Celebrity Insta-mums: How much of your kids should you share online?

Celebrity mums may appear to have it all, sharing pictures of their families and using social media to build their brands. But away from the spotlight they’re just like us. So how do they decide how much of their kids to share?

Celebrity offspring have helped propel their famous mums further into the spotlight, but they say that wasn’t their intention when they started posting cute and funny pictures and videos of their kids.

Nadia Bartel, Brooke Cotchin, Renee Enright, Lana Wilkinson, Alicia Loxley and Rebecca Maddern all agree the overriding reason for publicly sharing what would once have been considered personal pictures is that their social media accounts reflect who they are and their kids are a huge part of their lives.

“I’m a pretty open person, I’m naturally a bit of an over-sharer,” says Nadia Bartel, who has more than 400,000 followers.

“My kids are always with me and so I share that. It’s not like it’s sponsored or promotional.”

Stylist and former footy WAG Renee Enright, who has 43,000 followers, says people follow her because they’re interested in her life.

“My kids are my whole life so it wouldn’t really reflect my life without sharing them. We get lots of beautiful feedback, we’ve been very lucky we don’t really get any trolls,” she says.

Celebrity stylist Lana Wilkinson, who has 130,000 followers, says when she joined Instagram and her business started growing she initially decided not to feature her first child.

“At the time I felt like there was a need to keep it very business savvy, I tried to keep it very fashion. But then I realised people buy into people. The more honest I was the bigger my business became,” she says.

Cotchin, who is expecting her third child with Tigers captain Trent in July and has 23,000 followers, says when she first had daughter Harper five years ago the couple had decided not to post pictures but she has become more comfortable with it in recent years.

“It’s hard, it’s one of those debatable topics. We think about it all the time, are we exposing them too much?,” she says.

Channel 9 news presenter Alicia Loxley, who has just given birth to her third child, daughter Ada, says she uses her popular Instagram feed to share photos of her children (she has two boys, Archie 5 and Ned 3) with family and fans.

“My approach has always been I feel quite comfortable putting photos of the boys and now Ada up. Of course nothing that would be embarrassing to them when they’re older,” she says.

“Instagram is my main social media channel and we have a lot of family interstate and overseas, it’s a beautiful way for them to see.”

Rebecca Maddern, who has 87,000 followers, says she deliberately doesn’t flood her feed with pictures of one-year-old daughter Ruby, but she gets beautiful feedback when she does.

“I try to keep it to a minimum, we certainly don’t share everything. It was Ruby’s first birthday last month and we felt it was a private family and friend’s moment,” she says.

“She’s the joy of our lives, it would be really hard not to share some of what is my greatest achievement.”

The unwitting up-shot of sharing their family on social media is that is has led to an increase in followers and business opportunities for the many of the mums and their children.

Enright says it is now a part of her brand and her business.

“I’m a working mum sharing how I’m juggling that. You get all the positive things that come along with it as well. We get gifts sent and get to experience lots of things we wouldn’t otherwise and I get to support a lot of the family lifestyle brands I work with,” she says.

Bartel says while it was never a deliberate strategy, showing her life as a mum has helped her brand as well.

“Over the years it has become a bit about my brand with the kids,” she says.

Four-year-old son Aston has been offered his own commercial opportunities but she has been cautious in considering them.

“I think that’s something Jim and I are really careful to protect, it’s for him (Aston) to tell me when he wants to do that,” she says.

All are increasingly conscious of trying to portray their family lives as genuinely as possible.

“What I connect with is when people are honest in sharing the good and the bad. I’m all about sharing the positive and the negative,” Bartel says.

Cotchin says she gets lots of messages about how beautiful and perfect her daughters are and she’s more mindful now of posting more ‘real life’ moments.

“People think you’ve got this perfect life, it’s important for people to see we are like any other family doing the daily grind. A big thing for me now is we’re just like everyone else, just because Trent plays football doesn’t mean our kids are perfect,” she says.

The celebrity mums interviewed by the Herald Sun say they have been fortunate not to have been victim to too many nasty comments in response to posts on their children and that if they did they would most likely limit what they decided to share.

Wilkinson admits she was hurt by some comments on her Instagram after a recent trip to Coachella with other high profile mums Rebecca Judd, Bartel, Jessie Murphy and Kylie Brown.

“I had people saying, ‘Where are your kids, who’s looking after them?’ They were at home with their dad. I’m not going to lie, that hurts. If only they knew what I had to do to make that work and that most of the time when I’m out it’s for work,” she says.

All said they would never post anything that could identify where they live or where they go to school, nor would they post nude pictures or anything that may embarrass them later in life.

“Who knows, maybe I’ll look back in 10 years and think I was silly to put the photos out there. But I’m sure my kids, like most others, will end up being embarrassed by me no matter what I do,” Loxley says.