Dr. Phil wins the Apple Pie in the Face Award

Dear Dr. Phil:

Congratulations! You have won Mothers & More's first ever Apple Pie in the Face Award! In fact, the show you aired on Monday, Nov. 10, "Mom vs. Mom," was the inspiration behind creating this award, which calls attention to acts that divide mothers or trivialize the struggles mothers face in balancing caregiving with their other needs and responsibilities.

Mothers & More is a national women's organization dedicated to improving the lives of mothers through support, education and advocacy, with over 7,000 members and 180 chapters coast to coast. We daresay a large proportion of your target viewership overlaps our own member profile - mothers with young children, home full-time or balancing their caregiving with some level of paid workplace participation. Many of our members alerted us to this "mommy wars" show beforehand, which we were then pained to watch.

Dr. Phil, you tout yourself as someone who seeks to improve people's lives by helping them "get real." Well, we think it's time your viewers got real about you.

What did you really mean to accomplish with this show, Mom vs. Mom? You clearly didn't help your two guests, mothers who were ambivalent about whether to stay home with their children or try to juggle their caregiving with paid work. You literally divided your audience into two warring factions - at-home mothers and working mothers - and then aired inflammatory comments made by audience members, safely and privately taped beforehand. Then you threw down the gauntlet between the two groups by announcing, "Welcome to 'Catfights Are Us,'" complete with meows from the audience. You chose the most fanatical, stereotypical members of the audience to speak on behalf of each side. And you sabotaged the "experts" that you invited to represent the two sides, Joan K. Peters and Heidi Brennan, by barely letting either of them speak, repeatedly putting words in their mouths, and putting both on the defensive by characterizing both's views in extremist, alarmist language.

So, let's get real about what you were really trying to accomplish with this show. Ratings, ratings, ratings.

Now, let's get real about mothers' lives and "choices" in our society.

The reality is that most mothers, through their active parenting years, move in and out of paid work and caregiving work, wearing a SAHM label at some points and a working mom label at others. The reality is that mothers and their families face tough decisions every day about how to provide care for their families and have enough money to pay the bills. The reality is that caregiving is not treated as real work and that women shoulder the overwhelming amount of that caregiving work. In a world where caregiving really counted, both mothers and fathers would have more options for combining paid work and caregiving over their lifetimes in a way that suits the needs of their family without breaking their financial backs.

But, Dr. Phil, you clearly don't want to tackle real dialogue about how we might work together to reach that world. Your show preyed on mothers' insecurities about their struggle to find ways to care for their children, to make financial ends meet and to meet their own needs in a society that provides little support for that struggle. And you did it for ratings, pure and simple.

Mothers & More believes it's time for mothers to call the media on the carpet for their reprehensible behavior and the disservice they do to all mothers and all families when they stage adversarial drama-filled debates and reinforce stereotypes that are so far removed from the reality of most mothers' lives.

We have encouraged our members to let you know how they feel about this horrible show, "Mom vs. Mom," and we are posting this letter on our website to encourage the public to do the same.

We hope you like apple pie, Dr. Phil, because it is now all over your face. Enjoy!

Sincerely,

Joanne Brundage
Executive Director

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