Moms Talk: Do You Watch TV Shows and Movies About Parenthood?

Is it me, or are we suddenly a hot media demographic, even if many of us have slipped out of the coveted 18-to-34 Neilsen Ratings bracket?

This fall, the entertainment industry seems to be shining its spotlight on parenthood with the debut of the TV series 'Up All Night' and the new movie 'I Don’t Know How She Does It,' both of which focus on the lives of working parents.

Neither is bringing to light anything new under the sun. As Washington Post TV critic Hank Struever pointed out in his review of the TV show, “domestic stress among new parents has proved a worthy supplier of TV shows for a good chunk of TV’s history.” Struever also asks a great question: “Hey, married people with babies: Do you really like all these shows about married people with babies?”

That’s a question I asked myself as I read his review and others like it. And in response, my initial answer was no, I’m not going to watch the show because I’m living it. Also, in the past, very few shows have nailed it, or have portrayed us the way we want to be seen. (Hello, who wants to be thought of as the nagging wife and mother/cuckolded dimwit husband and dad pair a la the formula on 'Everybody Loves Raymond' and its ilk?)

That said, I broke my own self-imposed fast by watching via Comcast OnDemand the pilot episode of NBC’s 'Up All Night,' starring Christina Applegate and Will Arnett. I was home on a weekday with a sick child who was napping at the time I decided to queue it up out of boredom. I was pleasantly surprised that it made me laugh out loud a few times, and I usually cut pilot episodes some slack in the laugh department.

My favorite part was when the new parents argued about who got more sleep during a typical sleepless night with the baby. Overall, the show was a good mix of reality (swearing parents who lament the passing of their wild youth) and reality as we wish it was (awesome house, great jobs, money clearly not an issue, funny pretty people, etc.).

On the flipside, I don’t think I’ll be buying a ticket to see the new Sarah Jessica Parker film 'I Don’t Know How She Does it,' based on the book by the same name that I read years ago. At the time, parenthood wasn’t on my mind and that book really scared me off from taking it on anytime soon. As I recall, the book by Allison Pearson presented the same unreality as most Hollywood depictions of parenthood – the pretty parents, the high-paying jobs, the lovely homes – and threw in a whopper of an ending where – spoiler alert! – the harried mom’s solution was to quit her job and move to the countryside to raise her kids, as if that was a viable option for the vast majority of us working parents, especially when a job is hard to come by for too many of us these days.

So while I’ll be adding a season pass to my TiVo for 'Up All Night' alongside my other favorites 'Parenthood' and 'Modern Family,' you won’t see me in line at the Regal Cinemas at the Hunt Valley Mall to see the SJP movie.