"Worst Mother in American History" Challenge
Our special Mother’s Day show will explore what is has meant to be a “good mother” in American history–and there are a fair number of figures to choose from (though perhaps less than you would think): 1950s TV moms, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and now, Michelle Obama…
But we here at BackStory are stumped when it comes to who could possibly claim the title of worst mother in our nation’s past.
Can you help us out? Leave a comment below with your “Worst Mother” nomination and we’ll announce our favorites on the next episode of BackStory. Remember, this is history, so the Octomom doesn’t count!
How about Joan Crawford? Seriously, I have been mulling this over for awhile and asking friends, and no one really comes to mind. I’m still drawing a blank. Every women I think of tends to be someone who was the mother of an infamous American and I don’t believe you could necessarily blame the mother for the sins of the child. Case in point, one the first women I though of was Mary Surratt.. Andrew Johnson said she, “kept the nest that hatched the egg.” I don’t know that her skills as a mother had anything to do with her son John keeping company with John Wilkes Booth, but I doubt she would have won any mother of the year awards, at least not from any Lincoln supporters.
I will be very interested to see what others have to say on the subject. If you want to go with mothers in American popular culture though, I think Joan Crawford would fit the bill. No more wire hangers ever!
QuoteWhat about the mother of the author of “A Child Called ‘It’?” And haven’t there been mothers who have forced their children into prostitution? They seem worse than Joan Crawford, as bad as she was.
QuoteI totally agree that there has to worse out there, it is just that I have not been able to come up with a concrete example.
QuoteIt’s hard, right? I agree with you, Margaret, that the immediate tendency is to think of particularly infamous adults and work backwards. This seems to echo Linda Kerber’s ideas about “republican motherhood,” addressed in the first segment of the show: we tend to hold mothers directly responsible for raising “good citizens,” even though they themselves are kind of invisible in society, seen only via the citizens they eventually produce. Kind of an unfair contradiction, don’t you think? Surprisingly, it’s also pretty difficult to think of the “best mothers in history.” While motherhood has defined many American women’s lives, very few of them are actually known for being mothers, good or bad.
QuoteHow about Martha Alice “Mattie” Hageman? She physically and sexually abused Shirley Ardell Mason to the point Shirley had multyple personalitys.
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