I personally know >1 "moms" who have joined and are actively participating. I didn't push them to it, but I mentioned it and they decided on their own to sign up (my interest is more in seeing whether they are interested than trying to sell it). Many more are apparent on the site.

The voting circle jerk as you put it may put them off and cause them to lose interesting, but my bet would be on bad hosting and the limited feature set being bigger issues.