Can a Mother TRULY hate her son?

How about, no.

 

Have you ever read the book "A Child Called It"?
I doubted that mothers could hate their children, until I read that book.
It's a short read, a bit graphic, but after that you can see it's possible.
The book never really goes into why the mother thinks this way, that would be something you could probably study.

 

As with most positive titles the word "mother" is a heuristic. There's no such thing as a "Mother" a "Policeman" or whatever. Those words have a set of duties attached to them, but they only're carried out if the human behind the title wants to carry them out. If you free your mind from assumptions then you get a picture of life that's a little more clear.

Is the book you've mentioned fact or fiction?

 

supposedly fact, but has been disputed by family members...

 

I'd like to read about it, but not actually read it. About it not being true, sometimes I find the motives for lying more interesting than straight heinous stories.

 

I have no trouble imagining a mother hating a child. I do have trouble imagining a more or less mentally healthy mother who had a more or less healthy love for her child, turning around and hating that child.

So I'd probably need the mother to demonstrate mental illness. It wouldn't have to be blatant mental illness - the mother could, for example, have been a narcissist all along, perhaps one who only "loved" the child in the way that a child "loves" a shiny toy until that toy gets dirty and scratched. If the narcissistic mother valued the child for being handsome and accomplished and making her look good in front of her friends, and the child is now no longer handsome and no longer accomplished, then I can easily see the mother utterly losing interest in the child.

And then if the child somehow punctured the mother's ego or were the cause, even the indirect cause, of an ego injury, then that lack of interest could, I think, turn to hatred, or at least as close to hatred as a narcissist is capable of. Maybe the mother stops visiting the sickroom, and her friends notice and make it clear that they think less of her for that. That would, I think, enrage the mother and cause her to blame the child. (Try Googling "narcissistic injury".)

ChickenFreak

 

Maybe her son had some part to play in her husbands death. This could plant the seeds of dislike and the sons subsequent behaviour could nurture it to hatred. I think for the mother to end up hating her son, the son has to play a part as well. he can't be a squeaky-clean-do-gooder. He needs to do things that defy her, or challenge the moral upbringing she gave him. Even its only misinterpretation on her part.

 

This is the 21 century. I think it is high time we gave the mentally ill a break

 

I think that covers many situations.

 

I think that we may have a problem with definitions here.

I'm not saying that all, or most, or many, mentally ill people mistreat others. I apologize if I gave that impression.

I'm also not saying that a mother who doesn't love her child is mentally ill. I have no children, in part because I'm not the least bit confident that I could form a healthy loving parent/child relationship.

I _am_ saying that a mother who did form that healthy loving parent/child relationship with her child is unlikely to stop loving that child without some profound change in her mental state causing that change. Am I wrong? I might be, but i'd need some persuading.

As for whether people who murder and rape others are mentally healthy, I'd say that, no, they're not. They may not have a diagnosable mental illness, and most of them should be held responsible for their actions, but I'd still say that a complete lack of concern for others is not a mentally healthy state.

Maybe I need a category other than "mental illness", and maybe that category is "personality disorder" - I see that psychopathy and sociopathy are apparently defined as personality disorders rather than mental illnesses, as is narcissism. I can use the term "disordered" or some other term rather than "mentally ill", and again, I apologize if I misused the concept of mental illness. But I still don't accept that people with those disorders are mentally _healthy_.

ChickenFreak

 

Thanks for the input, guys!

A couple of ideas...

I was thinking that I would have the mother be consumed by grief, something that can lead to/be classified as a mental illness. Because of her grief, she would look at the world differently, including her son. At first she would be disgusted by him, and eventually her feelings would evolve into hate.

OR

I was thinking of having her not actually be his mother. Perhaps she is unable to be bare children, so she and the king us a serget. She doesn't love him, but also doesn't hate him. Until the accident, of course.

Make sense, or no?

Any other ideas?

 

Hi ChickenFreak. Point taken, I understand your meaning.

But going by the following quote from k.little90, my effort was fruitless.

 

I'd go with the grief story. It's dramatic, sympathetic, and you can resolve it or not and make it a tragic situation.

 

This one doesn't work for me. A genetic link doesn't produce love, and a lack of one doesn't preclude love. Whether the link is legal or biological, a parent is a parent.

That doesn't mean that all parents love their children, but simply removing the genetic link doesn't explain anything, IMO.

(Edited to add: I also have trouble with the grief theory, but my objection to that is not as easily expressed. I may return when I have it in a more coherent form.)

ChickenFreak

 

I get the feeling that you are trying to stir up trouble, Trilby. Neither CF or I ment anything by mentioning mental illnesses. I didn't address your post because I didn't see the point: this thread was created to discuss character development, not the socially/politically correct definiton for "Mentally ill."

There is nothing wrong with us using the phrase "mentally ill." It's a medical condition, and similar to me mentioning the queen having a broken bone.


Now that we've addressed that....


Thanks for your input, Allegro.

Chicken Freak, do you have any other ideas that I can use to make her loathe him? It's crucial to my plot.... The only thing I could think of that made sense was grief.

Everyone else that reads this feel free to share your thoughts

 

I didn't _mean_ anything bad, but Trilby's post is the second time that my attention has been drawn to the fact that my knowledge of mental health or lack of it is almost entirely about personality disorders, and that I know next to nothing about other mental health issues. I think that's a valuable thing for me to keep in mind.

So I'm announcing my ignorance even as I say: I still think that the mother shouldn't love the son in the first place. There are _plenty_ of mothers who put on a good pretense of loving their kids, who tie those kids into knots and prevent them from achieving a normal adult separation from their parents, who keep their adult children dancing like puppets and desperately reaching for the love that they never really had. And who, in the process, convince everyone, _including those kids_, that they're perfect parents.

I still think that a mother who was willing to put on a show of love while her son was sufficiently entertaining and rewarding, and who withdraws that show when he starts to seem like more trouble than he's worth, is (sadly) thoroughly realistic.

ChickenFreak

 

I am not trying to stir up trouble. What I am saying is let's give the mentally ill (mental conditions/disorders call them what you will) a break - a rest.

In the last couple of years here in the UK there has been some high profile cases of the mentally ill and disabled people and their families suffering from antisocial behavior from a minority in our society.

One mother and her disabled daughter (I cannot remember their names)were unable to go out, without being taunted, after years of abuse the mother finally ended her own and her daughter's life, in their car with the exhaust pipe through the window.

At the begging of this winter just gone, a middle aged man (again I'm no good with names) with the mental age of ten, he having been hounded for 17yrs. finally in the back garden of his home, while being taunted and tormented by his abusers suffered a heart attack and died.

A young man that lives near me, having being perfectly healthy all his life, when in his early twenties there was a bereavement in his family, that along with some other personal tragedies in his life this caused him to have a nervous breakdown. The breakdown has left him with mental health problems. A group of young people (I call them young people in order to be polite) in our neighbourhood, seeing a weakness in this young man have twice broken into his home and set about him.
He is being targeted by a minority in our area imo simply because he is weak and they are bullies, cowards.

That is why I say give them a break.

That out of the way, let's talk about writing.

I know the op was about hate rather than crime, but speaking generally;

Being that more murders and crimes are committed by people of sound mind, why would writers' choose to use a mentally ill person instead of a 'sane' person in the fictional stories.

Could it be;

(A)That being that the writer her/himself being sane cannot imagine any 'normal' person committing such heinous crimes.
or
(B)Could it be a laziness in the case of the writer. eg. If the person committing such a diabolical crime is sane, then s/he the writer has some work to do, in order to explain to the reader how such a crime could be committed by a sane (normal) person.
But if the perpetrator of such crimes is mad - then that is all they have to say - job done.

I do feel that negative writing about the mentally ill people (be it fiction) can only make matters worse and add to their suffering.

 

It's because, for whatever reason, "mental illness" has a grotesque sexy quality. As with the cases you mentioned, the situations if you empathize and feel the pain and the years of torment, are anything but sexy.

 

I certainly don't think that you're trying to stir up trouble, but I remain confused.

I'd say that a person committing such crimes _isn't_ normal. No, they may not have an actual physical illness that affects their minds, but they're not _normal_. Selfish, self-centered, cruel, sadistic, generally evil people are not, IMO, normal. And some of the ways that they're not normal have names. And some of those names refer to medically diagnosable conditions.

So I'm not clear on your position. I certainly don't argue that someone with depression or OCD or schizophrenia has any resemblance whatsoever to a sociopath or a narcissist. But I have trouble with the idea that an narcissist shouldn't be depicted in fiction because the term "narcissist" may be mentioned in the same books and classes as those other conditions. I'm not saying that that's what you're saying, I'm saying that I can't work out _what_ you're saying.

To me, a person who is selfish, self-centered, severely lacking in empathy, strongly driven by a need for admiration from others, inclined to hold unrealistically high illusions of her own value and accomplishments, likely to use others for her own emotional needs and discard or condemn them when they stop fulfilling those needs, inclined to react with sudden fury at any questioning of their illusions... is a narcissist. And I can't tell if you're saying that I shouldn't depict that person in fiction, shouldn't use the term narcissist in describing them, or should just maintain a clear bright line between conditions like narcissism that do involve harm to others, and conditions that don't involve harm, or at least don't involve deliberate harm, to others.

Help? What do you mean?

Edited for one more attempt to explain: To me, saying that people are "just bad" or "just criminal" would be as illogical as saying that they're "just insane". I would need to have a structure and logic for that badness, and that structure and logic is likely to follow behavior often seen in real life, and behavior often seen in real life very often has a name - like "narcissism". If I avoid all of those names and the behaviors associated with them, I'll be stuck with entirely nice, kind, well-adjusted people in my fiction.

ChickenFreak

 

In the DSM-IV it says that none of the conditions are fully explained as medical conditions, and that suggests they're psychological (mind) conditions. All things in the DSM are culture specific and you're warned to watch what you diagnose people of another culture and people of another culture may have bizarre mental states we aren't familiar with.

Example:

1. People in some African and South American religions have states where that would be called "psychotic" in the west, but are considered completely normal in the home countries.

2. People in Asia suffer from a psychotic thought process where they think their genitals are shrinking and it will kill them.

These are genetic conditions because people of those types who are born here don't develop those problems. It's somehow culture based. In the west many people kill and commit all kinds of crimes over money. Money is an artificial construct as is Capitalism which promotes deprivation, so many of our "Sociopaths" are indeed created by society.

So, my point is that mental problems (the term I prefer to illness) aren't like diabetes where people in the US have the same diabetes as Mongolians. When you talk about mental problems you're talking about something more complex and amorphous than a disease.

 

Hey k.little90.
Here are a few ideas.

Easy Idea
Perhaps the son only thinks his mother hates him due to her attitude and actions towards him. You could go into great detail about his thoughts on his mothers apparent hatred and completely leave the thought processes of the mother out. This will make the mother a one dimensional character but it is easier to write because you dont need to write why she hates her son.

Another Idea
When using this idea have this idea in mind, cause and effect or more specifically, the mother's hatred will only seem real if (a) there is a long history of a distanced relationship between the two and the son has caused not just pain to the mother but atrocities or (b) their relationship has been steady and normal and then suddenly the son does something truly disgusting.

If I were you I would not have 'hate' in your mind when writing your story because it will lead to a stereotype or some inconsistency that wont seem natural or real. To me, a distanced relationship would seem more suitable but I dont know a lot about your story. Just remember the cause of an extreme is an extreme.

 

This has gone well off topic, and some posts are becoming less than respectful toward other members.

Thread closed.