The Relationship between Stories and Identity in Science

When we encounter new information, it is filtered through our existing frameworks and understandings. The new information is evaluated against our previous beliefs and results in one of three choices: (1) rejecting the new information to stay loyal to our previous beliefs, (2) accepting the new information and breaking free from previous beliefs, or (3) bargaining with the new principles or “stretching” our previous beliefs to find compromise between them (Burke, Reference Burke1984). Option 1 is often the simplest – new information is not adopted and thus has no immediate effect or change on a person’s daily life.

Option 2 can be very difficult because our existing frameworks are cultivated throughout our lifetimes. Providing someone with new information may not simply be an incremental increase of new information, but a shattering of their worldview or their sense of self. For example, telling someone to “trust the science” about climate change may activate a religious identity that links scientific knowledge with evolutionary science, which challenges their faith (McCammack, Reference McCammack2007). Or, telling someone that medical science advises people to wear masks and quarantine at home may go against people’s beliefs in individualism, work ethic, and their notions of masculinity (BBC News, 2020; Paliewicz and Bloomfield, Reference Paliewicz and Bloomfield2023). It is rare for people to completely shift their mindsets because of how psychologically and emotionally taxing such changes can be.

Burke (Reference Burke1984) called option 3 “casuistic stretching,” to reflect how the adoption of new information leads to people stretching or compromising their old beliefs to make way for new ones. Another way to conceptualize casuistry is through the idea that people are torn between “competing duties or obligations” (Lynch, Reference Lynch2008). Paul Lynch (Reference Lynch2008) defined casuistry as people “maintain[ing] their moral obligations while at the same time remaining sensitive to circumstances,” such as believing that killing people is wrong but also understanding the exception of killing in self-defense. When casuistry occurs, it is hard to gauge what exactly from the old and the new beliefs will be retained and what will be stretched or modified, which can lead to uncertainty.

In analyzing religious responses to climate science in a previous publication, I identified “bargainers” as those who stretch scientific information to make the reality and severity of climate science fit their existing worldview of climate inaction (Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2019a). Instead of rejecting scientific information outright, bargainers tend to misconstrue or modify scientific information. For example, the Heartland Institute is a conservative think tank that argues that increased CO₂ will lead to more efficient photosynthesis, which will lead to better crop yields and food security (Watts, Reference Watts2019). These conclusions are in stark contrast to evidence from scientific organizations that climate change will not benefit crops.Footnote ¹ Because they draw upon scientific information and interpret it through their lens of climate skepticism, bargainers may seem more reasonable than those who reject scientific information outright despite still being damaging to public engagement with science.

Casuistic stretching can also lead to positive mindset shifts because it enables people to retain the familiarity of their worldview while making room for new information. Someone who does not believe climate change is a problem, for example, might stretch their perspective to be concerned if climate change is connected to something they deeply care about, such as their business, family welfare, or their community (Wang et al., Reference Wang, Leviston, Hurlstone, Lawrence and Walker2018). Susie Wang and colleagues (Reference Wang, Leviston, Hurlstone, Lawrence and Walker2018) found that people exhibit “strong emotional responses” when they perceive an “object of care” to be under threat from climate change, which “motivates caring about climate change itself, and in turn predicts [environmental] behavior” (p. 25). One shared value that researchers have explored linking to climate change is health. Studies find that framing climate change as a public health matter through discussing air and water pollution can lead to greater concern about climate change and support for climate mitigation policies (e.g., Petrovic et al., Reference Petrovic, Madrigano and Zaval2014; Kotcher et al., Reference Kotcher, Feldman, Luong, Wyatt and Maibach2021).

Identifying with one another can help to reduce the threat of receiving new information. In a series of studies, an interdisciplinary research team found that group members who identified two things they had in common before completing a climate consensus activity led to improved efficiency compared to group members who discussed an article with facts about climate change (Bloomfield et al., Reference Bloomfield, van Swol, Chang, Willes and Ahn2020; van Swol et al., Reference van Swol, Bloomfield, Chang and Willes2021). Instead of focusing on information and facts, which can make some people defensive, telling people to reflect on their similarities with others encourages positive feelings about the activity and their groupmates.

This research should not imply that facts or statistics should be abandoned. Indeed, information is the backbone of science communication because our primary goal is to educate. However, facts alone may not be enough to create connection between people and a topic; more often, people care about a topic because it directly impacts them, or they feel for those who are impacted. Identification is thus mediated through what is called “psychological distance” (Milfont, Reference Milfont, Corral-verdugo, Garcia-Cadena and Frias-Armenta2013). Because climate change can be seen as intangible or distant, appealing to more present and overt impacts can help bridge the psychological distance between audiences and the topic (Wang et al., Reference Wang, Leviston, Hurlstone, Lawrence and Walker2018).

Another way to close psychological distances between people and abstract scientific topics is through storytelling. Stories take an alternative psychological pathway that can foster emotional connections and motivate action (Slater and Rouner, Reference Slater and Rouner2002). There is evidence that narratives have immediate positive impacts on understanding, comprehension, and retention of information (Machill, Köhler and Waldhauser, Reference Machill, Köhler and Waldhauser2007; Busselle and Bilandzic, Reference Busselle and Bilandzic2009; Murphy et al., Reference Murphy, Frank, Moran and Patnoe-Woodley2011) that persist over time (Oschatz and Marker, Reference Oschatz and Marker2020), including for scientific topics. For example, narratives can improve responses to new biotechnologies (e.g., Yang and Hobbs, Reference Yang and Hobbs2020) promote pro-environmental attitudes and behavioral intention (e.g., Dahlstrom, Reference Dahlstrom2014; Sangalang and Bloomfield, Reference Sangalang and Bloomfield2018), improve health outcomes (e.g., Kim et al., Reference Kim, Bigman, Leader, Lerman and Cappella2012; Walter, Demetriades and Murphy, Reference Walter, Demetriades and Murphy2019), increase belief in the authenticity of scientists (e.g., Saffran et al., Reference Saffran, Hu, Hinnant, Scherer and Nagel2020), and improve hazard preparedness (e.g., Shanahan et al., Reference Shanahan, Reinhold and Raile2019).

In a meta-review of narratives’ use in science and health communication, Matthew Dudley and colleagues (Reference Dudley, Squires, Petroske, Dawson and Brewer2023) found that nearly 70 percent of studies demonstrated that narratives improved communication effectiveness when compared to nonnarrative or instructional forms of communication on topics such as tobacco reduction, cancer screening, environmental conservation, nutrition, and sexual health, among others. They concluded that stories are largely effective in communicating scientific information because they make information more accessible, increase attention to and retention of information, stimulate emotional connections, and delay the formation of counterarguments (Dudley et al., Reference Dudley, Squires, Petroske, Dawson and Brewer2023, pp. 8–9).

Science communication, therefore, is not only stating facts about a topic but is also about adapting the information to connect with who and what people care about, who they are and how they define themselves, and the social groups they belong to. To build on these broader conceptualizations of the relationship between stories, identity, and science, I now analyze specific stories and identities that influence science communication. I focus on topics of the environment and health due to the case studies of climate change and vaccination that are examined in the next section.

Important Identities in Science Storytelling

Storytelling and identity are intimately related. Walter Fisher (Reference Fisher1984) notes that the stories we tell about ourselves are connected to our notions of identity. He argues, “Any story, any form of rhetorical communication, not only says something about the world, it also implies an audience, persons who conceive of themselves in very specific ways. If a story denies a person’s self-conception, it does not matter what it says about the world” (Fisher, Reference Fisher1984, p. 14).

Stories call forth particular audiences who see themselves in the story, or as Fisher (Reference Fisher1984) describes it, who “dwell” within the story (p. 6). When stories challenge our fundamental notions of identity, they, and the information they contain, may be rejected. For example, I have previously argued that climate stories may be rejected because people consider themselves to be generally good, which is in opposition to climate stories in which people’s actions are blameworthy regarding environmental damage (Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024). Additionally, narratives about debunked links between vaccines and autism may work to unite parents overcome with emotions such as “helplessness, resentment, bitterness, anger, and guilt that somehow their children’s condition was their fault” by shifting blame onto an identifiable cause (Hoppin, Reference Hoppin2016, p. 52). Stories can appeal to particular identities that can call forth additional stories to represent their experiences and attitudes.

In what follows, I outline some of the identities that influence science communication, engagement, and advocacy. Integral in analyzing these identities are the stories they tell and the worldviews they uphold. These descriptions are not meant to be exhaustive or generalizable across all members of these different groups, but to provide preliminary information about important relationships and factors within the science communication ecosystem. Survey data, scholarly literature, and examples from public discourse provide a foundational look at the various ways that identities and stories can intersect with scientific topics, which invite further examination of these relationships and how they influence science communication.

There are a variety of prominent and vocal identities within science communication, including political identities, religious identities, and demographic identities such as race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, and age. These identities overlap with one another; one is never only one identity, even if some are more salient than others in different circumstances. Discussing them separately is not meant to suggest that they operate in isolation, but to gather relevant literature that links these identities to scientific engagement and understanding.

Conclusion

This section has laid a foundation for examining the importance of storytelling and identity in science communication, with a specific focus on how the two mutually inform one another. Scientific information is not just learned in a classroom or through a textbook, but is debated online, discussed with family members and friends, and imparted from cultural, political, and religious groups. These influences are part of the information ecosystem that we all navigate to inform our ways of thinking, acting, and moving through the world. Consequently, factors of identity, social influence, media consumption, and circulating narratives should be considered to hold equal influence, if not more influence, than formal, scientific channels.

The next section directly engages the identity of motherhood and the stories mothers tell in making sense of scientific information based on their gender and parental status. I apply an analytical approach informed by rhetorical theories of storytelling and identity to digital discourse from moms’ groups and advocacy organizations. From informal discussions on Facebook to advocacy organizations’ websites, the identity of “moms” can be leveraged to both support and challenge scientific information. Mothers are only one identity that makes claims to and gatekeeps scientific knowledge, but they are some of the earliest sources of information that people may encounter. Mothers also intersect other important identities such as race, culture, religion, politics, and age, which influence the sensemaking and decision-making aspects of motherhood.

In the next section, I track motherhood’s presence and deployment in the topics of climate change and vaccination to analyze how scientific information is mediated and filtered through the persuasive and compelling identity of mothers. Understanding the relationship between science learning, storytelling, and identities can bring awareness to scientists, science communicators, politicians, teachers, journalists, and members of the public to support public engagement with science, strengthen identification with scientific topics, and tell more engaging science stories.

Identification and Narrative Webs

Part of the persuasiveness of the motherhood identity comes from its ability to resonate with many people who are themselves mothers, have relationships with their mothers, or take on mothering or protecting roles. In this sense, we can say that audiences can easily “identify” with mothers on their shared substance, values, and priorities (Burke, Reference Burke1950). Kenneth Burke (Reference Burke1950) argued that “identification” is negotiated through consubstantiality, or the act of simultaneously understanding two objects as similar to each other and also recognizing the separate and unique qualities of both. Burke (Reference Burke1950) argued, “A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined A is identified with B, or he may identify himself with B even when their interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so” (p. 2).

For example, two mothers are not and cannot be the same person, but in the process of finding or realizing shared experiences and interests, they may be identified with one another. Identification is compensatory to division, which is a result of how each person retains their own unique identity even as they may feel connected to one another and part of larger group or societal membership. Without identification, Burke (Reference Burke1950) theorized that persuasion could not occur because there was no point of similarity from where the persuasive influence could originate. Identification is important because we can collaborate, cooperate, and find kinship together through our commonalities, such as a collective term that people ascribe to.

Burke (Reference Burke1945) described naming and labeling as imperative to the human condition: “These names shape our relations with our fellows. They prepare us for some functions and against others, for or against the persons representing these functions” (p. 4). By this statement, Burke is referring to how our names for ourselves and each other encourage particular actions and behaviors. For example, Burke (Reference Burke1950) notes that if you call someone evil or a criminal, you invite punishment and castigation rather than rehabilitation. Alternatively, if you call someone mistaken, you might be drawn to help correct them or set them straight. Tema Milstein (Reference Milstein2011) argued that kinship and identification can reach across species. She noted that on an orca whale watching tour, people fostered identification with the orca whales by naming the matriarch of the pod “grandmother” and referring to their pods as families, which fostered pro-environment sentiments (Milstein, Reference Milstein2011). Burke’s concept of identification provides a useful perspective to understand how narrative components such as characters may resonate with audience members.

While Burke’s concepts are generally applicable to all forms of storytelling, there are also analytical tools that have been specifically developed for use in evaluating and interpreting stories about scientific topics. Narrative webs are a visual mapping technique that represents story features along a series of three rings and six wedges (see Figure 1; Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024). Narrative webs do not express narrative as a binary (story/nonstory) or as a unidimensional scale (more to less story-like), but as a web of interrelated components that can be evaluated for their relevance and specificity to a target audience. The term “web” refers not only to the shape of the map but also to how stories are embedded in “worldly webs” of relations and cultures (Bacchilega, Reference Bacchilega2015, p. 32). The narrative web is not prescriptive of how narratives should be told but is a tool to help evaluate and compare the available narrative opportunities within a given communicative event. In this sense, narrative webs are designed to capture the “relevance of narrating for humanity” while being flexible enough to account for “different regions, periods, genres, or social strata” that may change a narrative’s acceptance by an audience (Marzolph and Bendix, Reference Marzolph and Bendix2014, p. 2).

Figure 1 A blank narrative web showing the six wedges (character, action, sequence, scope, storyteller, and content) and the three rings (micro, meso, and macro).

Narrative webs consist of “wedges” that represent the narrative features of character, action, sequence, scope, storyteller, and content. The character wedge captures the people, organizations, more-than-human life, and other entities that perform the actions in the story. The action wedge captures events that occur and the unfolding of the plot. The sequence wedge refers to the chronology of events and whether the story is told in the past, present, or future. The scope wedge refers to the setting of the story, including temporal and spatial considerations but also cultural, social, and historical contexts. The storyteller wedge denotes the originator, communicator, and channel through which the story is shared. The content wedge refers to the topics within the story, such as its scientific information, morals, and values.

Each wedge spans the web’s three rings – micro-ring, meso-ring, and macro-ring – which refer to a wedge’s specificity and alignment with narrative expectations. Mapping a wedge on the micro-ring indicates that a narrative feature is specific, concrete, and relevant to the story’s audience. Mapping a wedge on the macro-ring indicates that a narrative feature is broad, abstract, and generalizable. Mapping a wedge on the meso-ring indicates a middling specificity between the two or that the wedge contains components of both the micro- and macro-ring. When we plot features on the rings, we can connect them to reveal a shape called a narrative constellation. The shape of the constellation provides a visual cue for how specific or abstract the story is. Specific, concrete stories are generally clustered around the micro-ring, while broad, abstract stories are generally mapped on the macro-ring. A narrative web analysis affords critics an understanding of the specificity and abstractness in a story and opportunities for tailoring a story to different audiences.

The analysis is organized by narrative features, with issues of identification primarily falling under the character and action wedges. Failing to identify with characters in a story or not being able to see oneself in stories told by official scientific sources may contribute, in part, to mothers wanting to tell their own stories and rewrite their role in the narrative. The other wedges provide context and support by being the time and place in which characters act, the source of the information about the characters, and the values and information they convey. Consequently, all of the wedges are analyzed as parts of the overarching narrative of motherhood and scientific information.

I selected a variety of groups to represent maternal science appeals about climate change and vaccination. Because scientific discourse, especially in digital spaces, is diffuse and varied, it is necessary for critics to construct their object of study from “fragments” of various sources (McGee, Reference McGee1990). Groups that represent climate change include Science Moms, Mothers Out Front,Footnote ² Mountain Mamas, and Moms Clean Air Force. The selected groups that represent vaccination include VaxTruth,Footnote ³ National Vaccine Information Center,Footnote ⁴ Faithful Free Momma,Footnote ⁵ and A Shot in the Dark. These groups are not meant to be exhaustive of all advocacy groups related to motherhood on these topics, but to highlight themes, patterns, and differences in how motherhood influences communication about scientific topics. The corpus of data I analyzed included website information, news coverage of the groups, social media pages, posted videos, and downloadable publications. To analyze the collected fragments of digital discourse, I organized the analysis under three wedge pairs: character and action, sequence and scope, and storyteller and content.

It is important to note that these groups have varying relationships with mainstream science. Climate change motherhood is primarily appealed to in order to support scientific conclusions about the severity of human-caused climatic changes. In vaccination-focused groups, motherhood is appealed to in order to mobilize mothers against medical advice that vaccines are safe and effective. Both of these topics are counter to dominant behaviors; climate mothers challenge inaction around environmental protection, while anti-vaccine mothers challenge vaccine requirements. Both topics, therefore, specifically invite mobilization on one side of the issue.

Of the different sides across the two topics, pro-climate messages and anti-vaccine messages are more closely related to the mothering role of protecting children. Our changing climate directly affects the well-being of future generations, and anti-vaccine discourse focuses on parents’ control over their family’s health. Anti-climate discourses do not uniquely draw on notions of motherhood and instead center arguments based on economics, religion, or politics (Veldman, Reference Veldman2019; Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024). While pro-vaccine discourses are concerned with children’s health, there has not been as strong of an impetus to mobilize as mothers to support vaccination in the same way that anti-vaccine mothers organize against the status quo. However, in our current political moment of shifting discourses around vaccines and a rise in the spread of infectious diseases (Cirruzzo and Payne, Reference Cirruzzo and Payne2025; Ortiz-Prado et al., Reference Ortiz-Prado, Suárez-Sangucho and Vasconez-Gonzalez2025; Schering, Reference Schering2025), particularly in the United States, there may be more of a need for pro-vaccine mothers to join the conversation in the future as advocates for vaccine access (Abels and Ramirez Uribe, Reference Abels and Ramirez Uribe2025).

It is not my goal to denigrate any particular group, but to highlight how the identity of mothers can be deployed both to challenge and uphold scientific conclusions. Climate change moms uphold scientific conclusions that climate change is severe and human-caused (e.g., Lynas et al., Reference Lynas, Houlton and Perry2021). Anti-vaccine moms challenge scientific conclusions that consistently report vaccination’s safety and efficacy (e.g., Gidengil et al., Reference Gidengil, Bidwell Goetz and Maglione2021). One implication of the analysis of storytelling and identification in these discourses, consequently, is how the similarities and differences in the deployment of motherhood appeals could inform other scientific topics and how motherhood appeals can be used to counter science skepticism.

Mothers and Other Characters

The character and action wedges on the narrative web refer to the people or things in a story who are behaving, acting, interacting, and contributing to the plot. When we analyze the characters and actions within a story, we are interested in how characters are portrayed and the agency afforded to them, or their capacity to act in given circumstances. In the stories told about climate change and vaccination by mother-based advocacy groups, mothers take front stage as heroes (or potential heroes) for their children’s well-being and their futures.

Many studies have looked at the role of characters in improving narrative engagement and effectiveness. Some US-based studies have found that identification with characters improved narrative persuasion, enjoyment of the narrative, the complexity of reflection on the story, and the story’s influence on attitudes and beliefs (e.g., Slater and Rouner, Reference Slater and Rouner2002; Igartua, Reference Igartua2010; Hoeken et al., Reference Hoeken, Kolthoff and Sanders2016). For example, Elizabeth Shanahan and colleagues (Reference Shanahan, Reinhold and Raile2019) found that audiences had more positive attitudes toward narratives that invited them to be the heroes in the story. Other cultures, such as Indigenous cultures, more regularly use anthropomorphized nonhuman animals or more-than-human creatures in their stories, making connections with audiences not necessarily through the presence of humans, but through ancestral, interconnected, and spiritual understandings of life (Palleiro, Reference Palleiro2019).

In the stories of climate change and vaccination, mothers are characterized as caring for their particular causes due to their parental status. For example, Mothers Out Front (2024) described themselves as “Founded and led by moms, Mothers Out Front brings the unique voice of mothers to the climate movement.” Mothers Out Front also note that “There’s no such thing as a typical Mothers Out Front leader. We’re unified by the drive to protect all children.” The name “Mothers Out Front” places mothers in a central, lead role within the narrative in a topic where they are dismissed or ignored. Science Moms (2025a) discuss the unique connection between moms and climate advocacy, noting that “our action on climate change … [is] an extension of being a mom” because climate advocacy and motherhood both work to “protect the future.”

The groups emphasize the power of moms as forces for good. A consistent theme was the characterization of motherhood as a form of energy that can be harnessed to manifest change. VaxTruth profiled specific mothers, calling them “unstoppable” and “powerhouses” working to protect children (Piper-Terry, Reference Piper-Terry2025b). The Moms Clean Air Force (2025b) use the term “force” in their name as a play on the military segment of the Air Force. Mothers Out Front (2024) describe the force of mom power: “Mom power is a form of energy and resilience giving every ounce of yourself to become an unstoppable force of love for the next generation.” They continue by noting, “We believe that there is no more powerful force than women mobilizing to protect their children” (Mothers Out Front, 2024).

If mothers alone are powerful, they are even more so in a group. Many groups emphasize “empowerment” and highlight how their advocacy can “empower” other moms. VaxTruth argues that anti-vaccine advocates work “tirelessly” to “help educate and empower parents” (Piper-Terry, Reference Piper-Terry2025b). Science Moms (Reference Moms2025b) referred to the strength of mothers when “all of us moms [are] joining forces” to tackle climate change. Similarly, the moms of VaxTruth “band together and … work together” to empower mothers to make choices for themselves about vaccination (Piper-Terry, Reference Piper-Terry2025a). Mountain Mamas explicitly expand the label of “mother” to include a diversity of people. They note, “Mamas include trans women, non-binary people, cis women, and any other person who finds themselves identifying in some way with the incredible label of ‘mom’” (Mountain Mamas, 2023).

Mothers’ collaborative power even spans the aisle, as the mother identity transcends politics for many of the advocacy groups. Moms Clean Air Force refer to themselves as “Mompartisan,” because “protecting children’s health is a nonpartisan issue” (Browning, Reference Browning2024). Science Moms (2025a) describe themselves repeatedly as a “nonpartisan group,” likely to differentiate themselves from climate change’s more liberal associations. Instead of being divided by politics, the motherhood identity is a transcendent, unifying force.

Mothers are the primary but not the sole characters performing actions in science stories. Other characters in the story are invited to be a part of the groups’ activism who are in supportive roles to the mothers’ advocacy or are the receivers of the mother’s advocacy. While the mothers are fully realized as “agents” within the narrative, the other characters are typically “co-agents” to their acts (Burke, Reference Burke1945). For example, the power of mothers is complemented by other guardians, primarily fathers. The Moms Clean Air Force acknowledge that their group is 1.5 million members strong, specifically, “We are a community of 1.5 million moms and dads united against air pollution” (Moms Clean Air Force, 2025b, emphasis added). In their strategic plan, Mothers Out Front (2022) declare that they aim to bring together not only mothers but also “all those who care about children,” further widening the potential members in their advocacy work. Mothers Out Front’s (2025) new website lists the group as not only mothers but also “caregivers.” The Sierra Club (no date) had a now-defunct initiative called “Climate Parents” that was described as uniting “parents, grandparents and families mobilizing for clean energy and climate solutions” who are joined together by “love for our kids,” additionally extending the idea of climate advocacy to all parents, guardians, or caregivers.Footnote ⁶

Anti-vaccine groups and advocates include fathers through the use of general terms such as parents and families. VaxTruth, for example, describes the group by saying, “we are parents of vaccine-injured and vaccine-killed children” and notes that “young parents are never told that they have the right to say NO” (emphasis in original), expanding the relevant characters to also include fathers and other parental figures (Piper-Terry, Reference Piper-Terry2025a).

Children are characters in the narrative who benefit from the actions of mothers but they do not take actions themselves. Children in the narratives can be biological children or children in general who mothers care about. In terms of climate change, children are described as “grow[ing] up in” environments that are under threat by climatic changes (Science Moms, 2025a). Children will inherit the Earth, so mothers must “preserve the planet for our kids” (Science Moms, 2025a). Children are described as “the next generation” who are “vulnerable” to actions taken (or not taken) in the present (Mothers Out Front, 2024).

The narratives of motherhood include particular actions that mothers take during their advocacy (both for and against science), such as fighting, working, protecting, caring, giving, taking a stand, launching, harnessing, amplifying, loving, resisting, questioning, and uniting. Some of these words are gender-coded as stereotypically feminine behaviors such as giving, loving, caring, and protecting. Others are more active, masculine, and advocacy-oriented, such as taking a stand, launching, resisting, and fighting. The National Vaccine Information Center, which is run by mother and advocate Barbara Loe Fisher (Reference Fisher2022), evoked a masculine, military frame in describing mothers as being “on the front line” in their family’s vaccine decision-making. VaxTruth identifies their fighting spirit as rooted in love: “We love each other, even when we’ve never met, and even though many of us would never have been friends if not for the one thing that unites us: our children’s voices” (Piper-Terry, Reference Piper-Terry2025a). The varied use of actions demonstrates the marrying of the mother identity with the strength of activists who work tirelessly to support their causes and challenge existing structures that ignore their concerns.

Marcella Piper-Terry (Reference Piper-Terry2025a), the primary contributor to VaxTruth’s substack, describes her personal journey as a parent and someone with previous experience in the medical field. Regarding her actions, she writes, “I work. I research and I write. I advocate. I travel. I speak. I listen.” Angela, of Faithful Free Momma and Injecting Truth, provides a similar list of actions in an Instagram post, describing how she “watched, read, learned, realized, [and] discovered” more about vaccines (Injecting Truth, 2025b). These impressive lists of actions raise the credibility of anti-vaccine moms who must compete with scientific and medical experts. Instead of one action, anti-vaccination moms perform multiple actions in quick succession, describing a copia of actions to advocate for their children’s health to rival those of health professionals.Footnote ⁷

Anti-vaccination mothers define themselves, in part, by the actions they do not take, namely, the action of not vaccinating. Anti-vaccination groups call on mothers to consider the irreparable damages that vaccines cause, thus delaying action. As Heidi Lawrence (Reference Lawrence2016) has argued, appeals to the irreparable are persuasive because they stoke fears of events that “however unlikely, cannot be recovered if they come to fruition” (p. 205). For example, Piper-Terry (Reference Piper-Terry2024b) argues that mothers should delay vaccination decisions until they are “as well-informed as possible. The ramifications of making the wrong choice can last a lifetime.”

The actions that mothers take (or do not take) are directly tied to protecting children, building safer and healthier communities, and working against the “counter-agents” or villains in the story (Burke, Reference Burke1945). For Mothers Out Front (2024), the status quo of climate inaction needs to “achieve systemic change in order to transition from harmful fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy sources.” Mothers Out Front (2024) describe both toxic environments and “toxic politics” as threats to their children’s lives. Most climate-based moms’ groups did not label a specific enemy but used more abstract language to note that society needs to make changes. For example, Science Moms (2025a) simply name “climate change” as the enemy that is “taking the places we love.” Science Moms (Reference Moms2025b) also make references to “fossil fuels” and “pollution” as things to be avoided or minimized, but there is no explicit source of these issues outlined as an enemy to fight.

For anti-vaccine advocates, medical experts and pharmaceutical practices overly restrict the actions mothers can take, so constitute enemies within their narratives. Groups and accounts that labeled a specific villain – primarily anti-vaccine groups – tend to use more forceful and aggressive terminology, such as presenting mothers as fighters, resisters, and “warriors” because they are battling a system they feel is harming their children (Injecting Truth, 2025d). For example, VaxTruth views mothers as “the resistance, fighting together against the tyrannical forces that harmed our children, and that are continuing to harm other babies and children around the world” (Piper-Terry, Reference Piper-Terry2025a). VaxTruth frames doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and the medical establishment as enemies intent on harming children. VaxTruth characterizes medical enemies as unduly coercive: “They [young parents] are often pressured, manipulated (using psychological tactics taught to doctors for this very purpose), and even threatened if they fail to comply” with vaccine schedules (Piper-Terry, Reference Piper-Terry2024a). VaxTruth further argues that the force doctors use to push vaccinations should be called “medical rape” (Piper-Terry, Reference Piper-Terry2024a). This phrasing links vaccination to other prominent women’s causes of bodily autonomy and sexual assault, further invoking the gendered nature of mothers as women.

Across all of the groups and websites, mothers are framed as heroes working together, sometimes with other parents or allies, to protect children from harmful practices, named or unnamed. There are many similarities across the two scientific topics, such as climate moms seeing themselves as a powerful force combatting climate action, and anti-vaccine moms presenting themselves as warriors challenging medical elites. Instead of minimizing the role of mothers, these groups share an investment in the power of motherhood, especially as an inclusive, collective, and transformative force. Climate moms participate in actions that align with scientific consensus on the reality and severity of climate change; anti-vaccine moms reject scientific consensus about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.

The groups thus differ in terms of who the mother-heroes are fighting against, or the villains of the story, and from where their advocacy originates – scientific information or not. While climate change mother groups rarely name an enemy they are fighting, anti-vaccination mother groups have a concrete view of the sources of danger to their children. Clearly naming heroes, villains, and other characters helps emphasize the micro-ring of the character wedge, creating opportunities for identification and shared interests with mothers and other caregivers as opposed to the abstract nature of macro-ring characters common to science communication (Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024).

Places, Communities, and the Future

The sequence and scope wedges encompass the narrative’s setting. The sequence wedge refers to the ordering of events and whether the events stretch into the past or the future. The scope wedge covers the breadth of the setting in space and time. When telling a story, one may make a choice to limit or expand the scope to provide certain contextual information, which Burke (Reference Burke1945) called a story’s “circumference.” Imagine a person tells a story of someone killing someone else to argue that they should be convicted of murder. One might imagine a limited circumference that ignores contextual details or mitigating circumstances that might aid the storyteller in justifying a guilty verdict. Alternatively, the same story told with a larger circumference could provide context that the person was defending themselves from an attack after a warring country invaded their land. This larger circumference can transform that same person from a criminal into a war hero. Consequently, a broader or narrower scope are rhetorical choices that can influence whether an audience accepts or rejects the story. In narrative web terms, a smaller circumference would be mapped on the micro-ring, while a more expansive, broad circumference would be mapped on the meso- or macro-ring, depending on the scale.

Climate moms tend to move between the specific and the general in both time and space. For time, climate moms emphasize the future in advocating for a healthier planet for current and future generations. Science Moms (2025c) argue that they work to “protect our kids’ future” and to “preserve the planet for our kids.” The word “preserve,” in particular, gives a sense of maintaining the current quality of the planet through time. Mothers Out Front (2025) also discuss the future in arguing that what we do today “impacts [our children’s] health today and a livable climate for them tomorrow.” Connecting the present to the future, Mothers Out Front (2024) argue that “we must seize this moment with urgency” to avoid “reach[ing] a tipping point beyond which we cannot recover.” Future action is thus concretized by framing the importance of action now to avoid an inhabitable future. Mountain Mamas (2023) similarly connect the present to the future by arguing that we should “Take action today on the public lands, clean air, and climate crisis issues that are important to us, our families, and our future” (emphasis removed). Focusing on the future of climate through reducing air pollution, Moms Clean Air Force (2025b) are motivated to achieve “a safe, stable, and equitable future where all children breathe clean air.”

Climate moms include a range of spatial scales within their stories, by which they move from the more specific everyday actions of motherhood to broader political goals that extend nationwide. Science Moms (Reference Moms2025b), for example, advise mothers on “switching to clean sources” of energy in their homes to save money and the planet. Their “climate change solutions” page argues that moms can install solar panels, switch to an electric vehicle, and swap out gas stoves for electric stoves to “cut back big on your monthly [bills], while also giving our kids a healthier planet” (Science Moms, Reference Moms2025b). These scopes are situated in the micro-ring because they focus on individual households.

Expanding the scope from one’s home to a meso-ring of local community, Mountain Mamas present mothers as powerful voices within a region, specifically the Rocky Mountains. Mountain Mamas (2023) describe themselves as “guided by our commitment to organize, inspire, and activate Mamas across the Rocky Mountains to advocate for our climate, clean air and water, and public lands.” Their advocacy is primarily located in the Colorado and Montana areas, with their listed “wins” related to regional legislation to protect public lands. Similarly, focusing on a meso-scope at the regional level, Mothers Out Front (2024) note that they “drive campaigns at the local and state levels” to “shift the political landscape, creating conditions for the kind of transformational change necessary for protecting our kids, our communities, and our democracy.”

Expanding the scope even further to the macro-ring, Moms Clean Air Force portray mothers as national advocates who can work within the political system to enact change. In listing the various actions that moms can take, Moms Clean Air Force (2025a) widen the scope of mom activism to include “Signing petitions, making phone calls and writing emails to legislators, and sharing your personal stories with your lawmakers can help advance policies that will benefit our children’s health and put us on a path to climate safety.” On the Moms Clean Air Force website, visitors can sign petitions at the federal level to encourage Congressional representatives and the White House to take particular actions, such as defending the Environmental Protection Agency or cutting climate pollution. Mothers Out Front also operate on macro-ring scopes by describing how they not only care about their biological children but also advocate for “children everywhere [to] thrive.” Many of the climate mom organizations referred to “all children” or “children everywhere,” meaning that the caregiving actions of mothers extend across scopes to include worldwide care for youth and future generations.

Temporal scopes in anti-vaccine discourse are firmly in the micro-ring, focusing on the time frame of making vaccine decisions during a doctor’s office visit, pregnancy, and the vaccine timeline, which span the first few years of a child’s life. Piper-Terry (Reference Piper-Terry2025a) of VaxTruth notes that she and other mothers make decisions at “2 months, 4 months, 6 months, and 12–15 months” and even “within 12 hours of birth.”Footnote ⁸ She further argues that “After giving birth, you will have two months in which to do additional research before you will be pressured to give your infant his or her first big round of vaccines at the ‘well-baby check-up’” (Piper-Terry, Reference Piper-Terry2025a). The micro-ring sequence in this phrasing is used as a pressure tactic to influence parental decision-making. Candace Owens (Reference Owens2024a), in the first episode of A Shot in the Dark, also discusses the pressure and “duress” that parents feel under a time crunch. It was not common in anti-vaccine moms’ discourse to emphasize the future or focus beyond familial decision-making and doctor–patient interactions in the present or immediate future.

When larger, meso-ring time frames did emerge, anti-vaccine moms were more likely to discuss the recent past, framing the number of vaccines now as more than what was given in the past or framing the number of illnesses today as more prevalent than the past. For example, the National Vaccine Information Center noted, “back then [in 1978] infants and children were getting half as many vaccines as they do today.” Faithful Free Momma posted an image with the text, “Baby boomers had measles, mumps, and chickenpox. Today’s kids have autism, learning disorders, type 1 diabetes, asthma, allergies, eczema, and autoimmune disorders. Something has changed. Shouldn’t we be asking why?” (Injecting Truth, 2025c). The caption for this image reads: “if measles, mumps, chickenpox are so deadly … [they] should have wiped out most of our parents and grandparents” (Injecting Truth, 2025c). Even looking into the past, this post’s narrative only extends two generations back in making a fallacious argument that successful treatment of measles in the past means that vaccines have not been effective.

Anti-vaccine groups focus on how moms should make decisions in the present to defend their families, narrowing spatial and temporal scopes to the present, immediate moment within their households. Mentions of the future were primarily limited to messages aimed at prospective parents who may have a decision to make soon about vaccination. Although not the majority discourse, there were some larger spatial scopes in anti-vaccine groups’ legal advocacy. When anti-vaccine moms discuss regional or federal scopes, it is primarily in terms of how understanding laws can be used to help families navigate vaccine mandates. For example, Piper-Terry (Reference Piper-Terry2023) writes, “there are exemptions in every state. Go here to find the law in your state [link to a National Vaccine Information Center page].” The National Vaccine Information Center has pages on its website dedicated to “parental rights” and “informed consent” that include information on how to apply for vaccine exemptions (Fisher, Reference Fisher2015). This group, similar to some of the climate moms, provided motivation for mothers to “let our elected representatives know that we want them to put legal boundaries on the authority that doctors and public health officials wield in our society” (Fisher, Reference Fisher2018).

Most often, the scope of the anti-vaccine mothers’ stories is firmly rooted in the micro-ring of individual families and personal decision-making. Federal scopes are viewed negatively by anti-vaccine parents who reject “herd immunity” or the “greater good” as harmful to the family unit (Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024). For example, Piper-Terry (Reference Piper-Terry2023) summarizes what she feels is a common refrain from medical agencies: “The benefits of vaccination to society outweigh the risks of serious adverse reactions to those relatively few people who suffer them.” In other words, anti-vaccine moms characterize the scientific story of vaccines as considering individual ills to be collateral damage in the name of protecting a broader, societal scope. Piper-Terry (Reference Piper-Terry2023) instead tells parents to focus solely on themselves and their family in their decision-making:

Piper-Terry narrows the scope to individual families and rejects broader frameworks that she feels would erase individual choice. Focusing on individual choice, especially for one’s children and family, tells a micro-ring scope narrative that ignores public health trends and societal impacts. Even though its name indicates a macro-scope, the National Vaccine Information Center’s (2024) tagline is “Your health. Your family. Your choice,” which locates action and decision-making solely in the family.

The sequence and scope used within narratives from mom groups varied across climate change and vaccination. For climate moms, advocacy was described as happening across a range of spatial scopes, from their kitchen to the national political stage. Alternatively, anti-vaccine moms focused their advocacy on individual decision-making about children’s health, narrowing the scope to the family unit. In terms of temporal dimensions, climate moms were interested in the future – their children’s future, the planet’s future – while anti-vaccine moms were focused on the here and now of their children’s health and well-being.

Storytellers and Values

Although the storyteller and the characters in stories can sometimes be the same, the storyteller wedge more specifically attends to the motivations and qualities of the source of the narrative’s content and information. For example, the storyteller wedge can include how the story interacts with and is characterized by other storytellers, such as casting doubt on scientific storytellers from a science skeptical source. Walter Fisher (Reference Fisher1994) refers to the confidence an audience has in a storyteller as the story’s “characteriological coherence” (p. 24). A story’s characteriological coherence is made up of an audience’s assessment of the ethos of the storyteller which Fisher (1994) defines as the storyteller’s “intelligence, integrity, and goodwill” and the audience’s assessment of the “values she or he embodies and would advance in the world” (p. 24). Speaking directly about scientific discourse, Fisher (Reference Fisher1994) evaluates the quality of the storyteller based on whether their “word warrants attendance, if not adherence” (p. 24). Without a captivating, credible, and trustworthy storyteller, the content, value, and meaning of the story may be disregarded. Pamela Pietrucci and Leah Ceccarelli (Reference Pietrucci and Ceccarelli2019) also draw upon the three components of credibility, which they describe as good sense, virtue, and “goodwill,” and apply them to scientific discourse, arguing that scientists can be held to these standards just as other public speakers are.Footnote ⁹

In the case of climate change and vaccine arguments coming from mother-based advocacy groups, there is varying ability for them to draw upon formal expertise. Aristotle outlines how ethos is a quality attributed to speakers from within their speech or communication “and not from the audience’s preconceived ideas about the speaker” (cited in Braet, Reference Braet1992, p. 311). Instead of focusing on the presence or absence of credentials or degrees, examining the credibility, expertise, and trustworthiness of mothers-as-rhetors must occur through how they present themselves as experts or authorities on the scientific topic.

Some mom groups embrace formal credentials such as the Science Moms, while most other groups locate the credibility of mothers in something more intangible. Anti-vaccine moms, for example, evoke goodwill through the identity of the friend or confidante who is looking out for other mothers and can thus be trusted (Braet, Reference Braet1992, p. 311). Lindal Buchanan (Reference Buchanan2013) argued that mothers deploy a “maternal ethos” that draws upon stereotypes and dominant assumptions about gender that can make women’s activism in public spaces more “familiar [and] reassuring” (p. 118). Appeals to motherhood’s credibility are persuasive in that they are “embedded within an overarching system of gender [and reflect] prevailing beliefs about sex and sexuality, femininity and masculinity, reproduction and children” as to be “instantly recognizable” (Buchanan, Reference Buchanan2013, p. 116). In other words, more complicated topics and intersections of values and ideas can be “flattened” or simplified through the motherhood identity (Buchanan, Reference Buchanan2013, p. 118).Footnote ¹⁰

Most mom groups did not differentiate roles within the identity of motherhood, but Science Moms (2025a) refer to themselves as a “group of scientists (who are also moms!).” This phrasing puts the scientist identity front and center on the home page with motherhood as a secondary unifying characteristic. This phrasing is echoed on Science Moms’ (2025c) “Who We Are” page, which calls its members a group of “climate scientists and mothers.” This discursive phrasing separates the two identities instead of viewing them as united (Milstein, Reference Milstein2011). Alternatively, moms who are not scientists are described by Science Moms (2025c) as “everyday moms” who “aren’t confident in their knowledge about climate change or how they can help.” Because the Science Moms (2025a) “have collectively spent decades studying our earth and what human activity is doing to it,” they are empowered to share that knowledge with everyday moms who, it is implied, do not have that expertise and experience. Science Moms present themselves as credible storytellers on the topic of climate change because they have scientific backgrounds and training, but may sideline other, nonexpert moms in the process.

This division also emerges on the Science Moms’ website, which describes how climate scientists and mothers act, where climate scientists “know” things, while mothers “care” about things. To compare, one Science Moms (2025a) testimonial notes, “As moms, we care about our children and the environment they grow up in,” and another states, “As a scientist, I know by the time she takes her first breath, 9 billion more tons of carbon pollution will be in the air” (emphasis added). Science Moms present the identities of “scientist” and “mom” as united under the moniker of Science Moms, but each identity comes with distinct characteristics in which only the scientist component of the identity is infused with credibility and expertise. The identity of “science mom,” therefore, is reserved for people who have formal scientific training and wish to help other moms to “demand climate change solutions” by “demystify[ing] climate science” for them (Science Moms, 2025c). Visitors to the website may not feel that they are invited to be part of the Science Moms (2025a) if they do not meet formal criteria of expertise but might instead identify with the position of “everyday moms” who can benefit from the expertise of others.

Other groups present mothers as expert storytellers without having formal scientific credibility by evoking motherhood as its own unique expertise. These advocates portray themselves as having access to a particular form of knowledge reserved just for mothers. These appeals to motherhood’s unique characteristics were especially apparent in anti-vaccination discourse. In episode 1 of A Shot in the Dark, Owens (Reference Owens2024) talks about how a parent’s “gut instinct when it comes to parenting is supreme. I think especially if you are a mom.” She refers to how “God has designed us [mothers] in a way where we are just so attached to our children” that mothers immediately and completely know what is best for them (Owens, Reference Owens2024). Faithful Free Momma similarly refers to a “mom gut” that told her “something was wrong” at her son’s pediatrician appointment (Injecting Truth, 2024b). For Faithful Free Momma, the mom gut communicates important information about their children’s health. She argued on her two duplicate accounts: “We are given instincts for a reason, when something feels off it’s probably because it is. Don’t let anyone try to convince you you’re not capable of making the best decisions for you [sic] children” (Injecting Truth, 2024b) and wished happy Mother’s Day “to the mothers who questioned the system and honored their instincts” (Injecting Truth, 2025d).

Researchers who have studied anti-vaccine rhetorics describe this type of motherhood as the “intuitive mother,” which places motherhood and medical expertise as oppositional ways of knowing about children’s well-being (Baker and Walsh, Reference Baker and Walsh2023). While this motherhood appeal was more common in vaccine skeptical discourse, climate change groups also refer to the unique capacities of mothers. Mountain Mamas (2023), for example, note how, “whether by nature or nurture, we are all women who feel called to be the caretakers of our places and our people,” indicating that some women, by virtue of being women, are inclined to caregiving.

Anti-vaccine mothers tend to eschew the need for formal credentials in order to make health decisions. In a post on January 26, 2025, Faithful Free Momma assures her followers that “you don’t need to be an expert to do your own research – just the ability to read and critically think.” She further defines “do your own research,” a common refrain in anti-vaccine mothers’ discourse (Carrion, Reference Carrion2017), as “reading package inserts,” “reading books,” “watching lectures,” “listening to podcast[s],” and “watching documentaries” (Injecting Truth, 2025a). Similarly, Owens (Reference Owens2024) describes the point of her podcast, A Shot in the Dark, as, “I’m on a journey to ask the questions that it feels like we’re not supposed to ask, to look at the data that we’re not meant to see. I mean I’m not an expert, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a scientist, but I am a mother” (Owens, Reference Owens2024).

Piper-Terry, of VaxTruth, also distinguishes her knowledge as a mother as superior to her prior experience in the medical field. Piper-Terry (Reference Piper-Terry2024b) has a master’s degree in psychology and was planning to pursue a PhD before abandoning additional schooling to stay at home with her child, who she believes is vaccine injured. Regarding her own credibility, she argues,

By asking questions and doing their own research, anti-vaccine mothers empower themselves to interpret information and go against scientific consensus and medical data. Although scientists are usually deemed the question-askers who engage in “organized skepticism” to test and verify new information (Merton, Reference Merton1973), science skeptics often flip this association, where scientists are the ones failing to ask questions or do further research (Ceccarelli, Reference Ceccarelli2011), leaving it to skeptics to pick up the perceived slack.

It is science skeptics, such as anti-vaccine mothers, who better embody practical judgment by performing their own “unbiased” research they accuse scientists of abandoning. In a previous paper, Denise Tillery and myself (Reference Tillery and Bloomfield2022) named these persuasive strategies as appeals to “hyperrationality,” where science skeptics position themselves as more rational, or based in evidence and critical thinking, than credentialed scientists. While the term was originally coined in reference to climate skeptics, vaccine skeptics also use this strategy to emphasize the credibility of mothers over medical experts who are perceived to be closed off from considering anti-vaccination arguments.

Anti-vaccine mothers claim that the Centers for Disease Control, medical elites, and the pharmaceutical industry have been influenced by money, which “corrupts” their ability and motivation to accurately interpret medical evidence (Cloud, Reference Cloud2020; Bloomfield et al., Reference Bloomfield, Tillery, O’Gwynn and Cloud2025). On Faithful Free Momma’s Instagram account, for example, she repeatedly writes the word “science” as “$cience,” stylized with a dollar sign instead of an “s” to highlight her accusations that scientists have “everything to profit” by providing vaccines to children (Injecting Truth, 2024a). Piper-Terry (Reference Piper-Terry2024b) repeats this financial influence by noting that “The CDC [Centers for Disease Control] makes a lot of money off of the sale of vaccines.” Piper-Terry (Reference Piper-Terry2024b) argues that motivation is an important part of trustworthiness: “When you are thinking about what sources to rely on, there are some things to consider, and bias is the first thing. Think about what someone has to gain from what they are saying. Parents who are posting about vaccine dangers are trying to prevent other parents from making the same errors in judgement that we have made.” As compared to medical experts, anti-vaccine mothers have “nothing to gain” from their advocacy (Injecting Truth, 2025b).

Anti-vaccine parents frame themselves as having pure and uncorrupted motives and are thus to be trusted to act in their audience’s best interest, embodying the quality of goodwill.

Mothers as storytellers value their children, their families’ health and well-being, and the ability to make choices they feel are best for their family. These values stem from their views of themselves as experts with unique knowledge that empowers them to look out for their family’s best interests, locating their content wedges on the micro-ring. Moms value their intuition and base their decisions on what they feel is the best scientific information (whether that aligns with mainstream scientific conclusions or not). Because climate moms center scientific accuracy and their own experiences, the storyteller wedge for their narratives can be mapped on the micro-ring. Similarly, the stories of anti-vaccine moms can also be mapped on the micro-ring of storyteller. While their lack of empirical evidence makes them less credible, the specificity of their identities as truth-tellers against corrupt forces crafts a persuasive and resonate, even if not scientifically accurate, storyteller.

Conclusion

To compare the narrative webs of climate moms and anti-vaccine moms, I use an exemplar group from each to highlight their similarities and differences (see Figures 2 and 3). The groups profiled here share the characters of mothers as empowered who take concrete actions to protect the co-agents of children. Because many of the groups are explicitly mother-focused groups or were started by mothers, it is no surprise that characters are a prominent part of the stories these groups tell. Unlike stories told by mainstream or official scientific institutions, which tend to downplay the role of characters performing actions (e.g., Ceccarelli, Reference Ceccarelli2018; Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024), these groups highlight characters as empowered heroes advocating for change. Mothers are described in the narratives as taking specific actions to advocate for their causes. From the more general advocacy of standing up for their values to the more specific actions of saving money from Science Moms or not vaccinating from VaxTruth, the characters in these stories have clear options, are empowered, and regularly act as individuals and as a collective. Based on the narratives that the mothers’ groups tell, the character and action wedges can generally be mapped on the micro-ring or meso-ring, depending on whether specific moms are profiled or mothers are treated as a collective.

Figure 2 Mothers Clean Air Force narrative web mapped with a meso-ring character wedge, a micro-ring action wedge, a macro-ring sequence wedge, a macro-ring scope wedge, a micro-ring storyteller wedge, and a micro-ring content wedge.

Figure 3 VaxTruth narrative web mapped with a micro-ring character wedge, a micro-ring action wedge, a micro-ring sequence wedge, a meso-ring scope wedge, a micro-ring storyteller wedge, and a micro-ring content wedge.

Some of the climate moms locate mothers’ actions as primarily based in the home, but the majority of the climate mom groups position mothers in public, political, and advocacy-based roles, indicative of appealing to motherhood as a rhetorical strategy to mobilize support (Hayden, Reference Hayden2003; Peeples and DeLuca, Reference Peeples and DeLuca2006). Anti-vaccine moms, conversely, rarely mentioned macro- or meso-ring scopes and instead focused on the micro-ring of family. Climate and anti-vaccine moms differ in their use of sequence. Climate moms focus more on the future (i.e., the macro-ring of sequence), while anti-vaccine moms emphasize the present and recent past (i.e., micro- and meso-ring of sequence).

While all the mom groups emphasize the unique power of moms as experts over their families, some groups differentiate mom expertise from formal scientific credibility, either to emphasize the credibility of science (e.g., Science Moms) or to downplay its role in familial decision-making (e.g., VaxTruth). The storytellers position themselves as caring about their audience, voicing their concerns, and embodying the quality of goodwill, which makes them trustworthy. While anti-vaccine moms focused on goodwill and care toward other parents making difficult decisions, climate moms emphasized the power of practical judgment (phronesis) and making decisions informed by science. The content of the stories is also immediately relevant and important to audiences in terms of children’s health and well-being.

Comparing various groups and profiles across the topics of climate change and vaccination shows prominent similarities, stemming from the shared focus on motherhood. These comparisons also reveal important differences in how motherhood is enacted and put into conversation with scientific information, other caregivers, potential actions, and relevant scopes of space and time. These similarities and differences provide potential insights into how the identity of motherhood can be mobilized through communication strategies to support science-based and science-informed parenting practices by starting from the common ground of a shared identity.

Narrative Webs

Narrative webs are most effective when they have at least two narrative wedges mapped on the micro-ring (Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024). Micro-ring placements give audiences something concrete to hold onto, while enabling variety in terms of meso-ring and macro-ring placements on the other wedges. Stories that are too abstract may be forgotten, ignored, or seen as irrelevant by audiences. Stories about motherhood, therefore, can provide a framework for telling compelling stories based on the presence of micro-ring, concrete characters, and micro-ring content tied to the value they place on children. Moving through all six narrative features provides insight into the potential effectiveness of motherhood-based storytelling.

Sequence and Scope Wedges

Mother-based advocacy groups differ in their use of sequence and scope across the topics of climate change and vaccination. Mothers who are climate advocates position the scope of where motherhood occurs as spanning micro-, meso-, and macro-rings; actions can be as narrow as changing out kitchen appliances and as broad as attending protests and signing federal petitions. For anti-vaccination mothers, their advocacy is far more limited to the private sphere of the household and rarely strays into the public sphere of political advocacy, occupying a micro-ring scope. In terms of sequence, both climate change and vaccination topics evoke concern for the here-and-now, but climate change emphasizes intergenerational arguments about future environmental conditions. A pattern thus emerges where climate change narratives have more variety in their sequence and scope, while vaccination narratives tend to focus more on the micro-ring. This pattern aligns with previous research on how science-based narratives are typically broader and more abstract than science’s rival stories of climate skepticism and anti-vaccination (Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024).

It is not inherently bad or ineffective for a story to have meso- and macro-ring sequences and scopes, but their presence may be alienating or confusing for audiences. Certainly, a narrative about a mother working to protect her own family in the present or recent past is simpler to understand than national or global scales of action that may extend many years into the future. To balance the broader sequences and scopes, narratives can emphasize specific characters, actions, storytellers, and content (i.e., map some of the other wedges on the micro-ring) to help ground the story. Storytellers can experiment with other rings, especially if the character of mother functions as an anchor on the micro-ring.

Instead of only mapping a wedge on a single ring, stories can incorporate what Elizabeth DeLoughrey (Reference DeLoughrey2019) calls “telescoping,” where a story operates through “multiscalar” recognition of broad, abstract spaces and more specific, localized places or across periods of time (p. 2). In her book, DeLoughrey (Reference DeLoughrey2019) demonstrates how allegorical narratives can help to localize the “abstraction [of climate change] at a global scale” while still retaining both scales (p. 3). The idea of telescoping shares some qualities with Traditional Ecological Knowledges regarding “Seven Generation Thinking,” which is an Indigenous philosophy that one should keep the next seven generations in mind when moving through and interacting within the world (e.g., Fish et al., Reference Fish, Squires, Petroske, Dawson and Brewer2023; Kaagegaabaw, Reference Kaagegaabaw2023; Wildcat, Reference Wildcat2023).Footnote ¹¹ This philosophy has been applied to ecological thinking and various disciplines of science due to its relevance to sustaining a flourishing planet and population by considering future generations’ well-being.

When telescoping into the future, storytellers can use specific people in the present to ground the story, thereby employing a micro-ring and macro-ring scope in the same narrative (see Figure 4). Climate mom narratives place the local, mundane actions of cleaning laundry or cooking dinner into a larger framework of political advocacy, which “telescopes” between the micro-ring and macro-ring spatial scopes. For example, the testimonial videos on the Science Moms website contain micro-ring scopes in sharing concerns about their children’s well-being. At the same time, the testimonials address planet-level changes to the environment. The goal, therefore, is not to shrink climate change to only being a concern at the individual level, but to ground the story in specific experiences for audiences to relate to and identify with before increasing the story’s circumference. Giving audiences smaller, more concrete ways to get involved (e.g., switching from gas to electric stoves) can create comfort for some, while pairing those actions with broader invitations to activism (e.g., attending a protest) can engage those more comfortable acting within larger scopes.

Figure 4 An example of a map that shows telescoping between the micro-ring and macro-ring on the scope wedge.

Because anti-vaccination stories told by mothers tend to operate at the micro-rings of scope and sequence, it may be helpful to mirror that narrative form in promoting vaccination. For example, vaccination discourses can shift from being focused on “the greater good” and “herd immunity” to emphasizing protection for individual children and families. Vaccination stories tend to focus on anecdotes of purported vaccine-injured children (Shelby and Ernst, Reference Shelby and Ernst2013), so matching those with alternative testimonials and stories can work to counteract their potency.

One way of telescoping within vaccination stories would be to follow the lineage of a particular family, thereby expanding the temporal scope while still grounding the discussion in the lives of specific people. For example, someone could share a story of a family where a grandparent contracted polio, leading to the importance of parents vaccinating their children against it today. A vaccination story could look from the present to the future, noting how vaccinating children today means they will have a better chance to grow up and have children of their own, who, we hope, will have fewer diseases to navigate if we can functionally eliminate them through vaccination (Makati Medical Center, 2021).

Narrative-Based Strategies for Parents and Caregivers

I hope to raise a child who has positive associations and experiences with scientific topics, so I am personally and professionally invested in examining strategies and resources to make those conversations simple, fun, and lifelong. Stories are a productive tool for parents and caregivers to begin connecting children to these important topics, because they foster imagination, transfer knowledge, and help the mind grow and develop (e.g., Mackenzie, Reference Mackenzie1989; Quintero, Reference Quintero2010). Children already regularly receive information in narrative forms, so it is likely that stories will also be effective vehicles for their engagement with scientific topics (e.g., Martin and Miller, Reference Martin and Miller1988; Banister and Ryan, Reference Banister and Ryan2001). Similar to how I have argued for the value of storytelling in science communication among adults, I also propose storytelling strategies for engaging children and young adults in scientific topics. In addition to existing resources available for helping children understand topics like climate change (e.g., Shugarman, Reference Shugarman2020), I offer two narrative strategies of science-based media and experiential activities to help children engage with scientific topics.

Other Scientific Topics

One of the narrative wedges is content, which relates to the topics captured within the purview of the story, including any scientific information, facts, statistics, and values. A story’s content may even incorporate the presence of rival stories, which serves to acknowledge how some scientific topics, such as climate change and vaccination, are controversial. It is important to note that these topics are controversial not because there is confusion among experts as to climate change’s existence, cause, and severity or as to vaccination’s safety and effectiveness, but because there is public concern and opposition to scientific conclusions on these topics. Concern and opposition are, in part, understandable, as mothers balance an enormity of competing values and information, coupled with echo chambers and a plethora of less-than-credible storytellers offering promising alternatives (Bloomfield, Reference Bloomfield2024).

While this Element has focused on climate change and vaccines as incredibly important and controversial scientific topics, there are many other scientific topics that caregivers, such as mothers, must navigate. Similar to climate change and vaccination, scientific controversies often focus on content that is most pressing to the health and well-being of children and families. There are many additional scientific topics that could be given full-length treatment, but I briefly summarize two here that are also pressing concerns for contemporary mothers. Grouped loosely under what I call “crunchy mom issues,” I address two current controversies over sunscreen and fluoride.

After I gave birth to my son, I searched online for “mom groups” that I thought would provide support to me as a first-time mom. Many of the names included terms such as “crunchy” to indicate a general approach to mothering that is skeptical of perceived elite scientific and medical knowledge (Saikiran et al., Reference Saikiran, Nuvvula and Challa2021). While “crunchy” has been used in the past as a term to describe a more liberal, “hippie” lifestyle, the term can now refer to more conservative-oriented mothers who avoid processed foods, vaccines, hospital births, and formal schooling in favor of homecooked meals, holistic remedies, home births, and homeschooling. These mothers may encourage other parents to avoid pediatrician offices or provide scripts to help them skirt medical interventions or school vaccine mandates (Bloomfield and Willes, Reference Bloomfield and Willes2024). “Crunchy mom issues” is thus my catchall phrase for current parenting practices that reject substances and practices that are perceived as harmful or toxic because they are not “natural.”

In these groups, the term “crunchy” is sometimes paired with the term “silky” to refer to parenting that is easier and smoother, such as allowing children screen time and fast food (on occasion). A parenting style that combines features of crunchy and silky practices is referred to as “scrunchy” parenting (Saikiran et al., Reference Saikiran, Nuvvula and Challa2021). Instead of crunchy referring to granola, vegetables, and other crunchy foods associated with more liberal, eco-conscious people, crunchy now indicates an approach to parenting that is more difficult or full of obstacles. Conversely, a silky parenting style takes advantage of convenient, modern products and tends to follow “the advice of established medical authorities” (Saikiran et al., Reference Saikiran, Nuvvula and Challa2021, p. 16). In this sense, the crunchy label has shifted from more liberal politics to conservative ones that share a “distrust of the government and yearn[] to escape conventional society” (Jerina, Reference Jerina2024). Consider, for example, the Facebook groups called “Caffeinated Crunchy Christian Moms,” “Sort of Crunchy: MAGA [Make America Great Again] Moms,” and “MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] Scrunchy Moms (uncensored),” which emphasize conservative political and religious values through the crunchy/scrunchy identity. Less important than the specific political and religious affiliation is the likelihood that such affiliated groups may challenge accepted scientific knowledge and spread scientific misinformation.

Crunchy moms may eschew the use of sunscreen, following the naturalistic fallacy that human-made sun protection is harmful or unnecessary because it is not natural. Controversies over sunscreen largely emerge from health-based social media influencers, who either propose no sun protection at all or far less effective alternatives such as coconut oil. Sunscreen is one of the best tools to prevent skin cancer by protecting the skin from the sun’s harmful UV radiation. Some social media influencers, however, are encouraging their followers to “stop wearing sunscreen” because they falsely say that “the sun does not cause skin cancer” (as quoted in LaMotte, Reference LaMotte2024). These influencers encourage time in the sun with no skin protection, pointing to the benefits of sun exposure and the purportedly toxic ingredients within sunscreens. Scientific research consistently demonstrates that skin cancer is incredibly dangerous, is caused by sun exposure, and can be limited through wearing sunscreen and other protective measures such as wearing long-sleeved clothing and hats (Pikul, Reference Pikul2025). However, worrisome findings that some sunscreen ingredients can be absorbed into the bloodstream have increased fears that all sunscreen should be avoided (LaMotte, Reference LaMotte2020).

This controversy is incredibly important for parents who are deciding whether or not to apply sunscreen to their children, what type of sunscreen, and how frequently. Instead of abandoning sunscreen altogether, which can put one’s child at risk of increased sun exposure, caregivers can opt for mineral-based sunscreens (e.g., those that use zinc oxide), which avoid ingredients still undergoing safety studies, such as oxybenzone (LaMotte, Reference LaMotte2020). When discussing this controversy, people should be careful not to dismiss caregivers’ concerns about their children’s health and safety. Instead, those values can be appealed to by highlighting how the sun is a “known carcinogen” backed up by decades of research (Pikul, Reference Pikul2025). Additionally, people can share stories of those who have developed cancer from outdoor exposure or tanning beds. Offering mineral sunscreens and those specifically tested for children’s safety can be a way to transform a caregiver’s worries into science-based decision-making.

Controversy over fluoride has a long history since its introduction into the United States’s drinking water in the 1940s. Initial opposition to fluoride emerged from people who were passionate about the perceived threat to children’s health (Johnson, Reference Johnson2016). As is true of the cyclical nature of many scientific controversies (Goodnight, Reference Goodnight2005), concerns over fluoride have recently resurfaced as part of the MAHA movement that argues that fluoridated public drinking water poses “unreasonable risk” (Borst and Wittenberg, Reference Borst and Wittenberg2025). Some studies provide evidence that overconsumption of fluoride can cause health issues such as tooth damage (through fluorosis) and drops in intelligence (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2025). Importantly, these studies measure fluoride consumption well above what is considered acceptable or safe in the United States, making them weak comparisons for potential risks of fluoride intake in public drinking water (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2025).Footnote ¹³ While many people can be exposed to enough fluoride for healthy teeth through dentist visits and toothpaste, many low-income communities that do not have regular dental care or consistent access to toothpaste rely on public water fluoridation to protect their teeth, making public water fluoridation one of the “most effective and safest public health interventions ever introduced” in the United States (Schwarcz, Reference Schwarcz2024).

Due to its association with the MAHA movement, addressing the fluoride topic may be particularly fraught with political biases and loyalties. When having conversations about such topics, people should be careful to approach the topic not from a place of politics but a place of shared values and concerns. Connecting through content can help to shift the conversation away from an “us vs. them” polarized mentality to what is best for the children involved. Including stories such as personal experiences, podcast interviews with experts, or news stories can help to make a weighty scientific topic more accessible and tangible. When I took my son to his first dentist’s appointment, she immediately asked if we were using fluoride toothpaste to brush his teeth at night. When I said that we were using a toothpaste we got as a baby shower gift, she encouraged me to check whether it was fluoridated or not, because she could already see that his eight teeth were showing some early signs of damage. Sure enough, when I rushed home to check I saw that the tube we had been using since his bottom two center teeth emerged was emblazoned with an “all-natural” label on the front, which the back panel clarified meant fluoride-free. Now, we have been using a fluoridated toothpaste and the dentist notes that the damage is all but gone. Sharing these experiences or helping others to parse information about fluoride can help support healthy decisions for their family.

Other scientific topics may use similar strategies to tell engaging stories, emphasize the value of children’s health, and work to pair parenthos with traditional scientific credibility. With a world of information online and increasing feelings of precarity in a changing, postmodern world, we may sympathize with caregivers who are uncertain about which actions are best for their families. Instead of denigrating or patronizing them for inaction, it is important to recognize the competing forces, rival stories, and overwhelm of information that is incredibly difficult for us all to sift through. Ultimately, I hope that the power of storytelling and fostering identification can help uncertain or skeptical parents see their identity as caregivers as aligned with scientific information for the benefit of their children, the planet, and our collective future.

Conclusion

This section offered communication strategies for science-based storytelling to connect with particular identities, primarily mothers and other caregivers. In addition to strategies for strengthening the stories of climate change and vaccination based on the narrative web framework, the section also provided suggestions for parents and caregivers on how to communicate scientific information to current and future generations. Scientific topics such as climate change and vaccination are oftentimes difficult to broach with friends and family, let alone children who may not have the appropriate level of education or understanding to fully grasp their implications.

And yet, we must talk about these topics to our children – the next generation in whom we promote care for the Earth, more-than-human others, ourselves, and one another. Open communication is a key factor in people’s knowledge and concern about science, because hearing about it early and often is an important way to counteract misinformation and apathy. For the topic of climate change in particular, giving children time in nature, prompting human–animal interactions, and fostering extra-educational experiences are important to cultivating eco-awareness (e.g., Milstein et al., Reference Milstein, Alhinai and Castro-Sotomayor2017; Marras Tate, Reference Marras Tate2023; Milstein, Reference Milstein2024). For vaccination, teaching children about health should encompass regular doctor’s checkups and following vaccination schedules in addition to information about nutrition, exercise, and sexual health, which are typically regular parts of school curricula.

There are many other scientific topics that mothers must navigate in raising children, especially in a modern society that, in providing the luxury of many options, can also produce overwhelm and uncertainty. The good news is that many choices have relatively minor consequences and come down to personal preference, assuming one has a choice between these options as opposed to having bodily, financial, or other restrictions. For example, parents must decide whether one wants to breastfeed, use formula, or combo-feed (Castillo-Hegyi and Segrave-Daly, Reference Castillo-Hegyi and Segrave-Daly2024); how much screentime children should get; and whether one wants to enroll in public, private, or homeschool. Other decisions are much more immediately impactful to personal and public health, such as whether to vaccinate, wear sunscreen, or attend pediatrician well-child visits. Other decisions have longer-term and far-reaching impacts, such as whether we raise environmentally conscious future adults who will take personal, collective, and political action to protect our planet.

The stories we tell are important because they reflect ourselves – what we value, what we hope our audience will care about, and what we view as appropriate and achievable actions. They are also important because of who is listening. Our audience is affected by us and shape their attitudes in keeping. This is especially meaningful for audiences over whom we have some semblance of influence, such as children. The power of mothers, parents, stewards, guardians, othermothers, and caregivers must be valued and respected in alignment with and as a part of medical and environmental knowledges. Together, we can foster an interest in and care for scientific topics to ensure a healthy planet and society for future generations through the power of identity and story.