Mothers are not saints
Mothers have to work for it like everyone else
This is not going to be an anti-feminism rant. I’m neither feminist nor anti-feminist because I vowed to never join a cult after exiting enough of them.
Every woman has a mean girl story, sometimes starring her own mother. Women who deny experiencing being hurt by competitive, underhanded, envious, calculating, and humiliating behaviour by another woman are in an abusive relationship they see as healthy or are the mean girls.
Two months after the death of legendary Canadian Nobel laureate short story writer Alice Munro, her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner released the story of abuse by Andrea’s stepfather when she was nine years old. When Andrea told her father what happened, he didn’t do what normal fathers would do, which is to intervene, stop the abuse and report the crime to the police. He, along with all her other family members kept the news from Munro. When Andrea eventually told her mum (Andrea was in her mid-20s), Munro temporarily left and returned to Andrea’s stepfather after he threatened to release photos of Andrea in his underwear to the press and that he would kill himself.
“She said that she had been ‘told too late,’ … she loved him too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children and make up for the failings of men,” Skinner wrote. “She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.” - Andrea Robin Skinner for the Toronto Star
Her stepfather projected his sexual fantasies onto a nine year old’s behaviour.
“He described my nine-year-old self as a ‘homewrecker,’” she wrote, adding that he accused her of invading his bedroom “for sexual adventure”. - Andrea Robin Skinner for the Toronto Star
The story in Vanity Fair demonstrates how the entire family (her father, step mother and sisters) continued to get together with Munro and her husband despite what happened and never spoke about it. Family shame is kept buried, especially when a famous family member is at the centre. Her fame and not wanting it destroyed could be enough justification to pretend like the abuse never happened, continuing to protect her reputation.
This is but one example of how individuals in a group proximal to a centre of power behave to protect and justify wrongdoing of their leader. This behaviour is described in system justification theory and occurs in any group setting including dysfunctional family systems.
There’s nothing like the airing of a public figure’s laundry to start a Twitter storm of commentary.
Everyone is horrified that Alice Munro stuck with her pedophile husband, chose herself and blamed misogyny for his abusive behaviour as if what she’s done is a shock and uncommon. Sadly, this is more common than what statistics say because so many victims of child sexual abuse by family members never come forward because they are stonewalled, gaslit, scapegoated, and betrayed by their own family, making it difficult to trust other authorities with their story.
One of the myths floating in cyberspace is that mothers are saints and will fiercely protect their children against predators, like a lioness protecting her cubs.
Nope.
People, often women, who keep this myth alive know little about narcissistic relationships and the steps of grooming that puts mothers under a love spell to serve only her husband above any other, including her children.
People also like to deny the existence of woman on woman aggression sourced in envy and competitiveness. This is a well-known manifestation of dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships, with a mother undermining, infiltrating, and sabotaging her daughter’s intimate relationships to ensure the daughter remains umbilically connected, subservient and dutiful to her mother or competing against her as a sexual rival. Even if her daughter is a child.
Logic does not apply to a woman who has submitted to the authority they associate with security. Munro, a well established and financially secure woman, put her security in a man’s attention and devotion to her narcissistic needs. Abuse be damned. Nothing is more important than her feelings and needs, a slogan of toxic feminism.
Logic works on mothers who prioritise their children’s welfare above the needs of the abusive partner, let alone her own needs for affection and attention. The ability for a mother to walk away from a relationship and the security she might have in it to protect her children requires courage and an ability to centre the wellbeing of her dependents.
Every woman has a mean girl story, sometimes starring her own mother. Women who deny experiencing being hurt by competitive, underhanded, envious, calculating, and humiliating behaviour by another woman are in an abusive relationship they see as healthy or are the mean girls.
It’s also conceivable that some mothers choose to remain in a relationship with a man abusing her child, especially if this was the working model of her own childhood. The mother initiates her daughter into her trauma story, locking her into the same fate.
Women are bombarded with an endless stream of socially backed toxic feminist propaganda that encourages narcissism - entitlement to feelings, perspectives that involve control and dominance over others so that the other submits to placate them. Or to seek relationships with men who worship her as the realisation of the ultimate fantasy of a man’s submission to her glory.
Mothers are not saints by default. How can they be when women are already shamed into perfectionism and influenced by fantasies (and nightmares) constructed by media, peers, employers, and family the moment they consider pregnancy? Then add a layer of mother shaming guidelines for the best parenting practices. Pile on competition between mothers for most awesome child. Don’t forget mama’s own emotional baggage and Father Complex. Include the presence of spousal abuse of children and you get a hot mess of beliefs about a mother’s role and her entitlements.
There are many evil mothers around yet mothers don’t need to be saints. Even Mother Teresa was exposed posthumously as a communal narcissist for her neglectful, pain-giving methods to her patients, believing she was providing a path to their salvation. That’s not a realistic or desirable model for any mother.
Embodying the wisdom of motherhood is a process that every woman needs to decide she’s willing to undergo. A mother will be faced with impossible situations and her integrity will determine if she will face them with a victim mindset, negligence or with maturity. Her character defines whether she will sell out her own daughter for selfishness or respond appropriately when her daughter cries for help to protect her.
What do we need to see more of in our feeds, conversations and parenting practices that help women internalise healthy models and narratives of motherhood?
May all daughters (and sons) who endured a narcissistic mother be free from her hold and have peace,
Nathalie
Hack narcissism and support my work
I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.
While activists focus on fighting macro issues, I believe that activism also needs to focus on the micro issues - the narcissistic traits that pollute relationships between you and I, and between each other, without contributing to existing injustice. It’s not as exciting as fighting the Big Baddies yet hacking, resisting and overriding our tendencies to control others that also manifest as our macro issues is my full-time job.
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Oooofff…this piece!!! I could literally restack every paragraph, and even screenshot some to remember as I ready myself and my children to leave my abusive family of origin once and for all.
I will always say now that my mother groomed me for abusers. All the abuse I have endured has its origin in how she molded and shaped me to believe that was all I was worthy of….and in fact even lucky to have.
I have been unfucking myself out of the stealthy trap set by me by my family to keep me dependent… especially in the wake of exiting my abusive marriage. My children are the reason. I am not ashamed to say that before they entered the picture, I didn’t have a reason to fight against the abuse. I buckled under it and allowed for it to lead me into marrying an abuser too.
Finally seeing the family narcissistic system for what it is, and knowing I don’t want them growing up in a dynamic where such dysfunction is normalised is what kicked me in the ass to find some self-respect and self-love so that I could get us all the hell out of dodge!!!
Thank you for writing so bravely and passionately about these “taboo” topics. We need to all face these toxic threads that have held together the many narratives within the systems and institutions professing to protect us….starting with family.
When my first child was born in 2006, I knew that the culture I observed was a reflection of mainstream childrearing, and so I rejected it all and started from first principles. I made a decision to prioritize becoming the best possible mother I could be, which forced me to reckon with the obvious reality that, despite the ubiquitous social platitudes, mothering is something that requires conscious commitment in order to do well, and it is absolutely possible, even fairly easy, to screw it up. I would use stronger language, in fact, and not casually- motherhood is something that one can readily fuck up without careful self-examination. A lot of other things had to fall away in order for me to do it, but I can say, honestly and with plenty of room for self-critique, that I succeeded in my task and it made me a better person in every possible way.
But it has also caused a lot of cognitive dissonance for me, because I so often feel uncomfortable with women I care about in conversations about child-rearing and parenting struggles (and with my own mother, who is, by every conventional measure, very good, but with whom I cannot be myself because I have had to re-invent who I am through my own journey of motherhood).