I Know Exactly How She Does It: She Doesn't Sleep (and Probably Eats Dinner Over the Kitchen Sink)

Lately, I have been assaulted (on subway posters and television advertisements) by the SJP film I Don't Know How She Does It.  Let me preface this by saying that I have not seen the film.  In other words, this is all babble based in absolutely no knowledge of the film.  Unfair? Probably.  Perhaps it is the greatest film ever written; however, the advertisements are starting to get on my nerves.  From what I can glean, the film centers around a working mother who also has a high powered job and is struggling to balance her work/life situation.  While in no way do I want to minimize this struggle women face to balance their work/home life, because it is exactly that, a struggle, there is something obnoxious about the way she is depicted.

First of all, there are so many mothers who have the added burden of limited economic means and no support from their husband.  I would imagine they would not be saying "I don't know how she does it?" but rather, "I know exactly how she does it..." She doesn't sleep, she accepts being less than perfect at everything because one can not sustain a lifestyle like this.  At least she can afford a baby sitter.

Second of all, if the film is anything like the book, at the end of the novel, the resolution to the main character's problem is to move out of the city and becoming a stay-at-home mother in the pastoral countryside.  There's a great message: Become so stressed out that you are insane if you try to work and have children or, hey, stay home, because you know, that's easy.  Again, I have not seen the movie, but from what I gather, the messages being sent about motherhood are not ones I want to see being promulgated in a society that already demeans domestic labor and sets unrealistic expectations for women.

Here's an idea...Rather then looking at the struggle of a working mother in a cutesy comedy fashion, why not address the real problem of living in a culture in which perfection is expected of women, and yet economic and childcare systems are not supportive of them.  Makes me want to move to a Scandinavian country...