In addition to exposing the realities of pregnancy, Sex and the City reworks existing representations of new motherhood apart from glowing Madonna-and-child imagery. Throughout season 5, Miranda struggles with the trauma of being a new mother surrounded by single childless women who seem patently unqualified to guide her through this particular maze. In “Anchors Away” (episode 67), Samantha (Kim Cattrall) bundles Miranda and baby Brady into a cab with indecent haste so that the child-free friends can go shopping. Carrie’s spontaneous visit to Miranda finds her friend unable to breastfeed or concentrate on their conversation. The sight of Miranda’s veiny milk-filled breasts fills Carrie with horror and, taking her leave abruptly, she kisses Miranda on the head and tells her, “Miranda, you’re a mother, but it’s OK, I won’t tell anyone.” This phrase, although offered with love, widens the newly formed gulf between the two friends, identifying Miranda’s transformation from one of the girls to a mother. Considering how ambivalent all four women have been about marriage and motherhood, it is no reassurance to Miranda when Carrie tells her that nothing will affect their friendship and that she is still one of them.
“Critical Condition” (episode 72) exposes Miranda’s exhaustion with Brady’s constant crying, and, telling her friends that she has not slept for days, she rants: “If he was 35, this is when we would break up! This 13-pound meatloaf is pushing me over the edge. I feel disgusting.” Her three friends are no help and, with Magda looking on disapprovingly, Miranda’s story is a classic example of how isolating new motherhood can be. After a neighbor complains about Brady’s crying, Miranda feels excluded from the community of mothers and clearly suffers from the thought of “being judged by the toughest critics out there: other mothers” (Douglas and Michaels 19). It is only the intervention of a neighbor that gives voice to the problem that has, so far, remained unspoken. Offering Miranda an oscillating chair for Brady, Kendall learns that Miranda has only childless friends and tells her, “Well then you’re screwed. If they don’t have kids, they don’t have a clue.” While such moments can seem to undermine the show’s commitment to respecting single, child-free women’s lives by depicting them as clueless, they also cut in the opposite direction, reminding us that child care is, like gender and romance, a matter of effective props rather than natural instinct. Obviously it is practical help with mothering that Miranda needs and the only way to tap into this discourse is through other mothers. Douglas and Meredith assert that “motherhood is a collective experience” (25), and, despite the media’s emphasis on the individual achievements and failures of mothers, Kendall’s words of reassurance—”Miranda, you’re not a bad mother. You just didn’t have the chair”—reveal the truth behind the fiction.
Miranda may have stopped Brady from crying and is gradually getting a handle on life again, but there remain two last bastions to be stormed by the single mother: sex and work. Neglecting to tell an old flame that she has become a mother, Miranda explains, “I just didn’t want it to change anything” (“Plus One Is the Loneliest Number,” episode 71). Painfully aware of the constraints that motherhood puts on her single life, Miranda takes her date home and, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “mummy’s coming,” finally accepts her new role and the attendant responsibilities. After a female colleague formally complains about Miranda’s lack of punctuality since giving birth to Brady, thereby exposing the myth of sisterhood in the workplace, Miranda eventually decides that she has to cut her working week to around 50 or 55 hours max if she is to survive parenthood (“Hop, Skip and a Week,” episode 80). Miranda’s narrative demonstrates not only ambivalence toward motherhood but also the difficulties of adjusting to this new life in a social context that continues to make mothering a contradiction with sex and work culture—a reality routinely ignored by the media.
