Away We Go...To Alternative Parenting

Sam Mendes’s Away We Go, out in cinemas this Friday, 18th September takes you on a road trip through some very different parenting styles.

- The Self-Absorbed Parents (Gloria and Jerry)

Burt’s parents (Catherine O’Hara & Jeff Daniels) take empty-nest syndrome to the extreme when they announce they’re moving Antwerp a month before the birth of their first grandchild!

- The Abusive Parent (Lily)

Lily (Allison Janney) thinks her children are totally oblivious to what’s around them and therefore takes delight in taunting and mocking them within earshot that’s her son Taylor’s big ears!

- The New-Age Parent (LN)

LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal) believes in sleeping in the same bed as her children and has a severe distrust of strollers because they promote a separation between parent and child!

(Also has a penchant for breastfeeding other people’s children without permission)

Is Maggie Gyllenhaal an alternative parent?: ‘Once you are a mum you pay so much more attention to the way people parent. I’ve seen people like LN and I have a little bit of that hippie mum in me. I care about my daughter’s feelings I don’t leave her in the cot to cry.

"When I was pregnant I thought I’d be all organic food and cloth nappies. And then you’re on a plane and she’s dropped her food all over the floor and there’s nothing else but she’s hungry and it’s like, 'Ok, let’s have the crisps.' LN wouldn’t do it, but I do.’

- The Adoptive Parents (Tom & Munch)

Tom and Munch (Chris Messina & Melanie Lynskey) can’t have their own children, so are raising their multi-racial adopted family in the cultural melting pot of Montreal - for them alternative parenting is having a family from all over the world.

- The Expectant Parents (Burt and Verona)

Burt & Verona (John Krasinksi & Maya Rudolph) are expecting their first child and trying to decide where to lay down roots and raise their family.

Away We Go is released in cinemas on Friday 18th September, 2009