What Mad Men Teaches Us About Motherhood

There's no parenting problem that can't be solved with... cigarettes?

When you hear “Mad Men mom” the first person who likely comes to mind is Betty Draper.

We immediately see an image of Betty thanklessly sitting alone in the home she cares for while Don is off in some unknown place, cheating on her and/or hallucinating about the Great Depression.

What I have always found interesting about this association is that Betty never wanted to be a mom. Years later, she still yearns for her career as a model and her sedentary lifestyle as a suburban housewife begins to physically affect her to the point that she has difficulty driving through her neighborhood.

No matter what Betty wishes her life had become, she is a mother and in difficult moments her thoughts and actions are always as a mom and not as a nostalgic person yearning for a past that may have never even been real.

Betty comforts her daughter Sally after she has her first period. (© AMC/Lionsgate)

Mad Men is full of tough questions about motherhood:

• Betty resents her children’s mere association with their father and especially that Sally cares for him more at times.

• Peggy chooses to give her baby up for adoption and is shamed by family and her priest for the decision.

• Joan has a child through an affair with Roger and reveals the secret of the affair to no one.

• Trudy takes back her forgiven husband Pete at the end of the series, seeking some normalcy for the daughter they both love.

It is always difficult to be a mother and history shows that. Betty would have found divorce and parenthood hard, no matter when she lived.

Despite her failings and what she herself hoped she could improve on, Betty found strength holding her daughter when both women needed the comfort only a mother and daughter could give each other.

Happy Mother’s Day!