As givers of life, mothers occupy an essential role in ensuring the ongoing survival of the human race. The bond between mother and child is commonly revered in societies as primal and sacred. Perhaps it is because of the importance of child-bearing and child-rearing that so much critical attention has been given to how mothers should and should not behave. Entertainment and news media outlets, parenting manuals and social media are among the main sources of role models to which mothers might aspire as well as cautionary tales of women whose conduct has earned them the label of bad mothers.

But just what does it mean to be a bad mother? While mothers who kill or cause harm to their children are obvious examples, how should we regard a mother whose neglect for her child is due to having to work multiple jobs to support her family? What about the mother whose loving indulgence of her child’s every wish causes the child to develop a detrimental sense of entitlement? These grey areas signify the complexities of motherhood itself, as well as the challenges associated with evaluating a mother’s goodness or badness.

Bad Mothers is a project within a newly forming Evil Families thread which will also consider Bad Fathers and already has an event dealing with Evil Children: Children and Evil.

Activities

Conferences
1st Global Inclusive Interdisciplinary Conference
Bad Mothers
Sunday 14th March 2021 – Monday 15th March 2021
Lisbon, Portugal