Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than to hear people make sweeping generalizations about the overall “goodness” of mothers. Fathers can be piles of manure, but all mothers are presumed to have “done the best they could.” That is a bunch of BS, and I cannot help but rise to the bait whenever this is said around me.
This most recently happened at a book club meeting last week. We were discussing the book The Glass Castle, which is a memoir about Jeannette Walls’ childhood while being raised by an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother. While the children were digging through dumpsters in order to find something to eat, the mother was gaining weight eating chocolate bars that she hid in the house. Both parents did numerous things that were extremely neglectful to the children, and yet people seemed to have more sympathy for the mom because “she did the best she could.”
No, she did not.
Even with the limitations of mental illness, she could have left her children in the care of her mother (the children’s grandmother), who had plenty of money and food to meet the children’s basic physical needs. She could have shared her chocolate bars with her four children instead of stuffing her own face while her children starved. She could have done whatever it took to provide food for her children or put the children into foster care, where they would have had food to eat and a bed not made out of cardboard.
Whenever people say, “She did the best she could,” I think about all of the things that my mother did. People want to excuse her because of her mental illness, but there is no excuse. When I started recovering memories of the abuse and realized that I had amnesia about much of my life, I feared that I could have harmed my then-two-year old child and not remembered. I told my therapist that if I recovered any memories of harming my son, I would kill myself to save him from me. I meant it. That would have been doing the best that I could. My therapist assured me that I would never harm my son, and he is correct. I would do whatever it took to keep him safe, even if it meant taking my own life.
Instead, I take comfort from this saying:
Just because someone doesn’t love you with all that you need, doesn’t mean she isn’t loving you with all that she has. – Author unknown
I do believe that my mother loved me with all that she had. Unfortunately, she was very limited. However, I will never agree that she did the best she could because she did not.
Related topics:
- Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse
- Being Honest About Abusive Birth Parents after Adoption
- Talking Badly about an Adopted Child’s Beginnings
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
the phrase “she did the best she could” makes me angry……
I am the one who suffered major trauma for my entire life. practically.
it is not ok…..
You are absolutely correct, an I applaud your courage to stand up and say it. My exwife is being charged with child abuse, and every agency, except for the police have excused her behavior as “she is a single mom, doing the best she can…”
When will things change?
Things will not change until people stand up and call the abuse what it is. That is one reason that I write about this topic. I want other abuse survivors to know that they are not alone, and I want the world to know that this form of abuse happens. It is NOT okay to abuse a child, and being a mother does NOT give a person a “free pass” to abuse.
I am glad that your children have you to protect them.
– Faith
My mother didn’t sexually abuse me, but she did physically and emotionally abuse and neglect me and reacted to her suspicions that I was being molested by screaming at me and calling me a slut in front of a busload of people.
“She did the best she could” or “you’re not being fair to her” are some of the things I hate most to hear. The fact that I would have been put in foster care had the counselor in my elementary school reported my mother’s neglect says that neither of those things are true. I’m always glad when someone else feels that way too. In an ideal world, all mothers (and fathers) would be good, but it’s about time that society recognizes the fact that some are not.
“In an ideal world, all mothers (and fathers) would be good, but it’s about time that society recognizes the fact that some are not.”
I wholeheartedly agree. :0)
– Faith
I agree with you. For a few years I heard that phrase flung at me any time I brought up my parents. I don’t associate with anyone right now who does.
One of my brothers told me that a few years ago and that was when I told him about the mother-daughter sexual abuse. He was shocked and said well then she didn’t do the best that she could. At last, someone in my family got it.
I liked the other comment, that mothers love us with all that they had, though limited. For me, though that is not very accurate. I found a new phrase that works better for me.
Just because my mother didn’t love me, doesn’t mean that I am unlovable nor that I won’t be loved by many others. I will.
Thanks for blogging about these important topics.
Kate
I just found this post via a web search of “abuse by mother” … Thank you for writing of this …
I remember being at a gathering in 1985 that was part of efforts by former child abuse victims (i.e., they were adults now) to get federal law changed on the statute of limitation in cases of child abuse. I was at this meeting with a dear friend, and my then-therapist also showed up. The person who was initiating the challenge to the present law was a woman who had been abused by a male … The focus of the meeting (and the anger) was exclusively on male perpetrators … until my therapist called out during a lull, “Women abuse their children too!” DEAD SILENCE. I remained silent too … but I shot my mentor and soul’s guardian a gaze of gratitude for bringing up a subject that was surprisingly taboo, especially in feminist circles … that women, too, abused children.
I came to understand much about my own mother, whose behaviour towards me was abusive, sometimes sadistic. She was very ill, desperately unhappy, and quite entrapped as women of her generation were (she was wed in 1956). In some ways, especially later in her life as she worked hard to be sober, she *did* do the best she could with what she had. AND she left me with a terrible legacy, and with many scars …
Thank you for acknowledging what is still largely an in-the-closet issue.
my mother is an aweful person, she tried to kill me when i caught her cheating on my father, no member of my family stood up for me, not even my father, he took her side. she would mentaly abuse me none stop, i hope karma gets her as its not fair for evil people like her to get away with this
with age i see things differently ….. i want to forgive
I have wirtten a 19 page letter to my mother explaining to her that she abused me physically, verbally, and emotionally. I am unable to tell her straight in the eye as i still fear her response. I finally did what needed to be done i stood up for myself to her and to two family members who also abused me (sexually) This clearing is the best thing i have ever done in my entire life, it feels like a new begining, not a new chapter, a new life.
I am very excited for what comes.
Diiego Jesus Nava
24
I have a mother who “doesn’t remember” the hurtful statements that she made, the controlling behaviour that she exhibited all too frequently and the depression and emotional mood swings to which I was subjected right through into my twenties. Anything that she does remember gets swept away with a variety of denials, excuses and statements such as “I did the best I could” and comments designed to deflect the responsibility. I’m still struggling with her manipulative behaviour. She’s a master at it. I have thought about writing her a long letter, but I notice that at her age (85), she no longer wishes to deal with anything that she suspects is even slightly unpleasant and probably wouldn’t read it anyway. Counselling is the answer for both of us. I’ll definitely get the help I need; I’m not sure whether she’ll follow through with her stated intention to do the same.
Its amazing, as i was reading through your comment i felt as if i had written it. Exactly as it happens to you its happening to me, they dont rememeber anything, however i was told from a great source to terminate relationship. I also have learned to run as fast as i could from any negative people, if you have noticed most of these mothers (look around you for similar behavior, of mothers from friends or relatives) most of them dont care about their life, they are in termination mode, so they dont care if they crumble yours. These energies especcially the ones coming from mothers are very very stong sweete, i know what you are going thourgh, run, run before you become what her thoughts are. Best Wishes.
An Abusive Mother’s hatred for her daughter is overwheming. This is killing the loving and caring Father. Her abusive nature has separated the Father from his Family. What scares me the most is….. that Her abusive nature is showing up in my young son’s personality.
Wow. I only recently subscribed to your RSS comments feed. Wish I had done that much earlier. Not sure whether to comment on your most recent post about female abuse, but this particular statement of “she did the best she could” is a particular trigger of mine, so I’ll comment here.
My situation is similar to some of the commenters above: my mother was also a sadist. She most certainly did “the best she could”, but in her case it was her best effort to torture and terrorize all of us and destroy our very souls. It, unfortunately, worked to a large degree with my father who was an empty shell of a man by the time he died, and I fear with my younger brothers (although I don’t know as I’ve been estranged for approx. 20 years). Luckily for me, thanks to my paternal grandmother, her best wasn’t good enough. Close. But no cigar. I’m just now, in my 50’s, starting to climb out of the slime I grew up surrounded by.
I consciously chose never to have children, precisely because of that phrase. What I went through (the few things I can remember) was horrific and yet SOOO excused by all the mainstream mental health and social services that I went to for ‘help’ (haha – some help) that I couldn’t risk having children and, however unintentionally, passing that on to them. Don’t those people realize that by telling victims that our abusers “did the best they could”, that they are telling us they weren’t able to help themselves, and therefore if we find ourselves in similar situations WE won’t be able to help ourselves either? My own personal (admittedly very cynical) belief is that “she did the best she could” is a euphemism for “nobody gives a damn so shut up and don’t bother us”, &/or “no-one cares enough for or about those children to be bothered to provide help”.
@Eloise Beda, great point. I had been thinking along similar lines, but never got to the point to articulate it as clearly as you did.
@Mike – I’m sorry to read about your situation. I suspect that you are secretly dealing with female abusers in the ‘caring’ professions you’re involved with; my mother was a public health official that people in your situation would have been forced to deal with. It’s such a huge problem – particularly since there is so very little societal awareness of female perpetrated abuse. I wish you and your children every success in getting through and past this.
BTW: here is a comment from the female-offenders.com website about this (“she did the best she could”):
http://female-offenders.com/Safehouse/2011/09/10-things-you-can-do-to-stop-violence-against-people.html/comment-page-1#comment-510 That expression was used to describe Robert Pickton’s mother, who reportedly killed a child in front of him.
BTW – one of the things that was strangely ‘immunizing’ for me as a child, and healing for me as an adult, is the knowledge that my mother not only didn’t love me at all, but in fact hated me with a deep abiding hatred. I started to figure that out consciously as well as unconsciously about 2 months after I moved out of her house at the age of 19.
The more I’m able to gather the evidence of that and paint the bigger picture (evidence that I wasn’t able to see before), the saner and more grounded I become. I don’t have many memories of my childhood, but I have more than enough intact memories to substantiate that knowledge. And I’ve started to realize that, at least when it comes to this aspect of healing, I probably have things much easier than those people who have more confusing relations to work through. In my case there was nothing to ‘untangle’: no love mixed in with hatred, no concern or care mixed in with repulsion. Once I gave myself permission (and that required getting myself well away from the ‘helping’ professions), the truth was actually quite easy to see, even if seeing it was hard to take.
I too was a victum of abuse physically, verbally and emotionally and I choose to have children and not to follow in my mothers foot steps. It is a myth that abused children will abuse their own children. That is what the experts want you to believe. What breaks the pattern is recognizing what you went through and refusing to a be a participant to abuse. Both of my grandmothers were caring and loving, remodels of how a mother is suppose to be. I made a promise to myself that I would never allow anyone to abuse me or any children I have, once I turned 18. 3 days after I turned 18 my mother abused me and I was out of that house. I am now 51 and over the years I have tried to confront her, no appologies, just denials. One day I faced reality that no matter how much I wanted my mother to change and accept me, that would never happen. I kept my distance from her and when I did communicate with her majority of the time it would end in yelling from her. She would get very angry with me if I made any contact with any of my relatives. She voiced to me they didn’t want anything to do with me. I wasn’t to have any thing good in my life. I felt she hated me, her friends tell me that she loved me, it was just how parents treated their children. Playing favorites? She did not abuse my younger brother or sister until I moved out. My mother treated me as a servant, more on the lines of a slave. If I did not do what she said I was beat. I was even beat for things my sister did and my mothers excuse was my sister was too young to be hit when she wasn’t. My mother was forced to be a mother, when she left my dad, he would drag her back several times. But the angrier she got.
“She did the best she could” is a cold pathetic hurtful excuse that insults victums and stated by uncaring people. My mother was in a relationship she did not want to be in. The man she really wanted married someone else. I grew up listening to her gripe.
You hear about abuse laws, but where are they? I am now a grandmother of a granddaughter that is being abused by her mother (ex-daughter in law to be), whom was sexually abused by her dad. I cannot believe that Child Protection type agencies do not protect a child from a mothers abuse but they will not allow a father to abuse (discriminating). They actually stand up for the mother over the child claiming that a “Child prefers to be with their mother regardless of what their mother does to them”. What a lie. I was terrified of my mother until the day she died (May 2010). I did not want to be arround her because of her abuse towards me. The day she died the fear broke and was replaced with coming to terms with I will never have a mother daughter relationship.
My three year old granddaughter told her daddy (my son) that she wants to go home to her home and that she never wanted to go back to mommys’ house again, that mommy loves her sister and not her. My fear is what is going on in that house that causes a small child not to want to go to her mommys’ house or never mention her mommy when she is here. My son and his two daughters live with us. The girls are here more than at their mothers, 50/50 custody that granted her weekly child support payments. She is out for money while manipulating my son with her sawb stories into getting more money, she really doesn’t want the girls, not to mention a drug addict. This weekend she demanded to see my 3 year grand-daughter, my grand-daughter refused and now she’s refusing to let my son pick up his other daughter (emotional black mail abuse). As a parent it is difficult seeing my son being abused in this manner and there is nothing I can do. I tried speaking up after she dropped my granddaughter off with human scratches on her neck and red finger marks on her neck, with child services throwing at me that my daughter in law claims I am a hateful lieing mother in law those scratches were from the dog. Too wide for a dog scratch. The divorce system discriminates against loving caring fathers, and they are for abusive mothers. It is not about the child, it is about the weak incable mother.
There are assult and battery laws, but abused children are being exempt from them.
I too was emotionally abused by my mother, and just like most BOYS who are victims of women in general, I was told that she ‘did the best she could’ and that I was the one being ‘disrepsectful’ and ‘an ungrateful little b*****’ My mother’s daughters (i refuse to call them my sisters) took her side and blamed me for what i went through. My mothers family were trashy and abusive and this only validated (in their eyes) that it was my fault. I remember being filled with anger and rage which then turned in to anxiety and depression as I got older which then turned into a sense of helplessness. These women are given a free pass in society because this country still tries to view women as ‘victims’ and if they’re a mother…omg they could get away with murder (Casey Anthony, i rest my case) These children, and particularly boys, have so many problems growing up and the first person everyone wants to blame is the father: news flash society, these loser women are having children then ruining their lives, look at them!
This article hits home.
I realised my mother is abusing me, and it took a long time for me to recognise and accept. She hardly hit me, it was all emotional and verbal. She’d be like Jekyll and Hyde, she’d tell me she loved me and then snidely criticise every aspect of my looks to the point where I didn’t leave the house for weeks at a time. She’d encourage me, and then laugh in my face if I failed things. Eventually I stopped trying to be like her because nothing I ever did was good enough, and it got worse. From around 15 onwards, she’d poison my relationships with family, she’d hugely exaggerate things and call her friends and family, bemoaning what a terrible child I was. The person on the phone would sympathise, because she’s the mother and she’s “doing as best she can” with her “difficult” daughter, and everything she said was “right” because I was a “little liar”.
Because she was the mother and I the child, she was always “right” in everyone else’s eyes.
My mother was and still is sneaky. I’m currently 19, and from what I can remember, she’s been this way for at least the last 10 years.
My mother used to play little games. She loves sympathy and would try get it from anyone – literally anyone, and she has a gift of making everything about HER.
When I was diagnosed with Major Depression shortly after my 15th birthday, she started smoking pot openly, because SHE couldn’t cope with the fact that she had an “emo” child – even though I was nothing like the broody teenagers who claim the title of “emo”.
She would forever name me, loser, retard, goth, useless, emo, pathetic.
Whenever I told people what was happening, or that mum was being mean, that she would go days without talking to me for a minor crime, that she would refuse or “forget” to buy me things a growing girl NEEDS, they’d tell me to “suck it up because she’s doing the best she can.”
“The best she can” in my case, was not the best she could have done – she could have sent me to live elsewhere at any time, but she never did.
It’s only need recently that I’ve realised that she’s an abusive wife to my father – putting him and his family down (I’m English-Australian) and constantly mocking everything he does. I grew up with it, thinking it was just mum being silly.
She denied my brother proper education and hardly anyone raised an eyebrow, because “mother is always right” which led to my brother being uneducated and violent.
I was the one, however, that got most of the scorn. She’d tell me things that were “secrets” – like that my father wanted a son when I was born, and he was disappointed, just to poison my relationship with my father. She’d tell me my sister ran away because of me, because I was a “horrible little girl” (my sister moved in with her father in another state when I was 10). She would tell me that her mother didn’t like me, that I had fat ankles, that I was the “favourite” on dad’s side – and that’s why I got less than my brother and sister.
She’d then – and still does – rationalise it with “you make me do it” and “one day you’ll take me/realise I wasn’t so bad” and my favourite… “I did the best I could.”
I’m an optimist though – from roughly 10 years old, I’ve known one thing – I never want to be like her, and I will never treat my child that way.
Up until I was about 17, I swore I wouldn’t have kids, because she’d terrorised me so much.
The good thing is the knowledge that I will never, ever let myself be like her.
Wll phrases like your mother loves you. Not sure mine did part of me has days when I wish I had been aborted. Or she did best she could heck to the no my mother didn’t even try. They make my blood boil. While physical abuse didn’t start t i ll 7, neglect started as infant dad held me to her breast couple times a day when not at work till I refused to feed thus starting baby led weaning/solids around 5 months. The emotional and psychological abuse started around age 3 when called me a liar. What mother calls their 3 yr old a liar. Its one thing to think its overactive imagination but another to flat out call s three yr old a lair. The witch who I cut contact with like 6 or 7 yrs ago has now taken to facebook stalking and in process denies her behavior. Those phrases are beyond annoying mother loves you maybe but doubt mine did she did best she could she did not even try.