Horrible Mothers

This seemingly simple but truly complex question True or false: My mother was a good woman. This item has appeared in one form or another on countless psychological inventories over the years. The culturally-prescribed answer is, of course, True. Even the people most abused by their mothers tend to rise to defend "Mom." The rationale varies: She was basically good; She was never cut out to have children; She simply had no idea how to be there for me"; Perhaps if she hadnt had me; Maybe it was I who turned her into a bad mother? As early as 1954 in his work with abused children, psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn observed that a child acknowledging to herself or anyone else that she had a bad mother or that her mother was a bad woman was