We began by creating a list of the most popular fictional moms, using several articles (MassLive1, The A.V. Club2, BuzzFeed3, HowToWatch4) as inspiration in creating a list of 51 moms to include in our study. We then used Google Trends data from January 2017 to January 2022 to see which mom is the most searched for in each state.
While there were plenty of moms that pretty much everyone is familiar with, like your Marge Simpsons or your Wilma Flintstones, some less-famous fictional moms made the cut too! Take for instance Debbie Eagan, Michigan’s most popular fictional mom. Mrs. Eagan is from the 2017 Netflix original series GLOW that looks into the world of women’s wrestling in the 1980s. Another is Ellaria Sand, the favorite fictional mom of Montana and a character from HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones that isn’t Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, or Olenna Tyrell (all of whom made the cut as well!).
Our list was dominated by television moms, but movies managed to earn one victory thanks to Alaska’s love of Elastagirl, one of the characters from the 2004 Pixar hit The Incredibles. There was also a book mom (Molly Weasly from the Harry Potter books, South Carolina + Mississippi) and a musical mom (Donna Sheridan from the Mamma Mia musical, Utah). Though if we’re sticking to the base material, Kentucky’s most popular fictional mom, Little House on the Prairie character Caroline Ingalls, and all four Game of Thrones moms we mentioned previously should also be considered book characters as well as TV characters.
Modern Family’s Claire Dunphy being the most popular mom in Iowa and Nebraska was enough to net her the title of “Most Popular Fictional Mom in the Midwest.” This is a bit ironic considering the show is based around three California families, but considering the show’s national popularity over the 2010s, it’s not exactly a surprising result.
Maine and Vermont have Family Guy’s Lois Griffin as their most popular fictional mom which makes her the winner of the northeast. Unlike Claire Dunphy and the midwest, this one makes perfect sense as Family Guy is actually set in Rhode Island.
The south was a tie between Harry Potter’s Molly Weasly (South Carolina, Mississippi) and Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targaryen (Virginia, Florida), but the west belonged solely to the Mother of Dragons. Daenerys is actually very popular out west, winning Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington, but can we be 100% sure that people weren’t just really worked up about that series finale in 2019? No, no we cannot.
It probably comes as no surprise at this point, but our overall most popular fictional mom is… Daenerys Targaryen! And it wasn’t even close. Placing first in nine states, after Daenerys there’s an eight-way tie for second place consisting of moms that won just two states each.
Some of these second-place moms are moms we mentioned earlier, like Family Guy’s Lois Griffin, Modern Family’s Claire Dunphy, and Harry Potter’s Molly Weasly, but there’s also Grey’s Anatomy’s Meredith Grey (New Hampshire, Arkansas), I Love Lucy’s Lucy Ricardo (Alabama, Missouri), The Simpsons’ Marge Simpson (New Mexico, Minnesota), Black-ish’s Rainbow Johnson (North Carolina, Wisconsin), and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Miriam “Midge” Maisel (California, Ohio).
While you might not have magical powers like Molly Weasly or the ability to control dragons like Daenerys, if you’re a mother to a little one, there’s a good chance you’re making magic happen and controlling something wilder than a dragon every day. Let Chicco make things easier on you with everything from hybrid baby bottles to convertible car seats.