Redbook Assumes Christina Hendricks Wants To Be A Mom — Just Because She Is In A Movie About Moms
So it may be difficult to discern that other people besides Sarah Jessica Parker are in I Don’t Know How She Don’t How She Does It given how much press the actress is getting for the film. The film has quite the cast of well-known actresses, including Mad Men‘s Christina Hendricks who plays friend to Sarah Jessica’s character. In a recent interview about the film, Redbook goes around the table getting all the mothers’ input on work life balance. However, when the interviewer gets to Christina, they make one huge assumption.
Q: Guilt is to motherhood what rain is to Seattle: It’s the prevailing climate. Can we talk about mom guilt?
SJP: Conflict is a better word than guilt for me. Because I’m choosing to work, it’s more about the conflict of loving the challenge and the heart of being a parent and also loving the challenge of the workplace. When I was away shooting Sex and the City 2, my daughters couldn’t come because they were too young to get the shots they needed to travel. And the only way to get through the bad days was to flip a switch in my brain and say, “At this moment, I’m going to pretend. I’m just not going to have children in my head.” But I was comforted that my family was spending time with the kids. And there’s always Skype, which is both torture and comforting.
BP: Oh, God. Every day that I work, I feel the ache and pull. In TV, the schedules tend to change a lot. I’ll have promised Birdie, who’s 3, to take her to the zoo or a class, and then I get called in. I want her to be able to count on my word, so I’ve learned that when I’m working, I simply can’t promise those things.
ABM: The real difference between moms and dads is that moms lie in bed at night wondering if they made the right parenting choices, and dads lie in bed wondering what to say to get their wives to quit feeling guilty and sleep with them.
Q: Christina, you’re not a mom yet ”” do you worry about that guilt as you look ahead to motherhood?
CH: Who said I’m looking ahead at motherhood?! Anyway, you don’t have to be a mother to have guilt. You have to have a mother to feel guilt.
Well played, Christina.
Asking the other actresses to share their experiences of motherhood as they relate to the film is a fair point for the press. But simply assuming that Christina plans to mother too — just because she is childless woman — is pretty clumsy on the part of Redbook. Not all women, and men for that matter, choose to parent. Presuming that a mid-30s woman is just all set to breed says more how the interviewer views said women than about Ms. Hendricks herself.
(photo: theswash.com)
