Are Babies the New Hot Accessory?

By Luchina Fisher, Women's eNews. Posted February 28, 2005.

The recent spate of books on motherhood, magazine covers with celebrity moms and popular television shows about housewives seems to be embracing motherhood, showing it to be hip.

This new image of motherhood, which appears aimed primarily at affluent moms, is characterized by chic maternity clothes, innovative and expensive baby products, such as the $700 Bugaboo stroller, the style-savvy web site UrbanBaby.com, and "hip hotels with a kid-friendly vibe," as written about recently in The New York Times.

"When the beautiful people embrace parenting, it becomes sexy," mom Jana Platina-Phipps says, referring to actresses and magazine cover models Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow and Brooke Shields.

Moms even have the attention of television. Gone is Sex and the City about four single girlfriends in New York. This season's big hit is the dramatic series Desperate Housewives, while two different networks each have shows about wives who swap places and nannies who tame unruly children.

But as mainstream media put a new gloss on motherhood, moms and other observers point out that the underlying conditions of mothering in America have not undergone any substantial change. Real mothers are still worn out by broken sleep, worries about how to split their time between paying work and child-rearing and what to do about child care.

"We still have many policies that are counter to motherhood and need to be improved in order to make motherhood something that's manageable for women at all different income levels," says Avis Jones-DeWeever, a study director for the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington.

Jones-DeWeever points to the lack of maternity leave and flexible schedules for many working moms, including some Washington mothers featured in an upcoming report from the institute who have needed to rely on federally-subsidized child support (welfare) as a form of maternity leave.

Not a 'Liberation Moment'

"I don't feel like it's such a liberation moment," says Ariel Gore, who founded hipMama, a print zine and web site, as her senior project 10 years ago when she was a 23-year-old single mom struggling to finish college.

Back then, being a young single mom was "such an anti-hipster thing," Gore says. While her friends were going out after class, she was rushing home to relieve the babysitter. That is why, with her tongue in cheek, she named her zine hipMama, then took on serious issues such as child support, family leave, domestic violence and public education.

"When I see pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts, I think that's chic and hip for them," says Amy Harte, 38, the mother of a 3-year-old boy and a 4-month-old girl, living in the suburbs outside New York City. "My personal experience is that it's not chic or fashionable. It's absolutely the best thing you can do, but it ain't pretty. There are some beautiful moments and a lot of hard stuff in between."

"I think this hipness is a creation of Madison Avenue," says Jones-DeWeever. "It's hip for affluent mothers."

Luchina Fisher is a freelance writer and producer in New York.

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