Does Baby Mama Deliver?

Mommy Tracked

by Meredith O'Brien (Mommy Track'd: Working Moms in Pop Culture & Politics)



*Warning, spoilers ahead.*

There simply aren't that many movies that depict moms in a way we would want to be seen. But Tina Fey knows where it's at. An award winning TV writer and comedian, she's also the mom of a 2-year-old. So when my gal pal and fellow Fey fan Gayle and I to see Baby Mama on its opening weekend, we had very high hopes that the movie would make us - moms with six kids between us -- laugh out loud.

Alas, we were not disappointed.

Walking into the movie, though, I thought the premise was a little iffy: A single, successful, career-oriented woman, 37, decides she wants to have a baby. She goes through countless infertility treatments (inseminations, in vitro fertilization) only to be told by her ob/gyn that she has a "one and a million chance" of ever conceiving a baby. After learning that the adoption process could take up to five years and that it's challenging for a single woman to adopt a baby, Fey's character, Kate Holbrook, decides to go the gestational surrogacy route, hiring Amy Poehler's working class gal and prodigious gum-chewer Angie Ostrowiski to carry her baby.

Despite Baby Mama's funny trailers, I was leery about whether those who pursue infertility treatments would be mocked and whether there'd be a you-waited-too-long-you-selfish-narcissistic-career-gal-you thread weaving its way through the story. However I'm pleased to report, those things never happen. If anything, Baby Mama seems to use Fey's character's age, as well as her career success and financial security as a plus, not a minus. Nowhere did I see Kate lambasted for her life choices, which is a refreshing change.


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Have a love/hate relationship with your favorite TV show and how the working mom characters are portrayed? Loathe the so-called "mommy wars" on which the news media love to focus? Each week, Meredith O'Brien's Working Moms in Pop Culture & Politics column on the Mommy Track'd website provides a reality check on how TV shows, movies, books and the media depict working moms. A longtime journalist and mother of three, Meredith O'Brien teaches journalism at the University of Massachusetts and is the author of A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum.