On the eve of Mother's Day, Michael Farquhar took a look at some of the worst examples of mothering by "famously miserable matriarchs." Here's an excerpt of his take on Mary Washington, mother of George:
... Mary Ball Washington spent her life in a struggle to keep her son, and his fat purse, at her disposal, and she begrudged him his successes because they kept him away from home and spending his money elsewhere. According to historian James Thomas Flexner, “she never budged from her house to take part in any triumphant moment of his career.” And she lived into his second term as president!
Her denigration of his accomplishments led to speculation during the American Revolution that Mrs. Washington was actually a closet royalist trying to undermine the cause of independence. Though there is ample evidence that Washington was generous to his mother and that she lived quite comfortably, she never ceased digging deeper into his pockets while loudly complaining of his financial neglect. She also seemed to delight in humiliating him as publicly as possible. In 1781, Washington was mortified when he received a letter from Benjamin Harrison, the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, advising him of a movement in the House — in response to Mary Washington’s cries of poverty — to have the state come to her financial rescue. The Revolutionary commander was forced to make an excruciating public defense of his treatment of his mother...
There are worse examples, as Farquhar notes.
We're grateful ours and other mothers in our lives were and are generous, kind, and loving -- and those kind of mothers are far more the rule than the exception.
