The 'working mom' debate hasn't evolved in 30 years - 'The Intern' proves it

It's no coincidence that Nancy Meyers' "The Intern," the No. 2 movie at the box office this weekend, echoes "Baby Boom," the movie she wrote in 1987. Both films center on successful women in the corporate world.

In the former, Anne Hathaway is a CEO struggling to keep control of her company, and in the latter, Diane Keaton plays a high-powered executive whose life is thrown into chaos when she's given custody of a baby. But 30 years apart, they still tackle some of the same themes of moms in the workplace.

"They're a little bit like companion pieces," Meyers told the Los Angeles Times. "How we've grown is that one woman (in 'The Intern'])is the founder and CEO of her company and the other (in 'Baby Boom') is an employee who had a sit-down chat with her boss who said, 'Are you going to have kids or aren't you? 'Cause if you are that's going to be a problem.' In 'The Intern,' she's a mother and a CEO. But underneath all that there's some problem that still exists. So they're bookends in a way."

As "The Intern" shows, there are certainly still issues surrounding working mothers. Here are three common threads that run through both movies.

1) The myth of "having it all"

In the beginning of "Baby Boom," Keaton's J.C. Wyatt, a fierce executive married to her job and nicknamed "Tiger Lady," is offered a promotion as partner of her company. Still, her older male boss is deeply concerned that she might want to get married and have a family someday. "Do you understand the sacrifices you're gonna have to make?" he frets. "A man can be a success and still have a personal life, a full personal life. My wife is there for me ... she raises the kids, she decorates, I don't know what the hell she does. But she takes care of things."

"Is that what you're worried about?" J.C. scoffs. It's the last thing on her mind. "Forget it. I don't want it all. I don't."

Soon, J.C. learns her distant cousin died in an accident and left her his baby daughter, Elizabeth. She reluctantly adopts her, and next thing you know, J.C. is thrown into chaos trying to balance the baby and work, bringing Elizabeth to meetings as the baby's well-being becomes a priority. Eventually, she's demoted at work, as her boss says she's gone soft. "I told you you can't have it all," he tells her sadly.

Of course, it's still a fraught issue as illustrated in "The Intern" as Hathaway's Jules Ostin is a work-obsessed CEO of a fashion website start-up, which she founded. Jules is a micro-manager who never sleeps, let alone have the time to spend at home with her husband and young daughter. Although she adores them both, one eye is always on her iPhone scrolling through work emails. It clearly creates a strain in her marriage when her husband later complains that Jules is never home and (spoiler alert) uses this as an excuse to cheat on her.

2) Judgment for working moms

In "Baby Boom," J.C. sits at the playground with one eye on her work folder as Elizabeth plays in the sandbox. Other moms around her are chatting about how difficult it is to get their kids into a good preschool and other extracurricular activities that set them up for a solid life. Clearly distracted by her job, J.C. guiltily admits that she hasn't given any of this a second thought. The other mothers are obviously shocked.

There's a similar scene in "The Intern" when Jules brings her daughter to school and bumps into some other moms who ask if she's going to make the guacamole for a special lunch at the school next week. "You probably won't have time to make it - you can buy it," one says sweetly. Jules shoots back that of course she'll make the guacamole. "It's 2015. Are we really still critical of working moms? Still?" she asks, bewildered, as she gets back in the car.

Later, Robert De Niro's character (the titular intern) sticks up for Jules when the moms make snarky remarks about her at the playground. He notes that Jules is crashing the glass ceiling of the tech world, and the other women must certainly be proud to have someone like her in their co-hort. The other moms exchange skeptical glances at this.

3) Things can still turn out pretty spectacularly well

Though J.C. and Jules face similar struggles of sexism and condescending expectations of work-life balance, they still triumph in the end. J.C. quits her job and moves to the country with Elizabeth, where she accidentally falls into making organic baby food and starts a company worth millions. When her old bosses want to invest in the brand and make her even richer, she happily turns them down, saying she's happy with the way things turned out on her own with work and family.

Meanwhile, throughout "The Intern," Jules is pressured by her company to choose a seasoned CEO to help run things. She hates the idea, but thinks that maybe if she had help, she could spend more time with her family and maybe her husband would stop having an affair. After De Niro's character points out that's a terrible reason to bring in a CEO if you don't want one (and her husband tearfully apologizes and says the same thing), Jules realizes that she doesn't actually want to report to anyone. She's a fantastically successful business executive in her own right, and no, a CEO won't be necessary.

In the same Los Angeles Times interview, Hathaway agrees that even if there are still challenges, the corporate world has certainly evolved in some ways toward working moms.

"There's no Jules without J.C. (Keaton's character). You and I, we're standing on the shoulders of women who had to have conversations with their bosses like, 'Are you having kids or not 'cause if you're having kids you're no good to me?'" Hathaway said. "Things like that may still be thought, but they're not spoken in the workplace anymore. I'm happy that the story is improving."