MAHA (or “Make America Healthy Again”) motherhood is a bit of a mindf*uck. What, one asks oneself, unites “crunchy” hippie-leaning momfluencers (like Rudy Jude & her wannabes) of the world with someone as spray-tanned Marjorie Taylor Green? One looks like a sentient carcinogen, and one looks like she's never even heard of food dye! So how do we understand their alliance under the umbrella of Making American Healthy Again?

For many of us, there are some points of connection with these MAHA moms, which where this conversation gets juicy and frankly a little disconcerting. As Sara Petersen wrote, most moms probably would agree with the MAHA moms in that we prefer that our kids’ treats came without red dye #6, a food dye associated with behavioral side effects. But, unlike a MAHA mom, we’re proud to be up-to-date on our Covid boosters instead of guzzling raw milk and curing our own cancer with red light therapy (or something, tbh we couldn’t bear to go too deep into that one).

At the same time that motherhood taps us into our need to give and receive care, the conditions of modern millennial motherhood seem to have stoked a fear-driven and anxiety-ridden individualism. It’s a confusing time, and it’s getting more baffling by the minute. If MAHA mothers care so much about banning food additives like red dye, why have they aligned themselves with an administration that has effectively gutted the FDA? How did we get to a place where expertise is up for grabs and there is so much mistrust in our public health systems? Can we recover?

OG motherhood writer and New York Times opinion columnist Jessica Grose joins us to talk through all this and more.

LINKS:

* Jessica Grose, The Kind of Moms Who Fall for ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (New York Times, Oct 2024)

* Screaming on the Inside by Jessica Grose

* Sara Petersen: “MAHA Moms Are Wrong About Wellness”

* Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst

* Ariana Hendrix

* Katie Beck On Child-Friendly City Design

* Eloise Rickman on Children’s Rights

* Sprawl Is A Parenting Problem by Erin Sagan

* Noah Wylie being hot again on The Pitt

* John Early bit

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