5 Minutes with...Moms & the City

There could be - and should be - volumes of books written about what no one tells you about becoming a working mother. Take that to the next level and you could fill a library with what no one tells you about becoming a entrepreneur and mother. Until now.

“Moms & the City,” a media brand created by three NYC women, produces  edgy and often controversial parenting content for outlets across the country, including NBC TV in 10 of the top markets across the country. They have columns in the New York Daily News and BabyCenter.com. They also appear on “The Today Show” and in Us Weekly frequently. However, for New Yorkers, “the Moms” are most often recognized from their segments that air during our cab rides. 

Recently, NY Report executive editor Daria Meoli spoke with Melissa Gerstein of “Moms & the City.” 

Daria Meoli: How did you, Denise Albert, and Raina Seitel come up with the idea for “Moms & the City?” 

Melissa Gerstein: We’re all producers. Denise and Raina were at “Good Morning America,” and I had produced “The Big Idea” with Donny Deutsch at CNBC and had worked for Anderson Cooper at CNN. If you look around the newsroom you will not find very many mothers because of the hours involved. You’re paged at midnight and expected to go and cover a story. But being a mom, you’re not in the position to do that anymore. Raina and I had a conversation when she was thinking about getting pregnant. She was wondering, “How am I going to do this?” I was working with Anderson Cooper at the time and I felt like I was failing at work and failing at home. We sat down and realized there’s a conversation missing about how motherhood really is. 

We figured “Sex & the City” launched as a column, why can’t “Moms & the City?” I emailed the editor-in-chief of Metro newspaper and he responded immediately. Literally a week later we had a meeting and then he started running our column about a week after that. We cover parenting issues that deal with the joys, dysfunction, exhaustion, and exhilaration that motherhood brings. All three of us felt that it wasn’t as easy as having a psychologist tell you the five tips to get your kids to eat peas.

We really wanted to talk about motherhood in a very bold, truthful, provocative, and honest way. We’re really triggering something in mothers that have made them sort of rally around us and it’s exciting. Just opening up and admitting about how much guilt I have when I leave my children is very honest and people are really thrilled about it. 

DM: As a mom of three who is running her own business, do you have any survival tips? 

MG: What I’ve learned is there’s no balance. I have three children and the hardest thing that I’ve had accept is that somebody gets sacrificed everyday. Maybe my son doesn’t get his play date, maybe the baby doesn’t get me to tuck her in at night because I have to go to a cover a red carpet. I don’t get the gym in because I’ve got to work. You have to sort of learn to let go. 

Another survival tip for entrepreneurism is to always listen to that constant thought in the back of your head that says, “You better do this now because somebody else has this idea right behind you.” This thought still feeds me. I want our show to be in every single city across the country because I fear that someone’s got this idea right behind me. There’s never a right time, so you have to go for it. Literally, the column was picked up and I was still breastfeeding. I wasn’t necessarily ready to go back to work full-time. But you know what? No one is going to wait, so you’ve got to go for it when you’re given the opportunity.