Amy Huberman has loads of friends. No surprises there. She’s affable and warm, with a tinkly laugh and lashings of curiosity and compassion. And she’s also well-connected, to be fair: there’s her famous “fella”, not to mention all those she’s encountered through television, publishing and living on the top tier of Irish celebrity. So you can see why Aldi put its money on Huberman as host of Mamia and Me, the Aldi-sponsored platform for Huberman’s musings on parenthood.
Here’s the premise: Huberman invites her friends and other special guests on the show to have the chats, all of whom share one thing in common: they’re parents or parents-to-be, and conversation flows through their professional lives / pluggable work to the nitty gritty of raising chisellers.
Season 1 kicked off while the country was recovering from lockdowns and proved a balm for parents who spent those times grappling with “homeschool”. A moment when Huberman admits to being triggered by a see-saw, the once benign playground structure that lent its name to one of the many devilish online learning platforms, spoke to my own bruised soul. Guests included Westlifer Mark Feehily, actor Chris O’Dowd, Deirdre O’Kane, Victoria Smurfit, Brian Dowling and many more.
What we learn from Season 1 is that we are all living through the same modern-day parenting challenges — to Roblox or not to Roblox? — and also different ones. Feehily and Dowling make a serious case for changes to Irish surrogacy laws as they document the obstacles on their own roads to parenthood. And the elephant in the podcast is that, no matter how down-to-earth Huberman is, she and many of her guests were locked in much bigger homes than most of the country during the early pandemic.
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But maybe that’s the point for Mamia and Me’s myriad listeners — they’re here for the star power more than any particular parenting expertise. After all, it’s largely non-judgmental chats about raising children, peppered with peals of laughter and mutual agreement about how challenging it all can be, and sure they’re not that easy to break anyway.
All this “parenting’s a great leveller” aside, it’s a non-celebrity guest, ICU nurse Sarah Kearns, who really lit up my ears with her stories of nursing during a pandemic — the immense burden of care at a time when visitors weren’t allowed, and the stark reality of paying for childcare from a nursing salary — and practical tips about first aid for children.
Huberman’s charm and striking relatability, given that she’s basically the queen of Ireland, are clearly part of the podcast’s success, as is her extraordinary pull. Guests so far in this new second season have included Today FM’s Dermot and Dave, rugby legend Paul O’Connell and broadcaster Jennifer Zamparelli.
The latter broke through the banter with a story about her own regret at having her tubes tied, and real anger over how the decision was made at a vulnerable moment. That’s the best of Mamia and Me: when tired talk about how we’re all sleep deprived and failing and a bit of a mess sharpens into something more complex and nuanced.
Parenting is hard and Huberman doesn’t know any more about it than you or I. What she does know is how to put her guests at ease, and that’s what allows for some real truths to emerge.
