‘Mad About You’ Shows Parenthood’s Reality

“Baby Buchman Upsets the Balance in ‘Mad About You’ � by David Zurawik (Calendar, Jan. 6), made one thing crystal-clear: Zurawik doesn’t have any children.

He lamented that Paul and Jamie Buchman (played by Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt) are now too tired to have intimate chats on their bed. Having interviewed hundreds of working moms and scores of new dads for my book “Two Years Without Sleep: Working Moms Talk About Having a Baby and a Job,� I have concluded that most new parents are completely exhausted by the time they get to bed. Intimate chats are not even on the radar screen.

Zurawik also repeated a jeer from TV Guide that Paul and Jamie seem out of character because of their cluelessness with the baby. Very few first-time parents are prepared for the total upheaval a new baby creates in their lives. Since we no longer have extended families with whom we can share information and experience, most new parents are forced to just wing it.

Most of us assume that taking care of a baby is just another job. That’s particularly true of the kind of young professional couple that Reiser and Hunt portray. All of a sudden those great career skills and competencies you have don’t mean a thing. To make it even more bewildering, this crying, smiling, squirming, demanding being is totally dependent on you for everything. You no longer have a life. It’s hard to be sexy under those circumstances.

I think the producers of “Mad About You� should be applauded for bringing audiences an entertaining and realistic portrait of the joys and the trials of new parents. The title of my first book came from a lawyer who said, “Nobody ever told me when I had a baby and a job I’d have to go two years without sleep.�

Some parents get lucky and their babies sleep through the night most of the time. Some don’t. All usually agree on one thing: Having the baby is worth it.

But nobody says that it’s easy.