Netflix is releasing an Indira Mukerjea documentary, the Lori Vallow and Ruby Franke stories are still big news in America, and so far as I can tell from looking at international true crime, anything involving a mother harming her child for her own gain is big news everywhere. Why is that? And is that justified?

I listen to a lot of podcasts on cults, I think they are really interesting ways to see sort of society in a microcosm. Also, I’m Basic, and everybody in America right now is fascinated by cults. One thing that is pretty consistent across most cults is that parents are separated from children and then children are abused. Scratch that, children are FURTHER abused, because the mere fact of being separated from your parent is already abuse and everything else is just topping on the misery cake.

I understand how power dynamics work in abusive situations, I understand coercive control and all of that. I have no problem saying “this person was only 25, they’d been taught to be this way and believe these things, of course they would do ____.” But when I listen to a mother remember witnessing the abuse of her children and doing nothing because she was afraid, something inside me just tics over to “ooooo, that’s extra bad”.

Maybe it’s the self-interest that makes the difference? Lots of these parents will say that they hated, for instance, giving their child to a communal living situation and abandoning them. But they did it because they thought it was best for the child, they were so worn down that they thought they were unfit parents and the organization would be a better guardian. On the other hand, sometimes parents will say “I was beaten, I was tortured, I was too afraid to say anything”. And that’s when my internal clock ticks over and goes “Nope! Don’t like it!” Fear for yourself is not a good enough reason to let your kid be hurt.

Another part of this is that there are so many many stories of parents shifting instantly as soon as a child is involved. Of course we know this happens in abusive relationships, as soon as the child is hit or threatened, a parent will leave their partner. But the same thing happens in abusive social situations! Truly, it’s like 50% of the “how did I leave the cult stories” revolve around the children. As soon as my baby was born, I knew I had to leave. As soon as they tried to divide me and my kids, I knew I had to leave. As soon as I learned my child was being hit, I knew I had to leave. And so on. So what’s up with the parents that DON’T do that?

There’s such extra judgement in society already on mothers. Again, this seems to be universal worldwide. The whole concept of motherhood as this magical special thing is a real pain to live with as a human person. Anything at all that a person does for their ENTIRE LIFE, especially a bad thing, bam society says “well, look at the mother”. Serial killers (another true crime supertrend right now), all the time it’s going back to the mother, what did she do wrong, blah blah blah. Meanwhile, the Dad gets off scot-free! And the same goes for the kid who goes to kindergarten with missmatched socks. “where is their mother, why did she let them go out of the house like this?” No one says “kids do stuff and it’s not related to their parents” or “why couldn’t their father have checked their socks?”

But then I think, well, it’s far more likely for a mother to have been involved in raising you than a father. Because biologically, the Dad just has to be there for one night but the Mom has to be there for at least 9 months. And socially, it is way WAY easier for a man to just drift away from his kids without judgement than a woman. Women are expected to take responsibility and STAY. So if I go back to the cult example, if this is a single mother who has raised her kids herself for 5 years and then joins a cult and abandons them, is that worse or the same than their biological father who abandoned them before birth? Or with the sock example, if the Mom didn’t have time to find matching socks because she’s a single parent, is that her fault or the fault of the father who isn’t around to help match socks?

The sock thing, I’m not sure about. But the cult thing feels worse to me for the mother than the father. Because the Mom would KNOW these kids, they would be people to her and not just concepts, and she is turning away from that responsibility, doing something terrible to them.

Maybe it’s not a man-woman thing, maybe it’s a primary guardian thing? If something bad happens to a child, I will look at the primary guardian, and most often that is a woman. And then I will think about whether that primary guardian lived up to their responsibility or not.

I guess the one thing that does vary across society is how much, truly, a primary guardian may be able to do to help their children. If you are a woman in many places in the world (including most parts of India), you don’t really have the option of taking your children and leaving your situation. So maybe the best you can do to protect them is more passive actions, things that would be invisible to outsiders but we can give the benefit of the doubt and assume they are happening. The same would be true for any woman in an extremely restrictive society with no way of finding outside support, for instance women in America who are raised in cults. And I guess the same “self-interest” bit applies. If a mother starts abusing her kids because her in-laws approve of that and it makes her more favored in the household, BAD. If a mother stands by and watches her child be abused because she has nowhere else to go and then sneaks them a treat afterward, GOOD. Does that make sense? The child is still being abused but they are also getting love, also knowing they are the most important person in the world to at least one person, and that can go a long way.

Does any of this make sense to you? Or am I falling to the logical fallacy of expecting mother’s to be superhuman rather than human? Is it right to feel an extra kind of a way about Lori Vallow who murdered her children so she could be with her boyfriend, versus her boyfriend who helped? Or Indrani Mukerjea who killed her adult daughter, versus her ex-husband who helped her?