'Mad Men's' Sally Draper: A Child Will Lead Us

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Woman Up Editor

The superb young actor Kiernan Shipka, in her fourth season playing Don and Betty Draper's long-suffering child, Sally, on the AMC hit series "Mad Men," is maturing from her early days as a Mighty Milk endorser and as a performer ("I'm very method when I'm on set, when I'm in the scene . . . "). The nearly 11-year-old seems to be having a good year in her budding career.

The character Shipka plays, sixth-grader Sally Draper, is having a tough coming-of-age experience, however.

As the brutal season of disappointment and loss hits Don's shaky creative business (soon to be reorganized as Sterling Draper Bryce and Campbell?) the smoke-filled, whiskey-soaked era that existed during the golden age of advertising has been the primary series focus of 1965, and the remnants of the Draper family back in Ossining -- where Betty and her replacement husband Henry Francis "have everything" -- offers little to encourage optimism for the short term. I am looking forward to the fifth season to more intimately feature how one 1950s-born baby boomer survives her distracted upbringing.

I doubt either of the Draper adults would ever have consulted "Baby and Child Care," Dr. Benjamin Spock's parenting bible of the day, since they are barely capable of averting their own life choice disasters. (Betty would surely be a candidate for social service intervention in a less cavalier time.) In their clumsy way, however, they somehow find others who haphazardly look out for their children.

Sally's third-season teacher, Suzanne Farrell, seemed to genuinely care about children (when she wasn't having sex with one of their fathers). Don's passing girlfriends occasionally babysit, and once, a random suburban matron on the commuter train noticed the unaccompanied child and brought her to Don's office. Happily, there is one sane member of the Draper/Francis household, housekeeper Carla, who has taught Sally to cook French toast and tells her about her church. The adults have also fortuitously found her a confidence-building child psychologist.

In this season ending Sunday night, sensitive Sally knows her mother is "stupid and mean," but she is still in elementary school with her only kindred spirit, the troubled neighbor boy Glen Bishop (played by series creator Mathew Weiner's 14-year-old son, Marten).
As a veteran of the time, I know, as most confused or isolated teens usually eventually glean, it gets better. In the seasons to come, I'm guessing Sally will continue raising herself until she can escape into the 1970s and find ripe Germaine Greer feminism at Vassar or Smith (where she'll have a great time taking newly invented contraception and experimenting with sex).

Filed Under: Woman Up

Tagged: Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men, Sally Draper

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nowafewthoughts

It wasn't just children raised in the 1950s who suffered this way. I was born in 1965 and had the same type of family. My father was not a philanderer like Draper but he was domineering and personally rejecting if a child expressed emotion. My mother was dissociated like Betty and also personally rejecting if a child expressed emotion. She did not preoccupy herself with formality but more with cooking, gardening and charity work (that she didn't really understand the purpose of). She was another child in the family the way Betty is and the way Don is, sometimes. We really need to get women out of thinking that full-time mothering is healthy for children. I just don't think it is.

October 15 2010 at 10:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply