Every new mother knows the moment. You gaze into your baby’s eyes and, besotted as you are, a nagging feeling takes root: Doubt. No matter how competent you are, the realization hits that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.
All you know is you could use some help.
For those who sniff at that worry–after all, we have been doing this for thousands of years–that’s the point of The Motherhood, hosted and created by Connie Britton. Yes, women have been mothers forever, but for most of that time, we did it in community.
“The benefit of community is that we are able to reflect to one another who we really are,” Britton says the day after a glitzy launch event. “We can tell women what their strengths are. We can help reiterate for them, ‘Oh, look at how great you are at this. Look at how strong you are and how capable you are at doing this.’ And we can do that for each other.”
“It’s completely reciprocal,” Britton continues. “We learn from one another in community. We feel less alone and less isolated. And I think that is really, really important for us. You know what the other thing about community is? We can make each other laugh, and laughter can get human beings through a lot.”
Her unscripted series, The Motherhood, aims to do that for single mothers, and Britton, as a single mom, knows the challenges. The series premieres on Hallmark on May 5 with two of its six episodes, then airs weekly.
Each episode streams the next day on Hallmark+ and features a different single mom, with experts offering guidance on how best to use space, deal with children and pull your look together. The first two episodes were available for screening and feature one mom whose 5-year-old is running the house. Another mom, who, although she delegates to her sons, is still doing so much it’s a wonder she doesn’t collapse. The women are functioning, but realize this is not an ideal way to live. The Motherhood allows them do something so many of us find difficult–ask for help.
The series’ on-screen experts are parenting coach Destini Davis, do-it-yourself home designer Angela Rose, and stylist Taryn Hicks. (Hicks seems fated to be on Hallmark since she grew up on a Christmas tree farm.) The women offer the sort of advice friends dispense.
As a child, Britton heard her mom and friends talk. Memories of those neighbor ladies, as she calls them, inspired the series.
“We grew up on a cul-de-sac in a fairly small town in Virginia,” she says. “Every day, at five o’clock, the neighbor ladies would come over, get their glass of wine, and sit down, and talk about the day, and talk about what was going on, and get advice and opinions about everything under the sun, child-rearing, jobs, husbands, whatever. And that was incredibly powerful.”
“I thought about those women when I was creating the character of Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights because those are the women that shaped me," she adds. “They were Southern women, and they had a way about getting through life. They used laughter a lot. They used grace a lot. They would just kill with kindness. Those women have influenced me a lot to this day.”
These women ran the world, even if no one acknowledged as much, and were everywhere. My mother and her friends also spoke daily over cigarettes and black coffee. This being the Bronx, their preferred method of killing never involved kindness. Yet everyone offered advice, solicited or not.
Raising children felt more tribal then, with wisdom passed from generation to generation. It’s close to impossible for single mothers to find time to nourish those communities. Most of the time, they’re running just to stay in place.
No judgment is passed; there’s nothing harsh or mean, and everyone’s working toward making lives easier and better. The supportive vibe will feel familiar to fans of Queer Eye, and that’s because the same company, Scout Productions, is behind it.
Britton (The White Lotus, American Horror Story) took her concept to Scout, where it bounced around for years. Hallmark became involved about a year ago, says David Stefanou, the network’s head of unscripted series.
“Hallmark is a brand, and our movies and series are largely about love,” Stefanou says. “The romantic comedies they’re largely about romance. And I think what this show does is show that love takes many different forms. This is about the love of a mother and her children. And ultimately, if you watch the show, it is about the love that can be formed within a community of people with similar experiences.”
Hallmark tried unscripted with Finding Mr. Christmas on its streamer last year. Now, it’s making a concerted push into the genre and doing so separately from its signature season, Christmas.
“I hope this show, and Connie’s reach, will bring in people beyond Hallmark, and let people know that this is a place for uplifting, kind, warm-hearted stories,” Stefanou says. “On a broader level, I hope that this show will show people that unscripted TV can be positive and kind and create some good in the world, can create a little bit of love.”
To be heard above the crowd, Stefanou steps away from the elegant luncheon promoting the series. A string ensemble plays at the base of a winding staircase, where garlands of flowers wrap the banister in Manhattan’s Glasshouse on the Park. Yet as upscale as the event is, and as perfect as Britton looks (someone, please give this woman a hair product to endorse), she still emanates that mom-down-the-block vibe.
When the actress moved to Tennessee to star as Rayna James on Nashville, she had recently adopted her son and became a single mom. Yoby is now 14, but that craving for community when she settled in Music City resonates to this day.
“I can remember very vividly being in Nashville and having that experience of, ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t know how I’m going to do this,’ and needing to find community, a chosen family, very quickly,” she says.
Britton was friends with a single mom of four in the costume department. One day, when Britton was off, the mom called to say she forgot to give her son, Jed, lunch money. No biggie, Britton swung by the school with cash.
“And in that moment, I thought to myself, ‘Gosh, it would be so amazing if there was some kind of an organization where people could join and volunteer one day a week for a single mom,’” she says. “I was very aware that at least I had the resources to have a nanny.”
Cognizant of her privilege, Britton recognizes that most single moms don’t have much choice. There are more single moms than most people likely realize. In 2020, according to Pew Research, 41 percent of U.S. births were to unmarried women.
Data, however, doesn’t reveal how many of those women were with a partner, widowed, or divorced. It also doesn’t reveal how many chose to become single moms. For the purposes of the show, why anyone is a single mother is inconsequential. What matters is connecting with this huge, untapped audience.
The Motherhood aims to make them part of a community of women lifting other women. While their stories are, of course, individual, there’s a universal theme of having to do so much.
In one household, it feels as if an adult no longer lives there. The living room looks like a disorganized preschool, and that’s not a slight. Baby and toddler gear can take over, and it’s all ungainly. Mother and daughter, 5, share a bed, and the mom seeks the girl’s approval to work. Davis quietly helps bring order. She sets realistic boundaries, teaches the girl how to triage her toys (keep, donate, or sell), and encourages the mom to establish rules.
Life improves as the mother and daughter reclaim space and their rightful roles. The mom also stops dressing like a kid and ups her wardrobe. No one judges. Instead, everyone understands that a lot falls by the wayside once you become a mom.
A woman who once would not leave her apartment unless hair, makeup, and outfit (single-digit size, and that season’s fashions, thank you) were perfect, now finds herself stumbling through a market with greasy roots, lip balm passing as makeup, and stained sweats that fit 15 pounds ago. Motherhood has a way of sucking the stylish out of you.
The coaches help the women recover their own identities while continuing as moms. As novel as this approach is, it’s not as if single mothers have never been seen on television. They’ve long been the gist for terrific series: Mom, The Gilmore Girls, and, going back to 1968, Julia, the first broadcast series to star a single Black mom. For decades, single moms have also been a staple on daytime talk shows, usually when treated to makeovers.
But an unscripted series that stresses what women have always known—turn to the wise women in your life—is new. The Motherhood should be a safe bet for Hallmark; it’s a natural concept that could run for many seasons. And, it’s the realization of a 14-year-old dream for Britton, who still wants to start an organization for single moms.
“A big part of my initial thinking around all this is, I want to create community, create support systems, but also lift moms up and lift single moms up and let them know they are to be revered as heroes because that’s what they are,” Britton says. “And the fact that nobody’s ever done anything like this shows me we’ve got work to do.”
