Poll - Did you have a good mother?

psychopathbabble

I've said no, in that we have no relationship now whatsoever, and I have low confidence due to a few things she said when I was growing up, and if you talk to others that know me then I was a neglected child. However, she managed to keep me alive long enough for other good people to come into my life and help me be who I am today

psychopathbabble

ilovecheese wrote: »

My mum often says that if she knew then what she knew now she would never have had children - thanks for that!!

I was once told I should be grateful as if it wasn't for her, Id be a bit of blood in the toilet! :eek:

davy23

Another no here.Im a middle child so maybe to be expected.Loved to humiliate me for most of my childhood for being a bed wetter,told everyone who would listen.Rubbish grandmother too,we no longer speak but she has chosen to chastise her grandchildren too and no longer sends birthday/xmas cards.she never bothered with them anyway they were lucky to see her once a month.The hurtful thing is she wasn't that way with my siblings.

angelbob

No, my mum was and still is very selfish. If i have a problem she changes the subject so her life is always worse, its not.
Had a very unhappy childhood (though i loved being at school) came home to violence, rows and housework/babysitting, there were 7 kids in our home (some step).
She was and still is only interested in my younger sister, whereas two of my step-brothers no longer have any contact with her or my step-dad, and I had one step-brother who became a drug addict and commited suicide two years ago and he always blamed our childhood for his problems.
In my case, I'm not sure if it is a reason but I lived with violent men and when I finally left my ex, my mum told me 'I'd never find a better man than my ex, he was smashing etc' and she knew what he did to me.

Having children myself I know I could never be like her.

angelbob

I forgot to add, I had a lovely wonderful nan who I spent every weekend with, she sadly died fours years ago (aged 92) when i was pregnant with my youngest son.
Without her I would not not have known what love was xx

balletshoes

davy23 wrote: »

Another no here.Im a middle child so maybe to be expected.
Loved to humiliate me for most of my childhood.....

........The hurtful thing is she wasn't that way with my siblings.

but you know, really don't you, that its not to be expected ie just because you were the middle child, you're not any less deserving of your mother's love or care than your siblings.

That brings up an interesting point for me - why are there so many experiences of mum/dad apparently consistently neglecting one child and not the other/s? Is that another example of mum/dad being wired differently, or is it something else?

GotToChange

I did not have a "mother" in the true sense. She "lost" me - the first child she had, and the one who caused the marriage (veeeery reluctant on the part of my "father") - at around the age of three. I met her again when I was 16. She had popped out children at a rate of one a year for four years - and also brought up a stepson (who molested my sister).

I have tried and tried and tried since then (she wrote to me to open communication; I had no choice - and even though brainwashed to hate her, I didn't).

I am only interested in having a decent connection with her. She isn't interested in even that - and much prefers the offspring who can offer her a granny flat (daughter 3) or holidays in the Canary Islands (daughter 2); even the stepson is welcomed to her house three times a year (in "honour" of his now-deceased father or some such bolleaux).

It is only now - after yet more rejection - that I have no choice but to hate her. I am also so very afraid of any inherited traits (let alone those from the paternal side....) so pretty much keep a lid on my personality.

Last week she told me (on phone when I called her and after *sigh* another "talk") - again - that she never wants to speak to me again. This was after she had paraded "all" my failings in front of me, told me that I had effed up her life, effed up my own life (she didn't say effed either), that she wishes she had never bothered with me and that I deserve to be on my own with nobody....

I have seen her twice in the last four years - and once was when we bumped into one another in town and I drive her home, the other was last Mother's Day, when I took the risk and made the 45 mile round trip to take her some tea roses; my visit to her meant that I also had to visit with (?) my half-sister (drunk after a darts match) and her new girlfriend and my half-sister's daughter (then 16), a bigger show-off you could not wish to meet. I found out the next day that my mother was also visited by my other sister's husband - this is to keep the lines of communication open because the sister herself is "not speaking" to her/my mother (which I took her to task over the next day - and now she isn't speaking to me* - ever again - either *sigh*) - so it should be no loss. But it still is a loss.
(*She and I have a terrible "relationship" also - but that is a tale for another day. Simply put, for some reason, she wants me to dance to her tune - and I have done it. But it still doesn't work.)

Even though she has proved herself - time and again - to be spiteful, selfish, aggressive, mean-spirited, unrepentant, shallow, harsh, judgemental, narcissistic, hypocritcal, self-centred and self-obsessed, indifferent (to me), hostile, small-minded, untrustworthy, rude, unpleasant, foul-mouthed, sharp-tongued, lazy, soul-less and just plain nasty...
...I could go on. She is - ironically - in good health - despite her 40-a-day habit, so could do many many things. She is not depressed - just lazy and boring.
She is not interested in ANYthing (worked for The National Trust for a long time so appreciates stately homes I guess) - not sewing, painting (even though she can), music, gardening, anything creative at all, writing, cooking or baking (and no, she has not had alifetime of it....), animals, computers, the wider world in general. She is horrendously over-involved with my half-sister and her daughter (due in part of course to the proximity of the granny flat - but the reliance predates that and has been in place for nearly 18 years now, regardless of the distance and my mother's working life and my half-sister's father's ill-health and then death) - and yet the teenager especially writes rotten and disrespectful things about her grandmother on her bl00dy TWITter page. (I kept my lips zipped about that though. So far.) And yet the only thing my half-sister does is play darts (she is otherwise a fat, drinking slob) - which I know is very time-consuming and she has certainly done very well at it - but this has been enabled by her mother practically raising her daughter for her, which in itself has caused an issue with the other daughter (who even though very far away still manages to be a huge factor).

I have never expected anything like "equal" treatment from her - and once I became an adult, and particularly a mother, attempted to see her point of view... her loathing for me (when it isn't just plain old indifference) means that there is no overcoming the difficulties.

She has visited my house twice in 11 years (once for 10 minutes and with the grand-daughter with her; yet my daughter has been ignored by her all her life), will NOT meet me in town say for a coffee, will NOT go shopping with me (as I was critical of Primark clothes), will NOT let me go over there now (as I apparently "don't like" my half-sister [that's true - but is only a very recent development]) and has point-blank told me that "there is no place here for you at Christmas".

Trying to connect with her - and the failures - turn me into somebody I don't like; when she rants at me and won't let me speak, when every utterance that I make has to be me defending myself or explaining myself, or - dangerously - mentioning something about me she doesn't know (a lot) which she interprets as a dig at her. I end up shrieking and shouting back at her and feeling levels of dislike that are off the scale - of her, but mainly of myself...
The strong feelings this incites sustain me for a while, strong enough to keep away - to give up - forever. But then I feel so sad - and believe that I can say or do something - the right thing - to make her have even an iota of interest in me; just to know me a little better - and not be so unkind. To see a side to me that she never will in just a couple of hours a year - and on the phone at that. But she simply cannot be bothered - and seems to hate me too much.

So, the way I have finally seen it is that these people who have cut me off - who are cruel and ignorant and hold grudges where there is no grudge to hold, who would prefer not to have to speak to me at all but when I have the nerve to speak to them, make me wish that I hadn't and that I could simply just die - thay have saved me; saved me from being like them. They have cut me off - cut me out. Ergo, I can never do it right back. There is probably something perverse and egotistical about that particular take on it but as I see it, my heritage has SAVED me from my heritage.

They are still relatively young so the final curse is that shall probably outlive me - I shall never be free of them.

I have to hate her - as it is the only way to stop my futile and pathetic attempts to "have" a mother. She simply isn't.

So - the short answer, NO, my mother was not a good mother.




(But then, I am not to sure what good mother actually is....)

And please note also, that I have never made a list like this before, even now, it is mainly as a warning to myself rather than reasons that I should not still attempt to have her love me.

song_of_calliope

My mother was an alcoholic and a drug user. She had crazy wild parties in the house and always put whatever man she was dating ahead of her children. I clearly remember some random bloke telling her if she didn't start treating her children better he would leave her. She immediately turned round and starting saying "oh sorry kids, I'm so sorry" to me and my sister for being awful to us. That turned my stomach even at the age of 10. She beat me up and constantly told me how stupid I was and how she wished she'd never had me.

I know alcoholism is a disease and she did clean up her act eventually when I was in my late teens but by then the damage was done. And even though she's sober she's still a very selfish woman.

That would be a no from me, then.

dizziblonde

Not really - she did the best she could, but her own childhood was screwed up by an equally disfunctional mother-daughter relationship really and so the cycle continued.

She means well - I know that much, but my childhood was an entire litany of "never good enough" - and when my dad left, my childhood basically vanished as so much was dumped on a 10 year old girl that shouldn't have been - both practically and more worryingly - emotionally. Did I really NEED to have the ins and outs of my father's affair and parents' sex life offloaded onto me at that age? Did I need to have to sit and hear a phonecall to my father where she sobbed and told him she was going to make us all take overdoses and die? Nope - but there was no protection there for me - I was very much thrown as collateral damage in order to protect my younger brother emotionally.

Fine - that stuff happens - but then to use that as a stick to bash me with, how I'd become emotionally withdrawn and it was hurting her her her her - that was really the point where I started to think it was unfair. To be repeatedly and constantly bashed for being a perfectionist, afraid to fail, highly strung and worrying about tests - when anything below 100% would be grounds for sanctions and hour after hour of postmortem dissection about where I went wrong... I still do get bashed for failings in my personality that are as a direct consequence of the pressure and emotional upset dumped on me when I was growing up.

She's very controlling - still resents the fact I didn't take the job she wanted and the career she wanted me to have - this one gets thrown in my face at regular periods. She doesn't value me as a person at all - I get repeated comments how I don't deserve my husband and how I'm a "lazy dramatic cow you" and I need to make sure I hang onto him... and basically - until I managed to get pregnant... I wasn't worthy as a child of the family - she even picked the middle of my wedding, right after years of infertility she knew about - to tell me she'd decided I should make her a grandmother now.

She never calls me, returns texts, emails or anything - I honestly think she cares more about her politics and networking than me... she lies and plays me and my brother off against each other - she'll do things like not invite me to something, and then try to make out to my brother that I decided not to come because I didn't value HER and HER DAY as important (she doesn't realise that me and my brother actually speak and figure this one out - for years she tried to actively discourage me and my brother contacting each other).

On the other hand - sometimes when we see her she can be lovely... other times it's so vicious, such a relentless barrage of criticism (both at me AND my husband) that I've been known to sit in the car driving home and sob wondering what I did to deserve a mother who doesn't love me - even though I know it's just her way. Not knowing whether you're going to get Jekyll or Hyde makes it much worse to be honest.

And last night she sends me basically a very passively-aggressive worded request to be at the birth of my daughter (and boy oh boy the fact this one's a girl scares me witless with how screwed up mother-daughter things are in our family)... her usual style - lots of lip service about how she won't mind if I say no (but between the lines you KNOW she will and there will be wrath and it'll be yet another failing to be held against me for the rest of my life and brought up in arguments - oh well, it tops the usual of me being ungrateful for the gift of life one, or asking her not to open my post when I was 25 years old) and I'm sat there thinking - you're likely to launch into a tirrade of criticism about me when I'm at my most vulnerable, you're likely to make the entire thing about you, you're about as supportive as a cactus... what on EARTH makes you think I want you in that room with me?! But of course I can't say all that and I continue to play the dutiful daughter game... and make polite excuses that we're not playing favourites and risking offending anyone so we're saying neither of the grandparent sides are coming in but feel free to come to the house afterwards.... it's just easier not to argue back, smile sweetly and simmer quietly - you try to fight it and it just becomes rapidly her sobbing hysterically about her evil ungrateful daughter, and rallying everyone to tell me how nasty I am - so I just play for the quiet life really.

She likes to claim she triumphed over her own bad mother - but in reality she's the absolute mirror and the cycle repeated... but she'll never ever listen to anyone saying that - so it's just a case of smile, give the required amount of presents at Christmas, birthdays, mothers day and play the game as best I can. Can't blame her - it's all SHE ever knew and unfortunately she didn't get the daughter she quite envisoned... that part's her loss - not mine.

GotToChange

dizziblonde - that sounds so dreadful and yet strangely I can relate.

I think that you show a level of self-wawareness that will save you, has saved you; knowing your own possible weaknesses and the potential pitfalls - that you have learnt through your experiences - will mean that the chain of awful mother-daughter relationships can be broken.

She sounds like a cow of the highest order (in a very different way to my "mother") and you are an angel to be able to maintain some kind of closeness - and still try (although you shouldn't have to) to have a better relationship, a way forward.

You know the old cliche of course - that we cannot change other people, only how we react to/deal with them... never truer than in your case (or mine I guess).

You are doing a great job.
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