactful as their peers, they succeeded in providing an alternate take on the ultimately negative view of moms via memes.

The Mid–Late 2010s: Assimilation and Variation

By the middle of the decade, mom content was beginning to diversify. Memes were becoming more normalized, to the extent that actual moms were developing their own meme culture that blossomed on the Boomer containment chamber Facebook was rapidly becoming. While no self-styled edgelord would even consider participating in this trend, it became a massive source of memetic inspiration and much of its content was repurposed in more online circles. As irony became the order of the day, so did the mocking embrace of mom memes.

Some of this was found in the continued advancements in the genre making mom into a meme character, most notably found in the embracing of Wine Mom.
She was by no means a role model, but she was relatable in a way that earlier mom memes hadn’t been. She was friendly, down-to-earth, and when life and the kids got too much, she liked to open a bottle of Pinot. For a certain brand of childless but overwhelmed millennials, she became an unlikely icon.

It could also express itself in more indirect ways, like the Minions craze of 2015 (a large part of which was encouraged by the questionable graphic design decisions of real-life Wine Moms and their anti-inspirational Facebook quotes).

On top of this, the culture itself was making creative leaps and becoming more reflexive by the day, something which informed a more abstract use of mother figures. The childlike glee in the nonsense classic When U Mom Com Home And Make Hte Spagheti is powered by the anticipation for a small role that your mom plays in your life, something that would have been unthinkable a generation of memes earlier.

Meanwhile, moms offered a glimmer of hope in the rise of the genre dealing with depression and poor mental health, with her imagined distress averting a suicide attempt in the Mom Would Be Sad format. It evokes a very different emotion to When U Mom Com Home, but it acknowledges the same appreciation.

In contrast to their earlier, critical peers, this wave of memes held some sympathies for moms. While it still treated them as worlds apart from the meme maker, they were valued for their role as a caretaker and as an unwitting contributor to the ecosystem of innovative online content, which seemed set to continue

The Late 2010s to Present Day: Reclamation and Regression

More recently, the mom-related memes we're seeing have experienced an even deeper change, with new levels of identification and self-awareness working alongside a certain amount of regression. For all its well-publicized controversies, TikTok has ushered in a new era for mom content — one that allows them to embrace some of the trends their children might follow, instead of being locked out of them. TikTok has made content creation more accessible for all ages, often despite what level of "online" you are. While you might not hit Hype House member levels of fame, with the right moves, you can still develop a cult following as a normal 50-something mother of three.

The videos might not actually differ that much in substance, even if they do in style. This level of mom meme appeals to a consumer that likes to think of themselves as wholesome, but at the same time more discerning. A lip sync routine might strike them as unbearable from a teenaged peer with a brand deal in the pipeline, but from someone like Carey Jolly, the cringe factor is what makes it endearing. As Carina Chocano concluded in a New York Times article last year, “When you think about young people online, their normal self-consciousness amplified to a terrifying degree … is it any wonder they are captivated by the spectacle of someone who does not have to care so much about any of this?”

This journey of self-discovery combined with the saturation of mom memes we have reached has meant that original content on the topic is not as common as it once was. It still finds itself in the occasional example though, making rare cameos in the Wojak universe, whose resurgence has conquered established meme culture over the past couple of years.

Redemption via dance routine this is not. There’s more than a hint of a fetish element to it — as the mom character tends to be played by the Tradwife Wojak, or the infamous Dick Flattener girlfriend, who is at odds in some way with her Wojak son. The attitude it portrays is not that far removed from the vintage mom memes, rallying against an unfair dominating influence. It’s not that hard to believe a lot of Wojak devotees would have created, or even used to create, the Rage Comics dunking on mom back in 2011.

They may represent opposite ends of a spectrum, but this only goes to prove how far we have come in terms of the varying actors and stances we experience nowadays. The latest wave of mom memes gives us a clear example of the complexity of the landscape we navigate on the contemporary internet, for better or worse.

There is definitely a detailed Freudian explanation as to why the meme world has returned to mommy so often, but on a less psychological level. Perhaps our obsession with moms stems from the perceived gap between them and the meme-fluent masses. In a world where nothing can be taken seriously, a role that we are conditioned to believe should be earnest and authentic is always going to offer a humorous contrast. Although some communities are getting rid of the gatekeeping, they aren’t destroying this relationship. Instead, they are giving us new ground to tread.

Meme Insider is a Know Your Meme publication and the world's leading internet culture magazine. Find out how to get your first print copy for free, and check out the Meme Insider website for more info.