I have already stated that it is unreasonable of me to expect anyone to know what it is like to have a narcissistic parent, unless they themselves have one. I will now illustrate what I think a "useless" mother might be like:
Imagine you have recently given birth to your first baby, and your mother offers to stay a couple of nights at your house to "give you a hand/a break". You are unsure because you have never really got on with each other, and your breastfeeding has only just established so you're still feeling 'fragile', but you think: "she's my mother, and my baby's grandmother, I've got to make an effort, so let's see how it goes".
Your mother arrives at your house, fusses over the baby, showers you with gifts, but doesn't help out with the cooking or housework and just makes successive cups of tea and watches daytime television. But she gives many cuddles and plenty of moral support and advice, and in spite of being a rather idle and irritating house guest, she does at least allow you some much-needed rest by taking the baby out for walks and playing the 'proud granny'. You disagree on many topics of conversation and her company often leaves you feeling extremely stressed and drained, but ultimately you feel glad and grateful that she came to stay, even if you do ultimately feel even gladder and more grateful when she leaves.
While I think we can all agree that the mother here in this hypothetical scenario is undoubtedly pretty "useless", she has no malice in her heart. As the truism goes, she really does "mean well".
My mother also offered to "help out" when my first baby was a few weeks old. I accepted the offer. I really, really wish I hadn't. Within hours of her arrival, my milk dried up. ("I don't know why you're bothering with breastfeeding anyway," she smirked, sneering as she watched me trying desperately to get some milk to flow from my sore nipples while my baby cried, "I didn't bother breastfeeding you or your sister, I mean, what's the point?'") The visit went downhill from there. (Miraculously, my milk flowed freely once again as soon as she left.)
My decision to breastfeed was not the only one my mother had an opposing opinion about. Of course it wasn't! Apparently, my choice to vaccinate my child was also 'wrong'. (Let's ignore the fact she vaccinated her own children; my mother's staggeringly audacious hypocrisy is, after all, such a steadfast, leviathan and intrinsic aspect of her character that it often just goes entirely unnoticed.)
Knowing that I had decided to vaccinate my baby (and that I'd done extensive research on this topic, like most new parents), she would nevertheless copy me in on emails she sent to her 'crunchy, hippy, alternative-medicine-endorsing' friends with links to 'evidence' that the MMR vaccine causes autism, for example. The obvious implication being: you're such a terrible mother! You are filling your helpless baby with toxins! (No, the irony wasn't lost on me.)
It turned out, unsurprisingly perhaps, that my mother was dismissive or unsupportive of seemingly every decision I made as a new mum. She even sent me a newspaper clipping when I was four months' pregnant (just after my second scan), about a baby who had died a few days after he was born due to a rare disease that can't be picked up by antenatal scans. Tell me, honestly, can you think of anything more unspeakably cruel? Seriously, I wouldn't expect shit like that from my worst fucking enemy.
So, at a time in my life when I most needed my mother to say "You're doing fine, don't worry," she instead ensured that my mind, at its most emotionally chaotic and vulnerable, was plagued with even more guilt, fear and uncertainty. For that alone, I am not sure I can ever forgive her.
So please do not try to tell me my mother was merely 'useless', and certainly not that she ever 'meant well'. I would have done ANYTHING for a 'useless' mother. A 'useless' mother would have felt like an absolute godsend.
Further reading:
The narcissistic mother's game - "In a way, mother is like a black-hole, empty as eternity. She is also a vacuum (yes, nature abhors a vacuum and mother’s constantly trying to be filled). But I also pity her—more than that, actually. I feel such sorrow for her suffering, because I believe she must be suffering. And I see glimmers of hope. Sometimes, I sense a pause in her emptiness as if her soul is trying to infiltrate the emptiness. Sometimes I sense genuineness. These moments are precious to me and I try to encourage them now that I am strong enough to not feel the arrows she slings at me."
Narcissistic Mothers get away with their secret cruelties - "Narcissistic mothers are exceedingly critical, at times physically violent and psychologically horrifying with their children."
Daughters of narcissistic mothers
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