What does a good mum look like? Upon hearing the phrase, despite your very best feminist intentions, visions of a nurturing, floral-clad woman holding a freshly baked loaf of bread might already be forming in your mind. It’s 2026, but, for many of us, it can still be hard to accept that motherhood is anything but one-size-fits-all.
Perhaps that’s why Claire (Danielle Galligan) in The Walsh Sisters, an adaptation of the beloved Marian Keyes series, is such a quiet revelation. The show follows the five grown-up Walsh sisters as they deal with the ups and downs of life, from romances to addiction to friendship to complicated family dynamics. (There’s a truly excellent portrayal of the Boomer mom-millennial daughter relationship). From her first appearance, Claire serves up some serious Samantha Jones energy – it’s a million miles away from the Little House on the Prairie vibes we’ve come to expect from our on-screen mothers. Our introduction to Claire is a shot of her grunting as she steps out of a car and slips her feet into a pair of metallic heels, before strutting confidently over to greet her sisters before a family lunch. With her sharp black blazer and her even sharper blunt bob, she’s the perfect picture of ballsy, modern woman about town. I’ll admit that, at first, I couldn’t help but think that the young girl following her from the car looked slightly out of place.
BBC/Enda Bowe
As the first episode continued, I fell more and more in love with Claire, the recently divorced young mum. There she was, animatedly refilling her glass of white wine. And there, swiping left and left and left again on Tinder. And there, flirting with a random guy and the bar before stumbling home, dropping her jacket on the floor, and tumbling into bed, full face of makeup still on. What a diva, I thought! And what an… unusual representation of motherhood!
It’s safe to say, Claire bears none of the signifiers of maternal stability we have come to subconsciously expect. She doesn’t look or act the way society says mums should look and act. And, instinctively, many viewers have bristled at it. Apparently, she is too selfish, too irresponsible, too unmotherly.
But look closer and you’ll see that Claire is a wonderful mother – even if she doesn’t fit the socially accepted mould. When it comes to her daughter, she’s loving, caring, responsible. Why shouldn’t she rock a blazer and swig a little Chardonnay at her family lunch?
After all, it’s what a stereotypical father would be doing. A 2021 study from the Office for National Statistics found that although working fathers were spending more time caring for their children following the pandemic, the gender imbalance was still firmly in place, with fathers typically spending 65% of the time working mothers spent on unpaid childcare, compared to 54% pre-COVID. Other studies have shown that fathers almost always end up with more leisure time than mothers. Nevertheless, mothers also tend to feel higher levels of guilt about their parenting contributions.