Bad Mothers

Sandra Tsing Loh sort of reviews Aylet Waldman's Bad Mother. Loh mostly talks about her life, since she publicly self-combusted on the pages of Atlantic Monthly. Her marriage is over and she's homeless. Her essay isn't even really about motherhood. It's about tragedy. It's about the fragility of the intact, middle-class family and the heroics of the extended family. That woman needs a hug.

Comments

[bj]

I think that her article has really started us talking about what a "bad mother" is. As Loh argues in the beginning of her "review" Waldman's "Bad Mother" is really not much more than embracing not being the perfect mother (I don't actually know, 'cause I haven't read the book). And, we know that there real "bad" mothers, the ones who don't feed their children, abandon them to predators, or hurt them. Loh's story is somewhere in the grayer area (though some may see it as black and white). How bad a mother is she? I guess I'm arguing I can't really tell from the parts of the story she tells us, and that that her behavior still falls in a gray zone.

I'm using her story (in my mind) to argue against a model of motherhood that depends on selflessness (and mind you, even people who argue that they're being selfish about something, aren't really, most of the time). Others are casting the story differently. And none of it is really *her* story.

[Russell Arben Fox]

Finally read it, and I'm sorry, but my only thought is to borrow a phrase which a then-Maoist friend of mine back in college used regularly: STL is going to be one of first up against the wall when the revolution comes. Not because she's a bad mother--there are far worse--but because she seems resolutely determined to hate everything her educational and economic class have given her, while simultaneously treating with utter contempt the possibility that those class advantages might be anything other than component parts in the tragic, unavoidable trap which is marriage and reproduction. The fact that hundreds of millions of people can and do build permanent relationships and raise children who do not turn out to be either hobos or cannibals has no moral presence in her writing whatsoever. Her essay is one of the most annoyingly and ostentatiously un-self-aware things I've ever read. As Matt rightly put it back at the beginning, "What unpleasant people."

[Amy P]

"A woman by herself with a child is just a nuisance, but everyone smiles at a girl and her dad."

I think there may be a big regional difference here. I remember living in DC with a preschooler and a toddler and many titanic struggles with getting the three of us and a stroller. Then we moved to Texas. The kids are bigger and more prudent and I can really manage by myself, but people here (men and women) literally spring to help me with doors, even if they are sitting at a Starbucks table and I'm only with one child.

[Amy P]

"the three of us and a stroller through a door"

[Marya]

I'm sorry that happened to you, Jody.

Amy, there's been plenty of press about Gen X parents being very into the self-immolation (or self-fulfillment through parenting: take your pick) and I have seen a lot of it anecdotally. Don't you know parents whose kids have never had a babysitter until age 4 and are shocked at what a terrible time the kids have separating when they go to preschool? I know a bunch.

[JennG]

Yeah, I'm not talking about Giving Tree type behaviour either.

I'm talking about both parents walking out after a fight and neither one coming home for three days while the two kids (11 and 7 years old) fend for themselves, terrified, or Ice Storm like cocktail parties where all the kids are in the basement drinking booze and (not even joking) molesting each other while the parents pair off in different rooms upstairs, over and over for years. (My parents didn't divorce, in the end.)

I am all for a careful consideration of everyone's needs. But when one parent (or both) freaks out and changes everything in the name of passion, or love, or feminism, the upheaval can be profoundly disturbing.

While I do honestly reap the benefits of first-wave feminism I am not sure that people who didn't live through the upheaval of mothers casting off the shackles as the shackles understand what damage that does.

My friends, cousins, and I were what our mothers & fathers were walking away from, especially from our points of view.

They may not have meant it quite that way, but their actions spoke really loudly. Is it irreparable? No. But wow, it does kind of burn to read much of the same language. The kids are okay because they're reading??? I read like gangbusters. I was lonely and scared and needed to escape. I was never able to articulate that /half/ as clearly as asking if mum might get a job and get a place to live. Kids often don't.

(And CY, just a side note: If she's doing so well, maybe she could put a deposit on an apartment?)

The thing is, maybe the women did need to do that. But the walking away did damage. The lucky ones of us sat at home and watched ABC afterschool specials in order to try to figure out how to grow up. The unlucky ones of us found other ways to try to get the love we needed from adults around us who chose to exploit that need.

And I guess it makes me sad that in Tsing Loh's piece she evokes the same "leaders" who lead it the first time, and she doesn't seem to apply the learning that I guess I feel like my generation had, which is that kids do need to have /their/ experience acknowledged and that they are often /not/ okay when these things go down. Now she may be doing that, but it didn't come through in the piece.

[laura]

Just a quick note as a blog moderator. A few years ago, we had a good discussion about the impact of divorce on kids here.

Thanks, cy! Glad you delurked.

God, JennG and Jody, I am so, so sorry. Thanks for sharing your stories. I have friends who had similar experiences, so you're not alone. There is a real danger with a hipster rejection of Giving Tree motherhood when it goes to the other extreme. It's one thing to have a job that gets you home by 5:30 or to refuse to do art projects and another thing to abandon your kids. As some commenters said here, it's a dangerous game that Waldman and others play by championing their idea of the bad mother. It could end up justifying some really bad behavior.

[Amy P]

"Amy, there's been plenty of press about Gen X parents being very into the self-immolation (or self-fulfillment through parenting: take your pick) and I have seen a lot of it anecdotally."

There is something to that, but I suspect a lot of it may be stage-specific. It's natural for parents of babies to be totally immersed in them. Notice how much more emotionally charged the early controversial issues are (breast vs. bottle, cry-it-out vs. family bed). Sure, there are controversial issues for older kids, but it's not at all on the same scale.

"Don't you know parents whose kids have never had a babysitter until age 4 and are shocked at what a terrible time the kids have separating when they go to preschool?"

Not really. The worst separation anxiety I've ever seen at preschool was from a little boy whose parents had a series of au pairs. I was working co-op, and he was howling for an hour or so in a very small classroom, until he finally crawled into his jogging stroller and fell asleep. He did that for at least a couple days. There was another little boy who had separation problems far into the preschool year, but he also had a full-time nanny. Of course, my preschool peer group was probably rather different than yours--we had only maybe one or two really zealous attachment parenting types.

With regard to what people were saying upthread, I'm learning a lot from my husband about sharing what you like with your kids. He takes the kids boating, does an electronics set with the oldest, takes the kids out (one at a time) to do amateur astronomy, has started a board game club at school (with my help) etc. My adult interests aren't quite so sharable, but I admire it as an ideal, and I've enjoyed seeing my daughter start doing some of the crafts I did as a child (I'd really like to get her a loom).

[bj]

"I'm talking about both parents walking out after a fight and neither one coming home for three days while the two kids (11 and 7 years old) fend for themselves, terrified,"

OK, this particular incident is beyond anything Loh has described and actually qualifies as abuse in my book.

Loh has not, by any stretch, done anything along those lines. I'd argue that what she's done, is violate a version of what a good mother (or conversely a bad mother is) in Amy's characterization:

"When I was a kid, she was never the hover mother, but she was always there."

So, is this the definition of a good mother, or conversely, a bad mother is one who "is not always there" or who makes her child fell that she "is not always there?"

I would actually define selflessness as the "always there" expectation. I do not think men have ever been expected to be always there, but I think the gender neutral version of this is to say that every child needs, emotionally, to have someone who is "always there." I don't know if I believe this or not, but I'm inclined to think not (and I don't mean always there as in there has to be someone to take care of a five year old, I mean it in a more metaphysical sense)

But, as Laura summarizes, I think I now understand Jody & JennG's specific beef with STL's essay -- that it specifically alludes to the self-actualization feminism that they experienced personally in the 70's, raising it as a potentially positive model. I think the question for Loh is whether one can make that allusion/use that guide without falling into the behavior that all of us would agree is bad motherhood.

[Marya]

Anyone else read the novels of Norma Klein as an adolescent in the 1970s? They were full of fairly kind, fairly self-aware parents divorcing (sometimes multiple times) and somewhat older-than-their-years kids living with the results. Certainly the divorcing parents were infinitely more grown-up than mine acted, but their kids had to meet the challenge of making sense of it all.

I think there are some studies saying high-conflict divorces are what's really hard on kids but I don't know how serious the research is and to what degree mature, responsible divorces have been studied, assuming anyone can agree on what constitutes one. (For example, do the reasons for the split have to be good, and does custody have to be shared, or is the main characteristic a united front where there's no public fighting and the kids know what to expect from the arrangement?)

[virgil xenophon]

Great comments section. I've been (or was) an STL fan for years and sad to say I'm profoundly disappointed. As someone who helped raise (along with my wife) a special needs child myself like laura I would only add to the general discussion which has covered so much already the fact that in my book one "parents" not only because of the biological imperative; but because, morally, one is RESPONSIBLE for one's offspring--like it or not. One does not have to like or even necessarily love or respect one's offspring--be it their personalities or their actions--but one is nonetheless still ultimately responsible for them.

The bottom line, it seems this geezers eyes, is that artsy STL tired not only of her own parental role, but also of her beta-male "kitchen bitch" husband and now seeks new thrills living "on the edge." Time to grow up, imho, and tend to one's basic work-a-day responsibilities before hunting for a more "fulfilling" lifestyle and some "edgier" more exciting Alpha-Male with which to find psychic and sexual Nirvana.

[jen]

More than anything I'm SO DISAPPOINTED in STL! I used to love her writing. Now she just seems like the consummate loser.

Being a mid-40s mom is never easy. But she makes the alternative look even worse.

[Timothy Burke]

You know what, gang? I don't think people who are indulging in really bad behavior need much in the way of justifications in order to get there. So let's not worry about writers who are just trying to get the "worried well" to be less worried.

I think STL is a completely familiar kind of person with familiar desires who has lost some of the validating narratives that were in wider circulation for her desires in a previous generation. I don't know quite how or when it happened, but a lot of educated professionals and intellectuals kind of made their peace with suburban domesticity, only with less Jell-O and more chore sharing. STL is still hung up on a view that this is incompatible with living an artistically fulfilled, sexually alive, humanly possible life and is sort of confused that the rules got changed on her somewhere along the line such that there was no longer a chorus behind her singing that good old American Beauty Ice Stormy kind of tune.

In general, I prefer people who are grappling with their own choices to do a bit less complaining about everyone else's choices.

[Amy P]

Speaking of bad mothers, today I deleted unread around 15 emails having to do with the planning of the teacher appreciation lunch. My mom (who once told my sister "don't volunteer me for anything") would have done the same thing.

[B mama]

"Don't you know parents whose kids have never had a babysitter until age 4 and are shocked at what a terrible time the kids have separating when they go to preschool?"

I absolutely see this dynamic (I'm a preschool teacher and mom), and I honestly think that there are more Gen X parents engaging in "overparenting" than not. It seems as though American parents (mothers) swing from one extreme to another depending on our generation. The real problem is that we have little societal support system to have a real middle ground.

[anon for this one]

I'm a regular reader here (but only very occasional commenter) and I've been hesitant to post here becuase I actually know Sandra Tsing Loh socially. I wasn't sure my comment would really add anything to the discussion but what the heck...We are not friends exactly, but we have friends in common, we know each other socially and are "friendly". I am not privy to any details about her divorce or living situation outside of what I've read in her essays but I can tell you that she has not at all abandoned her children nor is she planning on couch surfing and living out of a car for the next 5 years. Her husband travels frequently--though I understand slightly less frequently than he used to-- but she is still the primary caregiver a good portion of the year and sees her kids daily as far as I know.

She's not one of those warm and fuzzy women who projects a nurturing vibe. I think that's pretty obvious from her performances and writing too. But every time I've met her and discussed kids, houses, politics, Los Angeles, LA public schools etc. she comes across as a smart, funny, self deprecating, interesting woman who loves her kids but bristles a little at some of the conventional and traditional expectations of being a woman, wife and mom of the "creative class". She can be a challenging person honestly. But I like her a lot--even though in many ways I don't relate to her despite having a lot of surface things in common.

I've never gotten even the slightest impression that she is anything but devoted to the well being of her children. She is a professional writer and performer who makes a living mining her personal life for books, essays and performance pieces. I would say that her public persona is an exaggerated version of the real life person.

I think it's normal to read a lot into a personal essay and there is clearly a lot of projecting going on in the comments. I don't know her well but my impression of her has always been that she is a very thoughtful person. I just can't imagine that she's not considering her kids well being in the long term decisions she'll need to make in the near future in order to move forward with her life. I think right now she's still in crisis mode and it's hard to make long term decisions in crisis mode. It hasn't been that long since the decision to leave her marriage was finalized after all. She's not writing with any hindsight. She's very much living it right now.

As far as the essay goes, I personally thought it was kind of all over the place --very much like this comment probably-- but also had a lot of good points. I enjoyed it, even though I found it kind of depressing.

[B mama]

Okay, now that I've read the essay (and the above comment too), I have to say that I think STL has some really good and interesting points about motherhood today. In fact, I've been thinking about many of the things she's writing about.

But, it's really really hard to extrapolate those good points from her essay, which is kind of a mess.

[JennG]

I don't recall Norma Klein but I still own my copy of The Pistachio Prescription. :)

Thanks for the kind words about the three-day fight... that episode was extreme but I do kind of believe that the cultural movement at the time contributed richly. Women were encouraging women to throw fits and leave home and not look back because that was (microculturally) "empowerment." (And you know, sometimes it was. It's just that the children trailed in the wake of it.) In my parents' defense, not only did we not have cell phones or answering machines, they really did each believe the other was sulking at home.

As for Gen-X overparenting, sure, I think that's one struggle people (women) in my generation have and one way it comes out. But I guess I believe that unless we can discuss the reasons that Gen-X parents may be untrusting of others, keen on attachment theory, or apt to hover and want to know every detail, it's only half the picture.

I agree, anon for this one, that I do come to the essay with my own experience and that it definitely stirred my own reaction. I do get that Tsing Loh is grappling with very real pressures and issues and obviously I feel them too. It's nice to hear your perception and I hope that's the case.

I do have to say that my experience coupled with the cynicism for which Gen-X is known, is that when someone describes a situation I would find extremely difficult and then says they know their kids are okay, my personal filter goes: Urg. Because that's what people really thought when I was growing up, but therapists and pharma companies have grown rich on the results.

Laura thanks for the great discussion and sorry to post so much in your comments.

[Amy P]

"It's nice to hear your perception and I hope that's the case."

Amen.

"...when someone describes a situation I would find extremely difficult and then says they know their kids are okay, my personal filter goes: Urg."

Amen to that, too. People in the middle of huge emotional cataclysms are often not very perceptive about what's going on with other people.

[bj]

" People in the middle of huge emotional cataclysms are often not very perceptive about what's going on with other people. "

Well, and often unable to do something about it. I've never been able to forgive Sylvia Plath for killing herself with her children in the house with her.

But, I think that if STL stumbles on this discussion (or others about her) or one of her friends do, one has to recognize that the discussion isn't really about her, but is about a made up person we build based on the essay (which is only a part of her).

[Marya]

I can't even think about Plath without getting incredibly angry. Don't you think Loh is a GREAT Mom in comparison? (insert obnoxious smiley.)

"Speaking of bad mothers, today I deleted unread around 15 emails having to do with the planning of the teacher appreciation lunch. My mom (who once told my sister "don't volunteer me for anything") would have done the same thing. "

Oh, very very bad. Almost Plathian in its badness.