When the journalist and tradition critic Amanda Hess acquired pregnant together with her first little one, in 2020, the web was among the many first to know. “Extra manufacturers knew about my being pregnant than folks did,” she writes of the torrent of focused advertisements that got here her manner. “All of them referred to as me mama.” 

The web held the promise of limitless details about changing into the right mother or father. However at seven months, Hess went in for an ultrasound appointment and every little thing shifted. The sonogram seemed atypical. As she waited in an examination room for a health care provider to go over the outcomes, she felt the urge to achieve for her telephone. Although it “was ludicrous,” she writes, “in my panic, it felt incontrovertible: If I searched it sensible and quick sufficient, the web would save us. I had constructed my life by its screens, mapped the world alongside its circuits. Now I might make a second life there too.” Her physician knowledgeable her of the situation he suspected her child may need and informed her, “Don’t google it.”

Unsurprisingly, that didn’t cease her. In reality, she writes, the extra medical data that medical doctors produced—after weeks of escalating exams, her son was in the end recognized with Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome—the extra digitally dependent she grew to become: “I discovered I used to be turning to the web, versus my mates or my medical doctors, to resolve my emotions and feelings about what was occurring to me and to exert a way of exterior management over my physique.”  

However how will we retain management over our our bodies when firms and the medical institution have entry to our most private data? What occurs when people cease counting on their village, and even their household, for recommendation on having a child and as an alternative go browsing, the place there’s a relentless onslaught of knowledge? How will we make sense of the contradictions of the web—the strain between what’s inherently synthetic and the “pure” strategies its denizens are so keen to advertise? In her new guide, Second Life: Having a Little one within the Digital Age (Doubleday, 2025), Hess explores these questions whereas delving into her firsthand experiences with apps, merchandise, algorithms, on-line boards, advertisers, and extra—every promising a better, more healthy, higher path to parenthood. After welcoming her son, who’s now wholesome, in 2020 and one other in 2022, Hess is the right particular person to ask: Is that actually what they’re delivering? 

In your guide, you write, “I imagined my [pregnancy] check’s pink dye spreading throughout Instagram, Fb, Amazon. Throughout me, a techno-­company infrastructure was locking into place. I might sense the promoting algorithms recalibrating and the branded newsletters assembling of their queues. I knew that I used to be supposed to consider focused promoting as evil, however I had by no means skilled it that manner.” Are you able to unpack this a bit?

Earlier than my being pregnant, I by no means felt like promoting know-how was notably sensible or particular. So when my Instagram advertisements instantly clocked my being pregnant, it got here as a little bit of a shock, and I spotted that I used to be unaware of precisely how advert tech labored and the way huge its attain was. It felt notably eerie on this case as a result of to start with my being pregnant was a secret that I saved from everybody besides my partner, so “the web” was the one factor that was speaking to me about it. Promoting grew to become so personalised that it began to really feel intimate, although it was the other of that—it represented the company obliteration of my privateness. The being pregnant advertisements reached me earlier than a health care provider would even comply with see me.

Although your guide was written earlier than generative AI grew to become so ubiquitous, I think about you’ve considered the way it adjustments issues. You write, “As quickly as I acquired pregnant, I typed ‘what to do whenever you get pregnant’ in my telephone, and now advertisers have been supplying their very own solutions.” What do the rise of AI and the dramatic adjustments in search imply for somebody who will get pregnant right now and goes on-line for solutions?

I simply googled “what to do whenever you get pregnant” to see what Google’s generative AI widget tells me now, and it’s largely spitting out commonsensical suggestions: Make an appointment to see a health care provider. Give up smoking cigarettes. That’s adopted by sponsored content material from Babylist, a web based child registry firm that’s deeply enmeshed within the ad-tech system, and Perelel, a startup that sells costly prenatal dietary supplements. 

So whether or not or not the search engine is utilizing AI, the knowledge it’s offering to the newly pregnant just isn’t notably useful or significant. 

AMIE CHUNG/TRUNK ARCHIVE

The web “made me really feel like I had some sort of relationship with my telephone, when all it was actually doing was staging a scene of knowledge that it might monetize.”

For me, the oddly tantalizing factor was that I had requested the web a query and it gave me one thing in response, as if we had a reciprocal relationship. So even earlier than AI was embedded in these programs, they have been fulfilling the identical function for me—as a sort of artificial dialog accomplice. It made me really feel like I had some sort of relationship with my telephone, when all it was actually doing was staging a scene of knowledge that it might monetize. 

As I wrote the guide, I did put some being pregnant­-related inquiries to ChatGPT to attempt to get a way of the values and assumptions which can be encoded in its data base. I requested for a picture of a fetus, and it supplied this garishly cartoonish, big-eyed cherub in response. However after I requested for a practical picture of a postpartum physique, it refused to generate one for me! It was actually an extension of one thing I write about within the guide, which is that the picture of the fetus is fetishized in numerous these tech merchandise whereas the pregnant or postpartum physique is essentially erased. 

You may have this nice—however fairly unhappy—quote from a lady on TikTok who stated, “I preserve listening to it takes a village to lift a baby. Do they simply present up, or is there a quantity to name?” 

I actually recognized with that sentiment, whereas on the similar time being suspicious of this concept that can we simply name a hotline to conjure this village?

I’m actually that so many parent-­centered applied sciences promote themselves this manner. [The pediatrician] Harvey Karp says that the Snoo, this robotic crib he created, is the brand new village. The parenting website Huge Little Emotions describes its podcast listeners as a village. The maternity clothes model Bumpsuit produces a podcast that’s truly referred to as The Village. Through the use of that phrase, these corporations are evoking an idealized previous which will by no means have existed, to promote client options. A society that gives communal help for youngsters and oldsters is pitched as this historic and irretrievable concept, versus one thing that we might construct sooner or later if we wished to. It would take extra than simply, like, ordering one thing.

And the good thing about lots of these robotic or “sensible” merchandise appears a bit nebulous. You share, for instance, that the Nanit child monitor informed you your son was “sleeping extra effectively than 96% of infants, a strong A.”

I’m skeptical of this concept {that a} piece of client know-how will actually clear up a major problem households or youngsters have. And if it does clear up that drawback, it solely solves it for individuals who can afford it, which is reprehensible on some stage. These merchandise would possibly create a constructive distinction for a way lengthy your child is sleeping or how straightforward the diaper is to placed on or no matter, however they’re Band-Aids on a bigger drawback. I typically discovered after I was testing out a few of these merchandise that the info [provided] was fully ineffective. My buddy who makes use of the Nanit texted me the opposite day as a result of she had discovered a brand new function on its digicam that confirmed you a warmth map of the place your child had slept within the crib the evening earlier than. There isn’t any use for that data, however whenever you see the warmth map, you’ll be able to attempt to interpret it to get some ineffective clues to your child’s character. It’s like a BuzzFeed quiz in your child, the place you’ll be able to say, “Oh, he’s such, like, a right-side king,” or “He’s a down-the-middle man,” or no matter. 

COURTESY OF HAPPIEST BABY

“[Companies are] advertising and marketing a treatment for the dad and mom’ anxiousness, however the product itself is hooked up to the physique of a new child little one.”

These merchandise encourage you to see your little one themselves as an extension of the know-how; Karp even talks about there being an on swap and an off swap in your child for soothing. So when you do the “proper” set of actions to activate the appropriate swap, you can also make the newborn purchase some fascinating trait, which I feel is simply an extension of this concept that your little one will be below your full management.

… which may be very a lot the fantasy whenever you’re a mother or father.

These units are sometimes marketed as quasi-­medical units. There’s a converging of client and medical classes in child client tech, the place the merchandise are marketed as helpful to any potential child, together with one who has a critical medical analysis or one who is totally wholesome. These corporations nonetheless need you to place a pulse oximeter on a wholesome child, simply in case. They’re advertising and marketing a treatment for the dad and mom’ anxiousness, however the product itself is hooked up to the physique of a new child little one.

After spending a lot time in hospital settings with my little one hooked as much as displays, I used to be actually excited to finish that. So I’m on this reverse response, the place there’s this urge to increase that have, to take private management of one thing that feels medical.

Regardless that I might get hold of any medical therapy that might assist preserve my youngsters wholesome, childhood medical experiences may cause numerous confusion and trauma for teenagers and their households, even when the outcomes are constructive. Once you take that medical expertise and switch it into one thing that’s very smooth and suits in your shade scheme and is completely below your management, I feel it will probably really feel like you’re seizing authority over that scary house.

One other factor you write about is how pictures outline idealized variations of being pregnant and motherhood. 

I grew to become excited about a well-known {photograph} {that a} Swedish photographer named Lennart Nilsson took within the Sixties that was printed on the duvet of Life journal. It’s a picture of a 20-week-old fetus, and it’s marketed because the world’s first glimpse of life contained in the womb. I purchased a duplicate of the problem off eBay and opened the problem to seek out just a little editor’s notice saying that the duvet fetus was truly a fetus that had been faraway from its mom’s physique by surgical procedure. It wasn’t an image of life—it was an image of an abortion. 

I used to be excited about how Nilsson staged this fetal physique to make it look celestial, prefer it was floating in house, and I acknowledged numerous the weather of his work being included within the tech merchandise that I used to be utilizing, just like the CGI fetus generated by my being pregnant app, Flo. 

You additionally write concerning the pictures being supplied at nonmedical sonogram clinics.

I used to be attempting to google the tackle of a medical imaging heart throughout my being pregnant after I got here throughout a industrial sonogram clinic. There are tons of of them across the nation, with cutesy names like “Cherished Recollections” and “You Kiss We Inform.” 

Within the guide I discover how applied sciences like ultrasound are used as basically narrative units, shaping the best way that individuals take into consideration their our bodies and their pregnancies. Ultrasound is odd as a result of it’s a medical know-how that’s used to diagnose harmful and scary situations, however potential dad and mom are inspired to view it as a sort of leisure service whereas it’s occurring. These industrial sonogram clinics curiosity me as a result of they promise to fully banish the medical associations of the know-how and elevate it right into a pure client expertise. 

COURTESY OF NANIT

You write about “pure” childbirth, which, on the face of it, would appear counter to the digital age. As you notice, the motion has at all times been about storytelling, and the story that it’s telling is admittedly about ache.

Once I was pregnant, I grew to become actually fascinated with individuals who talk about freebirth on-line, which is a observe on the very excessive finish of “pure” childbirth rituals—the place folks give beginning at residence unassisted, with no obstetrician, midwife, or doula current. Generally additionally they refuse ultrasounds, vaccinations, or all prenatal care. I used to be excited about how this refusal of medical know-how was being technologically promoted, by podcasts, YouTube movies, and Fb teams. 

It struck me that numerous the freebirth influencers I noticed have been excited about exerting supreme management over their pregnancies and youngsters, leaving nothing below the ability of medical consultants or authorities regulators. They usually have been additionally excited about controlling the narratives of their births—ensuring that the second their youngsters got here into the world was staged with compelling imagery that centered them because the protagonist of the occasion. Video proof of probably the most excessive examples—like the girl who freebirthed into the ocean—might go viral and launch the freebirther’s private model as a digital wellness guru in her personal proper. 

The phrase “pure childbirth” was coined by a British physician, Grantly Dick-Learn, within the Nineteen Twenties. There’s a really humorous part in his guide for potential moms the place he complains that ladies preserve telling one another that childbirth hurts, and he claimed that the very concept that childbirth hurts was what created the ache, as a result of birthing girls have been performing too tense. Dick-Learn, like lots of his contemporaries, had a racist principle that ladies he referred to as “primitive” skilled no ache in childbirth as a result of they hadn’t been uncovered to white middle-class schooling and applied sciences. Once I learn his work, I used to be fascinated by the truth that he additionally described beginning as a sort of efficiency, even again then. He claimed that undisturbed childbirths have been completely painless, and he coached girls by labor in an try to realize them. Painless childbirth was pitched as a reward for reaching this peak state of pure femininity.

He was actually into eugenics, by the best way! I see numerous him within the present presentation of “pure” childbirth on-line—[proponents] are nonetheless invested in a sort of denial, or suppression, of a lady’s precise expertise within the pursuit of some unattainable best. Not too long ago, I noticed one Instagram publish from a lady who claimed to have had a supernaturally pain-free childbirth, and she or he seems to be so pained and depressing within the images, it’s absurd. 

I wished to ask you about Clue and Flo, two very totally different period-tracking apps. Their contrasting origin tales are hanging. 

I downloaded Flo as my period-tracking app a few years in the past for one purpose: It was the primary app that got here up after I searched within the app retailer. Later, after I seemed into its origins, I discovered that Flo was created by two brothers, cisgender males who don’t menstruate, and that it had rapidly outperformed and outearned an present period-tracking app, Clue, which was created by a lady, Ida Tin, a number of years earlier. 

The weather that make an app worthwhile and profitable will not be the identical as those that customers may very well need or want. My expertise with Flo, particularly after I grew to become pregnant, was that it appeared designed to get me to open the app as continuously as doable, even when it didn’t have any new data to supply me about my being pregnant. Flo pitches itself as a sort of synthetic nurse, although it will probably’t truly look at you or your child, however this sort of digital substitute has additionally grow to be more and more highly effective as inequities in maternity care widen and first rate care turns into much less accessible.

“Docs and nurses check pregnant girls for medication with out their specific consent or tip off authorities to pregnant folks they believe of mishandling their pregnancies ultimately.”

One of many options of Flo I spent numerous time with was its “Secret Chats” space, the place nameless customers come collectively to go off about being pregnant. It was truly actually enjoyable, and it saved me coming again to Flo many times, particularly after I wasn’t discussing my being pregnant with folks in actual life. Nevertheless it was additionally the place the place I realized that digital connections will not be practically as useful as bodily connections; you’ll be able to’t come over and assist the nameless secret chat buddy soothe her child. 

I’d requested Ida Tin if she thought-about including a social or chat aspect to Clue, and she or he informed me that she determined in opposition to it as a result of it’s unimaginable to stem the misinformation that surfaces in an area like that.

You write that Flo “made it seem to be I used to be making the empowered alternative by surveilling myself.”

After Roe was overturned, many ladies publicly opted out of that kind of surveillance by deleting their period-tracking apps. However you point out that it’s not simply the apps which can be sharing data. Once I spoke to attorneys who defend girls in being pregnant criminalization circumstances, I discovered that they’d not but seen a case by which the federal government truly relied on knowledge from these apps. In some circumstances, they’ve relied on customers’ Google searches and Fb messages, however far and away the central surveillance supply that governments use is the medical system itself. 

Docs and nurses check pregnant girls for medication with out their specific consent or tip off authorities to pregnant folks they believe of mishandling their pregnancies ultimately. I’m excited about the truth that media protection has centered a lot on the potential hazard of interval apps and fewer on the actual, established menace. I feel it’s as a result of it supplies a deceptively easy resolution: Simply delete your interval app to guard your self. It’s a lot more durable to dismantle the surveillance programs which can be truly in place. You possibly can’t simply delete your physician. 

This interview, which was carried out by telephone and electronic mail, has been condensed and edited.