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As we reflect on Mother’s Day, we celebrate mothers for everything they give, sacrifice and carry. We talk about love, resilience and devotion.
But we don’t talk enough about how often mothers are left to navigate impossible choices without the support they actually need.
And we talk even less about how corporations step into that gap.
Because there is a truth we are not naming loudly enough.
Corporate formula companies are increasingly positioning themselves as champions of moms, wrapping profit-driven agendas in the language of support, empowerment and care.
And we need to talk about it.
As a woman leading a breastfeeding equity organization serving Los Angeles and Orange County, I want to be clear: this critique is not about judging families or how they feed their babies. It is about calling out corporate practices that exploit a moment when parents are vulnerable and searching for support.
Because what we are seeing is not just support. It is marketing.
Take the formula company Bobbie’s recent campaign featuring Grammy-winning rapper and mother Cardi B. Framed around paid family leave and support for families, the campaign positions the company as an ally to moms navigating the demands of early parenthood.
On the surface, it feels empowering. A recognizable voice. An honest conversation about real challenges and realities of parenting. A brand claiming to care.The messaging is carefully crafted to feel personal, compassionate and socially conscious.
But beneath that polished messaging is a more troubling reality.
This is not just support. This is strategic marketing embedded within one of the most vulnerable periods of a person’s life.
Motherhood, especially in the early months, is a time often marked by exhaustion, isolation and uncertainty for families. It is also a time when structural supports like paid family leave, access to care and mental health resources are often inadequate or entirely absent.
Into that gap, companies step in with messaging that feels like reassurance.
That is precisely what makes this approach so powerful and so concerning, products are not solutions to systemic problems.
We have seen this before.
For decades, the formula industry has marketed itself as the answer to the very challenges it created and cannot solve, from lack of workplace protections to gaps in postpartum care. More recently, families across the country experienced the fragility of a highly consolidated industry during the 2022 formula recall and resulting shortages, when caregivers were left scrambling to feed their babies.
These are not distant concerns. They are reminders that formula is a commercial product produced within an industry accountable first to shareholders, not to the long-term wellbeing of families.
Formula is essential for many parents. For some families it can be lifesaving, medically necessary and deeply important. Access must be protected without shame or stigma.
But acknowledging that reality should not prevent us from critically examining the marketing practices that position it as a substitute for the support families actually need during one of the most vulnerable periods of parenthood.
Today’s tactics are more subtle than in the past.
Instead of directly competing with breastfeeding, companies increasingly align themselves with the language of advocacy, maternal empowerment and social support. They partner with influencers and trusted public figures to create messaging that feels authentic, relatable and empowering.
But authenticity does not equal accountability.
When corporations position themselves as champions for mothers while simultaneously expanding their market share, they are not just participating in the conversation around maternal wellbeing. They are shaping it.
And in doing so they shift the focus away from structural solutions families are actually demanding like paid family leave, affordable childcare, access to culturally competent care and postpartum mental health support, and toward individual consumer choices.
That is not support. That is market positioning dressed in the language of care.
Across Los Angeles and Orange County, we see every day what real support looks like. It looks like peer counselors who sit with parents through the hardest moments, exhaustion and uncertainty. It looks like support groups where families can be honest without being sold something. It looks like building a workforce that reflects the communities it serves. It looks like care that extends beyond feeding and into mental health, stability and long-term wellbeing.
This work is not flashy. It does not come with celebrity endorsements, viral campaigns or marketing budgets.
But it is what families actually need.
If companies like Bobbie genuinely want to support mothers, they must do so with integrity. That means not positioning products as solutions to systemic failures, not blurring the line between advocacy and advertising and not co-opting spaces that have long been led by community-based work without acknowledging that history.
Motherhood is not a marketing strategy.
Moms and families deserve more than campaigns that exploit and capitalize on their unmet needs, filling the gaps left by policy failures.
If we truly want to support families, we need to look beyond polished branding campaigns and invest in conditions that make parenting sustainable: paid family leave, accessible healthcare, mental health support and community-based care.
Local policymakers, hospitals, health care organizations, and funders in Los Angeles and Orange County have an opportunity and a role to play in making that vision real by investing in programs that meet families where they are while protecting them from exploitative marketing practices that thrive in moments of vulnerability.
Because mothers should not have to rely on corporations to meet needs that our systems have failed to provide.
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