The unsurprising failures of Alice Munro, the mom

When estrangement is the only safe place

In the summer of 2024, news broke that the Nobel Prize-winning writer Alice Munro continued her marriage to a man she knew sexually abused her daughter. Last week The New Yorker published a deep dive on the entire saga, penned by Rachel Aviv.

While I strongly recommend reading the full piece, here’s the story in a nutshell: Alice Munro had three daughters. Her second husband, Gerry, exposed himself and abused her youngest daughter, Andrea, when she was nine years old. Andrea told her father and step-mother, but they did practically nothing about it (her father even questioned whether it was true, and diminished it; her step-mother offered for Alice to not return to her mother and Gerry’s, but Andrea was afraid of upsetting her mother). Nobody told Alice Munro until Andrea herself revealed it in a letter about fifteen years after the fact.

There were signs that Alice was suspicious of Gerry, and Aviv does amazing work in the New Yorker piece analyzing Munro’s published short stories alongside these real-life revelations. The news of the abuse only entered the mainstream following Alice’s death in May 2024.

I haven’t read much of Alice Munro’s work, but this scandal fascinated me. She put her own interests before her daughter (something I think we too harshly judge mothers for doing in some cases but not this one) by choosing to remain with Gerry rather than reject him for gravely harming her daughter. But did Alice actually want to be with him? Or did she just believe Andrea to be stronger than herself or Gerry, and so allowed her daughter to bear the burden of the abuse? The piece points to two possible reasons Alice stayed with Gerry: she did not want to be known as the woman who married a pedophile, and she feared Gerry would take his own life if she left him. (Ironically, if she had left Gerry when she learned of the abuse in the 90s, it would likely not be her lasting legacy, as it now seems to be). Neither possibility, of course, excuses her actions. But it does show that in the face of this abuse, Alice chose to adopt the role of the victim: she saw herself as the woman stuck married to a pedophile out of guilt and/or shame. It seems she did not consider herself the mother of a girl who was victimized by said pedophile. In fact, in the aftermath of learning of the abuse, Alice reportedly told Andrea that “blaming a mother for her husband’s abuse was a symptom of the culture’s misogyny.”

Of course, it was not Alice’s fault that Gerry abused Andrea. It is, however, her fault that she kept Gerry in their lives after she learned he was an abusive pedophile, and it is Andrea’s father’s fault that he ignored her abuse. But the parentified child is conditioned to do whatever is necessary to care for and soothe the parent; for Andrea this included keeping this secret from her mother for all of her childhood, and consoling her after sharing the news. In the end, though, Alice’s choice to stay with Gerry was too much, and Andrea soon cut off contact with her mother.

In my personal experience, the unresolved conflict between my mother and grandmother created a cascade of pain through the next generation — mine. Even in the midst of the chaos, I have always known that the abuse committed by my grandmother was the source for everything bad I experienced with my mother. Perhaps this cycle goes back generations. How is it, then, that I am able to see that estrangement is the only safe option I have, but my mother never could? She taught me to be independent and fearless, which I took to the extremes necessary. Perhaps she preached these values because she couldn’t achieve them herself; she prioritized her relationship with her mother, to her own detriment and mine. Like Andrea, the daughters bear the burden.

There is an overlooked generational component to the Munro story, too: Alice’s fraught relationship with her mother. Aviv reports that Alice did not see her mother for the last two-and-a-half years of her life. Given the childhood abuse she has referenced, Alice’s distance from her mother is understandable. Their issues remained unresolved. Perhaps Alice internalized a lesson that abuse is the daughter’s responsibility to bear rather than the mother’s to repair.

Even if we can excuse this backwards rationale as a trauma Alice did not know enough to unlearn (unlikely), why would she stubbornly view Andrea’s distance as a ploy to hurt her rather than a rational response to her mother’s neglect?

[Robert] Thacker asked if she was still out of touch with Andrea. “Oh, yes, I always will be,” Alice responded. “She’s going to do exactly what she feels will help her. And I think she has. I thought maybe, as the years went by, it would become less necessary for her to make people suffer. Maybe not.”

Alice felt guilty for leaving her own mother. Aviv notes that “If [Alice] had stayed home to care for her mother, as she felt a good daughter should, she could never have become the writer she was.” She didn’t see her distance as an act of preservation, but one of selfishness, and maybe believed Andrea was acting in the same way.

There has been a swell in stories recently about parental estrangement initiated by adult children, and since it is the 21st century, of course there are strong opinions across the Internet about other people’s personal choices. It is frustrating and infantalizing to suggest people who establish boundaries with their parents are childishly acting out. Maggie Hsu from Estranged and I discussed the dismissive claim that young people are categorizing ‘normal’ experiences as ‘trauma’ and expanding the definition to explain their hurtful behavior toward their parents. Many parents report being devastated and confused, claiming the adult children are just overreacting to simple disagreements or forgivable mistakes.

Perhaps the definition of trauma has indeed expanded to include things we once overlooked, and all the better. Remember how we all simply laughed about every family’s pervy uncle in 80s and 90s? If that was acceptable, imagine what else is hiding in the corners. In short, the Munro story is not unique. What should be unique is Alice’s neglectful response to the abuse.

For the key thing many estranged parents are missing is that, in many cases, all their child needs is a reckoning. Estrangement is the last, painful, option. But parents who respond by claiming oversensitivity or a spoiled nature will never achieve a resolution. Likewise, assuming the adult child is going no-contact with a parent just to punish the parent will achieve precisely nothing. It’s unusual to hear about parents who listened and kids who forgave because those stories typically don’t end in estrangement. Instead, they carry on in a mature, evolved relationship. (I do believe there are lots of great parents in the world!)

Too many people, Alice Munro included, seem to prefer to not rock the boat. I guess they are unwilling to suffer a stormy spell in pursuit of reconciliation — which should tell us all we need to know. If Alice had been willing to cut out Gerry, then her daughter would not have had to take the drastic actions she did to protect herself. Safety from this type of abuse should never be up to the child; it’s for the parents to fix. And in this case, it was for the mother to fix by ousting Gerry (Aviv does further discuss the complicity of the rest of Andrea’s family, including her father). Alice’s choice to remain with Gerry signaled to Andrea that her pain was unimportant. How do you have a relationship with someone who refuses to acknowledge your pain?

It seems that Alice was able to write about it, but in terms of her own pain. Aviv points to a trilogy of short stories (“Chance,” “Soon,” and “Silence”), published in 2004, a few years after Andrea cut off contact.

But Juliet feels that she has failed at the most important relationships in her life. She abandoned her mother when she was dying, and, in the second half of her life, she is abandoned by her only child, Penelope. After a day out, the first thing Juliet does when she returns home is look for the flashing light on her answering machine: “She tried various silly tricks, to do with how many steps she took to the phone, how she picked it up, how she breathed. Let it be her.”

Aviv notes that in these stories “Juliet never tries to find Penelope…or to investigate why Penelope has made this choice. Instead, she tries to normalize her rejection as part of the tragedy of being a mother.” It is much simpler for Juliet (and Alice) to dismiss her daughter’s behavior as a selfish overreaction meant to hurt the mother, than to try to reconcile. She believes herself, after all, to be the victim. The story allows the mother to be the one abandoned by her daughter rather than the one who left her child no other choice.

That, too, is a familiar trope: that the parents are the only ones suffering, while the children are living carefree lives through estrangement. It’s clear from the timeline of the Munro saga that Andrea continued to suffer. Years into her estrangement from her mother, her twins turned the age she had been when she was abused, and she cut off contact with her sister, too, who had remained in touch with Alice.

The only reason anyone has the strength to enforce these boundaries is because the alternative is even more painful.

Adult children are not happy about being estranged from their parents. Just look at any support group. It is hard and sad and the guilt is overwhelming. The only reason anyone finds the strength to enforce these boundaries is because the alternative is even more painful.

There could be a simple solution. Parents of estranged kids could ask themselves: Have I acknowledged the pain my child suffered? Have I apologized for my part? Have I actively signaled that I am willing to do whatever it takes to repair the damage?

But it’s not that simple. Every parent who has been cut off unknowingly shares one thing in common: they are incapable of asking these questions.

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Next week I’ll publish the first full episode of the Bad Mothers podcast. You can learn more about it here. I want this podcast to explore the necessity of estrangement, and remove the guilt and shame many of us feel. I also want to discuss whether 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.

I decided to begin with a conversation with my sister Gina. We experienced the same mother, but she has two daughters while I’ve decided against having kids. We discuss how our mother’s treatment of us affected us and our choices, what we thought about motherhood as children, and how that perception evolved over time.

Further episodes will feature interviews with all types of women - mothers and not - who are estranged. If you’d like to be one of them, please get in touch.