Magazine Interview About a Mother's Disdain of Her Child Raises Concern

In the June issue of "Redbook Magazine," a mother writing under the pseudonym Jennifer Rabiner admits in a lengthy confessional her dislike for her older daughter. While I found it easy to sympathize with some of the challenges Rabiner and her daughter faced in light of her daughter’s developmental difficulties, I found that my brain was very busy after reading the article. 

I knew that Rabiner’s confession left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn’t simply a judgment against a mother that seemed unloving, but something deeper inside that was giving me pause. 

Two aspects of this story left me cold. One was that Rabiner felt compelled to tell this story, despite the fact that her daughter is nine years old, and if not now, might eventually catch on that it was her mother with the very unique voice that appeared in shadows on the "Today Show." 

This young girl could grow up to discover that her mother could hardly stand to be around her, and that she spent most of her early motherhood comparing her daughter to other babies and toddlers and found her lacking. While her mother claims to tell her story to help other mothers who feel the same way, the amount of attention paid to this woman makes me suspicious. 

We don’t need to discuss everything publicly that is on our minds. Even if we hide it under a guise of helping others with the same problem, the truth is that therapists are abundant and everyone is aware that if you don’t like your kid, that’s probably news best shared in a counseling session. 

Why do we feel so entitled to disclose every detail of our lives, even if it might damage someone else’s feelings? Even at the most petty level, our Facebook confessionals of “Just sayin” statements might be setting a standard where anything is okay to discuss. Adding this tired phrase to a statement is like admitting: “Yes, I’m aware, too, that this is inappropriate.” 

The second reason that Rabiner’s story irked me is that it seems that in our society, children are increasingly seen not as individuals, but as some twisted reflection of our own identities and born as conveniences within our own plans. 

We agonize over our children’s names, whereas our parents simply chose from the names of parents or grandparents. In our own home, this has been reflected many times when we’ve tossed out potential names from the list because they’re just not “us.” 

We carefully plan the timing of our children’s births, not wanting them too close together or too far apart. While much of this comes from having family planning tools not available to our parents, some of it may have gone too far. Children are starting to seem like little well-dressed accessories, limited to two per family, please. 

While I’m not criticizing those who lovingly plan their families to be small, or those who have preferences about child spacing or strong feelings about names, it seems that in some extreme cases, these preferences have twisted into a very customized type of family where every aspect of it must be within our control, including our children’s personalities and interests. 

However, Rabiner’s story might be a situation where it has been published because in a small way, her story is being reflected in many families across America. I can’t imagine our parents reading this same story 30 years ago, because in our time, there have been new developments that allow our children take a very central role in how we design our lives. 

Rabiner’s disappointment in her child’s not fulfilling her expectations seems to come from an extreme form of this obsession of children as a reflection of our own identities. While she seemed to rethink her prejudices after her child was diagnosed with a developmental problem, the fact that her husband was able to rise above the circumstances to have a meaningful relationship with his daughter makes it seem that Rabiner’s problems are not attached to her child, but her own issues.