Writing this on Mother’s Day 2023, and thinking about my mom (depicted here), gone for nearly half my life, I’ve been reflecting on the way mothers have been depicted in literature and in my work. Novels contain untold examples of every kind of experience women have had navigating their own journey as parents as well as all the ways that we, as children and adults, have experienced our own mothers—or the absence of them.

Common depictions include the following:

  • Unconditional love
  • Nurturing
  • Protective
  • Self-sacrificing
  • Inspirational
  • A source of strength and resilience
  • Complex or conflicted
  • Fearful or uncertain
  • Absent
  • Ambivalent
  • Neglectful
  • Jealous and petty
  • Abusive
  • Terrifying
  • Homicidal

Thinking back on books I’ve read, I can come up with examples of all these. I was fortunate to experience the positive end of the spectrum with my mom and to witness mostly the same positive behaviors and attitudes from other mothers. My wife, Kim, is a remarkable mother to her two daughters. But the stories I’ve heard from survivors of the negative end of the mothering spectrum are the source of nightmares. Surviving the evil parent(s) is a whole genre of novels, to which I’ve made some contributions.

I think because I had parents who loved and sacrificed for me and encouraged me to be happy, I’m compelled to learn and write about those experiencing the harsh side of parenting. Just like I grew up middle class and have been most successful writing about those trying to scrape by.

For many of my readers, the parents in Hardscrabble Road probably come to mind as my most memorable depictions. Both fall on the dark side of the parenting spectrum. Papa is the obvious choice as Worst Parent of the Century, but Mama was a much more complicated character. The real-life people whose childhoods inspired Hardscrabble Road and Return to Hardscrabble Road would joke about Papa’s “unique parenting style” with the gallows humor of survivors, but they never kidded about Mama. I attempted to explain that discrepancy with the following passage from Return to Hardscrabble Road:

“As ever, I envied Jay’s ability to always be kind to someone who’d made our lives even worse. If Papa was the tornado that tore through every day of our childhood, Mama had chosen, as often as not, to push us into the path of that twister instead of pulling us to safety. Maybe just to see what would happen.”

The protagonist’s view of her evolves as the sequel progresses, coming to see her as someone who perseveres and endures: “Whenever I talked about Mama or thought of her, she was fixed in my mind as a survivor, the last one standing, somehow eternal as she connived and clawed her way from one day to the next like a character from a Greek myth who staggered through an endless series of catastrophes but always overcame, forevermore: the Hardscrabble Goddess.”

And by the end, he has an opportunity to reconcile with his complex mom, to accept and love her despite her many flaws. Those with challenging or problematic parents will recognize that struggle to come to terms with someone you were utterly dependent on as a child who let you down in numerous ways or actively made your life hellish. This can make for compelling reading but can also be difficult to get through for those whose memories are sparked by such literature. For those readers who had to set down any of my books either temporarily or permanently because of this triggering, all I can do is apologize and promise that a happy ending awaits at the end of that hardscrabble road.

For the mothers among my readership, I hope your parenting journey is one of patience, empathy, and humor. For those with mothers who are still among the living, I wish the same as you interact with that person doing the most difficult and unappreciated of jobs. If mothering was easy, just think how different this world and our literature would be.