Why Watching Baby Boom As A Parent Feels Like A Personal Attack

It’s 10:43 PM on a Tuesday, and I'm sitting on the left side of my couch wearing college sweatpants that have a literal hole in the knee and a maternity bra that I haven’t actually needed for two years but refuse to throw away because it feels like a hug. Mark is upstairs snoring softly enough that I can't quite justify waking him up to complain about it, but loudly enough to be deeply annoying. I’m drinking room-temperature decaf coffee—which is disgusting, why do I do this to myself—and I'm yelling at Diane Keaton on my TV.

I hadn’t watched the 1987 movie Baby Boom since I was a teenager. Back then, I thought it was just a cute, quirky rom-com about a fast-talking New York executive who inherits a toddler from a distant relative, freaks out, and moves to the country. But watching it now, with a four-year-old and a seven-year-old sleeping upstairs? Oh god.

It's not a comedy. It's a terrifyingly accurate documentary about the mental load, the complete impossibility of “having it all,” and the sheer, unadulterated panic of realizing you're fully responsible for a tiny, sticky human. Before I had kids, I watched J.C. Wiatt (Keaton) marching around her pristine, non-childproofed Manhattan apartment carrying a 14-month-old like a football under her arm, and I thought it was hilarious physical comedy. Now I watch her do the “football hold” and I'm internally screaming about hip dysplasia and the lack of ergonomic baby carriers in the 1980s.

Anyway, the point is, watching this movie as a thoroughly exhausted, modern millennial mother is a deeply unhinging experience.

The corporate motherhood penalty is literally still the exact same

There's a scene early in the movie that made my blood boil so hot I had to pause it and aggressively eat a handful of Leo’s stale goldfish crackers to calm down. J.C. is a partner-track management consultant. A “Tiger Lady.” She inherits this baby, and literally the next day, her male bosses call her into a wood-paneled office and basically demote her. They assume that because she's now a mother, her brain has dissolved into mush and she can no longer handle major accounts. They don’t even ask her! They just steal her clients.

I mean, yes, technically that blatant level of discrimination is illegal today under various HR policies, but come on. Are we really pretending this doesn’t still happen? When I came back from maternity leave with Maya, I was hyper-aware of how I was perceived at my old publishing job. I'd literally hide my breast pump parts off-camera during Zoom meetings because I was so terrified of being seen as “distracted.” I remember sitting there leaking through a silk blouse, forcing myself to use words like "synergy" and "bandwidth" just so the guys in marketing wouldn't think I had lost my edge.

We're still living in the exact same corporate paradox that Baby Boom highlighted almost forty years ago. We're supposed to work like we don't have children, and raise children like we don't have jobs. It’s impossible. You just end up feeling like you're failing at everything simultaneously.

Sam Shepard is hot but whatever

She eventually moves to Vermont and meets Sam Shepard, who plays the hunky local veterinarian, and they fall in love, which is fine, I guess, but honestly I was way more invested in how she was managing her heating bill in a drafty farmhouse with a toddler.

The applesauce empire and my own pureed delusions

Okay, so the whole second half of the movie is about J.C. getting frustrated by the lack of quality baby food on the market. She starts boiling apples in her farmhouse kitchen and accidentally launches “Country Baby,” a massive, premium organic baby food empire. And this is the part that really triggered my postpartum memories.

When Maya was around six months old, my pediatrician, Dr. Miller, was talking to me about the AAP’s new stance on introducing whole, minimally processed foods to babies. He started rambling about some recent studies showing heavy metals in commercial baby food pouches and how it might impact neuro-development. I think he was just trying to gently suggest I mash a banana every now and then, but my sleep-deprived brain absorbed this information entirely wrong. I walked out of that clinic convinced I was poisoning my child with store-bought carrots.

I immediately decided I was going to be J.C. Wiatt. I was going to make all my own purees from scratch using organic produce harvested by monks or whatever. I bought an expensive food processor. I steamed sweet potatoes. I pureed peas until my kitchen looked like a crime scene involving a leprechaun. I spent four hours making three tiny jars of artisanal sludge, and when I finally offered it to Maya, she aggressively swatted the spoon out of my hand, splattering orange glop all over the ceiling.

I gave up by Tuesday. Now, I realize that the science around baby food is always shifting and I probably misunderstood half of what Dr. Miller said anyway. I used to think I had to perfectly control every single nutrient entering my kids' bodies to be a good mom, but honestly, we’re all just surviving. If you've the energy to boil farm-fresh Vermont apples like Diane Keaton, bless you. If your kid is currently eating cheerios off the floor of your minivan, also bless you.

At least today we've decent gear to survive the teething and feeding phases. In the movie, the kid is just gnawing on whatever random 1980s plastic she can find. Whenever Leo is cutting a tooth, I shove the Kianao Panda Teether into his little fists. I've intense anxiety about choking hazards and toxic plastics, so knowing it's just pure, food-grade silicone helps me sleep at night. Or, you know, helps me rest my eyes for twenty minutes until he wakes up screaming again.

Let's talk about the 1980s baby clothes

There's a scene where J.C. takes the baby to a grocery store, puts her in the produce scale to figure out how much she weighs, and then tries to buy diapers. The logistics of 1980s baby wrangling are wild. But the clothes! THE CLOTHES.

Every outfit that poor baby wears in the movie looks so stiff, scratchy, and heavily layered. It gave me secondary eczema just looking at the screen. I remember looking at Leo when he was a newborn, trying out cute nicknames like "my little baby boo" for about three days before realizing that required way too much mouth energy, and I was just so hyper-focused on what touched his skin.

This is my absolute favorite thing we’ve discovered over the years: the Organic Cotton Sleeveless Bodysuit from Kianao. I'm ride-or-die for these onesies.

Here's why I care so much about this. When Maya was four months old, my mother-in-law bought her this insanely complex, synthetic, tulle-covered monstrosity of an outfit for a family photo shoot. It was basically made of the same material as a cheap shower curtain. I put Maya in it, and within twenty minutes, her entire chest broke out in this furious, red, bumpy rash. She screamed for two straight hours while the photographer awkwardly checked his watch.

After that, I tossed every piece of polyester in her dresser. The Kianao organic cotton bodysuits are the only things I’ll use as a base layer now. They're so ridiculously soft, they don't have those terrible scratchy tags that irritate the back of the neck, and the envelope shoulders mean when a diaper blowout happens (and it WILL happen), I can pull the whole thing down over his body instead of dragging poop over his head. It’s the little things that save your sanity.

If you're currently drowning in a sea of terrible, unbreathable baby clothes, please just click around the Kianao organic collections. Your baby’s skin will thank you.

Trying to buy our way out of the chaos

In the movie, J.C. throws money at her problems. She buys a massive farmhouse in Vermont to escape the city pressure. As modern parents, we do a much smaller version of this. We buy educational toys, hoping they'll magically turn our living rooms into serene, Scandinavian learning environments.

Mark, my husband, is obsessed with this idea. He bought Leo the Gentle Baby Building Block Set because he read some article about "early mathematical reasoning" and spatial awareness. He sits on the floor with Leo, stacking them and pointing out the little animal symbols, talking about cognitive development.

I think they're just... fine. They’re blocks. Honestly, my favorite thing about them has absolutely nothing to do with Leo's brain development. My favorite thing is that they're made of soft rubber. Do you know what happens when you step on a hard wooden block barefoot at 6:00 AM while stumbling blindly toward the coffee maker? You die. Your soul leaves your body. With these soft blocks, I step on them, they squish slightly, I curse quietly under my breath, and I keep walking. That's the true metric of a five-star toy in my house.

Before kids versus after kids

Watching this movie reminded me of the divide. The massive, unbridgeable chasm between Who I Was Before and Who I Am Now. Before kids, you watch J.C. Wiatt panic over a crying baby and you think, "Wow, she's so out of touch." After kids, you watch her lock herself in the bathroom to escape the noise and you think, "Yes. Good strategy. Take deep breaths in there, Diane."

If you've a tween or older kid (the movie is rated 11+ for some mild 80s adult themes and people drinking wine to cope with stress), it’s actually a really fascinating thing to watch together. Maya is only seven, so we aren't there yet, but I can't wait to show it to her in a few years and ask her if she thinks a woman would still be treated like J.C. in a corporate office today. I'm dreading the answer, but it's a conversation we need to have.

So, the next time you feel like you're failing at the juggle—the impossible, endless juggle of parenting, working, feeding, and just existing—go stream Baby Boom. Let Diane Keaton validate your chaos. And then forgive yourself for serving frozen chicken nuggets instead of homemade artisanal Vermont applesauce.

Ready to upgrade your baby’s wardrobe to something that actually makes your life easier? Grab one of those organic bodysuits I won't stop talking about right now.

My Messy, Real-Life FAQ on This Whole Situation

Is the movie genuinely safe for kids to watch?
Okay, so Common Sense Media says 11+. It's an 80s movie, so the adults are casually drinking wine and taking Valium to deal with stress, which is wild to watch now. There’s some mild language and some dating stuff with the hunky veterinarian. I definitely wouldn't put it on for my four-year-old, but for a middle-schooler? Yeah, it’s fine, and it’s a great way to talk about how much (and how little) things have changed for women.

Did making my own baby food honestly work out?
Hell no. I mean, I tried. I really tried. But the reality of boiling, peeling, pureeing, and storing tiny portions of vegetables while also trying to work a job and do laundry was just too much. Dr. Miller’s advice about avoiding heavy metals really got to me, but eventually I found a middle ground—mashing up a fresh avocado takes three seconds. No food processor required. You just do what you can.

Does the Kianao organic bodysuit really shrink in the wash?
Not if you follow the directions, which I usually don't. I wash literally everything on cold because I'm terrified of ruining things, and I let them air dry over the back of my dining room chairs (much to Mark's annoyance). They hold their shape incredibly well. They have a little bit of elastane in them, which is the magic ingredient that keeps them from turning into sad, stretched-out crop tops after your baby pulls on the neckline 400 times.

Why does this movie hit so hard for millennial moms?
Because we were sold the exact same lie J.C. Wiatt was! We were told we could "have it all" if we just leaned in and girl-bossed hard enough. Then we had babies and realized the system is completely broken and childcare is impossibly expensive. Watching Keaton realize her fancy job doesn't give a crap about her new reality is deeply, painfully validating. We're all just trying to figure it out without losing our minds.

Will those soft building blocks honestly make my kid good at math?
Look, Mark thinks they're building Leo's early geometric reasoning skills or whatever. I think they're just colorful squares that keep him occupied for twelve minutes while I answer emails. The science on early brain development is basically just "let them play with stuff," so wrap that in whatever educational anxiety you want. Like I said, I just love them because they don't cause physical injury when I step on them.