What Feminist Movies Keep Getting So Wrong About Motherhood
The entertainment industry's depictions of motherhood remain woefully incomplete.
Ron Lach | Canva I recently accomplished a rare feat — I watched an entire movie from beginning to end. In one sitting. It wasn’t a kid's movie, either, and it was over two hours long.
OK, I was on an airplane, which I suppose makes the feat less impressive. The movie was She Said, based on the book written by New York Times journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor. It depicts their 10-month-long investigation into Harvey Weinstein that broke the silence around decades of sexual harassment and assault.
I don’t write much about entertainment because I typically watch one show a day, if that, and I am usually catching up on the shows that other people have been chattering about for years already. And movies? Well, I’m still working my way through pre-pandemic Academy Award nominees. I manage to see a handful of “new” movies in the theater each year, mostly with my kids, and if I ever work up the stamina to stream an R-rated feature film after the kids’ bedtime, it is almost always throughout at least two nights.
Here's what feminist movies keep getting so wrong about motherhood.
I’m by no means an entertainment buff or a particularly qualified critic. But much of what I have watched over the last decade has a feminist bent, and I’ve seen just enough to recognize what is — and what isn’t — being said. So what did she say — and what didn’t she say — in She Said?
While She Said is a movie first and foremost about rape culture, it is secondarily a movie about working motherhood. Twohey has her first baby throughout the movie, who, as the real-life Twohey told The New York Times in an interview, was “12 pounds and had never eaten a bite of solid food” when she began the investigation.
It’s interesting that Twohey mentions what her baby was, or wasn’t, eating in the interview because what stood out to me throughout the 129-minute movie is that we never, not once, see Twohey feeding said baby.
There is the classic “doctor’s visit during pregnancy” scene, Twohey’s hand on her swelling belly, watching her fetus squirm on a screen. After the baby is born, Twohey’s scant weeks of maternity leave flash by in a series of scenes that depict clear signs of postpartum depression.
Then we see Twohey all smiles as she heads back to work. The baby, at this point, more or less disappears. It is implied that Twohey’s partner is picking up most of the slack at home, though there is never a scene in which the division of labor is explicitly discussed. If there is another caregiver in the mix, we never get a chance to meet them.
Kantor has two young children of her own. In a phone conversation, Kantor acknowledges to Twohey that she understands the challenges of postpartum depression, her tentative and nearly-whispered sympathies making it clear that she recognizes this is not a “work appropriate” conversation. There is a scene in which Kantor appears to be packing lunches for her children and another classic “parent FaceTiming with child” scene, during which her children, unlike my children, stay in the camera frame and willingly engage in conversation.
We get the sense that Kantor’s partner is also picking up a lot of the slack at home, implied by a scene in which Kantor returns home after dark to find her slightly disheveled and disgruntled spouse sitting at a messy table, drinking a glass of wine. Again, if there are other caregivers in the mix, we never get a chance to meet them.
While the movie makes it abundantly clear that Twohey and Kantor are working mothers, what’s not clear is why we need to know this. We are otherwise shown very little of the women’s personal lives. We don’t meet their parents or friends, we only fleetingly meet their partners, and we know nothing about their hobbies or pastimes outside of work.
So what point is the movie trying to make? Is it that that working mothers can, in fact, do it all? That two investigative journalists can rise to prominence and make history, despite their status as caregivers? This is what I see — or more accurately, don’t see — time and time again.
So many movies and shows that purport to be feminist, or that at least speak to feminist themes, still relegate caregiving work to the background.
Much like the patriarchy itself, they render it more or less invisible. I’m grateful there are more movies and shows these days that center on complicated, multi-dimensional female characters, some of whom have babies and children in tow, but who still manage to preserve a sense of autonomy.
We’ve come a long way from the flat, saccharine depictions of moms as eternally happy caregivers, bustling about in the background and bothering their husbands with silly questions and superficial gossip. Well, actually, those depictions are still everywhere, but at least they’re not the only depictions.
The “autonomous career mother” depiction — a direct byproduct of “career feminism,” which we could also call “mainstream feminism,” which we could also call “white feminism” — is also highly problematic.
For one, these depictions never tell the whole story. If I were to carefully curate scenes from the past week of my life, I suppose I could come off as a liberated, strong, autonomous, ambitious woman. There could be a scene from the open mic I attended on Saturday, raising a glass of Hazy IPA with friends, a scene in which I’m ascending the 155 steps that are part of my morning run, a scene in which I’m leading a Zoom presentation with a dozen important clients, and another scene from my weekly women’s group, during which we gather on my front porch to commiserate with one another and scheme about smashing the patriarchy.
Then, to remind the audience that I am not only a liberated, strong, autonomous, ambitious woman but also a mother, we could, just for good measure, throw in a tender scene of me reading in bed with my nine-year-old son or a get-it-done scene of my 12-year-old daughter helping me mow the lawn.
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But this jauntily edited montage would leave so much out. The audience would never know that I brought my kids to the open mic, that my son arranged his lanky body in my lap, and that I nuzzled my nose in his hair, feeling a sharp pang in my chest because I knew my cuddling days were numbered. They would never know that after an hour, I told my daughter she and her brother could walk the few blocks home, igniting a fierce argument between brother and sister because she wanted to go and he wanted to stay, ultimately culminating in a round of frustrated and sulky goodbyes.
The audience would never know that while I was ascending the 155 steps that are part of my morning run, I was stewing over an ugly argument with my husband about planning for our son’s birthday and, at the same time, stressing out about said planning because of course, as usual, it would fall to me. They would never know that around stair 138, while mentally reviewing the guest list and our motley collection of party supplies, I also started stressing about the surprisingly honest conversation I’d had the previous night with my daughter, during which she informed me that the other Black kids at school call her “whitewashed” because she has a white mom and some white friends, and how she likes her white friends well enough, but they just don’t understand her.
The audience wouldn’t see how many times my children interrupted my client presentation, how even though they have been explicitly told during these long summer months not to bother me when they hear me in a meeting unless someone is bleeding or the house is on fire, they still often feel the need to inform me in real time about other pressing emergencies, like the fact that our milk supply is insufficient for the bowl of cereal that has just been poured.
The audience wouldn’t see the flurry of cleaning that took place before my weekly women’s group — the sweeping of scattered Legos my son was supposed to pick up before bed, the scrubbing of brownish-dried urine on the underside of the toilet seat.
I suppose I could be called a "career woman," but the fact is, my caregiving duties take up at least 50% of my brain space, usually more, at any given time.
These caregiving duties can be stressful, particularly in the context of a country that offers little support and tells me, in no uncertain terms, that my work should come first. They also offer me access to the full, terrifying range of human emotion, constantly teaching me, humbling me, and pushing me to grow.
Why was I bothered that She Said never once depicted Twohey feeding her newborn baby? Because when my daughter was born, feeding her was both the most tender and the most taxing aspect of my life for the better part of a year. During my 10-week leave and throughout many ensuing evenings, I relished the skin-to-skin contact, the quiet suckling, and the permission to simply sit and be present.
I also felt exhausted by my baby’s voracious appetite, particularly in the middle of the night, and then entirely overwhelmed by the logistics of pumping after returning to work. There was the schlepping of milk and sanitation equipment, the labeling of bottles, the multiple breaks (resented by my colleagues) to fit into my workday, and the discomfort of stripping down in my place of work and hooking my breasts to a machine.
At six months, I stopped pumping and started giving my daughter formula, but this decision was not one I arrived at easily. For months I felt weighted by tremendous guilt, worried I was compromising the health of my child and already failing as a mother.
I’m quite sure that the real-life Twohey encountered many similar challenges, but from what the movie allows us to see, feeding her baby is not something she seems to think about much, if at all.
Similarly, Kantor doesn’t seem particularly concerned with childcare logistics for her two young children — logistics that monopolized my mental load for over a decade, but that rarely seems to concern parents in movies and shows. I can’t count the number of times I’ve shouted at the screen: “Where the heck are your 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, when it comes to depictions of parents on screen, the Constant Quest for Childcare goes entirely unacknowledged. And the childcare providers, who comprise the backbone of our economy and contribute to the health and growth of rising generations, are nowhere to be seen.
I’m not trying to pick on She Said, and I’m certainly not trying to pick on Twohey or Kantor — both highly skilled investigative journalists with admirable tenacity. If anything, I’m sure they would agree with me that the movie left a lot out.
I do have a bone to pick with the entertainment industry’s incomplete depictions of motherhood, particularly in movies and shows that speak to feminist themes.
Caregiving is either depicted as a soul- and freedom-crushing burden (see: Esther in Alpha Males) or a responsibility that mostly white and well-off women effortlessly hand off to invisible caretakers so they can venture forth to do Important Work.
What we don’t typically see is the constant push and pull that most mothers contend with daily; the emotional and mental space our children take up even when we are not physically with them; the stress and cognitive dissonance that come with being pressured to prioritize “economically valuable” work over raising small humans; the vast love and fear and joy and rage that sometimes threaten to swallow us whole.
I can think of a handful of movies and shows from my admittedly limited repertoire that offer more nuance. There’s Ladybird, which depicts a challenging but loving mother-daughter relationship alongside the daily complexities and financial pressures of working motherhood. There’s Maid, one of few shows in which a lower-income mother plays a central role and The Childcare Challenge is a central theme.
In Better Things, Sam is a once successful actress and single mother of three, who struggles with managing her waning career alongside the dramatic ups and downs of mothering pre-teen/teenage daughters. She is so relatable and delightful that I’m willing to overlook her obnoxiously large house and well-off friends.
I’m currently watching Little Fires Everywhere, which I’m finding less subtle and more contrived than the book, but it raises quite a few thought-provoking questions about motherhood. Mia is an intriguing mother figure in both versions, embodying the feminist drive for autonomy and ambition, but not ambition as the white patriarchy defines it. She is also a fiercely devoted mother. Like most mothers, she fights with her child, fears for her child, and feels overwhelming love for her child.
Mothers, of course, are not a monolith and there is no “perfect” or all-encompassing depiction of motherhood. But I'm tired of feminist movies and shows in which mostly white, well-off mothers venture forth into the wide wide world to Make History, while the caregivers and domestic laborers enabling their Important Work to be done are nowhere to be seen.
Is this an empowering message to be sending to rising generations of young women? And what is the message, anyway? With a magically replenishing trove of money and a supply of childcare fairies who can watch your kids on demand, you too can be a mother and accomplish Something Great? It not only reinforces the “having it all” aspirations that have left so many working mothers feeling disillusioned, but the central takeaway is that women can only Be Great or Find Fulfillment when they are not acting in their capacity as mothers.
As a feminist, I’d like to see movies and shows that center on a broader range of motherhood experiences, particularly ones that center on lower-income mothers and mothers of color.
I’d also like to see these experiences depicted in all their raw and messy glory. I hope future feminist movies and shows will show us that caregiving is a complex and worthy endeavor, and also that mothers are autonomous beings with our hopes and dreams. That our society grossly fails mothers and other caregivers, and also that motherhood is not an inherently soul-crushing experience. Maybe that’s not what she said, but that’s what I have to say on the matter.
Kerala Taylor is an award-winning writer and co-owner of a worker-owned marketing agency. Her weekly stories are dedicated to interrupting notions of what it means to be a mother, woman, worker, and wife. She writes on Medium and has recently launched a Substack publication Mom, Interrupted.