The backstory: Nickelodeon subsidiary Nick Jr. has historically aired preschooler-friendly programming 24 hours a day.  In October of this year, the folks at Nickelodeon decided to branch out a bit by turning over their overnight (10pm-2am Eastern) programming to a new block, called NickMom (tagline: “motherfunny.”)  The new block features four series: What Was Carol Brady Thinking? (in which episodes of The Brady Bunch are overlaid with pop-ups indicating what Carol was really thinking–see image at right for an example), reality series Mom Friends Forever, comedy talk show Parental Discretion with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, and stand-up comedy showcase NickMom Night Out.  (Blogger Joyce Slaton offers a useful overview of the series here.)

Though the series are technically different, they all share a trademark sense of humor about 21st Century motherhood: kids are great, but they’re also a pain in the butt, so when they go to bed, have a glass of wine and laugh over the ridiculousness of raising kids in our modern times.  This bump, aired as the channel switches from its preschooler content to NickMom demonstrates the way Nick Jr. conceives of the connection between these two program types, and the approach to motherhood NickMom has adopted.

Nickelodeon’s strategy here is clear: turn a slow daypart into a moneymaker by appealing to the folks who are already likely to be tuning into the channel.  Once the kids go to bed, demand for preschooler programming goes down, but parents may already have the TV tuned to Nick Jr.–why not give them some “adult” programming to enjoy?

But NickMom  has been met with quite a bit of resistance from audiences whose complaints illustrate the perhaps unanticipated flaws in such an institutional strategy, along with the current national sentiment on representing motherhood.  The lineup has led to the creation of the Cancel NickMom movement, a group of parents committed to achieving one of two goals: getting Viacom to cancel the offending programming or move it to another channel.  Their primary complaint is the unsuitability of NickMom series on a channel otherwise aimed at a preschool audience,  highlighting audiences’ expectations for niche cable channels.

Parents have come to rely on Nick Jr.’s 24-hour cycle of kid programming for a variety of reasons: sick kids awake in the middle of the night, 2nd and 3rd shift parents whose families are on a late-night schedule, families in the Pacific time zone for whom this content is on not at 10pm but 7pm, and so on.  Because NickMom shows are targeted to adults, their more grown-up themes (including sex, alcohol, and adult language) frustrate parents who previously viewed Nick Jr. as an ever-ready tool in their parenting arsenal.  One parent, quoted on the CancelNickMom.com homepage, notes, “Why have you put garbage such as NickMom on a PRESCHOOL channel??? Sometimes, I do allow my child to stay up past 10 pm, and sometimes, she does wake up in the middle of the night. Used to, I was able to let her watch nickjr [sic] until she went back to sleep. Nick jr [sic] is the biggest reason I have kept the satellite plan I have. But if I have to tolerate this nonsense, she won’t be watching the channel at all.”

It would be easy to dismiss CancelNickMom as a small but vocal minority–indeed, many of the comments on their Facebook feed indicate that parents who dislike NickMom should simply switch the channel–but ultimately the programming block has not performed well for Nick Jr.  The Wall Street Journal reports that ratings for the time period have decreased 74% from the same timeslot in 2011.  Moreover, the movement has inspired several advertisers, including kid-friendly companies who should be Nick Jr.’s bread and butter (Green Giant, Cheerios, and Fisher-Price), to withdraw from the channel.  Perhaps the increasingly dramatic narrowcasting strategies that are the hallmark of the post-network era have reached a point of no return when those extreme niche channels can no longer diversify.

Of course, this particular drama centers around two hot-button topics: kid-appropriate content and representations of motherhood.  Though most of the complaints from parents center around the unsuitability of NickMom programming for the preschoolers who may be watching, media critiques of the NickMom block suggest that the real problem is the way the series portray modern motherhood.  The New York Times‘ Neil Genzlinger calls the block, “a collection of shows both aggressively lowbrow and narrowly focused on a few areas of interest to the female audience, namely sex and children.”  Indeed, as the promo below indicates, these topics do seem to form the bulk of the lineup.

Though the New York Times critique offers a perspective on audiences which is a bit too “passive sponge-like” for me, suggesting, “repeated exposure to NickMom’s two-note material will quickly turn otherwise smart women into zombies who can talk of nothing but sex and the mundanities of child-rearing,” the argument that the NickMom representation of motherhood focuses too narrowly on jokes about potty training, sex, and chardonnay is one expressed elsewhere, also.  Slate‘s Jessica Grose had a similar reaction to Genzlinger’s piece, and so completed her own review.  In her more nuanced critique, Grose indicates that her favorite series, Parental Discretion, stood out because, “That one half-hour of goodness nestled in hours of mediocrity made me realize what’s the matter with NickMom’s other shows. What worked about the nanny hidden camera was that, while of course embracing mommy culture simply by being a part of the NickMom block, it was also pointed criticism of the absurdity of it all, rather than bland, soppy reassurance that whatever you’re doing is just great because you’re part of that exalted category of human known as MOM. It’s the hardest job on earth, didn’t you know?”

Ultimately, the drama surrounding NickMom provides a wonderful case study of both institutional strategies in the post-network era and the ambivalence surrounding contemporary representations of motherhood.  I, for one, will continue to watch the news surrounding the lineup, even if I rarely watch the lineup itself.

There is an unwritten rule in dramatic television–particularly shows whose genres create unstable realities for the characters–that no one is really dead until you see a body. Through supernatural or soap operatic machinations, characters previously believed to be dead can act as a Chekhov’s gun waiting to go off, upending a protagonist’s worldview and often destabilizing their essential sense of self.

Ten years ago, Alias pulled the trigger on that narrative gun by ending its first season with a shadowy figure in a doorway and a handcuffed and beaten Sydney Bristow looking to her captor and asking, “Mom?” Audience members had known that Sydney’s supposedly dead mother, Irina Derevko, was a Soviet spy and potentially very much alive, but the final moments of the season revealed her as a direct and ongoing threat to Sydney. She was “The Man,” the season’s big bad. The question of “Mom?” mixed hope and terror as the revivification of the maternal is wrapped in violence, a threat left unclear over the four-month summer hiatus.

Now, almost ten years later, two more first seasons of television ended with similar revelations: NBC’s Grimm and ABC’s Revenge. All three shows are set in narrative worlds where twists, threats, and threatening twists are commonplace, relating to ongoing serial mysteries and generic conventions. There is nothing necessarily new about a character’s surprising return, but the particular attention to the absent mother’s return in a threatening form that appeared in two finales last week appears to tap into a current and contentious discourse of motherhood: attachment parenting.

This recent TIME Magazine cover image and the accompanying story discuss attachment parenting as both physical and emotional closeness between mother and child during the child’s formative years. The image on the cover represents an extreme example of that method in which a child is breastfeeding well past the normative time-frame. Underlying this form of parenting is a reaction against absentee-ism and an implicit critique of distance between mother and child. It is this criticism that links with the threatening fictional mothers on Alias, Grimm, and Revenge. Death appears to be the only legitimate reason for an absent mother, and when that death is revealed as a lie, the mother becomes a threat to the child.

Grimm’s first season finale, “The Woman in Black,” followed protagonist detective and creature-hunting Grimm, Nick Burkhardt, as he is threatened by a man who was involved in his parents’ murder. The eponymous woman operates one step ahead of Nick, the police, and the assassin, outwitting, outrunning, and outfighting all before revealing her identity as Nick’s supposedly dead mother. Although the reveal tempers her threatening characteristics–at least toward Nick–the majority of the episode portrays her as a powerful, shadowy figure not to be trusted. She poses a potential physical threat toward Nick by being a clearly better fighter than him (in a few seconds she fells the man he had battled for the previous five minutes), but she also represents a threat to his understanding of self and purpose. If his parents–particularly his mother through whose blood the gift/duty of being a Grimm was passed to him–were not sacrifices to the Grimm duty and name but were/are instead hiding from it or waging their own separate war, how can Nick reconcile his recent acceptance of the mantle? It is yet unclear whether Nick’s mother will live up to her threatening title as the Woman in Black and join the other monstrous women of the show or if the reference to Susan Hill’s recently adapted novel is merely happenstance. The implication, however, seems to be that there is something seriously wrong with her that she’d distance herself from her son when he was a child.

Different from the two mothers discussed above, the reveal that Amanda Clark’s mother may still be alive on Revenge does not pose a physical or immediate threat to her daughter, but it does show a similar potential for existential crisis. What happens to Amanda’s singularly focused drive for revenge when she may have family yet to love and lose? Alternatively, what role might Mrs. Clark play in the vast conspiracy that instigated Amanda’s vengeance? Might she be “the Man” behind the Initiative? How bad could she have been to warrant a faked death and total isolation from her young daughter? We are only told that there is more to Mrs. Clark’s alleged death than we know, and that David Clark didn’t even bring a picture of his allegedly dead wife when he moved to the Hamptons. Until next season, she is an empty vessel for viewer supposition, the equivalent of a shadow in a doorway, a maternal threat cultivated through absence, a bomb waiting to go off.

The balancing act that has followed has much in common with what both Jason Mittell and Eleanor Seitz have described in previous columns. I’ve had to learn how to be both an active and engaged parent for my son and a productive and present faculty member, which has been challenging and has often left me feeling as though I’m doing a poor job on both fronts.  The difficulties of academics who choose to become mothers have been discussed elsewhere and studies on the consequences of our choice have revealed depressing statistics on the negative impact of parenthood on the careers of female academics in comparison to our male counterparts.  Motherhood and academia are in many ways an uneasy mix. And even more so when it comes to single motherhood.

My own experience surely speaks to how difficult it is for female academics to identify the ideal time in which to start their families: Is it graduate school? Immediately after graduation? During the first years on the tenure-track? Wait until post-tenure? None of these options felt exactly right for me (especially considering I didn’t have a long-term partner willing to commit to fatherhood for much of that time) until I was up against a wall and had to make a choice about what was best for my future self and family. For most women, in fact, it will likely feel as though there really is no right time, since our biological clocks start winding down just as we feel the worst of the job insecurity and workload begin to lift. Mary Ann Mason, law professor and co-director of the Economics and Family Security Center at Berkeley, refers to the ages of 30-40 as the “make or break years”, a time when almost too much has to be decided and accomplished by women both personally and professionally.

I should note that there are some unique circumstances to my life that make single parenting less stressful for me personally than it might be for many others.  I work in a family-friendly department in a Research 1 institution with a teaching load of 2/2 and a generous maternity leave policy. My tenure provides a rare and coveted level of job security. I have subsidized housing on campus and in a neighborhood zoned for excellent public schools. I also have an incredibly supportive network of friends—many of whom also live close-by in faculty housing. All of these factors, combined with the flexible schedule that being an academic affords, means my work is conducive in many ways to my life as a single parent.

That said, the many practical difficulties of being a single faculty parent still play out in my everyday life. Besides the financial burden, the most challenging aspect of my choice has been fitting in as much research, writing, administrative work, teaching and class prep possible into a 40 hour a week schedule—the time when my son is in school/daycare. While I can technically squeeze some work in at night, once my son is asleep, and on the weekends, it is incredibly difficult to accomplish anything at those times that requires my full attention and/or any level of intellectual energy. (Not to mention that I often need those hours for more basic life-management tasks like paying bills and cleaning.)

I can also only attend talks on campus, which are often scheduled after 5pm, if I chose to sacrifice both time with my son and money to pay for a babysitter, which is why I often take a pass. Conferences and research trips also involve much finagling and uncomfortable decisions, as I have to leave my son with friends or transport him back and forth to his grandparents in Florida in order to travel alone. (Some of my single mom friends chose to bring along a babysitter or family member to watch their children while travelling for work.)

Another struggle for me as a single parent involves trying to protect my time on campus without feeling as though I am avoiding or short-changing my colleagues, students, and myself. I don’t enjoy having to tell people that I can’t meet them for coffee or lunch or spend a big chunk of time conversing with them in my office. However, I often have to do just that, as every hour not working in the office is an hour that I will have to make-up post-bedtime when I am in a state of utter exhaustion.  In general, my tight schedule means that, for now, I am losing out on much of the social and intellectual life that I had prior to becoming a parent. However, I am banking on the idea that at least some of that will return once my son gets older, since, as I’m quickly learning, the early childhood years are astonishingly fleeting.

In exchange for all the juggling and social, professional and financial costs, I have a life that is richer, more intimate, and more complex thanks to the presence of my son in my life. For now, I am avoiding the workaholic trap that Ben described in his column that is often the fate of the single academic and experiencing more joy and satisfaction in my personal life than I ever had before. Single motherhood was not my first choice for how I envisioned creating a family and it likely is not a workable option for every single female academic approaching the end of her childbearing years. However, even with all of the struggle, balancing, and strict time management involved, it has turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made.

When The Good Wife was announced last fall my first reaction was interest, as Julianna Margulies and Christine Baranski are both awesome, but that reaction quickly turned to apprehension. Infidelity is the one topic I really avoid in entertainment if I can help it, and I had no interest in seeing this play out. However, the power of word-of-mouth swayed me when a number of my friends–friends who tend to not have much of a fannish love intersection–raved about the show. I gave it a try, and I got hooked. Watching a season in the course of just a few days is always a heady experience, and one that differs from following a series as it airs, week by week. The compressed viewing can highlight weaknesses, but it can also allow longer story lines to gain impact for the viewer, benefitting from the accelerated narration.

Yet neither the larger story lines, such as the myth-arc of corrupt politicians and unjustly imprisoned husbands, nor the smaller, episodic court case narratives were what kept me watching. Rather, I found that the depth of the characters and their interactions had me riveted and wanting to see more. Bechdel test aside, it is nice to see three main female characters interact about everything other than their relationships to or with men. It is even nicer to see these women struggle and yet remain sympathetic and strong. I’m looking at Alicia Florrick and I feel myself identifying more than I have with many other characters who more closely resemble me and my life. It is the program’s demonstrated ability to show depth without needless melodrama and stereotyped caricature that I’ve fallen in love with.

By genre classification, The Good Wife is, disputably, a procedural. And what’s more, it isn’t even innovative as such. The audience is usually presented with one case per episode, and the good side tends to win: defendants are innocent and are vindicated in the nick of time. I’m not sure we have a more precise category for such procedurals cum drama (which seem to cluster in medical and legal settings), but it is the characterization in these shows as well as those in more traditional prime time soaps that I measure Alicia’s portrayal against. I don’t identify (or even much like) most of the characters on Grey’s Anatomy or Parenthood to use two shows I still watch as examples. The drama tends to be extreme, not in the actual issues–because clearly the imprisoned husband and large political scheming are dramatic indeed–but in the responses to those issues. The appeal for me is that the show succeeds in presenting mature adults with adult capabilities beyond their profession, and yet the women are not dominated by any single issue in their lives–neither motherhood nor work nor their sexuality.

The balance of work drama and home issues presents Alicia in different roles that do not defer to one another (mother, lover, wife, professional) but rather mutually influence and affect. This feels like my life: constant negotiation, juggling of different roles and responsibilities, the small concessions and compromises that are part and parcel of most adult lives. In my favorite line of the show, former boss Stern tells Alicia “I always thought the CIA could take lessons from the suburban housewife,” calling out the similar emotional demands of Alicia’s different roles. The show doesn’t shy away from the challenges Alicia faces in negotiating her adult life; this is more than I tend to expect to see on television, where story lines often trade in emotionally false dichotomies. “Issues got more complex. And I grew up,” Alicia explains to her brother; this is the moment where I feel that I am seeing a real person on the TV screen. People may up and run to Africa and break up relationships in airports (example), but most of us go to work and pick kids up from school and have fights and make up and continue on with our lives.

In Alicia, we are presented a woman who’s recovering from an immense emotional trauma and upheaval in her life, but whose response isn’t extreme. She isn’t divorcing her cheating jail-bound husband, but she refuses his demands in a way that make it clear he’s not used to refusal. In the subtle details we see her change and grow, rather than in big melodramatic gestures, and this is why I love the show. At one point, her husband and potential lover discuss a court case while Alicia prepares coffee for everyone in the kitchen. When she moves to present some cakes along with the coffee, she suddenly throws them back in the box, clearly redefining her role. Emotions may not be writ large in this drama, but the message comes through loud and clear nevertheless: this Good Wife is not simply a suburban mom who was publicly shamed by her husband’s infidelities. She is a host of other things at the same time, as are we all. Adult issues are complex indeed!

Case in point, Tuesday night’s viewing of Lost led me to pronounce the following mandate to my husband as we drifted to sleep. “Just so we’re clear, if I’m ever trapped in the debris of an explosion in a submarine that is rapidly taking on water, there will be no romantic gestures. You know I love you, but someone has to get out to take care of the kids.” Minutes before I had been enthralled by the latest chapter of the Lost saga, but the final minutes rang false to me. Part was probably the oddity of the Kwons speaking in English (an idiosyncrasy others have already commented on), but narrative disbelief really took over once I realized that Jin was to sacrifice himself to die with Sun. Maybe they have a good option for their orphaned child (although I don’t recall this to be the case). But the supposed romanticism of Jin’s death and subsequent orphaning of the child seemed far-fetched to me.

A previous version of myself might have bought that scene, and my point here is not to pick on Lost. In the spirit of the holiday, the episode gave me a way to express something I’ve been thinking about for awhile. To be clear, I’m not arguing some sort of essential maternal viewing position, but in the nearly three years since I joined the motherhood, I’ve noticed differences in the meanings I make and in what stays with me. More typically I notice it in tragedy. A child’s death on Grey’s Anatomy would have been sad in the past, but now the meaning I take is far more devastating. This subject position also probably explains why just remembering the detectives arriving at Shane Vendrell’s (Walton Goggins of The Shield) apartment to find he killed his family as part of his suicide still takes my breath away. While Goggins had displayed growing desperation throughout the last season, the audacity of this last act made clear the consequences of his friendship with Vic Mackey and their actions of the previous seasons. I suspect there are myriad other ways my meaning making has changed that I can’t recall as readily or may not even recognize.

Certainly, this isn’t a radical reading position, and as much as many of us have been interested in the prospect of oppositional readings, it grounds my understanding of negotiation of meaning to be fairly limited and of polysemy to be bounded.