Top Lists: The Other Kind of Labor Movies

Last weekend, we honored Labor Day with a list of films celebrating labor unions and working people. But as every mother knows there is another kind of “labor.” Two things that Hollywood loves – weddings and births – are the subjects of countless films. To celebrate that other kind of “labor day,” here are a half-dozen movies (in no particular order) about having a baby with a birth scene.

1. Knocked Up (2007)
Judd Apatow’s guy-humor comedy features Kathryn Heigl in a very graphic birth scene with some shots you won’t soon forget (in the unedited version), which some have suggested might serve as birth control for some women out there.

2. The Back-Up Plan (2010)
Probably the weirdest movie birth scene -a home birth in a pool, surrounded by your closest friends, some of whom do not want to be there. Not sure an audience is really called for with this significant life event, except in the movies, of course.

3. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
This is not how you want your pregnancy to turn out. Roman Pulaski’s chilling film about a happily-married young woman (Mia Farrow) unaware that the baby she is carrying is the child of Satan.

4. Children of Men (2006)
Babies have become very, very scarce in this dystopian futuristic world, so who know how to deliver one anymore? Seriously, this is a serious, intelligent film set in a world where no babies have been born for years – until unexpectedly one woman (Clare-Hope Ashitey) turns up pregnant. One man (Clive Owen) makes a desperate effort to save her and her baby, as a violent, overcrowded, decaying world descends into chaos.

5. Juno (2007)
This award-winning comedy explores some serious issues around teen pregnancy and adoption, with Ellen Page and Michael Cera as the teen parents, J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney as Juno’s supportive parents, and Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner as the potential adoptive ones. The birth scene is pretty standard and not shocking but it is such a worthy, well-acted film about pregnancy and birth is deserves a mention.

6. Baby Mama (2008)
In this comedy, a successful woman (Tina Fey) with fertility problems but a strong desire to have a baby decides to hire a surrogate (Amy Poehler) to have a baby on her own. In a more realistic birth scene, demands drugs and has a pretty sharp and cutting description of what it feels like giving birth.