The Cult of the Bad Mother
When everyone's a "bad parent," is anyone?
by Katie Allison Granju
May 29, 2009
Once upon a time, women were under tremendous cultural pressure to be something known as "Good Mothers." During this long ago, faraway time, these beatific Good Mothers not only did a fantastic job at every aspect of raising children, they also loved every
minute of it, from changing dirty diapers to dealing with sullen teens. (Oh, wait. A truly Good Mother's teenage offspring wouldn't ever be sullen.) Good Mothers never, ever complained, and in fact, they took every opportunity to publicly extol the joys of
blissful, euphoric, totally fulfilling motherhood. They sang this parenting paean both directly to one another, as well as in the pages of the then-ubiquitous women's magazines.
Fast forward to 2009. The public Cult of the Good Mother has been replaced by the Cult of the Bad Mother, and everything has been turned on its head. Today, instead of magazines full of stories about maternal faultlessness, we have an entire media cottage
industry focused on the myriad possibilities of maternal fault. In magazines and on blogs and TV sitcoms, those of us currently raising children vie to tell the most outrageous story of our own mothering failings; we yell at our children! We drink during playgroups!
We feed our kids junk food! We use the TV as a babysitter! We admit that we love our husbands more than our offspring! We are Bad Mothers, aren't we? Aren't we?
Three Recent Articles About "Bad Parents"
Wall Street Journal:
"Bad Parents and Proud of It: Moms and a Dad Confess"
The American Prospect:
"Naughty Mommies"
Salon.com: "The worst parents in the world"
Babble's 5 Most Discussed "Bad Parent" Columns
1. Unschooling: I'm not sending my child to kindergarten.
2. Resentment: I resent my stay-at-home spouse.
3. Getting Something Off My Chest: I'm still nursing my toddler, even though it freaks me out.
4. In Praise of the C-Section: I'm not sorry I didn't have a natural birth.
5. Supersize Me: I feed my baby fast food.
Actually, we really aren't; we're simply imperfect mothers, just as the Good Mothers before us were. The only real difference between yesterday's Good Mothers and today's Bad Mothers is that we are now able and willing to tell the truth about what it's like
raise children, without leaving out the unpleasant parts. As women and as mothers, we've found our voices, and with the accessibility of online media, we have a ready platform and audience for dialogue. And now that it is now culturally acceptable to actually
talk out loud about the harsher realities of motherhood — about how it's sometimes mind-numbingly dull, can lead to depression, and can ruin our sex lives — it seems that we sort of can't shut up about it.
I know I can't. Why? Because I've discovered — along with an entire generation of moms like me — that being able to talk and write openly about my own parental screw-ups and shortcomings somehow makes mothering easier on a day-to-day basis. As war veterans
can tell you, there is tremendous mental health value in being able to discuss the worst parts of a specific kind of experience with others who have shared that experience. It's the same thing women discovered when they gathered in the feminist consciousness-raising
groups of the late '60s and early '70s, where they found that openly expressing the unvarnished truth about previously taboo subjects like date rape and domestic violence and abortion was both healing and empowering.
©2009 Katie Allison Granju and Babble Media
About the Author
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