Amy Poehler is still promoting her Yes Please book like crazy. Her publishers must be thrilled because Amy is working hard for those sales.
When we last covered Amy, she was talking about the feminism discussion in the media. Now she’s talking to NPR’s Terry Gross about motherhood. Amy has two young sons, Archie and Abel, with ex-husband Will Arnett. They co-parent pretty well from what Amy says. In these excerpts, Amy speaks to the pressure of being all things as a mother. Her reasoning is that mothers who work outside the home are supposed to spend their days full of guilt. And that stay-at-home moms are made to feel bad for not heading to the office every day. Amy believes the “unspoken pact” tries to guilt women no matter their choice. Dig it:
The “unspoken pact” of working vs. stay-at-home moms: “There is an unspoken pact that women are supposed to follow. I am supposed to act like I constantly feel guilty about being away from my kids. (I don’t. I love my job.) Mothers who stay at home are supposed to pretend they are bored and wish they were doing more corporate things. (They don’t. They love their job.)”
She did suffer postpartum depression: “I look back now and realize that I was unprepared for what my emotions and body and energy level would, you know, consist of. I had to go to L.A. and start this show, and my baby was only a few months old and it was a very difficult time. It was harder than I think I wanted to admit at the time. I think I tortured myself a bit in that first year about what kind of mother I was and could I do this thing well and also give birth to this new show.
“There’s not enough … working mothers who kind of talk about who they leaned on and how they got through that difficult time. There’s this thing where nobody likes to talk about how difficult things are. Everybody likes to talk about [how] easy it is or can be if you only do X, Y and Z. But it’s difficult to be away from your baby and to be working hard and also want to be working — and it’s difficult to be staying at home after you’ve been a person who maybe wasn’t.”
[From Yes Please & NPR’s Fresh Air]
I love what Amy has to say about the difficulties of adjusting to motherhood. With or without postpartum depression, it’s not an easy transition for many women. A lot of people tend to sugarcoat their experience (ahem, Facebook), so it can be a shock to realize that taking care of a baby is … hard. Then you start to wonder if there’s something wrong with you. Nope. Parenting is difficult work, and it’s rarely a smooth road.
Amy did a Reddit AMA with no standout quotes. She was very funny and interactive with users though. She talks about stuff like being able to destroy boyfriend Nick Kroll with her mind. That’s probably not a huge exaggeration. She also visited Seth Meyers and grilled George R.R. Martin on GOT trivia. Here’s a video clip.
Photos courtesy of Dey Street Books & WENN
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