By Allison Thomas
No one wants me to have children as badly as Pinterest does.
I have a love-hate relationship with Pinterest. Most days, she provides a refuge from the harshness of other social media’s near-constant negativity. I absolutely adore planning out my life and discovering new hobbies. A beautiful app with beautiful people. However, she has recently been subtly incorporating her traditional ideas of family and what it means to be feminine.
Now, I’m a girl who likes what I like when I like it. I go through phases of thinking that one hobby is the absolute coolest thing in the world and feeling the exact same about a new interest down the line. That is the beauty of being human. I get to be multifaceted. I am hardwired to be unique in what I like and what I want to do. So, it is a little frustrating when I feel like I’m being put into a very clean-cut category.
After scouring through as much AI slop as I humanly could, I decided to try to move my entire feed away from art. In doing so, I pushed more heavily on my other interests: the crafting, the sewing, the baking. Now, I’m not stupid. Crocheting and knitting are old lady hobbies, I know that. Baking and sewing are traditionally women’s work; I know that, too. Don’t even get me started on needlework and language learning. There are a lot of signs pointing to me being a more traditional person. But I am not. I love immigrants and gay people and the trans community and women’s rights and minorities.
I tell my algorithm that I want to cook, and now it’s showing me recipes to get a husband and feed my imaginary kids. I say that I love sundresses, and now I’m seeing mothers taking their children to the park in big floppy sunhats. I said I love flowers, and now I see mothers watching their kids play in sunlight fields. None of these are inherently bad; it’s just that they aren’t me. I’m not ready to be the one watching over others; I still want to experience, to do.
So here Pinterest is, ruining my perfect, museum-level homepage curation to create tradwife propaganda. I cannot believe I have to Hailee Steinfeld Most Girls in 2026, but here we go. Traditional hobbies do not equal traditional mindsets. Some girls like to clean while others, like me, absolutely hate it. Some girls like to bake just to bake and not because they want to be subservient. Watching Bridgerton does not mean that everything I do is to go into the marriage market. And sometimes I do go out because there is duality in the human experience that simply cannot fit into just one category. It feels like when you’re at a family gathering, and suddenly someone hands you a baby just because you’re the only girl around. I don’t know this kid, and he looks just as confused as I feel. And as a predominantly female used app, I find this to be a tinesy bit alarming.
Mind you, Pinterest isn’t promoting all families, no. It’s just babies and toddlers. You never see any pictures of mothers with their teenagers. No one’s Pinterest is showing a mom driving to and from soccer practice with their middle schoolers or a six-year-old sobbing because you won’t let
her touch the stovetop. It pushes young (white) nuclear families where everyone is well behaved, like it’s the 1950s.
And I think that the worst part, truly, is that it’s working. I want these things now. Well, not the kids’ bffr. But to be the cute wife that wears hand-stitched aprons and sings to birds and crap. Homemade pie on windowsills to cool. Dinner party hosting. Beach houses surrounded by hydrangeas. I love Nara Smith. I think she’s so adorable. So now, I’m feeling extra annoyed and contrarian. And I couldn’t help but wonder, maybe it’s not some big conspiracy? Maybe I’m just getting older. Maybe the same things that I want at twenty-one are different from the glamorous lifestyle I had set at sixteen. Or maybe that’s what they want me to think.