Mothers. We can’t always live with them, but you can’t live without them. We don’t always want to hear their advice, and their insatiable craving for hugs can sometimes get on our nerves. But one woman has set out to capitalize on this precarious relationship between a mother and her child, putting a potential wedge between them.

Nina Keneally, mother of two from New York City, recently developed a service known as Need a Mom, which bears the slogan, “When you need a mom, just not your mom.”  

The idea of the service came to Keneally when she noticed young adults approaching her when she was in yoga class or cafés. The millennials would strike up conversations with her, and, after listening, she would provide her best motherly advice. Unfortunately, Keneally soon realized that instead of giving free advice she could capitalize on her maternal skills, almost taking advantage of struggling young adults. 

Keneally’s service is targeting our generation, people in their 20s and 30s. She provides numerous services for individuals who hire her, including advice or help cooking, and she will even buy, wrap and ship a present to your real mother for you. She will do all of this for the “low” price of $40 per hour. She is of course willing to “consider” a sliding scale for people who can’t quite afford her steep prices but still need help navigating adulthood.

While I could see this service being beneficial to kids growing up without a mother figure, it is not the best option for young adults with access to their real mothers. The business practice undermines a child’s relationship with his or her true parent.

Jane Adams, social psychologist, discussed Keneally’s new business with Yahoo Parenting. While Adams acknowledged that while most children experience a mismatch in understanding with their parents, as well as parental narcissism, when a mother views her child as an extension as herself, early adulthood is the best time to patch the mother-child relationship. She stated that adults’ early 20s are the years that determine their future relationship with their mothers.

While renting a mom could be great for early adults who cannot get in contact with their mother, it also has the potential to compromise standing family relationships as millennials can choose a stranger for advice and nurturing over their own mother.

Keneally’s business seems to contradict everything it is trying to promote. Need a Mom’s home page states that Nina’s practice will avoid questioning a client’s lifestyle choices and being judgmental.

However, Keneally said in an interview with Today.com about screening prospective clients: “I’m pretty good at picking out the weirdos.” This statement contradicts her message of being an anti-judgmental mother who will offer loving advice, as she will decline to take people on as clients for being “weirdos.” 

Along with the previous contradiction, the business as a whole seems to step on the toes of the all-important mother-child relationship. A mother’s role is to nurture her child, providing advice and help when it is needed. Keneally is marketing herself as a mother at the expense of young adults in need of real help.

When Keneally found out she provided good advice to younger friends in yoga class or her neighbors she chose to charge extraordinarily high prices to continue doing so rather than listening out of kindness.

A relationship with a mother is something that cannot be bought or sold. Despite the differences between most moms and their children, there is a bond that cannot be replaced by any stranger, no matter how good that stranger thinks she is at giving advice. Most importantly, maternal advice is something that needs to come from a loving heart and not from the drive for a paycheck.