LIZ: As I have always been famous – that’s a joke, son. Like everyone, I’ve had to learn to juggle these two things. You just steal the time from your work to try to give it to the people you care about most and to take care of them. You make sacrifices all the time and I’m sure that it’s the same for you both.

CANDICE: Cynthia, how old is your son now?

CYNTHIA: Ten.

CANDICE: The hardest time for me was during the first years of "Murphy Brown," when Chloe was four years old, five, and was waking up at 5:30 in the morning routinely. I didn’t have anyone living in because I didn’t want to have anyone living in. And it was just me because Louis was in France doing a movie. I was just exhausted on a level that I had never experienced before – all the time. And there was just no getting around that. It would have been helpful to have a nanny live-in and have a weekend nanny. But I didn’t want to make that choice. So for a few years I was just running on empty all the time. I’m sure Cynthia’s been through a version of that as well. But with Spencer getting older I would imagine it’s gotten easier.

CYNTHIA: Well, except that the job has changed. I anchor at night. I get off the air at 12:30. By the time I get home and then get up and take Spencer to school every morning at 7 AM, I am pretty much a sleepless mess. I think you have to be willing to sacrifice sleep if you’re going to do both things. I guess I would disagree with Liz a little bit. It’s not that I have the work and then I steal whatever time I can for the rest of my life – though that used to be the case before Spencer. And now I see it as completely opposite. I have Spencer and I steal whatever time I can for work.

LIZ: I don’t have the same problem you two have. I haven’t had to raise any children. But I had lots of kids who sometimes depended on me – nieces, nephews, godchildren – and I tried always to make them come first. But I haven’t had to make any sacrifices. And so I’ve pretty much made my work my life and made my friendships my fun.

CANDICE: Right. But if you’re the mother – especially of a small child – the priority is clearly your child.

CYNTHIA: Absolutely. 

CANDICE: And one reason that I did "Murphy Brown" was because I wouldn’t be traveling and working. I would be home every night. I could do carpool. I could be there for her. But it was challenging at times.

CYNTHIA:  It is. I wanted to be the class mother and was the class mother every year up until last year when somebody else wanted to do it. Maybe the guilt associated with working makes you sort of want to do it doubly hard, the motherhood thing. You want to do it double as much. I don’t know. But the corners I cut are not HIS corners. I’ve sort of stopped doing anything except working and Spencer. And that’s a happy choice. It’s hard, I think, for your friends to understand.

CANDICE: I think, as a parent, you give up social time. You go to work. You come home in the afternoon or the evening and you spend that time with your child – put them to bed, which takes hours usually – and then you fall asleep.

As for personal opinions? Well, for you as a journalist you’re really constrained.