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"  Nine years ago, Allison Pearson introduced the world to Kate Reddy, a stressed-to-the-gills working mom we all related to because she didn&amp;#039;t make it look easy. This month Kate hits the big screen in the movie version of I Don&amp;#039;t Know How She Does It. We asked Allison to continue the conversation, this time with the film&amp;#039;s stars \u2014 Sarah Jessica Parker, Busy Philipps, Christina Hendricks, and Jane Curtin \u2014 and screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada). Turns out, tough choices make for great girl talk. Q: We&amp;#039;ve been called the &amp;quot;Having It All&amp;quot; generation of women. How does that phrase resonate in your own life?  Busy Philipps: After my daughter was born and I had started working on Cougar Town, I said to my husband, &amp;quot;Whoever said we can &amp;#039;have it all&amp;#039; is either an idiot, really bad at their job, or a really bad mom.&amp;quot; The truth is, we can have it all-ish. Some days I&amp;#039;m great at my job, some days I&amp;#039;m a great mom, some days I&amp;#039;m a great wife and friend. And some days, I nail it all.  Sarah Jessica Parker: I&amp;#039;m slightly allergic to the phrase having it all, because it suggests an indulgence I don&amp;#039;t really identify with. The idea of having a full life resonates with me more, because it&amp;#039;s what I aim for. I&amp;#039;m a mother first and foremost, and the work that I do outside the home can only happen if I know all is well inside my home. Christina Hendricks: I believe [women can have it all] but that it requires an incredible amount of work. It&amp;#039;s important to never expect anything or believe you deserve something.  Jane Curtin: I did have it all! But &amp;quot;all&amp;quot; was defined as a career that was flexible and a husband who was flexible. I decided to focus on television [Kate &amp;amp;amp; Allie and 3rd Rock From the Sun] so that I could be home every night and cook dinner.  Aline Brosh McKenna: I would describe my approach as: Having Some But Not All Things Some of the Time, with breaks for snacks.  Q: Guilt is to motherhood what rain is to Seattle: It&amp;#039;s the prevailing climate. Can we talk about mom guilt?  SJP: Conflict is a better word than guilt for me. Because I&amp;#039;m choosing to work, it&amp;#039;s more about the conflict of loving the challenge and the heart of being a parent and also loving the challenge of the workplace. When I was away shooting Sex and the City 2, my daughters couldn&amp;#039;t come because they were too young to get the shots they needed to travel. And the only way to get through the bad days was to flip a switch in my brain and say, &amp;quot;At this moment, I&amp;#039;m going to pretend. I&amp;#039;m just not going to have children in my head.&amp;quot; But I was comforted that my family was spending time with the kids. And there&amp;#039;s always Skype, which is both torture and comforting. BP: Oh, God. Every day that I work, I feel the ache and pull. In TV, the schedules tend to change a lot. I&amp;#039;ll have promised Birdie, who&amp;#039;s 3, to take her to the zoo or a class, and then I get called in. I want her to be able to count on my word, so I&amp;#039;ve learned that when I&amp;#039;m working, I simply can&amp;#039;t promise those things.  ABM: The real difference between moms and dads is that moms lie in bed at night wondering if they made the right parenting choices, and dads lie in bed wondering what to say to get their wives to quit feeling guilty and sleep with them.  Q: Christina, you&amp;#039;re not a mom yet \u2014 do you worry about that guilt as you look ahead to motherhood?  CH: Who said I&amp;#039;m looking ahead at motherhood?! Anyway, you don&amp;#039;t have to be a mother to have guilt. You have to have a mother to feel guilt.  Q: When I was writing the book, I was appalled by the way women judge each other&amp;#039;s choices \u2014 stay-at-home moms vs. working ones. What&amp;#039;s that all about?  SJP: Nothing is harder than being a stay-at-home mom. Nothing. For anybody to judge any choice among the sisterhood is beyond me. It&amp;#039;s unaccountable. I don&amp;#039;t understand how anyone can decide what&amp;#039;s best for someone else.  BP: It&amp;#039;s the worst. Comments like, &amp;quot;I just couldn&amp;#039;t leave so-and-so. But I&amp;#039;m that kind of mom\u2026.&amp;quot; Puke! I think it&amp;#039;s a case of the grass being greener: I envy stay-at-home moms when I&amp;#039;m working. Then, when I&amp;#039;m on hiatus, I&amp;#039;m like, Agh! Get me a job! Q: Kate gets into a lot of crazy scrapes because of her double life: lice jumping off her during client meetings, for example. What&amp;#039;s the worst stuff you&amp;#039;ve gone through? SJP: I literally got an email while we were shooting this movie that there was lice in my son&amp;#039;s school and there would be group checks for the next few days. It was hilarious. I forwarded it to our director and was like, &amp;quot;Yep, yep, I&amp;#039;m living it now.&amp;quot; BP: Well, you know, I can never wear anything nice unless it&amp;#039;s after 8 p.m., because there will inevitably be something smeared somewhere on it. And last year, Birdie was visiting me at work, which she does a lot. They had just started to roll and our craft-services lady ran up to me and said, &amp;quot;Birdie&amp;#039;s okay. She stopped throwing up and I brought her ginger ale.&amp;quot; And then they called &amp;quot;Action!&amp;quot; I was beside myself. I don&amp;#039;t remember the take; I just remember running up to my room when they yelled &amp;quot;cut.&amp;quot; There was my poor girl, wet face and hair, lying on her nanny&amp;#039;s lap in her diaper with a blanket around her. She jumped into my arms; she was so hot and sick. And I held her and rocked her. The worst part was, I had to leave her again to go back to shoot. I started to cry, but, you know, there are 130 people who need me to do my job so they can do theirs. Q: In the book, Kate says life without her kids would be &amp;quot;like a world without music or lightning.&amp;quot; What does being a mother mean to you \u2014 and how would you express that to someone who was uncertain about becoming one?  BP: Nothing has made me a better actor than motherhood. It opened a whole new wealth of emotions and a deep calmness. But if you&amp;#039;re waiting for the perfect time, there isn&amp;#039;t one. You just have to dive in and hope the water is deep enough.  SJP: If being a mom is what you want to do, it&amp;#039;s the most spectacularly wonderful, difficult, thrilling thing in life. But the beauty is that you don&amp;#039;t have to make that choice: You can be someone who doesn&amp;#039;t necessarily want to be a parent, and have friends who have kids and be around them when you want to be. But for me, it&amp;#039;s just such a tremendous joy. ABM: You spend a lot of time in puzzled wonderment about how you can adore a tiny person so much, how you will race across broken glass to get there before bedtime. You also finally understand how hard your own parents worked to raise you, and you start immediately apologizing to them.  Q: I once went away for five days and left my husband a list of stuff to do with the kids/pets in my absence. He said, &amp;quot;But it looks like a plan for invading a small country.&amp;quot; Do you think it will ever be possible to download the &amp;quot;Motherhood Program&amp;quot; to a man&amp;#039;s brain?  SJP: No, nor would I want to. I like that there is something I&amp;#039;m certain I&amp;#039;m superior at! It&amp;#039;s worthy of a Nobel Prize if somebody could figure out what it is that allows a woman to be so strategic and plan and carry things out. I feel confident that there are very few men who could do the same thing. I&amp;#039;m sure there are exceptions to the rule. But I&amp;#039;ve not seen it.  JC: I say: Let fathers do what they do, and as long as nobody dies, a successful time was had by all.  ABM: My husband once tried to convince me that we were splitting all parenting chores 50/50, which led to an argument that culminated in me asking \u2014 okay, yelling \u2014 &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s his shoe size?&amp;quot; Once we both realized that he was never going to grasp the nuances of matching the little socks to the little hat, or even where we kept those things, it got a lot easier.  Q: The challenges of being a working mom will always be part of the picture, but what hopes do you have for the girls of the next generation? And what advice? ABM: Being a good parent starts with being a fulfilled, happy person. Begin with that. Try to keep that going. You deserve it, and so do your kids. If you can learn to do that before the babies arrive, you&amp;#039;re in good shape.  BP: I hope that some of the kinks get worked out with men, as far as what&amp;#039;s expected of them and how to keep balance in the home. I feel like my daughter&amp;#039;s generation may just get the balance right. And the advice I will give her is to be as open and honest with your friends and coworkers as you can be. It&amp;#039;s easier when women talk these things out as opposed to suffering alone. You know, it isn&amp;#039;t easy. But it sure is worth it. I love both my jobs and couldn&amp;#039;t imagine not doing one. CH: Work hard. Take pride. Figure out what you love to do and be excellent at it. JC: My advice? Maintain a good support system, keep a sense of humor, and avoid perfection at all costs. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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