I Hate My Mother

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

filed under: jill spivack

She didn't beat me or lock me in a closet. I just genuinely do not like her -- and people find this hard to accept.

Guest blogger Gina: I am not close with my mother and this is a concept that people are unable and unwilling to accept. They say things like, "Well, she's your mother so you have to love her." I always think, you know there are jerks who have kids every day. And I'm sorry that's it's uncomfortable, but every now and then you are going to run into the child of one of those jerks. It was always so difficult because it was so unacceptable for me to not like my mom. People (mostly adults) stuck up for her and -- by doing that -- made me seem like I was the crazy one. It was incredibly frustrating and when you think about it, really stupid.

We asked momlogic contributor and psychotherapist Jill Spivack if it's okay to hate your mom. Here's what she said:

As the saying goes, we don't choose our family. We are all born into a set of circumstances where we don't necessarily have much control. We are born with a particular temperament and our parents have both their own temperament as well as their own life experience which, combined, made them who they were to be as people as well as our parents. For some lucky kids, their parents can be nurturing, supportive, non-judgmental, loving limit-setters and consistent and present in their lives. For others, parents can be less than perfect and sometimes really abusive, abrasive and disabling.

While there is no such thing as a "perfect parent," we are all hoping for a good enough one. But unfortunately, for some, this isn't even impossible. Their own lives and experiences have often crippled them beyond a point of return where they cannot be the kind of parent we need. Do we need to empathize with their history? Maybe. There's some degree of "anger reduction" when we understand that maybe our parents' experience was as difficult for them as they were to us.

Should we continue to allow ourselves to be treated hurtfully or abused once we are adults? NO! It's very important for adult children of "not good enough" parents to come to terms with the cards they were dealt. If they feel that an ongoing relationship with that parent will cause them ongoing damage, they need to set boundaries with that parent.

If it is impossible to set enough boundaries or the parent is especially toxic, it is sometimes necessary to disengage completely. Before this, I would ask: Is there any way to remedy/repair the situation? Does their parent have the ability to take in your needs if well explained or maybe with support from a counselor? Has the parent who made the mistakes been in therapy or trying to change or repair what they've done wrong? You really need to know who you're dealing with and the extent to which that parent is "disabled." Just like you wouldn't ask a paraplegic person in a wheelchair to get up and walk over to you, you sometimes may not be able to get a very emotionally damaged parent to change and treat you the way they should have as a child. If your parent has disappointed you beyond repair, abused you emotionally or physically, you're lucky to realize as an adult that they treated you badly and that you're going to learn to be a better parent to your own children.

Go see a therapist if you need guidance and support. Deal with your anger and disappointment and try to make conscious decisions about the way you'll be with your own children. Consciousness will save your children from experiencing a negative relationship with you. And for adult children of "not good enough parents," be sure to recognize when you're taking the pendulum too far in the opposite direction with your own kids. If your mother was, for example, emotionally neglectful, the natural tendency would be for you to overly-coddle and overstimulate your own child for fear of her experiencing the same neglect you felt. However, if you aren't careful, you can over-do that nurturing stuff -- robbing your child of normal independence and competence.

What if one of your children's friends doesn't like his/her parents? Unfortunately, that child is still under their parents' care until he's 18 years old. I would empathize and listen to the child's feelings if they are trying to talk to you about it, but this is not territory you can necessarily get involved in, unless there is extreme emotional or physical abuse. Doctors and teachers are mandated to report abuse, so if you suspect something very serious, talk to the child's doctor or teacher anonymously and let them look into the situation.

201 comments so far | Post a comment now >>

My mother is a terrible, spiteful person who told me I was a mistake. My sister has since become anorexic from her constant mother stress. I hate my mother.

- Veronica

Posted 04/13/09 05:41 PM

I HATE MY MOTHER. HATE HER. I’m in my mid 30s, and I am so happy to say it outloud after so many years. As a 7 year-old I used to cry my eyes out because I felt like she didn’t love me. She’d laugh and call me stupid if she ever caught on that I was even crying. At my age, I am quite accomplished and have a WONDERFUL child of my own. I KNOW peace now, finally, but she INSISTS on actively going out of her way to be hurtful to us. This disables me for days when it happens and I hate to give her that power. I hate her for robbing me and my daughter of a mother and a grandmother. I’m a single mom, professional and strong and loving and so is her granddaughter, her big fat loss!!!

- EN

Posted 04/14/09 05:55 AM

I not only dislike my mother but I am so ashamed of her. She doesn’t comb her hair or wash her clothes. She’s rude and petty. I recently went on a trip with her and realized that I have come go a breaking point with her. I recently experienced a life changing event and came to the realization that life is too short to live inside of the small space she has created for me. She likes to keep you down and make herself look good. I realized that I do this with my kids because it was done to me now they resent me. I’m going to make a change and not be the parent that she was to me but it’s so hard because she was so emotionally abrusive to me for so long and I to my children.

- Lina

Posted 04/14/09 11:00 AM

For as long as I can remember I’ve hated my mother. From the moment I was able to process conscious thought, I knew I hated her. I was adopted by her when I was a baby and honestly I don’t even know why she chose me, or why fate decided to play that cruel of a joke to place me with her. My earliest memories of her are of her screaming at me, running at me and pummeling me with her closed fists. Throwing things at me or throwing me into walls. When I got into trouble as a child, of course as all kids do, she never sat down and explained right from wrong, she just flat out flew off the handle and “straightened me out” with a bit of verbal and physical abuse. If something happened in school, such as a poor test grade, I was always terrified of going home. She never praised the good she only highlighted the bad, flipping out on me for just about anything. I was never allowed to speak my mind or talk back to whatever she said to me. If I spoke my mind, I’d get a smack in the face or a punch or a shove. I went from the talkative child in school to the introverted shy girl who had trouble talking to people because I always would get a negative response when I did. I’m 24 now, and because of the economy I don’t have enough money to move out just yet, but she still talks down to me and flips out on me and thinks she can control me at my age. And the truth is she can. I am terrified to do anything that goes against what she wants because then I will have to deal with her wrath. She’s controlling, manipulative, and bi-polar woman who will just scream her face off if someone goes against what she wants or how she wants anything done. She’s a pathetic human being who never even completed high school until she was an adult and she lives off my father who makes 6 figures. He struggles with the whole mortgage, car payments, bills, EVERYTHING, she doesn’t even lift a finger to contribute. She works 3 days a week and claims she can’t work more b/c she has a “household to take care of.” I’m pretty sure you can work

- Jessica

Posted 04/14/09 08:33 PM

(Continued)..full time and still take care of your house. She talks down about anyone who doesn’t drive a top model car or wear the latest fashions and calls them “trailer trash” but she seems to have forgotten what she was before she met my father. NOTHING. She would have nothing if not for him. She goes out and blows six grand on purses and clothes and shoes and jewelry just to secure her image as the “high class woman.” When my boyfriend got me a white gold necklace for Christmas she took one look at it and made a face, saying he needed to “treat me better” because the necklace wasn’t huge and didn’t have gigantic diamonds in it. She made me ashamed to wear it, and embarrassed to wear it, because I LOVED it and she totally looked at it like it was a piece of sh*t. She’s always made comments how she wished she didn’t have me, and when I bring that up she conveniently forgets to have ever said it. She would hit me and scream at me when my father wasn’t home and then suddenly turn into “woe is me, my daughter does nothing but cause me grief, I am so sad, why doesn’t she like me,” when he comes home. I still don’t even think he knows what she was like to me in childhood. Because I still live in her house I try to stay away from her as much as possible. I work all day and I lock myself up in my room when I come home. I have problems in relationships, I can’t open up to people, I cannot verbally express my emotions, from years of suppressing them for the fear of being beaten for letting them out. My boyfriend doesn’t even know what to do with me because I close myself up so much. I prefer being alone to being in large groups. I know the point of adoption is to give your baby up to a better home, to give them a better life. I wish with all my heart for her to know what my life was like, and I would love to know how she felt about her daughter being raised like that.

- Jessica

Posted 04/14/09 08:35 PM

I am 39 years old and I thank God everyday that I have a loving husband and good friends who love me unconditionally. I have a mother who is controlling, unloving, unforgiving, calculating, shallow, mean and sees the world through a straw. I am British Chinese and our family moved to the UK when I was 8 years old. My mother was very strict and never let me out except to go to school. I wasn’t allowed to have any ‘English’ friends. As a result, I did well at school because I spent so much time on my own reading and studying. She mellowed a bit when I went to University at 18. I deliberately chose a college that was far away so she I could move out. I now live in a different country to my mother and have tried to keep her ‘toxicity’ out of my life. However, I still send her flowers on her birthday, mother’s day and always a gift at Christmas because she hasn’t always been horrible and I don’t want to hurt her feelings. She has not talked to me since we had a big row three years ago. Sometimes she visits the country where I am now living with my husband, but she deliberately ignores me and never contacts me. She never rings or leaves her number with me, yet she tells people that I never call her when she is here. Her friends, the so called aunties, her brothers and sister are all critical of me because they say she is my mother and that I should be the one to beg for her forgiveness. What really gets me is the way she bad mouths me to people behind my back and tries to get those people to call me and lecture me. I used to cry and cry because I don’t know what I have done that is so bad. I work hard and send my parents money for holidays as expected of a Chinese child. I have brothers and they are both westenised and they never give her money yet she loves them so much more than me. I guess they are her ‘boys’. Over the years, I have found talk therapy very useful and have tried to accept her rather than to change her. It has taken nearly three years to realise that I can keep her out of

- yan

Posted 04/14/09 11:33 PM

Hate is such a strong word and it is one that I do not use freely. But deep in my heart I hate my mother for all the pain she has caused me my entire life. I am 38 years old and just now realizing all the damage I have to repair. I have a sister that is one year younger than myself, but my mother chose her as her favorite. She has protected her and nurtured her as I hung out by the wayside. My father and my mother divorced when I was only 6 years old and I believe in my heart my mother resented me for continuing to love him. When I was in high school, I wanted to go live with my father, which I did. But my mother manipulated me into believing things would be better if I moved back home. WRONG DECISION!!!!! I had my first child in my senior year of high school. I graduated and received my diploma but was told that I wouldn’t have gotten it if it werent for her (she made me feel that by her being a school teacher she had that kind of power.) My mom kicked me out of the house with my baby knowing we had nowhere to go. After a few months, she found me and apartment that was income based for me to move into. (I was not raised in poverty, so I knew nothing about survival) After having my second child at 18, I was beginning to have problems with a tenant. I was in a biracial relationship and this lady was very racist. She would constantly complain about me on a regular basis which eventually lead to eviction due to 3 write ups. I called my mom and let her know I was being evicted and asked if I could move home until I could find somewhere else to live. I worked and walked every day taking my kids back and forth to daycare. Her answer was no. So I asked if she would at least take care of the girls until I could find us a home if I could arrange daycare for her. Her answer was it was not her place to raise my kids. I agreed, but I did not know how to fix my situation because I was still learning how to survive. The following weekend, she

- Kimberly

Posted 04/15/09 08:53 AM

(continued)she asked if she could come get the girls and I said yes. Little did I know this would be the last time I would ever embrace my children without my mothers control. She told the lawyer I was living in a car which was a lie to get them into her custody until a court hearing. Then at the court hearing, the judge asked me over 10 times if this is what I wanted for my kids. I told him I wanted my children to have a roof over their head. i believe now after reading the transcript that this judge knew I was being taken advantage of by my mother and why he did not order child support. Now my mother continues to put a wedge between me and my children. She puts me down to them and I refuse to put her down as I know what damage this causes.

- Kimberly

Posted 04/15/09 09:23 AM

(continued)She told me not to fight to get my kids back or she would see to it that I would lose them forever—-and I believed her. How could a mother do this to her daughter? I could see if I was unfit to be a parent but I wasnt. I loved and still love my daughters. I have 3 children living at home and they are so loving and devoted! I adopted my son 8 years ago from an abusive relationship.(fostering children). It angers my mom that i have him because it shows people that she was a liar in describing how terrible I was. I am a veteran of the us Army and a proud parent of 5 children. the only reason I continue to put up with her is she has my oldest girls. but she has twisted their minds so bad that they don’t have much to do with me and this hurts me deeply. My mother has only been to my home 5 times in the 9 years I have lived here and does not have much to do with the kids at all which in turn hurts them. How do I fix this situation. How do I walk away and rid her out of my life without my older children resenting me. What do I do? I can’t continue letting my mother destroy me, but she is sucking the life out of me. I have let her destroy the best in me and I want it back. I would embrace and advice one has to offer and appreciate you taking the time to read this post!!!!

- Kimberly

Posted 04/15/09 09:35 AM

I hate ALL of you whining ungrateful Gen Xer’s and a few yrs older…..Boo-Hoo. You guys have actually been spoiled next to most generations and you’re selfcentered, conceit makes me sick! You really believe the world revolves around what you think, feel and what your delicate opinion is - you THINK! Got news for you - NO ONE GIVES A RATS BUTT. People only care about themselves - period. You included! You make yourself a little god on MySpace listing your likes, songs, pics, etc… WHOOO CARES! You hold yourselves superior than the people who raised you like you’re so much greater a person, so much better and higher. Wait a couple more years when your own children write about what monsters you are right now. I feel SORRY for all of your mothers. They should’ave aborted you! Grow UP every one of ya!

- Haters?

Posted 04/16/09 04:24 PM

i think there are people in the world that REALLY hate their mother. i do hate my mom ,she critasises everything i do and shouts and yells hurtful things that make me hate her even more,and she treats my brothers so much difrently,the way she acts towards me makes me depressed for weeks,and my sister cuts her self because of her,so yeah I REALLY DO HATE MY MOTHER.

- i hate my

Posted 04/17/09 05:42 AM

Reading these posts has been an eye opener for me. I am amazed at the amount of hate and anger which can be directed towards one person. I too am probably the hated mother in my daughter’s life. All of her mistakes, decisions, and unhappiness of course, stem from the fact that I wasn’t a good mother. On the other hand, have years of unhappiness, frustration and disappointment in my life been her fault? After years of trying to foster a good relationship, I agree with you. Sometimes a mother daughter relationship needs to be ended. When a daughter is no longer interested in anything but inflicting pain, anger, and hate I aree with you readers, I am moving on. You name it - she has done it. You name it - I have tried it to mend this relationship. It’s time to move on. Thank you for waking me up.

- amused

Posted 04/19/09 10:26 AM

I’m so excited to find that I’m not the only one that hates their mother (and I’m 35 yrs old). My mother is a witch amoung them, even when I was a child I couldn’t stand the way she treated me. Now as an adult I see how she favored my brother, oddly she now favors my oldest. (maybe she likes boys?) I was nice enough to let her move in with us and she’s destroying my marriage. She cries “poor me” to my husband and has him convinced that I’m so mean to her all while she hangs all over him. Most recently he’s told me that because I’m so mean he wants a divorce. All because I won’t let her mother my children and take over my house. The only thing I can come up with is that she wants me to be as miserable as she is so she’s out to destroy my life. Once she’s out of my house (which will come soon but why I can’t just toss her out is a long story) I will never talk to her again or allow her around my kids. I am just glad I’m not alone in dealing with this sort of thing. N.

- Anonymous

Posted 04/19/09 07:28 PM

the hell theyy do i know i hate mine with every fiber of my being

- Anonymous

Posted 04/23/09 11:20 AM

I am 28 and am perfectly aware of the fact that I genuinely do not like my mother. Here are the words that best describe her: misreable, abrasive, emotionally abusive, lonely, and bitter. Throughout my life I have always wanted to make her proud. She was my motivation when I graduated college and law school. I would like to think of myself as a good daugther. I have never given my mother any trouble outside of the ever popular teen years. Even then however, it never went any farther than “why can’t I go?” My mother has never taken a personal interest in my life. She can never be happy for me or anyone that I call a friend. Our relationship is best described as “toxic.” I have always wondered why mother couldn’t be as nurturing or caring as others. But rather than dwell on it I made the decision to “keep it movin” I have accomplished a lot to be 28 and I know I am a caring person who has a tremendous amount of love to give and if my mother wants to see me as being insignificant; oh well. I am glad that I have the friends and people that I do in my life. They help remind me that there are people out there who care. So all I can do is learn to come to grips with it and live the life I planned for myself. I will always be there to support my mother in every way, but I know that I will never be able to call my mother a “friend” and with each day I am learning to deal with it.

- Keepin' It Movin'

Posted 04/25/09 06:54 PM

I’m glad I am not alone. I have suffered with debilitating depression for a few years, and when I have terrbiel bouts of crying, my mother either completely ignores my pain, or screams at me to stop. She doesn’t even try to understand what I am going through. She even tried to choke me once. She only talks about how it affects her - she is extremely selfish and childish, and I just want to escape from her.

- Deanna

Posted 04/27/09 08:05 AM

Wow, it really is amazing to find out you are not alone in this. You spend a lot of time trying to explain to people when the subject comes up and you admit that you hate your mother. With mine, I am pretty sure it started because she “had” to get married because of me. At least that is how she sees it. She used to tell me it was all my fault when she and my father would fight. She used to beat me with a 7 layer razor strap when I was growing up but threatened to leave my father when he used it on my brother one time. She has even told me since I have been grown that she still has it in the attic if she needs it. (btw, I am 39) She was talking to my daughter one day about her activities in school and I guess mine came up in the conversation, she had the nerve to ask me why she never knew I ran track. Hell, she had to get me the physical for it, she knew I was in track she just didn’t care or bother to come to any meets unless my brother was in them too. I was talking to the parish priest at their church one time and he gave me the funniest look when I told them who I was, he finally admitted that he thought they only had a son. Apparently they never mentioned me. My husband and I bought a house recently and she and my father came for a visit. She didn’t have one nice thing to say about it, she just told me how I had done this and that wrong. She and my father have both told me that she is still pissed at me for the things I did as a teen-ager. I tried drinking a couple times, snuck out, and the other basic stuff but never got into drugs and never got arrested or brought home by the cops. We have butted heads a couple of times since I have been grown but most of the time I just back down to keep the peace and because she is not worth it. I could go on and on as many of you could but we all know the drill. The thing is I really don’t know what to do. I

- Margaret

Posted 04/28/09 12:47 AM

Some moms just can’t look past their own lives and be genuinely happy for their children. Like my mom who didn’t make it to my bridal shower and blew me off the night before my wedding to hang out with her sisters. Then she showed up at my wedding and had her sister warn everyone not to dance on the dancefloor because it was slippery.

- Anonymous

Posted 04/29/09 12:21 PM

As mothers day approaches fast I thought I should read this page. I am a child welfare worker and a mother. There appears to be many very angry women on this page, I am sure some of this anger is warranted, certainly in abusive relationships. The thing I think that is missing in all these comments is everyones individual accountability. I have seen children who never held themselves accountable for the damages they have created in their own lives and it is always easiest to blame a parent versus accepting ones own contribution to a situation. Reality is this, the hatred you feel can last a lifetime, even when that parent is deceased, you will continue to feel the hatred and this is unhealthy. Best advice, mend what you can, forgive what you can, and in worst case scenarios, remove all contact with the person whom you hate. But always, make sure you can live with your own choices, in the end, its all about you.

- Just a mom

Posted 05/07/09 06:45 PM

I just saw the “VIEW” where they talked to the author Alyse Myers who wrote a book about hating mother. I have not read it and the show was interesting. They said it is ok to hate your mother and they talked about e-mails from people who wrote in about hating their mothers. I am a mother and I will be talking to my adult kids about issues becaseu the other day my son said something to me “… mom you can be very difficult to deal with…” and it has stuck with me since. Life is too short and we all have to do what we have to do to live it trying to find peace and happiness. If it meets having to severe parental ties, then I guess that is what it takes.

- RB

Posted 05/08/09 12:15 PM