One Day at a Time
It’s Emmy preview time and the Hollywood Reporter published a piece The Rise of the TV’s ‘Anti-Moms’ about the types of moms on TV today. Not surprisingly they run the gamut from hapless to neurotic to cruel to superhuman. The crazy, funny truth about moms on TV today is that they are much better at reflecting real life because there are actually so many more moms writing and working on these shows. No more picture perfect moms like Leave it to Beaver time. No more Ma Ingalls. But the moms of my childhood that I remember most were the moms working and struggling to make their families successful whether they were single moms or a part of a couple. The moms I remember most and best are: Alice; Kate and Allie; Florida on Good Times; Elise Keaton on Family Ties, Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show and Ann Romano on One Day at a Time. (I know there are so many more. Who are your favorite TV moms?)
But no one would have ever have called those women anti-moms? And seriously, what the hell is an anti-mom? All these women love and take care of their kids in a variety of ways like what happens off TV. Does putting a ridiculous and sexist term term out there help move the conversation forward in any proactive way?
According to the piece you are an anti-mom if you are a mom who struggles day to day and occasionally loses it with your kids, your husband (or lover), friends or co-workers. Is there any woman in life who hasn’t done one or all of those things? Why does being real make a woman an anti-mom?
Is an anti-mom a code word for bitch? Or crazy? Or self-absorbed? Rachel Griffiths who plays mom Sarah Walker on Brothers and Sisters asks:
I’m like, ‘Really? Am I playing a bitch?’ ” she says. “God, if I’m playing a bitch, I guess we’re all a bunch of bitches because our lives are pretty loaded and it’s a struggle and there’s certainly often not the time and grace to plaster the smile back on our faces and straighten out the apron.
Why couldn’t the piece have been called something else? And by the way have you seen the new anti-dads? Doubt it. I guarantee no one would ever come up with that headline for a story.
The Rise of TV’s Anti-Mom (Hollywood Reporter)
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
My mom is a lot like the mom from Malcolm in the Middle. She’s awesome. She’s not my anti-mom, she’s my real mom.
So, basically, if you’re not a perfectly cheerful Stepford Mom, you’re the anti-mom? I have a huge problem with the idea that there is only one right way to be a mother. That bullshit is compounded by the fact that the “one right way” is a standard that no human being can ever achieve all the time, but having one cultural standard for what constitutes a “good mother” is highly problematic even if the standard is generally reachable. Women are not a monolithic entity and neither are mothers.
How unsurprising. Courtney nailed it — if you’re not a Stepford mom, you’re an anti-mom. But the thing is, I’m racking my brain trying to think of any Stepford moms that have been on TV in, say, the last decade and a half, and I’m having trouble. Rita on Dexter might have fit in the category of classically “good” moms. There have been some comedically/comically bad mother characters (take the ones on Arrested Development), but that’s a different area than earnest dramas.
What’s for sure is that “anti-mom” is a nonsense category.
I see your point, but I read the article and was thrilled that they were even recognizing these deeper, more realistic roles that female actresses get to play. As Julia Louis-Dreyfus was quoted in the article, “As a mom, there’s all this pressure not only to raise your children correctly, but to make a living and to make a lot of money. It’s not possible to do everything well all the time, and I think that is portrayed on television very effectively.”
I think it’s fantastic that there are such a wide range of roles, even if maybe they all fit in the “mom” mold out there right now. From Showtime shows (Tara, Nurse Jackie, Weeds) to sitcoms like Modern Family or dramas like Parenthood and The Good Wife.
I know part of the fight is also having fair language and wording about women, but I think that even having this diversity of female roles on television is a big step in the right direction.
I had some stuff in there about how the piece was way better than the title but I cut it cause it didn’t work for me. But the piece is way more thoughtful than the title. The term just pissed me off. It better not become the new cougar.
It’s a shame that an inflammatory headline mars an otherwise readable piece. Granted, I’d argue that such flawed mother characters have been around at least since the Rosanne Barr/Brett Butler days, and Jane Kaczmarek certainly played a more realistically-flustered mother in Malcolm in the Middle ten years ago.
I agree, it’s so frustrating to see these kind of headlines. These characters aren’t “anti-mom”, they’re fully developed female characters that respond truthfully to their circumstances. Whether that circumstance is selling drugs to on Weeds or living on Wisteria Lane and dealing with the crazy that happens there, shows are starting to take risks on exploring all the different ways women experience things. To make it “anti-mom” undercuts the fabulous work the writers and actresses are doing on these shows.
I couldn’t agree more, the phrase “anti-mom” is really offensive, though it was a good article.
Favourite tv mom: Tami Taylor, hands down.
I actually had to think for a while to sort out if I was watching any shows that had moms on them right now. (This says something about my television viewing, obviously.)
I really love Alicia on “The Good Wife”.
In terms of t.v. moms of yore, the only one I’d add to your list is Marge Simpson, who I think is also a “flawed” – and thus real – mom.
I wish they had called it what they really meant to say, the “anti-women.” Because in re-defining the current roles of moms on TV as the “anti-moms,” the Hollywood Reporter decreed that women can’t even get the job of parenting done “right,” and, in fact, that they’re so lousy at it, that they are not worthy of even being called mothers. What absolute garbage. I was stunned when I read this nonsensical sexist article. We are being told constantly that we cannot get anything done “right,” and too many women are going along with that thinking–ergo how proud the actresses were to be classified as “anti-moms.” I wish at least one of them would have really challenged the interviewer–been even tougher than Rachel Griffith dared to be.
Gotta agree with Olly: You can’t top Tami Taylor. I think she’s part Amazon.
Joyce Summers from Buffy is pretty wonderful as well–temperament-wise more of the June Cleaver variety but not above taking out a vampire when her daughter’s life depends on it.
I also seem to remember a Roseanne episode when they specifically addressed this issue. They had Florence Henderson, Marion Jones, and other classic TV moms together with Roseanne comparing their differing approaches to family relations.
Let me guess, the person who wrote the article and coined the hideous term, is not a mother.
I would bet the person has issues that would be best dealt with in therapy as well.
Let’s not give that “writer” or the Hollywood Reporter our energy over this, except in letting them know that we are canceling subscription (I just did), based on the obvious sexism that we encounter in the publication. Life is too short to have to take that kind of bull shit from the reporter.
My eyes can be put to better use reading articles with in publications that are much less sexist.
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