Ej Dickson opens One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate with colorful admissions about the her own parental shortcomings, setting the tone for a radically honest discussion of the "stigma surrounding bad mothers." Societal shaming of mothers and the resulting disempowerment of women is the subject of this provocative and entertaining work.
A senior writer at The Cut, Dickson dynamically blends cultural research with witty anecdotal asides. Embracing her "bad mom" traits, such as not cooking well and being too attached to her phone, Dickson pushes back against the "perpetual state of judgment and surveillance" of mothers. Referencing quintessential onscreen bad moms like The Graduate's Mrs. Robinson, she encourages mothers to accept their flaws or badness and "take some much-needed pressure off" themselves.
The qualifications for being a good mom seem straightforward, whereas the criteria for being a bad mom are broad, making anyone subject to judgment. Like the titular character in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, working women are often depicted on television as, by definition, absent mothers. Dickson argues that some moms deemed "bad" are women whose only crime, quoting historian Steven Mintz, is "parenting under poverty," such as the working mother who left her child at the park because she didn't have childcare.
Slicing through cultural critiques of "unhinged" stage moms and momfluencers, One Bad Mother is an energetic rallying cry for mothers to rejoice in their maternal imperfections. --Shahina Piyarali