The unrealistic cultural representation of working mothers, termed supermoms, is a symptom of the looming intensive mothering ideology and its continued hold on society’s perception of parenthood. Catherine Reitman’s Workin’ Moms offers a portrayal of a working mother who balances home and work in an equal way that represents a sustainable approach to working motherhood. By comparison, Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother offers a portrayal of a supermom who juggles home and work in an isolated way that perpetuates the unrealistic expectations placed on mothers.

Intensive mothering is an approach to mothering that places a mother’s children as her priority over her own needs. Working mothers who expend what society considers an acceptably self-sacrificing amount of time, energy, and money on their children are named supermoms. This is a rather coveted position for mothers to find themselves in, and popular culture, including film and literature, has made space for a genre of mommy lit which captures success stories of working, yet intensive, mothers – supermoms.

In their 2021 study, “Working Mothers’ Experiences in an Intensive Mothering Culture: A Phenomenological Qualitative Study”, Forbes, Lamar, and Bornstein argue that there are restrictions on what mothers can achieve as workers, due to historical and cultural gender norms that expect mothers to prioritize childcare above work. The article points out that, due to the higher expectations placed on them as parents, working mothers tend to fulfill more parental duties than working fathers, which perpetuates the ongoing presence of gender inequality in the larger cultural discussion about parenting. The interview questions that Forbes et al use in their research design, are phrased so as to avoid key terms that might bias the participants’ answers to confirm the study’s assumptions. These research participants use pseudonyms, which allows for their higher freedom of disclosure. According to Forbes et al, the most commonly cited problems for working mothers in an intensive mothering culture are coping with the perceived gap between real and ideal mothering, the overwhelm of the juggling act, the gender-based double standard, and the consequences of deferring self-care.

Forbes et al asked their participants to describe ideal mothering for themselves. The interviewees described the ideal mother as readily available to meet the needs of those around them. “Gabriella, a mother of two, indicated [that] an ideal mom is a supermom who is ‘everything to everybody… a rock star at work… a rock star at home, your house is clean, your kids are in 15 activities, [and] you’re put together all the time physically and emotionally’”, (Forbes et al 278). These criteria echo intensive mothering ideologies, whereby mothers are expected to expend an exhausting amount of time and energy on caring after their children and managing their homes. Forbes et al found that while they exhibit some self-consciousness, working mothers tend to differentiate themselves from intensive mothering ideologies. In reality, among the rest who claim in various ways that they “just don’t fit that persona”, one mother admits that “It sounds awful, but I don’t want to be around my kids all day long. I don’t find that fulfilling” (Forbes et al 278).

The intensive mothering ideology is echoed in Pearson’s novel, in which Kate Reddy explains her internalized worldview that “the world of women was divided in two: there were proper mothers, self-sacrificing bakers of apple pies and well-scrubbed invigilators of the washtub, and there were the other sort”, (Pearson 8-9) referring to her earlier concept of, “Women Who Cut Corners”, (Pearson 8-9). Given this binary, Kate Reddy classifies herself as the latter, in her efforts to distress ready-made mince pies, indicating a desire to fit into the ideal mother role, yet being unable to. There seems to be a guilt-fuelled discrepancy between Reddy’s ideal and real mothering strategies. For Reddy, this discrepancy leads her to attempt to appear to other mothers around her as an ideal mother would, bringing what seem to be homemade mince pies to her daughter’s school.

Reitman’s show portrays a gap between ideal and real motherhood. In the first episode, Kate Foster stays late at work when a male co-worker jokes “Hey – shouldn’t you be at home right now putting your baby to bed or something?… Nice priorities” (Workin’ Moms). It is indeed taxing on Foster to miss out on spending time with her child, as she soon after, breaks down and admits that she has missed her baby’s first word that day. The interaction shows that sometimes working mothers choose to prioritize their work over their mother roles, despite that such a choice leads to their feeling that they are not doing their best at mothering, given the intensive mothering culture that is omnipresent. A difference between Reddy and Foster’s management of the discrepancy shows that Reddy attempts to hide her reality from others, while Foster communicates hers. “I want to work”, Foster asserts to her manager, after having shared her grief to a team of male co-workers. This difference becomes increasingly apparent through an exploration of the other ways in which Pearson and Reitman’s working mothers interact with the intensive mothering culture.

Forbes et al explore the ways in which mothers are overwhelmed by the juggling act – that is, a working mother’s balancing of her career, home, childcare, marital, and extra responsibilities in her life. Many interviewees point out that time management is difficult, saying that it is “probably the biggest challenge, [as well as] energy, and knowing [that there will be] things that aren’t going to get done”, and that “it’s literally just the challenge of finding the time in a week, or the day to do everything that needs to be done”, (Forbes et al 279). This juggling act forms the basis of many plots in motherhood literature, that center around a working mother’s ability to succeed in balancing all of her different roles.

The juggling act is central in Pearson’s novel, as most evidenced by Kate Reddy’s to-do lists throughout the story. “MUST REMEMBER: NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS / Adjust work–life balance for healthier, happier existence. / Get up an hour earlier to maximize time available. / Spend more time with your children… Learn Italian…”, (Pearson 62). The length and variety of Reddy’s to-do list, shows a prevalent optimism about the number of goals that are achievable for a working mother. Indeed, Reddy boasts of her abilities to multitask, as she reflects, for instance on that “[she] can get [her]self and two children washed… dressed and out of the house in half an hour, [she] can juggle nine different currencies in five different time zones… [And she] can prepare and eat a stand-up supper while on the phone to the West Coast”, (Pearson 39). In full self-awareness, Pearson’s novel portrays a version of motherhood that is not so sustainable after all. Indeed, at the end of the novel, the protagonist resigns herself to quit her lucrative career in managing hedge funds, and focus more centrally on her mother role, after a moment of shame over not knowing some medically required information about her sick son at the doctor’s office, (Pearson 288-289). It seems that a sense of shame forces this working mother into giving up one of her roles, in order to fit the ideal mother archetype that intensive mothering ideologies endorse.

Reitman’s show also portrays overachievement within the juggling act. Regarding her own to-do list, Kate Foster says that because she couldn’t go running as planned, she would “take nothing but the stairs today – boom! Check!” (Workin’ Moms). Foster’s to-do list includes a “Performance Review” at work, to which she arrives out of breath due to having taken those stairs; a pink-coloured “DATE NIGHT!” with her husband, which she is later absent from; and among other items, “PUMP Like Crazy!”, referring to her breast milk (Workin’ Moms). As the list of tasks continues so does its increasing use of capital letters, and yet as the episode progresses, it becomes clear that most of Kate’s tasks go uncompleted. This overload of tasks to complete in such little time is an example of what is described by Forbes et al’s interviewees, and captured in Pearson’s novel.

Yet, like Kate Reddy, Reitman’s Kate Foster holds an optimistic attitude about following through on her schedule. When Nathan, her husband, suggests that “maybe it’s time for formula”, Kate shoots him a disapproving look, (Workin’ Moms), which suggests that Kate is determined to fulfill her ideals of motherhood within her already-tight schedule, such as the commonly argued ideal of breast milk over formula for many mothers. Indeed, in the season finale, an idolized manager, who is herself a mother, pulls Kate aside in a meeting, to criticize Kate for disclosing to a client that her son is in the hospital, urging her to “Think about what is important to you”, suggesting that Kate’s client is more important than her hospitalized child, (Workin’ Moms). As compared to Pearson’s Kate Reddy, who experiences shame from an intensive mothering culture, Reitman’s Kate Foster is experiencing the opposite – shame from the counter-culture by which working mothers commit to prioritizing their careers over their children. In essence, neither protagonist truly executes the juggling act to perfection – each eventually prioritizes her children over her career, and the ongoing difficulty of choosing one over the other is what Forbes et al’s interviewees note.

Forbes et al also noted a common theme among participants as that of socialized gender roles dictating how much more responsibility the mothers held, relative to their male partners. Referring to her partner’s sense of responsibility over household and childcare chores, one mother says that “He’s not in a place where he picks up on it on his own… if I were to get really analytical about that it probably goes back to socialized gender norms – it’s not at his forefront because it doesn’t have to be” (Forbes et al 281). These socialized gender norms, by which women are expected to care more about household chores, fall in line with the intensive mothering ideology targetting mothers, and not particularly fathers, putting their effort into raising their children and running their homes. While women seemed to be aware of this gender-based limitation, they shared a sense of guilt over not putting enough time in, despite some of them being in equal partnerships.

Reflecting on her own efforts, as a woman in her generation, particularly her career at a firm in downtown London, Reddy says that “women in the City [sic]… are the foundation stones. The females who come after us will scarcely give us a second thought, but they will walk on our bones”, (Pearson 71), referring to laying the groundwork for other women, such as Momo, to believe in their capabilities in male-dominated workplaces. While Kate Reddy pushes for gender equality in terms of career opportunities and success, she lacks in pushing for it in terms of household responsibilities. Reflecting, later, on the unequal distribution of those responsibilities between her husband Richard and herself, Reddy feels that “Women are… great at [multitasking]… if you ask Rich to hold more than three things in his head at once you can see smoke start to come out… I’ve heard… that guys play up how useless they are in order to avoid doing stuff. Unfortunately… It’s not laziness, it’s biology”, (Pearson 123-124). Reddy continues to allude to her perceived general uselessness of husbands throughout the story, (Pearson 52, 179, 282). This resignation to sex differences dictating one’s ability to multitask as the basis for Kate doing more parental work than her husband, plays a key role in her eventually quitting her career in order to be a full-time mother.

After sharing with her mommy-and-me groupmates that she will work in Montreal for three months, Reitman’s Kate Foster is confronted by a fellow mother named Alicia, who recurs in the series as a flat character that embodies the intensive mothering ideology, such as avoiding the use of the word ‘can’t’ with her children (Workin’ Moms), due to her fear that they may internalize negativity. In response to the scrutiny, Kate’s best friend Anne asks Alicia “Doesn’t your husband work in Alaska half the year?”, to which Alicia replies “So?… it’s different because he’s a–” (Workin’ Moms). Kate smilingly shakes her head in disapproval, and Anne erratically celebrates the opportunity to shame Alicia (Workin’ Moms), for her internalization of self-limiting gender roles. This interaction shows that Reitman’s Kate Foster pushes not only the boundaries of gender in her career, as Kate Reddy does, but also, by extension and unlike Reddy, pushes those boundaries in her marriage. Still, when Foster is in Montreal in the season finale, her husband Nathan consults her help in dealing with their son’s diaper rash (Workin’ Moms), showing that ultimately, Reitman’s Kate, too, tends toward dealing with her child’s diaper rashes more often than her husband must, a symptom of the looming intensive mothering ideology.

Forbes et al noted a final theme as the emotional and physical consequences of working mothers placing their own needs below all of their responsibilities towards others, a similar theme to the overwhelm of participating in the juggling act. One mother says “our needs generally come last, under our employers, our spouses, our children, our households, our volunteering, and our parents” (Forbes et al 283), with others pointing out their lack of time to exercise or maintain friendships. This is an interesting point at which it is evident that Pearson’s novel documents a more realistic working mother’s struggle, as Kate Reddy, for instance, points out often that she does not have time to exercise (Pearson 67, 68, 208, etc.). Reitman’s Kate Foster, on the other hand, manages to fit her self-care into her schedule, as evident in the beginning and end of the first episode wherein she runs while pushing her baby in a stroller.

The difference is stark, wherein Pearson’s novel essentially sends the message that mothers simply cannot both work and be proper mothers, while Reitman’s show sends the message that mothers can indeed work, exercise, and be supermoms altogether. This message is exaggerated in the last shot of that first episode, wherein Kate Foster scares off a large, wandering Grizzly bear, protecting herself and her child, (Workin’ Moms). While screaming at a bear to scare it off is unlikely to work in real life, the sustainability of working motherhood is what Reitman’s show attempts to capture – sustainability that Pearson’s novel rejects, and that Forbes et al’s interview participants warn against the culturally glorified easiness of.

Allison Pearson’s Kate Reddy captures the struggles of being a working mother under an intensive mothering culture, yet Catherine Reitman’s Kate Foster represents new ways of conceptualizing the supermom so as to grant her not only the possibility of a fulfilling life of motherhood, but rather also the freedom that is possible within that life.

Works Cited
Forbes, Lisa K., Margaret R. Lamar, and Rachel S. Bornstein. “Working Mothers’ Experiences in an Intensive Mothering Culture: A Phenomenological Qualitative Study”. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, vol. 33, no. 3, 2021, pp. 270-294.
Pearson, Allison. I Don’t Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother. Knopf, 2002.
Reitman, Catherine. Workin’ Moms, season 1, episodes 1-13, CBC Television, 2017.

Originally written for ENG 548 at Toronto Metropolitan University, Prof. Podnieks, April 2022.