Crunchy moms as ideological pioneers: the negotiation of natural motherhood and consumerist ideology through crunchy mom discourse on TikTok

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand an activist consumer subculture on TikTok – “crunchy moms,” and how they construct ideologies through negotiating tensions between societal ideals of motherhood and crunchy ideals and practices. Design/methodology/approach To study crunchy motherhood discourse and lived experiences on TikTok, the authors used netnography. To collect data, they created a TikTok account, searched and followed the #crunchymom hashtag and followed prominent crunchy mom creators on their main and backup accounts and followed more as relevant creators were suggested on the For You Page (FYP). Relevance was determined by creators’ self-identification as crunchy moms. The authors examined content from the hashtag and accounts in addition to spending immersive observation sessions scrolling through the videos algorithmically selected for display on the FYP tab. Findings This study found that this subculture experiences tensions between their consumer desires and consumerism. The study mapped divergent consumer pathways that affirm (pioneering) or reject (revolutionary) the market, offering a typology to better understand the consumer activist orientation. It reveals that crunchy moms actively negotiate ideals and identity through consumption. Finally, crunchy moms’ practices show hybrid logics, in which they respond to hegemonic ideologies by simultaneously resisting and embracing societal and crunchy ideals. Originality/value This study extends the research on consumerist ideology theory by expanding beyond binary ideological models. It offers a new typology of activist consumer pathways that could extend to other activist consumer domains. The study explores the ideological work of crunchy moms as they negotiate tensions through consumption.