My central goal for the Bad Mothers podcast is to remove the guilt and shame many of us feel for creating boundaries with abusive parents. I want to know if fraught relationships with our mothers play a role in our decisions about having children, which of course feeds into a larger cultural narrative about the declining birth rate, family policy and abortion rights.
So, I thought the best place to start was a conversation with my sister, Gina. I decided not to have kids, and Gina has two daughters – but we’re estranged from the same mom, and grew up in the same household with our two other sisters.
In this episode, we discuss how our mother’s treatment affected us and our choices, what we thought about motherhood as children, and how that perception evolved over time.
Gina and I don’t discuss the details here of how our mother hurt us as kids because I don’t think that’s as important as the fact that we know our estrangement to be necessary for our well-being and safety. I’ve written about the hows and whys here.
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