The way motherhood is represented in the media is changing. From recent TV comedies line Motherland, The Let Down and Catastrophe, to films like Bad Moms and A Bad Mom’s Christmas to the stick-figure cartoons of Hurrah For Gin, mothers are increasingly depicted in the midst of domestic chaos, intermingled with bouts of extreme hedonism.
We see mothers confronting incessant demands of frenetic home and work lives by toppling off their bar stool drunk; falling off their bed whilst high and trying to use a breast pump; and chatting with drug dealers in parking lots late at night, with their baby beside them in a car seat. Cutting back on home baking, they are cutting loose and partying hard.
I call this the rise of the ‘mother behaving badly’. The widening array of media representations of motherhood since the early 2010s is a healthy and liberating development. A broader range of ways to publicly inhabit the role of motherhood is now on offer to women. But there are caveats.
