Mothers, Mentors, and the Illusion of Connection

I’m one of those moms with twenty years between my oldest and my youngest child. When our first child was born in 2000, mom blogs were in their infancy. There was no Facebook, TikTok, or curated feeds. Having parented in two eras, one thing is unmistakable: the number of voices has multiplied. Yet amid the digital explosion, there is a lack of wisdom. Young women are influenced but unknown. For believers, Paul’s challenge to older women to teach sound doctrine remains a necessary cultural anchor.

The Change of Influence

The major influences on my mothering in the early years were friends and books. If I had a question about parenting, I phoned a friend or my grandmother. They most likely gave me suggestions, prayed for me, and possibly recommended a book. When I finished the book, we would have more conversations. Life happened over shared playdate sandwiches and dinners with heaping servings of ziti. There was accountability. If my struggles continued, my friends knew. My sphere of friends was small but true. Mothering was done in this context—trusted people and godly wisdom in relationships.

My youngest children were born in 2020. I gave birth to our daughter the week before shut-downs began. Nine months later, we picked up our son from the hospital. If our phones were already drowning us in information before COVID, the overload now permeated every quiet corner of life. Surfing TikTok and Instagram became a means for seeking out mothering companionship and wisdom. Instead, I encountered a deluge of information. Beige-washed accounts, crunchy mamas, mamas screaming on either side of the vaccine debate, gentle-parenting, and helicopter parenting—literally every genre of motherhood could be referenced in the phone in my hand at a moment’s notice. The noise of it all was dizzying. Where was the wisdom? In a crowd of self-proclaimed experts, no one seemed to know.

Lockdowns eventually ended, but that experience of solitude was deafening to me. Whatever happened to folding laundry while on the phone with a girlfriend, talking about everything from diaper rash to birthday parties? By this time, my grandmother had gone to be with Jesus. I missed the wisdom of a spirited older voice on the phone, telling me things would be alright and this too would pass. During the year our youngest children joined our family, I realized I had become the older woman. Experiencing both sides of the coin, I knew new moms were lonely and looking to a screen for belonging. On the flip side, being an older woman was not trendy in an age when trends seemed key. The good news is the gospel transforms women from being fixated on trends to fixing our eyes on Christ and his ways. The call to obedience is not powered by trends but by his Spirit.

Influenced but Unknown

Consider that one recent scroll of social media displayed a fifty-year-old woman shaking her hips at the camera, a mom pouring herself a glass of wine because she frantically got her kid onto the bus just in time, and another unboxing clothing while standing in a closet that rivaled a boutique. Contrast that scrolling experience with Paul’s words in Titus 2:1, 3–5: 

But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine . . .Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

We don’t align with these instructions simply to offer a cure for loneliness. What is at stake is not loneliness; it is the reputation of the gospel.

Social media can be a helpful tool when used wisely, but discipleship was never meant to happen over a screen between strangers. We are made for relationship. In an age of disconnect, the need for discipleship is stronger than ever. “The internet and smartphones are fantastic for connections, communication, and knowledge. But connections are not friends, communication is not intimacy, and knowledge is not wisdom” (Justin Whitmel Earley, Made for People, 112).

Ask a young mom who is helping her in motherhood, and she’ll probably list three influencers she has never met. She is being influenced but she is not known. Ask a single woman who is mentoring her, and there will be silence. Is there a difference between being a follower and being discipled? For one, followers have no accountability. They may or may not take advice. They might let the trends take them one direction this week and be swayed differently the next. Discipleship requires relationship and genuine connection. In relationship, we grow. In following, we float aimlessly. 

Gospel-Inspired Connection

Presented with this conundrum, we can take hope. The gospel holds the answer to the disconnect. Old or young, if we desire to be discipled and not just influenced, we need to clear the commotion. Consider the voices we’ve given the right to daily speak into our lives. How do they speak about their kids, spouse, or lives in general? Are they continually pointing hearts to gospel hope? Media weeding is a great place to start turning down the noise level of voices that shouldn’t be speaking into our lives. 

The cure for the silence we have been filling is presence. If, like me, you fall somewhere in the older woman spectrum, invite a younger mom over with her kids. Make sandwiches and embrace sticky fingers while you ask about her life. Go for a walk—movement greases conversation and tires out children. If you are a younger woman, feel encouraged to seek out an older woman. Nothing is more encouraging to an older woman than to hear, “Hey, I really need friends and I’m not sure what I’m doing. Can I come over and hang out?” This is an easy “yes” on our part. As older women, we don’t need to feel like we did it all right. Younger women are open to learning from our mistakes. Presented with my own disconnection, I began inviting a small group of women over on Tuesday nights. We were mostly all strangers of varying ages, some who knew Christ and some who did not, but it was a time for coffee, a devotional book, and intentional efforts for connection. For a few hours every week, we hashed out a way to silence the voices of social media and breathe deep into something real and tangible where relationships deepened.

Paul could not have foreseen algorithms or influencers, but the same Spirit that instructed him what to write did know all of our days. Trends may change. (They always do.) Technology advances. What remains unchanged is the Word of God that instructs women to enter into relationship with one another with the goal of glorifying Jesus and becoming more like him. The antidote to a perfectly curated feed is the reality of relationship. We welcome women into being known because that is what Christ has done for us. Discipleship isn’t cultivated within “likes” on social media. It is cultivated through life together, empowered by the Spirit, one ordinary day at a time.