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Baby Boom Movie Analysis

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Who doesn’t enjoy watching a heartwarming film about love, family, and attachment? There 's something about watching a story about love and attachment formation that pulls at the heartstrings of humankind. Hollywood is very aware of this and has provided us with a steady stream of movies centering around these themes. One such film is the 1987 production Baby Boom. This film tells the story of J.C. Wiatt, a successful career woman living in the heart of New York city, who lives and breathes her job. Her hectic, workaholic life takes a dramatic turn when she unexpectedly inherits a baby girl, Elizabeth, from a long-lost cousin. Feeling that her career and motherhood are not compatible she decides only to keep the baby until she can find an adoptive …show more content…

finds herself unable to part with the little girl. After giving being a career woman and a mother a go J.C. decides that living in the country might be better for her and Elizabeth. After many mishaps, accidents, and struggles the two manage to carve out a life for themselves in a little town in Vermont. J.C. runs a successful business from home and her and Elizabeth are finally able to become a real family, firmly attached as mother and daughter. While this tale about a mother and her adoptive daughter’s journey of attachment is heartwarming and enjoyable to watch, it begs the question does the portrayal of attachment in this movie accurately represent attachment theory?
Let 's begin to answer this question by examining how different attachment theory themes are expressed in Baby Boom and my overall thoughts on the film. The first element portrayed is infant coping strategies. Throughout the film we see young Elizabeth display a variety of coping mechanisms to help facilitate interactions and attachment. For example, when J.C. is not paying attention to her she coos, talks, and smiles trying to grab her attention. When this fails to work, she eventually …show more content…

It shows how a mother becomes sensitive to their infant 's state of mind, infant coping mechanisms, and demonstrates ethology at play. However, the picture it paints is incredibly sped up and idealistic. Attachments rarely if ever form as smoothly and quickly as they do in this film and many of the rough patches of building an attachment are either smoothed over or left out. When viewing this film, we should enjoy it for the heartwarming film that it is, take away the truth about attachment that it contains, but also remember that attachment doesn’t happen quite like this in real

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