This 30-Something Is Ending The Duel Between Work And Motherhood

Someone once told me, “Nothing matters if you don’t have a story.” Kate McMahon not only has stories, she’s a master at sharing them. Kate's a documentary producer dedicated to the idea that great storytelling rooted in journalism illuminates the wider world. She’s also a mother who says, “The conventional thinking that it’s a duel between work and motherhood can actually be turned on its ear to reveal something less toxic, more mutually beneficial.”

For Kate, it all begins with the answer to this question: Do you love what you do?

Kate: I understand it doesn’t turn out this way for everyone: having the job of your dreams. Luckily for me though, I am in my chosen career – documentary journalism. I don’t only love my job, I weirdly feel addicted to it. I get to go where no one else gets to go – into the scenes of people and places my own life would never cross – and then share what I learn from them in beautifully assembled films. And like a true addict, even before I’m finished with one project, I’m jonesing for the next.

But before you get too starry eyed about my career, allow me to reveal the ugly truth. Many argue that documentary is the toughest form of journalism to pursue. All journalists worry about getting access to great stories and vetting all the facts. But only documentary journalists have to worry about “the big production” that is filmmaking. Not a day goes by that I don’t fret over the quality of the job I’ve done.

I’m also a parent. And not a day goes by that I don’t fret over how well I’m doing as a mom too. That said, I do believe my work strengthens my parenting skills and being a parent makes me better at my work.  (Attention all “Lean In” readers:  the conventional thinking that it’s a duel between work and motherhood can actually be turned on its ear to reveal something less toxic, more mutually beneficial.)

Denise: How does your work strengthen your parenting skills and vice versa?

Kate: I was a producer long before I became a parent. From age 22 to 33 I went through classic entry-level years in production. This involved everything from making sure the water of the show’s host was the perfect hotness, to parading a troupe of professional laughers around a national PBS event to moving an executive producer completely out of her apartment with my bare hands (lingerie drawer and all). What does this have to do with making documentaries? you may ask. Hence, the aforementioned “big production” aspect of it. There is a lot of nonsense that comes with film production. But there is also a lot of substance. For example, in Cambodia, I met children living in shacks along the Mekong River who had no shoes and barely enough to eat. I gave them all the contents I could part with from my backpack. On a documentary about Andrew Jackson, I had to recreate an 1800s town and experienced the gut-wrenching feeling of shackling an entire black family in chains whom I’d hired as slave re-enactors. And then there were the teenage girls I got to know for a film about methamphetamine who reminded me of myself at that age, except they had 40-something boyfriends and parents who stole their money to buy meth.

The cliché I totally overuse about my children is that they’re the best things I’ve ever produced. (har har). But when my first baby was born, I had a difficult time adjusting to the awesome responsibility of motherhood. Prior to her birth, I could swear I was maxed out. And now a baby? My daughter was eight-months old when I began producing a documentary about vaccines. All of a sudden, I was caught between life imitating art and art imitating life. My baby was smack in the middle of her vaccine schedule, and as so many parents do in their child’s first year, we saw our pediatrician more often than dear friends. To say it was a stressful time is a gross understatement. I was torn between doing what I believed was right for my child and hearing Jenny McCarthy’s voice ring in my ear about how she swore her son was different after getting a shot. But in the end, it was the very fact that I had constant contact with a pediatrician that led me to one of my proudest journalistic discoveries. To counter balance the anti-vaccine and pro-vaccine arguments, it was essential to find modern-day footage of vaccine-preventable diseases.  This is because there are loads of videos showing clinical autism cases in modern day, but most of the vaccine-preventable disease cases caught on film are from times before all vaccines were readily available. The way I found the videos I needed was by asking my pediatrician if she knew of any doctor who has videotaped such cases. Her answer was yes, and she helped me connect with the doctor who provided the essential footage. Boom. Being a parent had opened up new doors and opportunities for me professionally. And it has continued in this way, going on six years. I’ve shown up for interviews hugely pregnant, and witness the person I’m about to interview markedly relax at the sight of my belly. I use anecdotes about my kids to break the ice when I’m introducing myself to people I’ve phoned up out of the blue to ask prying research questions.

And then there is the multi-tasking. I wish there could be a study of the brain that compares a person’s ability to multi-task before they are a parent and after they are a parent. It could be that I had simply grown up by age 33 which gave me the juice to take on more work in less time, but I am inclined to believe it had more to do with the efficiency skills that come with learning how to be a parent. Something changed in my early thirties and I’ve been able to excel in my career, have two babies – and keep my marriage happy (most of the time). I give a lot of credit to my kids for that.

But I also give credit to my job for helping me manage my home life. A wise executive producer once said, “Being a producer is like being the mortar of a brick house. You have to hold all the pieces together.” If I hadn’t had 11 years of being the mortar before being a parent, I probably wouldn’t be able to say all this now. My hunch is that documentary producers are not the only professionals who experience this. I believe work has both a complicating and a simplifying effect on parenthood – and vice versa.

Denise: You're 38 years old and your stories are valuable to women (and men) of any age, but especially to women in their 20s and early 30s. Do you mentor young women?

I’ve begun mentoring women in their 20s whom I see as “rising stars” in documentary journalism. I believe imparting my first-hand experiences as advice to the next wave of women is crucially important in promoting gender parity. We talk a lot about their goals, and I openly reflect on what I did when I was at their stage in life. Invariably, we bop and weave between the professional and the personal. Young women are desperate to unlock the secrets of success – not just professional success, but professional mixed with personal.

I find that mentoring is a two-way street. I, too, benefit from what they tell me about trends and technology. It’s a way to keep my professional skills fresh and reminds me to be grateful for what I’ve accomplished – even if I feel bedraggled and exhausted by it all. I also see it as a way to pay-it-forward to those who’ve mentored me. My most influential mentor was a correspondent for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer who took the time to help me learn from my mistakes and insisted that I try harder.

I also experienced a defining moment at age 22 when I’d moved from my parents’ house in rural Oregon to San Francisco and was slapped with a harsh reality check. It came during a job interview from a gauche woman headhunter who picked me over like a slave buyer and delivered this blow: “Look, Hon. You can’t be Little Girl Oregon anymore.  You’ve gotta be Miss San Francisco!” It felt like my inner child was on trial… and in that moment, it was. I had to grow up. For years I used her brutal honesty as my mantra whenever I felt small and meek in the big world.

Denise: You’re happy, loving what you do, loving your life. Are you lucky or do you create your luck?

Kate: I’ve had luck on my side. I was born in the United States to loving parents who supported me through a middle class upbringing and helped me learn to make smart choices, which create more good luck – like marrying the right guy. People might say I won the birth lottery. But a disproportionate number of girls on earth are not so lucky.

Take the story of the girls in the PBS film I’m currently working called, “Daughters of the Forest.” (January 2015)...

It’s about a group of girls who are attending perhaps the most revolutionary high school in the world. Set in Paraguay’s MBaracayu Forest, the school is surrounded by a region of South America in which more than 95 percent of the forest has been razed for multi-national agri-businesses. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of the people in the region live in extreme poverty, and nearly 90 percent of the teenage girls become pregnant by the age of 16, then drop out of school. The girls face challenges every other girl in every poor country on earth face, but amid this landscape of despair, the girls’ school is a beacon of hope – a place where 150 girls are becoming some of the most financially literate young people in South America, not just because they learn economics along with all of the other traditional subjects, but because they are putting what they learn into practice.

I took a small administrative role on this project because I believe in the power of the film’s message to girls everywhere: that the best hope for changing the world is empowering girls. Part of my job is to raise additional funds for a robust website and social media portal connected with the film that will enable the girls in the documentary to interact with other girls around the world.

Denise: In a nutshell, what’s your typical day of work like?

Kate: I work from my unglamorous home office most of the time. I’m the first to admit there are days I don’t shower before noon, perhaps a laundry pile has devoured my sofa and the only edible food in the fridge is a hot-dog bun. I stress about money, time and other people’s satisfaction with me. But these are normal problems, and I’m content despite them. I don’t expect fireworks and bliss 100% of the time. I wait for moments of glory when everything goes “click”  and pure happiness surges through – then it’s gone, but not without a trace.