Nightbitch—the latest entry in a now rich pantheon of media about fed-up American mothers—has an interesting premise. The film—adapted from Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel of the same name—stars Amy Adams as an unnamed mother and is about two things at once: how hard it is to be a mom in the US, and the metamorphosis that occurs to any person once they give birth.
When these two things intersect, the mother undergoes a transformation so radical that she turns into a dog. Yes, literally. Or maybe? Unclear. It’s a lot to unpack, and we (Glamour senior editor Stephanie McNeal and deputy editor Anna Moeslein) had a lot we wanted to discuss after watching it.
As new moms ourselves (Stephanie has a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and Anna has one-year-old twins, a son and a daughter), we both had strong opinions about the message behind the film, whether it accomplished the points it was trying to make, and what the depiction of modern motherhood in media is getting right, and what it’s not. Below, find the questions we asked ourselves, and our conversation, lightly edited for length and readability.
Let’s start with the basics. Overall, what did we think of Nightbitch? Did it accurately depict motherhood today?
Anna Moeslein: Yes and no. There were scenes that rang true, especially the one where Amy Adams’s character’s husband is like, “I’m going to take over bath time tonight. You relax.” And then the whole time he’s yelling from the other room, “Hey, honey, where’s this? Hey, honey, where’s that?” So she ends up just going in and doing it herself.
Stephanie McNeal: Oh yeah. We can take a diversion just to talk about the scenes where her husband displayed wildly infuriating weaponized incompetence. For me the most triggering one was when he asks her if she’s made coffee and she says, “No, you can make coffee if you want.” And then the whole time he’s hovering around like, “Well, how do I do it?” So the bathtime one was the triggering one for you?
Anna: Yeah, it was definitely the bathtime scene. My husband’s very hands-on, but I think we have fallen into our roles and sometimes in a bad way. I do, frankly, delegate a lot. I’ll ask him to do something but he won’t know, like, what drawer the socks are in. That kind of stuff. I just inherently hold all that information, always.
The movie very much plays into the trope that the mom is the one doing the emotional labor and household management, and anecdotally, it seems a lot of heterosexual women do play that role. But is that true across the board? Or is it just a stereotype?
Anna: That’s the stereotype or, historically, it’s been women. But I think that in every household, regardless of gender, there is a person who’s more dominantly the keeper of the household space and someone who is in a more passive role. I have friends where it’s the reverse.
Stephanie: We don’t want to be heteronormative here. Everyone’s dynamic is different.
Anna: There always is going to be someone who’s doing maybe over 50%, if not 80%, 90%, of the household labor.
What parts of the film didn’t ring true?
Anna: This is very specific to me, but the boy they cast was so cute and, honestly, struck me as the easiest kid. At times I thought, What is she complaining about? I am privileged to have childcare, but I have twins, so it’s double the work when I am on with them. There were so many points in the movie where I thought, Oh, that seems like the easiest day ever. I found it hard to relate to, but I know that’s highly specific to my own circumstance.
Stephanie: One thing that I personally have an issue with—and this is not even just with this film but all motherhood content—is that there’s not a lot of nuance. The film seemed to be showing all the activities she did with her son and saying, “These are all things that all moms find annoying.” At the beginning there are a series of scenes where she’s doing the same thing over and over again. She’s making eggs, she’s going to the park, she’s going to music class. And she hates it. They didn’t put any makeup on Amy Adams to make her look haggard and sad. But from my perspective as a working mom, I felt wistful. I guess you always want what you don’t have a little bit. I was always really sad when my daughter was a baby because I could never take her to a music class since they’re all during the week and never on the weekends.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, I wish they had explored more why she found these things so monotonous and awful and what that meant about her view of herself. They kind of did at the end, but I wish they’d done more of it. I wish they’d delved deeper into the nuance that comes with every decision of motherhood.
Anna: I also struggled with the way she was so immediately dismissive of the other moms in the class.
Stephanie: I agree. I think the point was that she was insecure with herself being a stay-at-home mom, and that’s why she was hating on the other stay-at-home moms. Whereas I feel like, when you're watching the movie, it comes off as very mean. But eventually she becomes friends with them and recognizes their value, I guess.
Anna: I think this movie might have been more successful if it had leaned in and become a full horror movie. It didn’t really have the levity of a comedy, so if it had leaned in with being full scary horror, that might have been more effective. As it stands, I ended up feeling as “in the dregs” as her character did.
Another movie that came out last year and was about similar themes was Another Happy Day with Lauren Lapkus. That one leaned much more into comedy and levity, and I thought it was a more relatable example of this type of mom content.
A lot of media about motherhood right now, it seems, is attempting to call out how horrible the American system is for parents. We don’t have a lot of support, childcare is expensive, and we have no paid leave. Much of the content emphasizes this and its impact on parents, especially moms. It’s important, but some of it veers into a kind of mom-trauma porn, and it can be depressing. Did Nightbitch thread that needle effectively?
Anna: I’m torn. Obviously our system is really frustrating and instills a lot of anger and rage at the lack of support our country gives to not just moms but parents. I mean, even talking about how more companies are requiring people coming back into the office and being less flexible about remote or hybrid policies; that isn’t parent-friendly. We have more and more households that have two working parents; or if one parent stays home, usually a woman, it’s because the cost of childcare is more than their salary. They would work if there were adequate childcare options. It all sucks.
So I understand the content coming out to meet that rage. But it’s like anything. Sometimes when stuff is so shitty, you look for escape or levity in what you watch, and when the mirror is held up and is a little too stark, it can be like, “I don't want to see that; I experience that enough in my day-to-day life.”
We need a little bit of it all. I also don’t want to go on the other side and have only rosy content because then you miss having opportunities for conversation and ideas that could move things forward. Ironically, one of the best examples this year of the struggle of parenthood, in a way, that felt fun to watch was The Valley.
Stephanie: Oh my God, I totally know what you mean.
Anna: It was relatable, and they really got into a lot of the same themes about the challenge of parenting, but there were also laughs.
What was the main message of the film? What are we supposed to take away from it?
Stephanie: The main message I took away was kind of exemplified, I feel, when she’s having an argument with her husband and he says, “What happened to my wife?” He’s complaining, essentially, that she’s lost all the qualities about herself that he fell in love with. And she says. “She died in childbirth.”
Then there’s this kind of heavy-handed metaphor where she literally changes into a dog—maybe she does, or maybe she just imagines it, I can’t really tell. That’s trying to say that becoming a mother changes you on such a cellular level that instead of expecting yourself to go back to your life before, you need to radically embrace the parts of you that you channel while being a mother. I think that is an interesting point.
Anna: Yeah, you do change. I changed to such a degree that I don’t think I could even recognize my old self. I couldn’t even go back to her if I wanted to. I do feel like, in a way, a new species of human. So I totally get the dog metaphor. I didn’t read the book, but I imagine it would be really effective in print.
Her metamorphosis makes sense to me, which is why I wish it had gone into this full horror movie mode. This fear of, What is happening to me—everything has changed! It really is scary at times, but things level out at the end of the movie as she starts to embrace this new side of herself. And I found the same to be true for me. My maternity leave was a struggle—they’re new, I’m new, and then my marriage and that dynamic was changing too. We all had to find a new way to be together. There’s a lot happening.
But then things leveled out. As I understood the new normal, my husband and I figured out what our relationship was going to be like as parents and teammates. We also learned our kids’ quirks and things like that. It’s not exactly a happy ending as much as it’s a new beginning—the same as any life change.
Stephanie: I think something that can be really challenging is if you have a baby and you expect everything to be normal, if you expect to go back to being the same person you were before you had your baby, that can be tough. I think people get really disappointed, and that’s where people really struggle, whereas it’s better if you just kind of embrace it. You’re a dog now.
