“I am a bad mother but I am learning to be good.”
This chilling mantra is like a repeated punch in the gut for all parents who read it. We spend our lives telling ourselves that we’re doing our best, being reassured by friends, family and health visitors that we are good parents. But deep down, this is our true motto.
With that in mind, when I’d read the blurb of The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan - read that it was about a woman, Frida, who rushes off to her office for an hour and leaves behind her child, only for CPS to find out and remove the child from her custody - I was convinced that the book would somehow make me feel sorry for Frida.
As I started to read, however, I found myself judging her; that one hour turned into more than two, and how did she have the right to complain about her ex-husband and his girlfriend who were showing her nothing but understanding and love as they took full custody of their daughter, Harriet?
But it felt as though, with each page, the child protection services and Frida’s child’s new guardians grew more and more insane. It started to feel like Frida was the only one whose actions didn’t do lasting damage to Harriet. And as much as you can never condone her actions (particularly as a mother of a toddler), you can’t help but empathise strongly with her situation.
You’ve got a woman who has one “very bad day” (and, fair enough, she deserved investigating - there can be no defending leaving a young toddler at home alone), among other mothers who have “coddled” their child, let them play alone outside, inadequately child-proofed their home, and directed too much negativity at their child on social media. They’re all thrown together into one institution, faced with learning how to parent to a correct standard while their every move, facial expression and heartbeat is carefully monitored. Big Brother isn’t just watching you; he’s listening to and feeling you.
They’ve each got a hyper-realistic robot doll to practise on, and any wrong move will get them a mark in their file. At the same time, they have to learn about comforting these “children” when they are in pain, and the only way to do that is for the instructors to assault the dolls (who have full sentience, by the way, despite not being “real”). The hypocrisy of it all is maddening.
Plus, the school make it so difficult for even the best parents to pass and win their parental rights back (even complaining about mistreatment will cost you your child), leading to many of their children remaining in the system; a system we know leads to underachievement, crime, poverty, and drug and alcohol abuse. Frida does her very best to play by the rules, even if it’s to the detriment of her comrades, and even she can’t help but mirror the reader’s emotions when confronted with women who she thinks are worse mothers than her. We just can’t help it; judging and comparing is part and parcel of motherhood.
But the irony gets even more poignant in Frida’s case. Her child is in the custody of her father and would-be-stepmother; while they are not bad parents per se, they do pierce Harriet’s ears, put her on a carb-restrictive diet (which they subsequently get told to lift by a pediatrician) and post endless photos of her on a social media account with thousands of followers depicting everything from bathtime to potty training. None of these things are of any concern to CPS, of course, despite the controversial aspects of all these choices. It’s rather an accurate representation of how single mothers are treated by the state; most of (if not all) the inmates at The School for Good Mothers are single mothers, and they are automatically seen as dangers to their children with the most minor of indiscretions.
Outside of this exploration of child abuse and what it means to be a good/bad parent, we see an in-depth analysis of racism and sexism. Self-segregation is one of the first things Frida notices about the other mothers, being the only Chinese mother there. Latinx, white and black mothers all sit with their own race, and racial tension is always made very clear - particularly when it comes to exploring the subject with their dolls. Frida even notices that her half-Chinese doll exhibits stereotypical traits which make her lean towards subservience, and she shares a huge concern that her daughter may end up hating her Chinese heritage if she doesn’t have her there to share her own experiences of racism.
The sexism is just as affecting. Later in the novel, the mothers finally meet their male counterparts and discover that they never have their phone privileges compromised, are not forced to undertake cleaning duties and are never punished with the sanction of “talk circle” - in fact, they never appear to be punished at all. They don’t have to say: “I am a bad father but I am learning to be good.” Instead they use the phrase: “I am a father learning to be a better man.”
The School for Good Mothers may well be fiction, but the reality is that there are lower expectations for men in the parental arena. Men get high praise for “babysitting” their own children, pushing pushchairs and doing anything generally considered maternal, while for women it’s just seen as the basics of their job. Women are frequently criticised for chasing careers while also being mothers, while fathers are expected to bring home the bacon, no matter how little time they spend with their children as a result. Men are never demonised for leaving their child, so long as they pay child support and visit regularly, while it’s virtually unthinkable that a mother could leave their child with their father and only see them on weekends.
If you want a book that will have you seething until smoke comes out of your ears, Jessamine Chan has you covered. The sentiments expressed by a government supposedly looking after children are exaggerated but not entirely fictional. There is a fundamental hatred of mothers woven into our patriarchal society that brands us lazy and free-loading for wanting more time with our children, and selfish and maternally-challenged for wanting money and a career.
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But on a more emotional level, this isn’t the sort of book you’ll struggle to put down. You’ll put it down every few pages, just so that you can cuddle your children close to you. This will make even the least marginalised mothers terrified of the thought of losing their brood, and hopefully encourage those who take their lives for granted to fight for those whose lives are in the unfeeling grip of a condemnatory society.
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