Pop Culture Moms · Good Morning America, ABC Audio

Catherine Reitman on 'Workin' Moms' and how representation of complex, flawed female characters benefits all women

·58 min·3 clips

Reitman says she had postpartum depression with both children, each time around seven months.

The hosts open with a blunt parenting thought: the hard realization that babies do not come out with factory settings. From there, the conversation gets into control, guilt, and the fantasy that perfect parenting can produce perfect outcomes, only to run into the simpler truth that so much of it is nature, not a formula. The guest talks about writing from the feeling of being broken and realizing there was no going back once that honesty made it onto the page and onto set. She says the material clicked right away with mom friends, who reacted as if someone had finally said out loud a familiar, awkward part of womanhood that usually stays tucked away. The hosts sit with that reaction and the larger point that women’s real experiences should not be treated as more shocking than the monster-fighting plots audiences accept without blinking. The guest goes back to the beginning and says the project started in 2013, grew from an eight-minute sizzle, and was then greenlit by Sally at CBC, whom she credits with real instinct for what women would connect to. The conversation also gets personal. She talks about postpartum struggles with both of her children, recognizing the second episode only after wrapping, and about being diagnosed with postpartum depression after already writing from exactly how she felt. The medication part matters too: she remembers being told she could not take medication while pregnant and how dangerous that advice could be. By the end, the episode comes back to the idea that telling the truth about messy, complicated women is not a niche indulgence but a way of making life feel a little less lonely for everyone who has been expected to perform a perfect version of themselves.

As heard by us

A frank interview about postpartum truth, burnout, and why the story lands.

Sabrina Kohlberg and Andi Mitchell turn a parenting confession into something sharper: babies without factory settings, the grind of burnout, and the silence around postpartum depression.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want motherhood talk that gets real about postpartum, not polished.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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