I heard Terri Apter on WH yesterday talking about her new book which deals with the subject of "difficult" mothers. Below is a link to the Daily Mail's summary of her book. I thought it would be interesting to writers to read about the different categories she puts mothers into, for fiction purposes. What this article leaves out and what Apter was keen to stress in her interview is that she struggled with the concept of this book - she knows full well how mothers are demonised in society in all sorts of ways and was worried about adding to the weight of argument that says mothers are responsible for all the crap in your life. It's a hard one!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2155524/How-repair-toxic-legacy-bad-mother.html

I lived with a single-parent dad and as much as I love him - and I won't say more as he had mental health issues to deal with - I think this is an issue of 'main carer' as opposed to one gender.

My friends with single-parent dads - and there were a few of them - struggled with the parenting they received for a variety of reasons, as did many of the children of single mothers. The crux is that there was no other person to lean on for parent or child.

It is strange how we demonise mothers and rank fathers so highly, even when they take on the main parent role (although men often have other issues, eg isolation).

I don't know whether it was a 70's thing, but the amount of times people made me thank my father for not putting us in a home (or said I should be grateful) makes me furious now. How dare they? Why didn't my friends with single mothers have to do the same?

I note she doesn't want to demonise mothers, but I can't see why she hasn't looked at the wider picture. Of course there are bad mothers... but there are plenty of not-too-great fathers too (doing either role).

I think Sharley that her research stemmed from the fact that she had a very difficult relationship with her own mother. She'd gone through her life pushing it away and realised that the effect on her could have been a bad one but in fact she'd turned it around, which is what she's counselling people to do in her book by showing the skills they may have learned from living with one of these difficult mothers.

If she'd had a diffficult father then probably her book would have centred round men.

I do appreciate the motivation behind her book.

I just think it does reinforce the message about mothers as she's using this book to not only look at her own mother's behaviour, but that of other women, completely ignoring the fact that men can take on the mothering role and all the associated - positive and negative - behaviours. If it was just about her mother, then fine, but it's not. It's about women as mothers.

It's good that she feels able to exorcise her demons in this way, I guess.

I don't think I'll be encouraging my daughter to read it.

Lol, no! Good for getting inspiration though!

Yep, there's my mother. Narcissistic, envious and emotionally unavailable. God bless her.

Has anyone read the Bradshaw Variations (I think!) by Rachel Cusk. She gets the parents, but especially the mothers, brilliantly.
There's a scene about new curtains which is fantastic.

Why did you buy new curtains - I've got loads of old curtains you could have had.

Lovely mothers!

Why did you buy new curtains - I've got loads of old curtains you could have had.

That's exactly the kind of thing my mother would say.

I reviewed that Cusk book for amazon vine. I thought it was very good.

Reading some of this article rang some bells with myself and my own mother, at times controlling, even envious despite denials. Here is one very stupid example although there are others I could quote. Two years ago, I bought a filing cabinet second hand from a charity that sends medical and office equipment abroad. At first, Mum was happy then she started to play up, in fact she was quite unpleasant and sarcastic about it at times. When I cleared her portable filing case and sorted out the rubbish, she improved. Actually,recently I turned the tables by being jealous of her because she was having more attention on the fact she wasn't well. Not nice but I did not state the full reason, just a taste of her own medicine. Not nice I agree but it might make her doubly careful in future about being jealous of me.

After reading that overview of Dr Terri Apter's book, I have to say that if I go by the mentioned criteria, then my mother was pretty good to me as a child as she doesn't fit any of the examples.
Yet we still have a volatile relationship.
Hmmm.... maybe it's me then....?

In fact, some of the 'types of difficult mothers' actually relate more to my ex-husband and his relationship with our children than to my mum's relationship with me (so I guess it's a good job I divorced him...).

It was my relationship with my father, rather than my mother, which drove me forwards as a child. His belief in my abilities which made me work hard to justify his beliefs. My mum was there to pick up the pieces when I struggled.

I think that using the 'difficult mother' to analyse our grown-up selves is often using a shortcut to understand what really makes us tick as adults.
Good for someone writing a short story or for a character in a movie, but a very one-sided and gender-specific view of much more complex issues.

But that's just me. It seems I was brought up by pretty caring parents, so I guess that's what makes me feel the way I do about this article.