After a handful of California-based family influencers announced they were ditching the Golden State for Tennessee, other folks on the internet shared a theory: What if the reason they were leaving was because of a new child-labor law that requires parents to put a percentage of their earnings into a trust? “If you’re wondering why your favorite family vloggers are all moving from California to Tennessee, I will tell you why,” says one TikToker in a video that has nearly 9 million views. The first reason, she suggests, is that they’re conservative Republicans and some viewers are just now realizing it. The second is the new law. Other videos followed suit, blaming the lavish lifestyles of influencers on the money they’ve supposedly been withholding from their children, who feature prominently in their videos but whose compensation (or consent to participate) is unclear. It’s more than likely, however, that something else entirely is going on. But first, a primer.
I don’t have a “favorite family vlogger,” and probably couldn’t even name one. Who are these people?
Even if you’re not on the Christian-family-vlogger side of the internet, there’s still a decent chance you’re familiar with the LaBrant family (YouTube subscriber count: 12.8 million), which includes Cole, a former Vine influencer; Savannah, mother of Everleigh; and their four shared children, Posie, Zealand, Sunday, and Beckham Blue. In 2023, they announced they’d be moving to Tennessee because “we truly feel like this is where God is calling our family.” 2023 was also the year that Cecily Bauchmann (TikTok following: 2 million) moved with her family to Tennessee, where she posts videos about life as a mom of four and wife to a pastor-podcaster.
The move that seems to have kickstarted the current round of discourse, however, is that of momfluencer Brittany Xavier (5 million on TikTok), who left California for a 20-acre property in Tennessee earlier this year after allegedly finding mold in her L.A. rental home.
What’s this law about?
Said law (which is technically two laws, SB 764 and AB 1880), was signed last September by Governor Gavin Newsom, who happened to be joined by Demi Lovato. Senate Bill 764 mandates that parents of children shown in at least 30 percent of monetized online content set aside the same proportion of the earnings into a trust until the child turns 18. Together, these bills are expansions of the Coogan Law, the 1939 ruling that requires child actors’ employers to keep 15 percent of their earnings into a trust. Illinois and Minnesota already have versions of this law on the books, while several other states have introduced similar ones.
But like a lot of legislation around the internet and influencing, it was created by lawmakers who have little understanding of how the industry actually works. As Taylor Lorenz notes in her Substack, User Mag, the bill doesn’t apply to how most creators make their money, which is via long-term brand partnerships. Instead, it applies only to the money directly made from the platform, like YouTube’s AdSense, which is where a small percentage of influencer revenue typically comes from. Plus, Lorenz points out, it’s largely unenforceable.
What have the influencers said?
Naturally, none of the three families accused of moving across the country to avoid paying their children have admitted to … moving across the country to avoid paying their children. The LaBrants and the Bauchmanns, for instance, moved before the laws were even introduced. Sheri LaBrant, mother of Cole, told Rolling Stone that they moved to be closer to family, because Tennessee doesn’t have a state income tax, and because it “aligns more with their conservative values compared to California.” A Bauchmann representative told the magazine that “This decision was personal, focused on strengthening family ties and supporting her husband’s career, and was not related to any legislative changes in California.” Both said the families in question supported the law.
Xavier, who has been bearing the brunt of the criticism, posted a video explaining that originally, her plan was to move to Tennessee in June after her 18-year-old daughter, Jadyn, graduated high school, but after she discovered mold in her rental home at the end of January, and with the L.A. fires causing a rental shortage, the family decided to move sooner. Jadyn, she said, would be staying with a friend while she finishes out her senior year. “We wanted land, we wanted a slower pace of life, we have friends here, and it’s a really good sense of community,” she says, while also mentioning the “amazing climate for farming, which is what we ultimately want to do.” Xavier adds that “the assumption that we moved to avoid paying our children is so laughable, considering how many times we’ve talked about financial planning and investing … for our children’s future.” The video, however, may have had the opposite effect: Nearly all the top comments are accusing her of abandoning her daughter, saying she’s using the mold as an excuse, describing her as a fraud, and criticizing her conservative values.
What’s actually going on?
What’s more likely happening here is the same thing that’s happening with Republican-leaning people all over the country: People are moving out of blue states with high taxes into red ones with lower taxes. Much like how a big chunk of the tech industry moved operations to Austin, Texas, a segment of the media and entertainment industries (the Daily Wire, for instance) is flocking to Nashville, which the Times called “Hollywood for Conservatives.” They want cheap land, they want “Christian values,” and they want a like-minded community.
The other part of this is that hatred of these types of influencers is at a fever pitch right now. We’re fresh off the release of two huge documentaries about family vlogging gone wrong, the first being an HBO series about the Stauffers, who “rehomed” their adopted son, and the second a Hulu documentary about Ruby Franke, the Mormon family vlogger who is currently serving a maximum 30-year prison sentence for felony child abuse. All three of the influencer families who moved from California to Tennessee have had their own brushes with controversy; the LaBrants, for instance, once released a YouTube “documentary” that compared the number of abortions in the U.S. to the number of people who died in the Holocaust and the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides.
People are hungry to demonize influencers who share their families on-camera not just because they’re conservative but because the idea of “monetizing one’s children” feels icky in a way that monetizing oneself doesn’t. There’s also the fact that the country is in the middle of a major crisis over what counts as “family values.” These influencers are often emblematic of the white Christian tradwives who preach subservience to their husbands and homeschooling for their kids while rights for Americans who don’t conform are being stripped away.
“Can 2025 be the year that we finally stop celebrating the exploitation of children, and especially stop celebrating family vloggers?” one TikToker pleaded. It might not be thanks to the California law, but either way, it seems like plenty of people are ready and willing to do so.