(This review contains spoilers.)
I first heard about The School for Good Mothers through an article in The Atlantic. Entitled ‘The Redemption of the Bad Mother,’ I was captured by this quote.
In motherhood, there is no space anymore; there are no idle stretches of time within which to ruminate or look at the sky or simply let your mind do nothing at all. There is no more catering only to yourself. Time, while precious, can be bought; space, that mental state of unfettered carelessness, cannot. “When I leave her,” Rachel Cusk wrote of her baby in her 2001 book, A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, “the world bears the taint of my leaving, so that abandonment must now be subtracted from the sum of whatever I choose to do. A visit to the cinema is no longer that: It is less, a tarnished thing, an alloyed pleasure.” [Emphasis mine.]
When I read that, I thought “Yes.”
Motherhood is precious. I believe this. I know too many people struggling with miscarriages and infertility to think otherwise. But motherhood is also draining. And this is the part no one likes to talk about for fear of being thought less-than. Less worthy, less able, less motherly, less adept at the martyrdom that is parenting in America. Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers is a dystopian novel that makes all of these points in a clever, refreshing way. I clung to this book because the experiences resonated with me.
Chan writes a flawed mother, as, let’s face it, most of us are. This flawed mother, Frida, chooses to leave her home after stowing her toddler, Harriet, in an ExerSaucer. Frida initially left simply to get a cup of coffee, then stops by her workplace, then falls into a pattern of answering work emails and forgets the time. Meanwhile, her daughter, Harriet, has been screaming for two hours, with no one to hear. Her diaper is soiled. The apartment is a mess. Child protective services are called. If you or I read about this story in a newspaper, we would immediately jump to conclusions. “Frida is a bad mother,” we would say, gleeful in our moral superiority. “I would never leave my child. She deserves what she gets.”
But does she? Because what Frida gets is a nightmarish rehabilitation center. She is forbidden to discuss anything that happens there, as the state’s methods are secret. What happens is that Frida and all the other bad mothers are given lifelike dolls that are the same age, race and ethnicity as their biological children. They need to parent these dolls- and they must pass tests that demonstrate that they are good parents. Only then will they be permitted to remain in their biological child’s life. But the tests are bizarre, intrusive and unfair. The deck is stacked against the mothers. And the entire system is a testament to the martyrdom of the American mother.
Taken to an extreme, the American mother is supposed to prioritize her child over all else. Her child is more important than her intimate life, recreation time, friendships, work, and really, at the core of it, her. On the one hand, this is true. Children do not choose to be born. We choose to give birth to them. One should only choose this if one possesses the necessary kindness and self-sacrifice required to give of oneself, and give, and give, and give some more. At the same time, no one really understands what parenting is like until becoming a parent. It is not a job we can train for, and colicky children who never sleep, children who are sick and vomit multiple times a night, children who refuse to eat any of the multiple meals one prepares for them are simply not what people picture when they envision parenthood. (And this is assuming the child is born neurotypical and healthy, which is not a given!) People picture rosy pink-cheeked babies who gurgle and smile adorably. And yes, those babies are real. But so are the cluster-feeding colicky versions who wake their mother up every single hour of the night. All of it is true, and taken together, it mostly evens out. But everyone has bad days, the days when the challenges outweigh the joy.
When that happens, there is very little that separates us from Frida. What separates us is the strength of our support system and network and how much money we have- if we are lucky, we have the funds to hire a nanny, a night nurse, or to ask family members to come over and babysit when we need a break. Knowing that this is the dividing line ought to chasten us into humility. I wonder if it does.
Here’s an example of how the rehabilitation center functions. It’s a saccharine sweet environment with a side dish of torture, offering solutions to problems that are both condescending and ridiculous.
The mothers receive talking points for their Sunday calls, a change in procedure that’s been rumored for weeks. They’re supposed to ask open-ended questions about their child’s education, home life, and friendships. They’re not allowed to mention the subject of time or how long they’ve been here or when they’ll go home. Drawing attention to parental absence may be triggering. Not everyone will pass. Not all families will be reunited. It’s important not to make false promises. False promises will damage a child’s ability to trust. They’re not allowed to ask about their child’s meetings with their social worker or experience in court-mandated therapy. They must praise their child’s resilience. They must thank the child’s guardian. They can say “I love you” once, and “I miss you” once.
“Make it count, ladies,” Ms. Gibson says.
At the end of February, Linda’s son Gabriel is still missing. He’s been gone for a full month. The women in pink lab coats tell Linda to use the available resources: her counselor, the twenty-four-hour hotline, the other mothers. They urge her to sign up for extra counseling. They offer her meditative coloring books.
The night before the medicine evaluation, Linda gets sent to talk circle for shaking her doll. The class was working on seizure protocol. Linda claimed she was trying to bring her doll back to life. The instructors said she was being too aggressive. They thought she was on the verge of something worse, that she might hit their doll if they didn’t intervene.
Linda breaks down at dinner. “I am not a hitter,” she sobs.
Beth and Meryl pass her their napkins. Linda’s cries are loud and shameful. Everyone is staring at their table. Frida pours Linda a glass of water. She says a secret prayer. For Gabriel. For his siblings. For their current and future parents. For their current and future homes.
-pages 177-178
Here’s another excerpt. (Gust is Frida’s ex-husband, Susanna is the woman he had an affair with and later married, and Emmanuelle is the name of Frida’s lifelike doll.)
Having completed “Preventing Home Alone,” this week’s anti-abandonment lessons address the epidemic of children being left in hot cars. Four black minivans are staggered across the warehouse parking lot. The mothers are given headsets with a screen that fits over their right eye. No matter what distracting image is on-screen, they must rise above the distraction and stay focused on their doll. They will strap the dolls into car seats and load them in. Once that’s complete, they’ll have ten minutes to remove the car seat and run to the goalpost at the end of the parking lot.
The headset plays images of war, couples having sex, animals being tortured. The mothers stagger and weave. Linda trips and scrapes her hands. Beth collides with a side mirror. Meryl gets caught resting her head on the steering wheel.
Days later, practice continues in the rain. The mothers try not to slip on the wet asphalt. Frida is in the back seat tending to Emmanuelle when the video begins. Harriet’s birthday party. Five children she doesn’t recognize. Their parents.
Frida stops breathing. She stops hearing Emmanuelle’s shrieks. The video was taken on someone’s phone. Gust’s. He’s narrating.
“Frida, we miss you,” he says. “Here’s Will. Will, say hello.”
Will waves. He’s there with his arm around a young woman. Susanna is holding the cake. Harriet appears in close-up wearing a paper party hat, white with rainbow stripes. The guests sing to her. Gust and Susanna help her blow out her number two candle.
The video switches to Gust and Harriet sitting in his office. On the bookshelf behind them, there’s a 3D model of a green roof he worked on in Brooklyn. Harriet is rubbing her eyes. Seems to have just woken up from a nap. Gust asks Harriet to tell Frida about the cake. An almond cake with blueberries. Who came to the party? Friends. Uncle Will. Harriet received a balance bike from Daddy and Sue-Sue.
Frida returns to the driver’s seat. Harriet looks thin and sullen. They’ve had her ears pierced. She’s wearing gold studs. New clothes. Black and gray.
Gust shows Harriet a framed picture. “Who’s this? This is Mommy. Remember we talked to her a few days ago? She looks a little different now.”
“No,” Harriet says. “Not Mommy. Not home. Mommy not come back! I want Sue-Sue! I want to play!” She slides off Gust’s lap.
When the whistle blows, Frida remains seated. Even if the car were on fire, she wouldn’t be able to move. Gust and Harriet disappear offscreen. /Gust offers Harriet another piece of cake if she’ll talk to Mommy. He asks her to please stop hitting him.
“I know you’re upset,” Gust says. “It’s okay to be upset. I know this is hard for you. I don’t like it either.”
Frida ignores Emmanuelle’s increasingly desperate flailing in the back seat.
[…]
Several times, when Frida looks up, expecting to see her classmates racing in the rain, she finds them stuck in the driver’s seats too.
Frida’s was the only birthday party, but her classmates watched their daughters brushing their teeth, eating breakfast, at the playground, playing with friends and foster parents. Linda’s daughter cried as soon as Mommy was mentioned. Beth’s daughter ran from the camera. Ocean wouldn’t speak.
They want to know how the school obtained the videos, what their children’s guardians were told, if they knew how the videos were to be used. Frida says Gust would never have consented if he’d known. “He wouldn’t do that to me. They must have told him it would be a gift.”
[…]
Inside the warehouse, the drills are combined into obstacle courses. Frida and her classmates now carry their dolls from house to car to house to car. They must run and narrate, run and deliver affection.
Frida’s counselor thinks she doesn’t care anymore. Her best time is third place. The only reason she’s not in fourth is because Meryl started having panic attacks.
“I’m not going to leave my daughter to die in a hot car,” Frida says. “I’d never do that.” And why is the school allowed to torture them? With videos of their own kids?
“Torture is not a word to use lightly,” the counselors says. “We’re putting you in high-pressure scenarios so we can see what kind of mother you are. Most people can be good parents if they have absolutely no stress. We have to know that you can handle conflict. Every day is an obstacle course for a parent.”
-pages 203-206
This gave me A Clockwork Orange vibes.
The School for Good Mothers is an excellent, thought-provoking book. Highly recommended. In a culture that increasingly encourages us to judge, one-up and otherwise compete with one another (see the “Mommy Wars”), this book reminds us to be compassionate. To realize that there but for the grace of God go I. That being a mother is often not about winning, but simply about surviving.
Everything valuable is difficult. Or, in our own tradition, לפום צערא אגרא.