Working Moms in Real Life Vs. Working Moms on TV
Even shows that aim to empower working moms still get so much wrong
TV is not real life — I get it. Most of my days would not make for particularly compelling television.
I doubt anyone wants to watch me comb my daughter’s hair, smile through Zoom meetings, make dentist appointments, fish spoons out of the garbage disposal, or bark at my kids to please, for the love of God, put away their shoes and hang up their jackets.
When I sit down with my partner and a glass of wine for my 30 minutes of “relaxing time,” I don’t necessarily want to watch a woman in sweatpants marching around a house that looks like it’s retching Legos and rice cake crumbs doing all of the decidedly unglamorous tasks that consumed my day.
The whole point of TV, as I understand it, is to temporarily remove yourself from your own reality and get caught up in someone else’s drama.
Admittedly, I’m no TV buff — I was allowed to watch two shows growing up: The Cosby Show and whatever came on after it (first Family Ties, then A Different World). I now allow myself a few shows a week, but I’m usually late to the party — by way of example, my partner and I just finished The Good Wife.
My repertoire might be limited, but I do tend toward shows that feature parents, and particularly shows in which mothers are central characters, not just superficial sidekicks.
And here’s what I find time and time again: Even shows that explicitly aim to portray the struggles of modern parenthood, like Workin’ Moms and the aptly named Parenthood still fail — grossly fail — to validate my daily challenges. Not just mine, but millions of real-life moms and dads who are workin’ both inside and outside the home.
Exaggerated TV drama is one thing, but widely perpetuated false narratives about the realities of working motherhood are quite another. Take these all-too-common TV scenarios:
1. Parents have time to make breakfast
The “harried morning scene” is a TV classic — Dad stumbling down the stairs while buttoning his shirt, Mom frantically pulling a sweater over a child’s head, a teen hovering over the kitchen counter while gulping orange juice. But somehow, inexplicably, someone (usually the mother) has always found the time to fry bacon and make pancakes. On a Wednesday.
The notion of “time” in so many TV shows is elastic, seeming to stretch whenever it’s needed to support the narrative, or sometimes for no reason at all. Even as shows attempt to capture the frantic schedules of modern parents, TV families still manage to consume hot food and speak in full sentences before 7:30 a.m.
Why? Why does TV insist on clinging to this 1950s notion of breakfast as a sit-down family meal when most working families are inhaling granola bars and Go-Gurts en route to work and school?
2. Parents are rarely cleaning, and yet their houses are always clean
Not only does someone have to fry bacon on Wednesday morning, but they (usually she) also has time to clean it up. At least, we assume so because the house is always clean when everyone gets home at the end of the day.
By clean, I mean not just tidy, but immaculate. Not a stray speck of dust to be inhaled.
When a house on TV is “messy,” it means a few items are strewn around an otherwise spotless living room, or that dirty dishes are littered across an otherwise gleaming countertop.
No matter how many times I tell myself, “It’s just TV,” I often catch myself gazing wistfully at the shiny uncluttered expanses and feeling ashamed of my home by comparison. Maybe no one wants to watch a narrative unfold against a backdrop of utter chaos, but these pristine houses aren’t just eye-roll-worthy — they’re actively demoralizing. They fail to acknowledge how much it actually takes to work a job and keep a house in order while raising a family.
My childhood “TV mom” Claire Huxtable made it look effortless.
Of course, I know that in real life, working parents with such rigorous standards of cleanliness would have to hire a housekeeper. And yet, we rarely see housekeepers on TV. On shows about the rich, “the help” sometimes plays a minor background role, mostly to reinforce the wealth of our “heroes,” but the working assumption for middle-class TV families is that they are doing it all themselves.
By not acknowledging the poorly paid workers who enable our middle-class protagonists to pursue careers, have brunch with friends, and become embroiled in entertaining dramas, TV shows perpetuate the invisibility of the “underclass” and the persistent devaluation of their work.
Of course, most of these workers are women. We can’t empower middle-class women by rendering low-income women invisible.
3. Childcare providers are rarely accounted for
And speaking of invisible low-income women, don’t even get me started on childcare providers. I can’t count how many times I’ve turned to my partner and asked him, “Where the hell are the kids?” Not our kids, of course — they’re sleeping in the next room. But this couple on TV has three small children who are currently unaccounted for, and the couple seems entirely unfazed.
The truth is, TV shows don’t have the time or inclination to show the multiple hours of drudge work it takes for couples to find the childcare they need to do anything without their kids. Occasionally some words are exchanged on the matter and occasionally a babysitter or a nanny makes a brief appearance. (Somehow, middle-class TV families are always able to afford nannies.)
But more often than not, the childcare logistics that took up most of my brain space for the better part of 10 years go entirely unacknowledged. And the childcare providers who comprise the backbone of our economy are nowhere to be seen.
One of the worst offenders in this regard was The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a show I really wanted to like. While some shows get around The Childcare Question by portraying families with older children, Miriam Maisel’s children are both under the age of four, and yet are conspicuously absent from her life.
Some accuse Miriam of being a “bad mom” because she’s not focused on her children. That’s not what I’m getting at. If anything, I’m jealous of Miriam’s freedom, and her magical ability to raise small children, work a day job, work a night job, exercise with friends, and look forever dewy-skinned and fresh-eyed.
The problem here has nothing to do with whether she’s a “good” or “bad” mom. The problem is that even with the luxury of a full-time housekeeper/nanny and the support of her nearby parents, what Miriam Maisel does is completely impossible.
Please don’t show us the impossible in the name of empowerment.
4. Moms have friends
OK, I’m a mom, and I’m not entirely friendless. But moms on TV sure spend a lot of time with their friends. (That is, if moms are even central enough to the narrative to merit a sidekick or two.) Working moms not only somehow find the time to have brunch with their friends on a Tuesday, but they have the emotional energy to become embroiled in Friend Drama — the kind I used to have back in high school.
What shows like Workin’ Moms fail to capture is the isolation endemic to modern parenthood. Somehow these women are constantly showing up for each other, whereas for most of us, a single night out every few months is preceded by an exhausting flurry of text messages. For the last decade, the vast majority of my mom friend time has been spent in the company of our children. We do not get into the intricate details of our lives because we are rarely able to complete a full sentence without interruption.
On TV, the children are either unaccounted for (see item 3) or make brief adorable appearances before obediently skittering off to another room.
5. Moms get awesome jobs after being out of the workforce for years
Parenthood had some great moments. It was the first time I saw a breast pump on TV, and when Kristina had her unplanned third baby, the show expertly captured her first few days of utter exhaustion. But then the plotline started to unravel. After years out of the workforce, a job more or less fell into Kristina’s lap and the baby more or less disappeared. When Kristina was at home, the baby made brief appearances, but usually seemed to be in the other room, where she was suspiciously quiet.
Not only does Kristina rock her job, but she then decides to run for mayor, and when that fails, she casually and almost singlehandedly opens a school. (Incidentally, the school is as beautiful and immaculate as her home.)
In The Good Wife, Alicia Florrick painlessly nabs a position at one of Chicago’s most prestigious law firms after 15+ years as a stay-at-home mom. Sure, she’s only a junior associate, and sure, she knows one of the partners, and sure, her husband was Attorney General. But still.
In the real world, it’s a Huge Problem that parents, and mothers in particular, cannot take breaks to focus on their families and expect to find any semblance of a career waiting for them on the other side.
A friend of mine who has a nursing degree spent many months desperately searching for a job after 18 years of being a good Christian homemaker, mother, and wife. She finally found a front desk admin job — and felt lucky. Three years and a divorce later, she scarcely makes enough money to cover her monthly bills. (Incidentally, we have never, not once, met up for brunch on a Tuesday.)
I’m glad to see women on TV running for mayor and rocking it at law firms, but not when they promote a false narrative that the working world will embrace women who have taken time to focus on their families over their careers.
At the end of the day, I just have to believe that there’s a way to make great TV while portraying the real challenges that afflict so many of us.
And come to think of it, while the daily minutiae of my life may not be particularly compelling, I have plenty of real-life drama that would offer a much more accurate, but still gripping portrayal, of life as a working mom.
I’m picturing a “Getting it Done” scene against upbeat music wherein I visit 10 different childcare centers but end up getting nothing done because they all have year-long waitlists. Or dramatic fight scenes depicting my ongoing struggles to explain emotional labor to my husband. Or epic battle scenes as I attempt to slay the credit card debt accumulated during two unpaid maternity leaves.
What about the time I was so sleep-deprived I took a nap behind the wheel and almost killed my entire family? Or that time I had to bail my Black husband out of jail and then spent my life savings fighting fabricated felony charges? Or the adventures I had biking my toddler 12 miles in the rain and dark to get her to and from daycare? Or the time I completely lost my shit when my daughter threw a tantrum at The National Sanctuary of our Sorrowful Mother in front of a bunch of nuns? Or the note my child wrote to Santa asking for peach skin and freckles?
There’s a whole lot more where that came from.
TV producers, I shall await your call.