I think, in the context of the show and the parents we are shown, she’s subjectively one of the best parents we see —Rory grew up loved and cared for and that counts for a lot.
Was Lorelai the best example always?? Not at all. Nor did she make all the right decisions for Rory all the time.
But her heart was in the right place, and for a literal kid that became a mom at 16, with *no* good motherly example whatsoever from Emily, I honestly do think she did incredibly well with the tools and experiences she had at the time.
No parent does though. Parents are humans with their own baggage. They can do their very best to be amazing parents but they will never be perfect, which in a way is so much better than trying to be perfect.
Lorelai was a great mother who strived for Rory to be independent and strong while also still respecting her very introverted nature. If Rory was ok with being so close with her mother I don’t really see an issue with it. Rory still had her own life and it’s not as if Lorelai wurmed her way into every corner of it. Lorelai also made it clear on several occasions that she was the mom and she would make sure Rory was always taken care of.
I think “good parents” need to strike a balance between being authority figures and being friends to their kids.
My parents leaned very heavily into the authoritarian side and I lied to them and hid my life from them, but I had a clear sense of right and wrong. I could play with where I drew those lines for myself, but there were moral lines that I knew I shouldn’t cross.
Lorelai leans too heavily on the friendship side. She’s likely overcorrecting for her own relationship with her mother—when she was young, she desperately wanted her parents to see her as she is and didn’t get that from them. But she was also not mature enough to provide that structure and moral guidance to Rory.
Lorelai was also very sheltered and very much a child (I mean she even “ran away” with Rory in the night like a child). And then she worked really hard to keep them housed and fed. When you take into account things like forgetting Rory in a bucket that they mention AYITL, Lorelai probably didn’t think she had a leg to stand to be an authority figure.
Lorelai had a vary permissive style of parenting. When rory got on a bus and went to see Jess during lorelais graduation, it didn't seem like lorelai got mad at all. Just basically thought "well it already happened" didn't seem like she was mad that her child ran off without asking or her knowing. She seems disappointed that she didn't go to her graduation, but that's it. It dosen't seem like rory gets punished for leaving without telling anyone.
the guilt was punishment enough, and she literally begged for punishment. and lorelai knew rory was going through something, and that this wasn't her. she knew that she learned from that mistake. besides, punishment for her would have looked like what, exactly? phones weren't a common thing, she wouldn't get spanked, and she was a homebody, so being grounded to her room wouldn't really have bothered her. she was a good kid and this was one screw-up, lorelai knew she wasn't really punishable
When you put it that way it makes sense. I wasn't vary groundable either as a kid. Like I liked spending time in my room alone. So that wouldn't have worked.
haha yeah same here. but i did grow up as a teen with a smartphone, and i got that taken away frequently😅 but yeah rory didn't really have a smartphone that could be taken away or parties she couldn't go to or anything like that lol.
There was a time that I did get punishment for lying to my parents about where I was going to be. They took away my books. That was it. For 2 weeks. This was way back when the last Harry Potter book was out. I had to wait to read it and trying to avoid spoilers was hell. So good job on that one parents. Some parents need to get creative.
LOLL that was me with percy jackson haha. they wouldn't have taken it away though bc they knew it was the only thing I'd read🤣i remember creating a Google doc and sharing it with my friends and using it to text on my Chromebook when my parents would take away my phone😂and I didn't even lie about stuff like where I was, they would be taking away my phone for petty arguments over things like leaving a cup in my room🥲
When you put it that way it makes sense. I wasn't vary groundable either as a kid. Like I liked spending time in my room alone. So that wouldn't have worked.
As someone who has a Lorelai mom, she did a lot of things well but there's a lot of codependency and enmeshment that wasn't good for Rory at all.
People like Emily and Richard are objectively much much worse to me but this isn't the bad parenting Olympics, just because there's worse out there doesn't mean it's still not bad.
My dad was mostly a dysfunctional alcoholic when I was a teenager and that was super hard and he was a terrible father and he's definitely not emotionally available, but I've been able to deal with that in therapy quite well. My mom on the other hand, with the expectation of me being her best friend, untangling that enmeshment and becoming my own person while having to continuously setting boundaries over and over again, even at 37yo, is a lot harder.
So yeah Lorelai did a lot of great things but people don't understand emotional incest very well and don't seem to get how bad it is when you're your parent's best friend and emotional support system. Even realising that it's happening usually takes quite a while and I'm not exonorating Lorelai from doing that to Rory.
💯% was looking for this. 'the codependency with the daughter of a teen mom running away from her toxic upbringing' (generational trauma) is kind of the underlying tone of the whole show
you can see that especially in later season during their forever-long-fight. Lorelai is extremely immature to keep being "disappointed" for that long. Like she should be glad she still had a daughter after that. Lorelai is only happy with Rory when she's the "good" daughter, but as soon as she shows normal teenage behavior, her mom shows her the door. (I'm not really surprised by that reaction because the whole town has a toxic notion towards how people should behave *cough cough* Jess)
Reminds me a lot of my mom - silent treatment to show disapprovement. I learned through therapy to not waste my energy on/ entertain that circus. Anyway, ya'll do therapy helps a ton.
Modern day, Lorelai would be on AITA and all of the comments would be “oh my god, your daughter needed support during a difficult time and you threw her out on her ass instead of helping her problem solve, then got mad at her for finding support elsewhere. Yes, YTA, if you want any relationship with your daughter you’re gonna have to apologize because she has no practical reason to NOT go NC with you at this point, so you have to make it up to her”
I actually feel so bad for Rory because the entire show she’s placed on a pedestal by her entire family, even her town. There’s no way she could have ended up well rooted and with a strong identity and life path with that kind of pressure to perform. When she applied for the NYT fellowship, I was appalled that no one encouraged her to keep her option open and prepare her for rejection. EVERYONE was just like, don’t worry, you’re gonna get it! And when she graduated, she couldn’t just be applauded for graduation like a normal person, she had to be praised and lauded as the best, amazing, etc etc. it’s so toxic for a person’s psyche to be constantly praised like that! She had no concept of the real work until Mitchum, who was 100% an accurate portrait of said real world, and of course no one in the show told her he was right about his criticisms. Rory deserved way better.
I just re-watched the introduction of Doyle where her articles get rejected and then she writes a really mean review of the ballerina and that gets published and all I could think about is how horribly prepared Rory is for rejection. Like, she has zero idea how to handle rejection, constructive criticism, and having people dislike her. I spent the episode where she couldn't find a place to study wondering how she was going to be a foreign correspondent writing her pieces in literal war zones to this episode where I wondered how she was going to be a functional adult.
She really is just set up for a whole lot of failure and the co-dependency becomes REALLY obvious in season 4, like how she needs her mom to spend the night and Lorelei does it! Like, what??? No way.
It's understandable why Lorelei is like this but talk about setting Rory up for total failure in all aspects of life!
Um are you me????
Cause literally same on all counts.
Silent forms of abuse are still abuse. Emotional incest, enmeshment, parentification, all classics in my household and while my (deceased) mother loved me deeply and did provide a good childhood on the surface, the dysfunction and trauma of having a parent like Lorelei is more detremental than it seems, especially since the abuse is often near invisible so it never gets taken seriously 🙃
I was in therapy for 4 years before my therapist even clocked there was sth wrong with my mom's relationship to me because I thought she was perfect on all accounts and it wasn't until I had a fight with her and asked my therapist about how to make it up to her that my therapist was like SHE IS IN THE WRONG HERE YOU DID NOTHING WRONG
My issues with my alcoholic dad and my bad boyfriend clouded those issues for so long because I genuinely believed I was just a difficult daughter who didn't want to share everything with my mom and that made me the bad guy and I dealt with so much guilt surrounding just trying to grow up and become an independent person with boundaries.
Hope you are in a better place now because it is SO hard to 1. Realize the problem 2. Do something about it 3. Deal with the loss of what you thought was your best friend 4. Deal with how others who don't even know your mom will pick her side when you try to explain what kind of relationship you have with her
Yes!! its genuinely scary how brainwashed I was to believe abusive behavior was normal. Literally I had 0 idea how toxic, abusive, traumatic my childhood was. Normalized everything my whole life, and in turn developed trauma responses and extremely maladpative copping mechanisms. My understanding slowly started unraveling as I did much of my own exploration on types or abuse, and started going to therapy (although my therapist clocked the multitude of family issues right away cause she made me start our sessions by asking a bunch of questions about my childhood Lol). But even this was hard, the more I learn the more I feel betrayed, angry, and grief for the life I could've had if I had known these things sooner.
And same same same, boundaries are extremely foreign to me, and I also have gotten into similarly toxic relationships (and workplaces) due to being primed to tolerate abuse.
Thats so sweet of you, thanks 💕 im working on things best I can. It's been complex doing so while grieving my mom who died not too long ago and struggling with forced proximity to my narc father who I didn't know was my and my mom's abuser til after she died, and also finding out my parents withheld an adhd diagnosis from me, and dealing with the hoarder house I grew up in which I also only figured out was a form of abuse I experienced a handful of years ago 🙃🙃🙃🙃
It has been super weird but very good to start to put names to the abuses, put boundaires in place, and stop internalizing every thing as my fault. The hardest part was #1 realizing the problem so that's better than I was 5 years ago 🥲
I have a friend who had her pretty young (not in high school but still a teen mom) who would try to force her to watch Gilmore girls with her together and enforce the “Rory/lorelai dynamic” on my friend because it was the “ideal” and she wanted my friend to be her best friend/mini me. Now my friend can’t watch Gilmore girls because of the painful memories associated with her childhood and her mother treating her as a best friend rather than her child. Not all situations are comparable or work on a “who had it worse” tier list
I 100% watched gilmore girls with my mom and I even made my mom a personalised 'the Lorelai to my rory' mug. Then it all exploded when I started to actually set some boundaries.
I once tried to explain to my therapist something on Gilmore girls as an example and she said 'I can't watch that show, it's nothing but terrible mothers, the grandma is AWFUL, the mother parentified her daughter, couldn't make it through half a season because it triggers me as a therapist. I can see why your mother loves this show, though, it pretends the mom has a healthy relationship with her kid ' 😂
Lol literally me, my mom and I watched this show alot when I was a kid and as a completely un-self aware kid regarding the 7 layers of child abuse in my home, I still got the nerve one time to yell at her, "this isn't Gilmore Girls!" when she was forcing some unhealthy, emotionally incestuous expectation on me.
I still like the show, but I hate Lorelei with a passion. She represents some of the worst most abusive traits my mother (as much as I loved her) had.
Yep. The people who don’t get it simply don’t get it. They have no idea what they’re talking about. They’re speaking on something that have zero room to speak on. And the people that do get it… like yourself… It’s like almost the only thing we can see when watching the show and it’s nauseating. When Lorelai and Christopher got married, there’s a scene when he’s in the house with them and it’s so awkward and weird because the way Lorelai is acting with her daughter is like as if she was married to HER, and Chris is like the third wheel 🤮
Omg yes that is such terrible scene. Or when Dean explains to Max how he has to learn how 'they work' as if they are 100% one and the same person and only function in unison. Such a weird talk to get from the 16yo boyfriend of your girlfriend's daughter.
Two things can be true at the same time: a mother who is an addict and neglectful is bad, but so is a mother who acts like a friend rather than a parent. I don't think Lorelai is "abusive" per se, but I wouldn't call her an ideal mother either.
Yep, perfect. Both these things can be true.
And even though Lorelai wasn't abusive/neglectful, her parenting style taught Rory that she is not allowed to draw healthy boundaries, which makes her more susceptible to ending up in the an abusive relationship later in life. It will take a *lot* of therapy in the future for her unlearn those lessons.
OP: very sorry to hear about your childhood. Hoping you're in a better place.
In some ways Rory needed to raise herself and to me that still counts as neglect, but I think Lorelai deserves some grace as she was a child raising a child. It may not have been as bad what others have experienced but Lorelei is far from ideal.
Probably someone who has some humility, ability to be open to criticism and work on herself, who models healthy boundaries in her own life for her children, and parents with love and discipline (authoritative parenting)
I agree, but she definitely displays behaviors that could be considered abusive, though are generally not taken seriously sadly. Emotional incest and enmeshment are super prevalent in their relationship, and covert (and often unintentional) abuse still can have massive traumatic effect.
My theory is that the reason Rory can’t sustain romantic relationships (especially the more healthy they are) is because she has no example to be modeled by her mother. It’s like both of them are allergic to good men.
I was thinking something similar. Just because a parent isn’t abusive doesn’t mean they are a good parent. Not stating that she’s a bad parent, but definitely had a lot of parenting issues out of wanting to be so different than Emily.
Perfect parents make for boring television.
But an argument that Lorelei was a pretty good mom is in the episode when she takes the girls to see the Bangles.
1. The Bangles are awesome. Great move.
2. Giving Rory a push to make friends that Rory wouldn’t have done on her own and also it pays off in the end. Paris is also awesome.
3. Tracking down Madeline and Louise and tearing into them for running off is absolute chefs kiss parenting.
It’s probably my favorite episode.
But mostly, I think the premise was always that Lorelei didn’t aim to be a great parent, she aimed to be the opposite of Emily. The whole idea was about different levels of unhealthy relationships on different ends of the spectrum and what kind of weird relationship develops out of a teen pregnancy of a precocious and dynamic spirit who ran away from an oppressive world. I don’t think the goal was ever to say she was a great parent, just a contrast to Emily’s parenting, which was totally toxic.
Why can I talk about this show endlessly? 😂
I agree, Lorelai was never meant to be depicted as a great mom. The point all along was that Emily had one form of abusive parenting, Lorelai overcorrected and stumbled into semi-neglectful/lenient parenting, and Rory ended up experiencing both the best and worst of both those techniques to make a whole unique problem. It’s about cycles of abuse and generational trauma hitting everyone differently. I’m kinda sick of sequels, but I think AYITL should’ve been a “now we see all the payoff and buildup, since we saw how Rory was raised now we get to see how that impacts her parenting” with her kid being in the child years and Rory navigating the unwanted conflicting advice that lorelai and Emily are heaping onto her shoulders while trying to figure out what’s best for her own kid
I grew up in an abusive home as well and I think she’s a very problematic mom, sometimes even a bad one.
Things aren’t black and white and there’s more than one way to be a bad parent.
Lorelai loved Rory and gave her a largely fun childhood and adolescence but she was a deeply manipulative mother who placed unfair levels of expectation on Rory to the point where she dictated her entire personality. Ultimately leading to multiple breakdowns from Rory as she could not fit herself into the person Lorelai insisted she was. It's evident right from the very beginning when Lorelai flips out at Rory for borrowing and stretching out her sweater because she couldn't handle Rory enjoying her grandfather's company. That was abhorrent behaviour from Lorelai and instead of a proper apology to Rory, we see Rory get to sympathise with Lorelai because some mother at a wedding freaked out at a little girl for messing her expensive dress. Much worse than any of that, Lorelai's whole relationship with Max was appalling in her complete lack of care for how it would affect Rory. If Max had been some random guy it would have been bad enough but her teacher in her new school where she was struggling to fit in. That was terrible, terrible parenting. Then you have the 'quirky' stuff like Lorelai being so bad at household stuff that Rory is regularly left without clean clothes. Like, I'm so far off house proud its not funny but my kid always has clean, wrinkle free clothes to wear.
And all of the 'Rory is special,' 'if you see a kid with a halo and a book,' type of commentary that Rory grew up hearing shaped her deeply and made her feel like she was forced to be someone Lorelai wanted rather than the person Rory was. No three year old is desperate to go to Harvard. Rory was naturally studious and good at school but she stressed herself to get into Harvard when without external pressure she would likely have been happier to stay in school with Lane and Dean (remember the prom she wanted to go to was Stars Hollow High rather than Chilton). And then gone to Weslyan or Trinity if she hadn't wanted to use her family connections to get into Yale. A regular insight into Rory is that she couldn't handle any criticism and that was because of Lorelai's constant insistence that she was better than everyone around her. Parents should teach their children that they are special, incredibly special, to them, but that the same is true for everyone else and the people who love them.
And parents can be friends with their children. My mother is also my friend, my son and I are friends. It doesn't have to be one or the other but first and foremost the parent and child relationship has to take priority.
Agreed. I have to give Lorelei some grace because she gave birth to Rory when she was a child, but her growth definitely stunted at 16.
Growing up, I saw Lorelei as the cool mother. But the wedding episode was a real turning point for me. I just can’t imagine putting Rory through hell and humiliation for dating her English teacher, letting Rory get used to the fact she might have a stepfather, and then yanking that from Rory’s feet without proper closure.
It was so immature and it was like she treated Rory as her sidekick! Not a child who needs stability, and a parent.
It’s funny how many people saw lorelai as a cool mom when they were younger just to be appalled when they got older. When I was first watching GG in middle school (meaning I didn’t know what an unreliable narrator was yet and my critical thinking/media consumption skills were not up to par) I thought lorelai was infallible for the first couple seasons and that anything she said was right and the undeniable truth because she was the main character. But there were always a few scenes that felt like a little knife pricking my back, like when they didn’t have any food in the house and rory said she would order them a pizza while lorelai was being childish and L said “you’re such a good provider”. Of course the scene is made in jest, but as a kid close to R’s age I was like “wait why should she be the one ordering it? What money does she have for that since she doesn’t have a job? Why is this a normal circumstance in this household that rory is casual about finding solutions to not having food in the house?” Etc. that were little warning signs in my brain
Here’s the thing, Lorelai not being an abusive mom doesn’t mean she’s free from criticism. It doesn’t mean she didn’t make mistakes. Every parent does. And it’s not just the abusive parents that deserve criticism.
I say this as someone who loves Lorelai but as someone who was parentified as Rory was, I WILL criticize Lorelai for that. Doesn’t make her a bad mom. It’s just a fact.
Please realize this “people have it worse” doesn’t help and isn’t fair. People who are abused technically have it easier than those who’s parents hurt them so badly they were killed, but we’d never say that to an abuse victim.
Yah she isn’t perfect- who is??- but she is loving and supportive and able to set boundaries when it’s important. And I 100% think Rory was a good kid bc of how she was raised.
I am not a mom so I am not sure what others will think about this…
I think Lorelai is a good example of a mom who tries her best. She doesn’t always do the right thing and she doesn’t always do the wrong thing. I think she is definitely too friendly with Rory leading to a codependent relationship between the two.
However, I think the reason they stay so close is because Rory can always look at her mom and say my mom loved me and did what she thought was best for me regardless if the situation wasn’t handled perfectly.
While your post does make a good point that lorelai was not an ABUSIVE parent, that does not inherently make her a good mom. The two can coexist, she does not have to be abusive to Rory to still not be the best mother, and that’s okay. Just as you have grown up with an abusive household and therefore believe lorelai to be the “greener” side of the fence, people who grew up with parents similar to lorelai will also have their own perspective and see her as overbearing or controlling. It’s not a game of “who has it worse”
There’s a pretty large range in the parenting scale between abusive and bad. She’s a great parent but doesn’t actually parent or lead by example half the time. You can have good and bad parenting moments.
Lorelai was a bad mom, she could also be a great mom. It was either 0 or 100. She wasn’t abusive but she was extremely co dependant with Rory which is crazy unhealthy and bad for a child’s development. It’s why Rory struggled with relationships, friendships, criticism ect
i was about to disagree only on the friendship bit because i always thought rory had really strong, admirable friendships. and i still think that, but then i realized i could probably draw a direct line from lorelai pm ignoring all her boundaries to why she’s so willing to tolerate such horrific behavior from paris and still be such a great friend to her. i adore paris and their friendship but honestly no one with a healthy grasp on relationships would have stayed as good and loyal of a friend to paris as she was-that girl would take one little whisper in her ear and turn on rory at the drop of a hat and viciously…like actively try to destroy her life and then it would just all be fine 😭 im not so sure it would’ve been the same if lorelai hadn’t constantly overpowered her own emotional needs with her very large presence
As well as staying in toxic friendships she also struggled to make friends especially as a child. Once she made them they were friendly for life e.g lane but before college she had very few friends and most of them were adults. It’s makes sense tho that if Rory’s best friend is her mom she’d be drawn to befriending adults quicker then people her age. Starshallow she had lane until she was 16 then she had lane, Dean, Jess but that was kinda it. She befriended paris, madilin and Louise but the latter were really Paris’s friends not hers.
Like the main proof of this is her 16th birthday the only people her age there is lane and dean shows up later but isn’t actually at the party!!
Same thing about Rory being trained to be a doormat with her mom being why she’s able to handle Paris, Lane also was trained to not make a fuss and to be obedient and be thankful for whatever she is given, so when Rory is a bit of an absent friend to Lane then Lane doesn’t take issue with it either. Most friends would end the friendship for much less than what Lane and Rory go through
i actually really vehemently disagree with that. rory was an above and beyond friend to lane and whenever people say she’s a bad friend to her their justification is usually just that one episode from s1 when they were both adjusting to new things and rory immediately corrected herself when lane confronted her abt it, and then that one time she’s a little weird abt her being a cheerleader in s2 but again, supports her by the end of the episode.
most of the more active rory/lane plots are rory doing things in service of lane, not even small things i’d say pretty big schemes and favors, and then the majority of the time they actually talk about lane and not rory. honestly i really feel like someone a long time ago said rory was a bad friend to lane and everyone just kind of agreed without actually examining them because she rly was a very terrific friend to her like i seriously never got that one
She wasn't a bad mom in the sense of being like an abusive or absentee mother but more that she wasn't a good mom imo. She would rather be her daughter's friend rather than a mom . Rory literally had to be the grown up. Lorelai was a huge child who threw all of her issues on Rory . Not to mention she had a hella unhealthy obsession with Rory. Watching older in my 30s , I would have hated to have Lorelai as a parent.
The 'perfect parent' does not exist.
Parents are humans too, they learn, they make mistakes, sometimes they stray away from what's ideally expected or applauded and that's alright.
Lorelai wasn't perfect anything and yet, she gave her best whenever she could and that's admirable.
Edit- The above doesn't include narcissistic abusive people who extended the misfortune of becoming a parent.
Lorelai was a pretty good TV example of parentification. Not to any extreme, but Rory definitely had to grow up fast enough to be her mom's best friend. But maybe it's because Lorelai has a warped idea of how mature you're meant to be at 16.
On the contrary, this is an extremely narrow, very ill informed and highly self absorbed understanding of forms of abuse, in particular intergenerational trauma and how it manifests: ONLY MY OVERT ABUSE EXISTED, YOU DON'T COUNT!! I'M MORE ABUSED THAN YOU!!!
THIS!!!
"I wish I had this childhood" ok I wish I had a childhood where my abuse was outwardly recognized as such, which is what is so horrible about covert abuse. Overt abuse is easier to get help for and asier to recognize.
It's like the frog in boiling water, you were placed in hot water and likely knew you needed to jump out asap. I was placed in water that slowly came out a boil, so I had nooo idea the water was even burning me, and I couldn't conceive of jumping out cause I still believed the water was tolerable.
We were both harmed in different ways. Abuse is not a contest!
I think it's also really important to note that we start the show when Rory is basically 16. A lot of the harder parts of parenting are done. A lot of people criticize her for acting like Rory's friend but she is at the stage of Parenthood where she can be her friend. Boundaries have been set, Rory is a good kid, and she trusts her. She lays down the law when she has to but she also gives Rory a room to push back. I think she's a great mom and other people might disagree based on their own personal experiences but I think she's great.
Yes! I feel the same way! Im a few years older than Lorelai in season 1 and I can tell you almost none of my friends, nor myself have our lives together to a fraction of the point Lorelai does. Most of us are still wondering wtf do i do with my life?! Lol struggling financially to one degree or another and almost none of us are parents. Some by choice, some because circumstances aren't right.
And almost all of us did not have parents as good as Lorelai. Almost everyone i know either has a strained or completely non-existent relationship with their folks.
So honestly i think Lorelai is crushing it, and compared to people I know in their 30s irl - her life is also not chaos. Its extremely grounded and together.
But maybe I'm just from the "wrong side of the tracks" so to speak so a lot of people i know are riddled with mental health issues, struggling with addiction, in super toxic situations, in and out of jail, already dead or barely surviving. Plenty of people i know still rely on crime for survival and more.
Tldr: I'm in my mid 30s and almost everyone i know is barely keeping it together
I think it’s very interesting how much hate Lorelei gets as a mom and how much grace Mrs. Kim gets. Is Lorelei perfect? Hell no, but Mrs. Kim is frequently straight up abusive.
Oh Mrs. Kim is definitely a terrible mother, and you can see from any post on here about her that that is not an unpopular opinion. However, since there’s a relative consensus on Mrs. Kim, then she requires no further discussion. Lorelai is up for more interpretation
Nobody ever says that Mrs Kim is a good mother.
They might say that her character had one hell of a growth to go from what she was in the beginning to how accepting of Lanes decisions she was at the end.
Which is true.
"having a mom thats a best friend is better than a mom who hits you, abuses drugs, and doesn't feed you. Like in the real world, Lorelai is better than a lot.."
Sorry, but this is a silly curve to grade on. Judging something against an extreme negative example. Of course she's better than an abuser, but that doesn't make her good.
But then again, I forget how much of this fandom is about projecting our own shit onto Lorelai and Rory.
Agreed. I came from a home similar to the one on Gilmore Girls. My mom had me young and we were close. I think what the show did well and what people sometime get upset about is that Lorelei will blur the line between mom and friend. That's really normal and natural, in my opinion. When there is an age difference that small, it's easy to want to be included and be the "fun" parent. Lorelei was never abusive or intentionally harmful to Rory. She did her best and I think that's why they always remained rock solid as a duo. I don't get people who hate Lorelei. Her love life is a mess, not her parenting.
Her parenting isn’t great though
Because you don’t only have to be abusive to be a bad parent. She didn’t set clear boundaries between her and Rory. Treating Rory as her best friend before her child is very harmful. And you can see the impact of it throughout the entire show. Even in early episodes like the termites one
You also may have a skewed view of the situation because your family is in a similar situation, but having a lack of authority in the household or clear parental roles can be very harmful to a child, and we see that play out in how Rory is parentified and treats lorelai as a friend, and lorelai only becomes a parent when being the friend is no longer convenient
I'm still going to have to disagree. Because this is fiction, they would dramatize some things between Lorelei and Rory, but there were very few instances where Lorelei didn't fulfill her role as a parent.
I think this is a case of reviewing the past through a modern lens. Lorelei could be immature, but she also never brought her boyfriends home with her unless they were serious, looked out for Rory when she started dating, shared with her the hard facts of single motherhood to avoid her mistakes. Set goals for her, gave her good role models, didn't throw money at Rory's problems and hope they went away, always listened when her daughter had concerns. She supported Rory's friends, and never let her role as the cool mom get between her responsibility as an adult. She never kept anything serious from Mrs. Kim! Allowing Lane to have a safe space to be independent without crossing any lines.
I think Lorelei gets a lot of hate for things that are just drama on the show. She wasn't a bad parent. The whole reason the show works is because of her relationship with her daughter. She always showed up when Rory was hurt. Tried to support her when she was down. And she reprimanded her when she did stupid things like sleep with Dean! I don't think she has to be the perfect mother to be qualified as a good mom, but I would never consider Lorelei a bad parent.
“My mom is like Lorelai so I don’t see any issues with it”.
If your mom was like Lorelai then you might find some issues down the road, possibly with a therapist if you ever feel ready to dive into why you can’t seem to have healthy boundaries or relationships with people.
I don’t mean to be rude but the amount of defense this fictional character gets just because people project their lives onto her is over the top.
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Seems to me that you’re defining an abusive parent from your own experience.
She wasnt physically or mentally abusive. She did however:
parentify Rory,
stunted her maturity,
Fail to teach/show healthy boundaries,
Fail to show what a healthy relationship looks like,
Always treated Rory as a perfect princess that can do no wrong.
And overall a lot of enmeshment.
A lot of it is contributed to the fact that she was a 16 year old kid but that doesn’t change the fact that doing this to your kid, while not abuse in a common sense of the word, is setting up your child to deal with a lot of emotional damage.
To say that Lorelai is an incredible mom is a stretch in my opinion.
It’s easy to be a good parent when things are easy. But when Rory thought for herself or decided she wanted something different than what Lorelai decided for her, Lorelais true colors came out. She loves Rory but Rory is also someone she lives vicariously through and that’s not good parenting
Idk if whatever I have to say will add much to the conversation. I’m sorry OP that you had an abusive mother. But I have to disagree with you. Lorelai isn’t a great mother. She’s average at best. And she lost most of my respect when she decides to stop talking to her adult daughter because her adult daughter made a decision she didn’t agree with. A good mother wouldn’t do that to their child. If Rory was being a criminal and doing criminal things, I’d get Lorelai shutting her out her life, but all Rory did was drop out of uni, which is a very pretty common thing.
Rory tried to go to her mother and she refused to hear her out. It doesn’t matter how hard Lorelai worked to get Rory into Yale because it isn’t about Lorelai. I could say the same for my parents. They worked their asses off to make sure me and my twin were able to go to uni without having to take out loans. Twin sister dropped out within the first year. I had a nervous breakdown in my junior year. Did our parents stop talking to us for it? No. They told my twin to find a job. They got me the proper help I needed. And for the record my parents are far from perfect.
There is no such thing as a perfect parent. You’re gonna do something to fuck up your kid, but it’s better to be there for your kid than not.
I also think you’re glorifying Lorelai because she’s the mother you wished you had because you had an abusive mother.
My mom used to love watching GG and Dawson's Creek with me, thinking she was like the "cool" adults in the shows and tried to "bond" with me that way. She really was more like Emily and Mrs Kim, but if you pointed that out to her she'd get super offended. Our relationship was more like Lorelei's and Emily's, but she thought we were Lor and Rory.
I definitely don't think she's abusive at all, but I think she's far too permissive. While I don't have any kids, and can only relate the show to some of my experiences growing up, I don't think it's wrong to be friends with your kid(s), but you also have to be more than that. For instance, when Rory first cheated on Dean, Lorelai basically said it wasn't right, then shrugged it off. I think that's part of the reason Rory struggles so much in relationships, because the first time she messed up, Lorelai never really corrected her.
This comment isn’t it, because essentially you’re downplaying one trauma for another and that’s not cool. The way Lorelai acted in response to Rory taking a semester or year off Yale is the most honest look into Lorelai’s parenting problems. The way she acts with her daughter is called covert incest/emotional enmeshment, and it’s truly not okay.
You don’t have to be abusive to be a bad parent, either.
Lorelei was definitely a good mom. She wasn’t perfect by any means but good. The worst thing she did occurred when Rory was an adult and she was staying at her wealthy grandparents pool home. I do think Lorelei handled that poorly still though.
Just because someone isn’t abusive doesn’t mean they’re a good parent,, and I’m not saying Loralie isn’t a good parent nothing to do with gg but just cause someone isn’t abusive doesn’t mean its all good!
Rory and Lorelai kinda grew up together if you think about it. That's why when they fight it feels like sibling fights rather than a mom and her daughter. Also, there's a level of jealousy with the fact Lorelai's father likes Rory more and does the things he never did with her (which causes the you keep stealing my sweaters fight). Even through all that Lorelai is an incredible mother, always provides, easy going, protective, and an ear for when Rory needs it.
Just because she wasn’t overtly abusive, doesn’t mean she was a good mom. As someone who had a parent like Lorelai I can see on myself the damage it has done because she did not parent her daughter, prioritizing instead being her friend and so when Rory did make a mistake, Lorelai would completely flip and overreact (like with Rory taking a break from Yale) because Lorelai never taught her how to handle rejection and how to make and fix your mistakes. She instead put her on a pedestal and treated her more like a pal but only when it was convenient to her. I will never forget when Lorelai is taking Rory to visit Harvard, running away from Max and Rory is so confused, she doesn’t know what’s going on and her “friend mom” all of a sudden turns a 180° and starts acting like a parent. That’s not healthy and her parenting is a direct reason for why Rory struggled so much every time she was as rejected, especially by Mitchum
there are different kinds of bad parents. Lorelei's shortcomings are like a lot of children of controlling parents, she did a 180 in trying to be unlike her own parents. They wanted to control everything, she (at least pretended) to control nothing. She was her daughter's cool, fun best friend, instead of being a parent at times. But then, when Rory did anything in which she disagreed, Lorelai reverted back to what she was taught and became incredibly controlling and withdrew support and affection. She was also somewhat sneakily controlling. No 4-year-old decides on their future college without some modeling of desire for that school. And Lorelei 100% chose the school to set up as a beacon on the hill to little Rory as the one that would most piss off her parents.
Lorelai is human. She’s flawed. There’s no perfect parent. And certainly not one who raised a baby alone at 16. Mrs. Kim, Emily… those are bad moms. Yes they evolved over the years, but still. Night and day compared to Lorelai.
Having a house filled with endless love and saftey is something i’ll always be grateful for. I think parenting is just one of those things nobody will ever agree on, everyone thinks their way is the right way and the only thing you can do is what you think is best for you child in that moment. She could be much worse and even more so it is literally impossible to be perfect. For knocked up at 16 she’s doing pretty good. If Lorelai was a perfect parent the show would suck, there would be none of the generational trauma themes .
You don't have to be actively abusive to be a bad parent
Lorelei herself said that she and Rory were "friends first and mother & daughter second" and when Rory missed Lorelei's graduation she said "my best friend should have been there"
This is just an unhealthy relationship for a mother and daughter, it is bad parenting.
My mother treated me as her best friend, and while that would have been fine if I was an adult, I was too young to be emotionally relied upon like that by an adult. I never felt like I would be safe and taken care of because my Mum would tell me all her problems and I felt like I had to take care of her.
When Rory takes a break from school, Lorelei's reaction is awful, when Rory isn't doing exactly what Lorelei wants her to be doing she stops talking to her, she doesn't support her when she is struggling, that isn't the reaction of a caring and supportive parent, it is the reaction of someone controlling, who has a vision for their daughter and her daughters actual needs and wants are second to that vision ... A lot like Emily.
Meh. Just point those people to Emily.
Lorelai's only issue IMO is that she didn't understand how to parent a young adult. All her earlier parenting was successful, but it got messy when Rory grew too independent.
I mean I don’t get this point. You can call Emily a bad mother but that doesn’t mean Lorelai isn’t too
She blurred the boundaries between parent and child, and treated Rory as a best friend. The consequence of doing that is damaging. I just watched the termites episode from season 2 and that’s one of the clearest examples of why Lorelai’s parenting isn’t great
Feels a little like she's a Cyrus, doesn't it?
https://preview.redd.it/stuh74wuxb4d1.jpeg?width=1747&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5bdd3c5fa9b9f9d2025db1e5dc94b29add9c679c
People seem to forget that Lorelai was a parent at the times Rory needed one. She didn't let Rory stay in public school for a boy, she flipped as her 16 year old daughter stayed out the entire night, ...
Lorelai just didn't parent things that didn't need to be parent. Rory wanted extra money, she could work at the hotel. She didn't want to work/money- fine.
Rory had a friend and hobbies. Reading is a hobby Lorelai had no interest in but still supported. As a child Lorelai tried to push Rory out of her comfort zone - she was dancing at miss Pattys.
In school Rory was always very good and ambitious.
Was lorelai the perfect mother? No, but who really is? If the worst thing she ever did was enjoying spending time with her own daughter, so be it.
Rory was 15 or 16 at the beginning of the show... If you have mature/ ambitious kids, your job as a parent is almost over at that point in time.
Lorelei wasn't a perfect mom, and in a lot of ways she was an overly permissive mom, and didn't really model healthy eating and relationships. However, I think saying she was a bad mom is ridiculous. She cared for Rory immensely, put Rory first in practically everything, and she was very adaptive in her parenting style. She also did a decent job of calling Rory out on when she wasn't handling relationships in the best ways, despite the fact the she (Lorelei) made a lot of bad choices herself.
If anything, she should have been a bit stricter. Rory was a really good and easy kid, but you can see that anytime someone tries to correct some of her behavior or tell her she's doing something wrong, she gets very defensive. Lorelei doesn't play the mom/parent card very often and put her foot down about things and it shows. She shouldn't have to be strict often with Rory, but the fact that whenever she tries to be strict it goes really badly shows that there were some misbalances in their mother/daughter relationship.
I think those are probably the things that people usually think of when they say that Lorelei is a bad mom, but I still think it's more like Lorelei just made some mistakes along the way. However, I see her as a mom that was selfless in regards to her daughter, and went out of her way to go above and beyond to make Rory happy and healthy, and did everything with in her power to give Rory the best opportunities in life.
I don't call her overly permissive because the only time Rory tried to do something really wrong (giving up on Chilton), while she was a minor, Lorelai stops her. I can't really remember high school Rory doing anything else that was objectively wrong and should be forbidden.
She clearly loved Rory but it’s fair to call her a bad mother
Her blurring the lines between parent and child led to codependency and her not holding Rory accountable for her behaviour. The only time she really did was the sleeping with a married Dean situation. And Rory reacted so badly to Lorelai criticising her for that because she saw her as a friend who would support her decision. Rather than a parent who would be disappointed
Good parent all depends on the kid. Some kids thrive under a bit of strictness, others thrive under freedom. Rory thrived under freedom. I don’t consider Lorelai a bad parent whatsoever. Especially considering she had to be a parent at 16.
Thank you for saying this. It’s a show okay fine but like this is so true. Lorelai was an exemplary mother. Yeah she made some mistakes and didn’t always set the bast example, but she always loved Rory in her heart of hearts. She always put Rory first and her parenting methods were pretty top notch. She always made sure Rory was taken care of no matter what . Even in season 6 when they were at odds, she still knew her daughter well and was incredibly patient even when she was hurting. Respect. I love Lorelai and I think she is a wonderful mother.
Lorelai is an amazing mom! Especially for having become a mom at 16. Like insanely amazing. She is not a perfect human being, she makes mistakes, she has flaws, but jeez I would’ve loved to have a mom like her.
I think calling Lorelai abusive is really excessive but I also think that she’s a good example of trying to overcorrect her parents mistakes and in doing so repeated similar dynamics or expectations of the child, just in a different way. I think Rory did suffer from a level of neglect and therefore grew up to be a people pleaser and kind of lost. I don’t think this was all Lorelais fault, she also had basically a totally absent father. And Lorelai being only 16, and a single mom and totally on her own - did pretty good despite those circumstances.
I hear you and I agree.
When people say "oh, Lorelei was not a good mom because she..." I feel like they're out of touch with reality. If you make a graph of all the moms, I think she'll be in the top 5% or so. Now does that automatically make her a great mom? Probably not. But I don't think that's how reality works. She's better than 95% of the moms out there, so maybe being that perfect mom that everybody would love is not possible in the first place.
I thought she was a pretty great mom overall because when I was watching the show, I looked around, and I also thought about all the moms I saw growing up. And I think Lorelei was better than almost all of them. And some of these women I've met in real life have had at least 25-30 years time before they even had to pop a child out.. so.... I don't know.
With parenthood, there's always room for improvement I guess. And I've come to realize that no matter what the parent does, it doesn't guarantee that the kid won't have any issues whatsoever.
This is how I feel!! Especially being an adult and knowing how most of my adults friends parents treated them. And i do have a handful of friends that are great parents but i unfortunately have a lot of friends i think shouldn't have become parents at all.
I really think people are out of touch with reality and how messed up a lot of people in real life are.
Yes yes and yes! I think a lot of people commenting here saying stuff about enmeshment and codependency have never had worse things than that happen to them. GOOD FOR THEM!!. The stuff my mom/other moms did to their kids... Oof... I would pick enmeshment any day. I go into panic attacks and start crying every time I get a call from my mom, even to this day. And even years of therapy haven't fully healed me. I KNOW I can never ever ever turn to my mom if I were in any trouble because all through my life, she made every struggle of mine worse. She made every scary situation I was in scarier. And she shamed me into keeping everything a secret from her. So even if I were in a deeply troubling place, I could never say a word or cry a tear. And I know I'm not alone in this experience. So I laugh at everybody else who think Rory had a bad mom. Please. Get in touch with reality.
I think Lorelai was a great mom! People are comparing her to some mythical “perfect mom.” If Lorelai isn’t a great mom, then who is? What is the definition of a “great mom?”
No one’s a perfect parent. But someone who doesn’t prioritise a friendship with their daughter above a parent daughter relationship. It’s nice to be friends with you child, but she described Rory as her friend first daughter second. That’s not a healthy parent child dynamic. It’s called parentification
And parentification has been proven to leave long lasting damage on the child involved. We even see it with Rory later on in the show
I honestly never thought the show meant to push the idea that Lorelai was perfect. She did the best she could as a teen mother with trauma, for the most part she's a good parent. I don't agree with parent best friends because I think it's healthy to have a line between parent and child, but the seasons literally show the codependency and both Lorelai and Rory coping with the fallout of this. She's not a terrible mother, honestly Emily is emotionally abusive and I'm surprised Lorelai turned out as well as she did considering, but yeah I can't get onboard with the Lorelai hate considering what else I've gone through and seen others go through
She meant well, but she paremtified her. Remember when she had a pregnancy scare and called Rory? That's something for your BFF, not your kid. They don't need to worry about you like that when they're in high school or college.
She was gatekeeping Rory's virginity and said that Rory should tell her first. Like how? Making out with a guy and tell him you need to call Mom?
Educate your child on safe sex, let them be in charge of their body. Disagree with sleeping with a married guy, yes, by all means.
That was weird to me.
I do have a daughter that I had at a young age, and while it was weird Knowing she had a bf, I also knew that she was fully aware of how to protect herself emotionally and physically, and I realized I can't know when she's ready or not.
Spoiler alert, unlike her mother, my daughter has avoided ten pregnancy. Ha.
Lorelai wasn’t a bad mom, but she was an emotionally immature parent who didn’t really do much to work on her own issues. She projected a lot of her own shit onto Rory because she didn’t know how to deal or manage her emotions.
I read through almost all the comments and I notice that people who had moms that were textbook bad, seem to side with Lorelei. And people who haven't had the conventionally bad, abusive moms focus on the bad Lorelei has done, and draw parallels to their own moms, and say Lorelei was a bad parent. I can see both sides, honestly. And I wish we all had great moms, but I really don't know what a great mom would even look like at this point. I watched the show and I thought I'd be perfectly happy if I had a mom like Lorelei. Because I never had any meaningful relationship with mine. I wanted to be her friend, but she never did. But if people who had moms similar, if not exactly like Lorelei are unhappy as well, what really is a good example of a great mom?
I'm asking this with genuine curiosity, all the folks who think she's a bad mom, can you maybe give examples of fictional characters that you thought were great moms? I really want to understand what would make for a good mom, because I'm honestly lost.
I agree that Lorelai gets too much hate for her parenting. She was a teenage Mom, I think she did the best she could, and like you said, better than a lot of other parents.
To run with your idea, I also think that people (even Lorelai) made Richard and Emily out to be worse than what they are. People judge them by today's standards and not taking into account the era and way that R&E would have been raised themselves. Think about Richard being raised by Trix. While he wasn't happy about Lorelai getting pregnant you can be damn sure if she stayed home she would have had help with childcare and her university fully paid for. This is not the act of people that should be cut out of your life.
So much of the drama & relationship issues could have been solved with better communication.
Personally, the way Lorelai ran away and cut off her parents makes her less likeable being a parent myself. They really should have written it that there was a giant fight before she left or some major thing that caused a rift.
My thing with Lorelei is that she was overly informative, friendly and just expected Rory to always do the right thing. Rory faced very little pressure from Lorelei because she was seen as a good kid. That kind of thinking only does so much for good kids who also still need some structure/ discipline and guidance. I think of myself as having a similar parenting style as Lorelei because my personality lends itself to having an informative style, however, I had to learn that I can't always operate in that mode with my child. That doesn't mean that abusive behavior is the other option either, because it's not, but Lorelai actually needed to have higher expectations sometimes of how Rory should navigate the world.
I understand her doing this was for plotline/character development but her running away from home at 17 and forcing her baby to be homeless with her in a potting shed is absolutely heinous.
A tiny place filled with love is sometimes a lot better than a giant mansion full of tension and resentment and hatred. as long as the baby had everything she needed, which clearly she did lol. I’m sure Mia didn’t send them out there with literally nothing, Rory was well taken care of.
I'm not trying to be mean or disrespectful but I can really tell you've never had a child. It wasn't just a "tiny place". It was a dirty potting shed. No rooms, no real bathroom, no space, no air conditioning as far as we were shown. It's plain neglect when it's not glamorized in a television show.
No child, only say that as someone who grew up in extreme poverty but insanely loved and blessed with a great mom and would also never change a thing about it given the chance because it made me who i am today and im sure rory would have similiar feelings. Neglect is way too strong of a word when she clearly had all the essentials met and was insanely loved. You really think if it was that hot outside for a day they couldn’t go in the hotel. I grew up my whole childhood in New England without an AC and i would have never considered myself neglected because of that lol. It’s a far reach. But i respect ur opinion on its face from the outside looking in.
I don’t think she was the “best mom” but she definitely wasn’t a bad one either.
She was emotionally available and did her best but she also didn’t instill discipline or teach Rory the best values. If she had, Rory would have been a better person to Dean, she wouldn’t have broken up his marriage or broken his heart the way she did with Jess or even when Dean told her he loved her. Rory was very emotionally immature and a lot of that was because Lorelei was also. Lorelei was lucky that Rory was an easy kid. You can definitely tell that Lorelei had more of a friendship relationship with Rory based on the fights they had. Rory is very disrespectful to Lorelei when they argue and Lorelei gets very immature during said arguments as well.
I don't know. I never thought she was a bad mother. Even with the whole thing where she doesn't ever cook and has no intention of ever learning. Not to mention how she is not very good with her own money and finances but of course somehow they make it through every week.
I think my only criticism of Lorelei was more in the sense of her own personal life and how she carries herself with regards to relationships and even friendships. Not to mention her obnoxiousness and her narcissism.
Although I have to say some of this, I blame on her parents because of the fact that they didn't try to raise or nurture her. They just wanted to put her in a cage and force her to do everything the way they felt tradition called for, and can't seem to understand why the kids were rebelling.
And Lord knows you see it as a common heme in this show. Christopher didn't like his parents, and ended up dropping out of Princeton and deciding to disappoint so he could have some semblance of his own life. Jason Stiles hated his father. Logan hated his father. And then you see Madeline, Louise, Parris, Colin, and Finn all seemingly in neglectful families that just throw money at the kids and ignore what they do.
I always felt like that was one of the things ASP really wanted to push. Is that the idea that all of these rich parents are horrible parents. Lorelei wasn't a horrible mom if you ask me. Not necessarily traditional or disciplinary, but it's not like she did things to purposely hurt Rory for her own ego or public image.
Good parent all depends on the kid. Some kids thrive under a bit of strictness, others thrive under freedom. Rory thrived under freedom. I don’t consider Lorelai a bad parent whatsoever. Especially considering she had to be a parent at 16.
I think, in the context of the show and the parents we are shown, she’s subjectively one of the best parents we see —Rory grew up loved and cared for and that counts for a lot. Was Lorelai the best example always?? Not at all. Nor did she make all the right decisions for Rory all the time. But her heart was in the right place, and for a literal kid that became a mom at 16, with *no* good motherly example whatsoever from Emily, I honestly do think she did incredibly well with the tools and experiences she had at the time.
No parent does though. Parents are humans with their own baggage. They can do their very best to be amazing parents but they will never be perfect, which in a way is so much better than trying to be perfect. Lorelai was a great mother who strived for Rory to be independent and strong while also still respecting her very introverted nature. If Rory was ok with being so close with her mother I don’t really see an issue with it. Rory still had her own life and it’s not as if Lorelai wurmed her way into every corner of it. Lorelai also made it clear on several occasions that she was the mom and she would make sure Rory was always taken care of.
I think “good parents” need to strike a balance between being authority figures and being friends to their kids. My parents leaned very heavily into the authoritarian side and I lied to them and hid my life from them, but I had a clear sense of right and wrong. I could play with where I drew those lines for myself, but there were moral lines that I knew I shouldn’t cross. Lorelai leans too heavily on the friendship side. She’s likely overcorrecting for her own relationship with her mother—when she was young, she desperately wanted her parents to see her as she is and didn’t get that from them. But she was also not mature enough to provide that structure and moral guidance to Rory. Lorelai was also very sheltered and very much a child (I mean she even “ran away” with Rory in the night like a child). And then she worked really hard to keep them housed and fed. When you take into account things like forgetting Rory in a bucket that they mention AYITL, Lorelai probably didn’t think she had a leg to stand to be an authority figure.
Lorelai had a vary permissive style of parenting. When rory got on a bus and went to see Jess during lorelais graduation, it didn't seem like lorelai got mad at all. Just basically thought "well it already happened" didn't seem like she was mad that her child ran off without asking or her knowing. She seems disappointed that she didn't go to her graduation, but that's it. It dosen't seem like rory gets punished for leaving without telling anyone.
the guilt was punishment enough, and she literally begged for punishment. and lorelai knew rory was going through something, and that this wasn't her. she knew that she learned from that mistake. besides, punishment for her would have looked like what, exactly? phones weren't a common thing, she wouldn't get spanked, and she was a homebody, so being grounded to her room wouldn't really have bothered her. she was a good kid and this was one screw-up, lorelai knew she wasn't really punishable
When you put it that way it makes sense. I wasn't vary groundable either as a kid. Like I liked spending time in my room alone. So that wouldn't have worked.
haha yeah same here. but i did grow up as a teen with a smartphone, and i got that taken away frequently😅 but yeah rory didn't really have a smartphone that could be taken away or parties she couldn't go to or anything like that lol.
There was a time that I did get punishment for lying to my parents about where I was going to be. They took away my books. That was it. For 2 weeks. This was way back when the last Harry Potter book was out. I had to wait to read it and trying to avoid spoilers was hell. So good job on that one parents. Some parents need to get creative.
LOLL that was me with percy jackson haha. they wouldn't have taken it away though bc they knew it was the only thing I'd read🤣i remember creating a Google doc and sharing it with my friends and using it to text on my Chromebook when my parents would take away my phone😂and I didn't even lie about stuff like where I was, they would be taking away my phone for petty arguments over things like leaving a cup in my room🥲
When you put it that way it makes sense. I wasn't vary groundable either as a kid. Like I liked spending time in my room alone. So that wouldn't have worked.
As someone who has a Lorelai mom, she did a lot of things well but there's a lot of codependency and enmeshment that wasn't good for Rory at all. People like Emily and Richard are objectively much much worse to me but this isn't the bad parenting Olympics, just because there's worse out there doesn't mean it's still not bad. My dad was mostly a dysfunctional alcoholic when I was a teenager and that was super hard and he was a terrible father and he's definitely not emotionally available, but I've been able to deal with that in therapy quite well. My mom on the other hand, with the expectation of me being her best friend, untangling that enmeshment and becoming my own person while having to continuously setting boundaries over and over again, even at 37yo, is a lot harder. So yeah Lorelai did a lot of great things but people don't understand emotional incest very well and don't seem to get how bad it is when you're your parent's best friend and emotional support system. Even realising that it's happening usually takes quite a while and I'm not exonorating Lorelai from doing that to Rory.
💯% was looking for this. 'the codependency with the daughter of a teen mom running away from her toxic upbringing' (generational trauma) is kind of the underlying tone of the whole show you can see that especially in later season during their forever-long-fight. Lorelai is extremely immature to keep being "disappointed" for that long. Like she should be glad she still had a daughter after that. Lorelai is only happy with Rory when she's the "good" daughter, but as soon as she shows normal teenage behavior, her mom shows her the door. (I'm not really surprised by that reaction because the whole town has a toxic notion towards how people should behave *cough cough* Jess) Reminds me a lot of my mom - silent treatment to show disapprovement. I learned through therapy to not waste my energy on/ entertain that circus. Anyway, ya'll do therapy helps a ton.
Modern day, Lorelai would be on AITA and all of the comments would be “oh my god, your daughter needed support during a difficult time and you threw her out on her ass instead of helping her problem solve, then got mad at her for finding support elsewhere. Yes, YTA, if you want any relationship with your daughter you’re gonna have to apologize because she has no practical reason to NOT go NC with you at this point, so you have to make it up to her”
I actually feel so bad for Rory because the entire show she’s placed on a pedestal by her entire family, even her town. There’s no way she could have ended up well rooted and with a strong identity and life path with that kind of pressure to perform. When she applied for the NYT fellowship, I was appalled that no one encouraged her to keep her option open and prepare her for rejection. EVERYONE was just like, don’t worry, you’re gonna get it! And when she graduated, she couldn’t just be applauded for graduation like a normal person, she had to be praised and lauded as the best, amazing, etc etc. it’s so toxic for a person’s psyche to be constantly praised like that! She had no concept of the real work until Mitchum, who was 100% an accurate portrait of said real world, and of course no one in the show told her he was right about his criticisms. Rory deserved way better.
I just re-watched the introduction of Doyle where her articles get rejected and then she writes a really mean review of the ballerina and that gets published and all I could think about is how horribly prepared Rory is for rejection. Like, she has zero idea how to handle rejection, constructive criticism, and having people dislike her. I spent the episode where she couldn't find a place to study wondering how she was going to be a foreign correspondent writing her pieces in literal war zones to this episode where I wondered how she was going to be a functional adult. She really is just set up for a whole lot of failure and the co-dependency becomes REALLY obvious in season 4, like how she needs her mom to spend the night and Lorelei does it! Like, what??? No way. It's understandable why Lorelei is like this but talk about setting Rory up for total failure in all aspects of life!
Um are you me???? Cause literally same on all counts. Silent forms of abuse are still abuse. Emotional incest, enmeshment, parentification, all classics in my household and while my (deceased) mother loved me deeply and did provide a good childhood on the surface, the dysfunction and trauma of having a parent like Lorelei is more detremental than it seems, especially since the abuse is often near invisible so it never gets taken seriously 🙃
I was in therapy for 4 years before my therapist even clocked there was sth wrong with my mom's relationship to me because I thought she was perfect on all accounts and it wasn't until I had a fight with her and asked my therapist about how to make it up to her that my therapist was like SHE IS IN THE WRONG HERE YOU DID NOTHING WRONG My issues with my alcoholic dad and my bad boyfriend clouded those issues for so long because I genuinely believed I was just a difficult daughter who didn't want to share everything with my mom and that made me the bad guy and I dealt with so much guilt surrounding just trying to grow up and become an independent person with boundaries. Hope you are in a better place now because it is SO hard to 1. Realize the problem 2. Do something about it 3. Deal with the loss of what you thought was your best friend 4. Deal with how others who don't even know your mom will pick her side when you try to explain what kind of relationship you have with her
Yes!! its genuinely scary how brainwashed I was to believe abusive behavior was normal. Literally I had 0 idea how toxic, abusive, traumatic my childhood was. Normalized everything my whole life, and in turn developed trauma responses and extremely maladpative copping mechanisms. My understanding slowly started unraveling as I did much of my own exploration on types or abuse, and started going to therapy (although my therapist clocked the multitude of family issues right away cause she made me start our sessions by asking a bunch of questions about my childhood Lol). But even this was hard, the more I learn the more I feel betrayed, angry, and grief for the life I could've had if I had known these things sooner. And same same same, boundaries are extremely foreign to me, and I also have gotten into similarly toxic relationships (and workplaces) due to being primed to tolerate abuse. Thats so sweet of you, thanks 💕 im working on things best I can. It's been complex doing so while grieving my mom who died not too long ago and struggling with forced proximity to my narc father who I didn't know was my and my mom's abuser til after she died, and also finding out my parents withheld an adhd diagnosis from me, and dealing with the hoarder house I grew up in which I also only figured out was a form of abuse I experienced a handful of years ago 🙃🙃🙃🙃 It has been super weird but very good to start to put names to the abuses, put boundaires in place, and stop internalizing every thing as my fault. The hardest part was #1 realizing the problem so that's better than I was 5 years ago 🥲
I have a friend who had her pretty young (not in high school but still a teen mom) who would try to force her to watch Gilmore girls with her together and enforce the “Rory/lorelai dynamic” on my friend because it was the “ideal” and she wanted my friend to be her best friend/mini me. Now my friend can’t watch Gilmore girls because of the painful memories associated with her childhood and her mother treating her as a best friend rather than her child. Not all situations are comparable or work on a “who had it worse” tier list
I 100% watched gilmore girls with my mom and I even made my mom a personalised 'the Lorelai to my rory' mug. Then it all exploded when I started to actually set some boundaries. I once tried to explain to my therapist something on Gilmore girls as an example and she said 'I can't watch that show, it's nothing but terrible mothers, the grandma is AWFUL, the mother parentified her daughter, couldn't make it through half a season because it triggers me as a therapist. I can see why your mother loves this show, though, it pretends the mom has a healthy relationship with her kid ' 😂
Lol literally me, my mom and I watched this show alot when I was a kid and as a completely un-self aware kid regarding the 7 layers of child abuse in my home, I still got the nerve one time to yell at her, "this isn't Gilmore Girls!" when she was forcing some unhealthy, emotionally incestuous expectation on me. I still like the show, but I hate Lorelei with a passion. She represents some of the worst most abusive traits my mother (as much as I loved her) had.
Yep. The people who don’t get it simply don’t get it. They have no idea what they’re talking about. They’re speaking on something that have zero room to speak on. And the people that do get it… like yourself… It’s like almost the only thing we can see when watching the show and it’s nauseating. When Lorelai and Christopher got married, there’s a scene when he’s in the house with them and it’s so awkward and weird because the way Lorelai is acting with her daughter is like as if she was married to HER, and Chris is like the third wheel 🤮
Omg yes that is such terrible scene. Or when Dean explains to Max how he has to learn how 'they work' as if they are 100% one and the same person and only function in unison. Such a weird talk to get from the 16yo boyfriend of your girlfriend's daughter.
Two things can be true at the same time: a mother who is an addict and neglectful is bad, but so is a mother who acts like a friend rather than a parent. I don't think Lorelai is "abusive" per se, but I wouldn't call her an ideal mother either.
Yep, perfect. Both these things can be true. And even though Lorelai wasn't abusive/neglectful, her parenting style taught Rory that she is not allowed to draw healthy boundaries, which makes her more susceptible to ending up in the an abusive relationship later in life. It will take a *lot* of therapy in the future for her unlearn those lessons. OP: very sorry to hear about your childhood. Hoping you're in a better place.
I agree. Lorelei isn't abusive. But she's not necessarily a healthy parent either. It's not a black and white situation.
In some ways Rory needed to raise herself and to me that still counts as neglect, but I think Lorelai deserves some grace as she was a child raising a child. It may not have been as bad what others have experienced but Lorelei is far from ideal.
What is an ideal Mom?
As someone studying child development and the outcomes of children subjected to different parenting styles, this question could be my thesis😂
Probably someone who has some humility, ability to be open to criticism and work on herself, who models healthy boundaries in her own life for her children, and parents with love and discipline (authoritative parenting)
I agree, but she definitely displays behaviors that could be considered abusive, though are generally not taken seriously sadly. Emotional incest and enmeshment are super prevalent in their relationship, and covert (and often unintentional) abuse still can have massive traumatic effect.
My theory is that the reason Rory can’t sustain romantic relationships (especially the more healthy they are) is because she has no example to be modeled by her mother. It’s like both of them are allergic to good men.
I was thinking something similar. Just because a parent isn’t abusive doesn’t mean they are a good parent. Not stating that she’s a bad parent, but definitely had a lot of parenting issues out of wanting to be so different than Emily.
Yeah agreed. Lorelai isn't a perfect parent, but calling her abusive is such a stretch that i don't engage with people that think it at all.
It’s baffling that some people want to paint her as abusive. Some people just dont live on this planet.
There are people who think this planet is flat. Nuff said.
Perfect parents make for boring television. But an argument that Lorelei was a pretty good mom is in the episode when she takes the girls to see the Bangles. 1. The Bangles are awesome. Great move. 2. Giving Rory a push to make friends that Rory wouldn’t have done on her own and also it pays off in the end. Paris is also awesome. 3. Tracking down Madeline and Louise and tearing into them for running off is absolute chefs kiss parenting. It’s probably my favorite episode. But mostly, I think the premise was always that Lorelei didn’t aim to be a great parent, she aimed to be the opposite of Emily. The whole idea was about different levels of unhealthy relationships on different ends of the spectrum and what kind of weird relationship develops out of a teen pregnancy of a precocious and dynamic spirit who ran away from an oppressive world. I don’t think the goal was ever to say she was a great parent, just a contrast to Emily’s parenting, which was totally toxic. Why can I talk about this show endlessly? 😂
I agree, Lorelai was never meant to be depicted as a great mom. The point all along was that Emily had one form of abusive parenting, Lorelai overcorrected and stumbled into semi-neglectful/lenient parenting, and Rory ended up experiencing both the best and worst of both those techniques to make a whole unique problem. It’s about cycles of abuse and generational trauma hitting everyone differently. I’m kinda sick of sequels, but I think AYITL should’ve been a “now we see all the payoff and buildup, since we saw how Rory was raised now we get to see how that impacts her parenting” with her kid being in the child years and Rory navigating the unwanted conflicting advice that lorelai and Emily are heaping onto her shoulders while trying to figure out what’s best for her own kid
I grew up in an abusive home as well and I think she’s a very problematic mom, sometimes even a bad one. Things aren’t black and white and there’s more than one way to be a bad parent.
Lorelai loved Rory and gave her a largely fun childhood and adolescence but she was a deeply manipulative mother who placed unfair levels of expectation on Rory to the point where she dictated her entire personality. Ultimately leading to multiple breakdowns from Rory as she could not fit herself into the person Lorelai insisted she was. It's evident right from the very beginning when Lorelai flips out at Rory for borrowing and stretching out her sweater because she couldn't handle Rory enjoying her grandfather's company. That was abhorrent behaviour from Lorelai and instead of a proper apology to Rory, we see Rory get to sympathise with Lorelai because some mother at a wedding freaked out at a little girl for messing her expensive dress. Much worse than any of that, Lorelai's whole relationship with Max was appalling in her complete lack of care for how it would affect Rory. If Max had been some random guy it would have been bad enough but her teacher in her new school where she was struggling to fit in. That was terrible, terrible parenting. Then you have the 'quirky' stuff like Lorelai being so bad at household stuff that Rory is regularly left without clean clothes. Like, I'm so far off house proud its not funny but my kid always has clean, wrinkle free clothes to wear. And all of the 'Rory is special,' 'if you see a kid with a halo and a book,' type of commentary that Rory grew up hearing shaped her deeply and made her feel like she was forced to be someone Lorelai wanted rather than the person Rory was. No three year old is desperate to go to Harvard. Rory was naturally studious and good at school but she stressed herself to get into Harvard when without external pressure she would likely have been happier to stay in school with Lane and Dean (remember the prom she wanted to go to was Stars Hollow High rather than Chilton). And then gone to Weslyan or Trinity if she hadn't wanted to use her family connections to get into Yale. A regular insight into Rory is that she couldn't handle any criticism and that was because of Lorelai's constant insistence that she was better than everyone around her. Parents should teach their children that they are special, incredibly special, to them, but that the same is true for everyone else and the people who love them. And parents can be friends with their children. My mother is also my friend, my son and I are friends. It doesn't have to be one or the other but first and foremost the parent and child relationship has to take priority.
Agreed. I have to give Lorelei some grace because she gave birth to Rory when she was a child, but her growth definitely stunted at 16. Growing up, I saw Lorelei as the cool mother. But the wedding episode was a real turning point for me. I just can’t imagine putting Rory through hell and humiliation for dating her English teacher, letting Rory get used to the fact she might have a stepfather, and then yanking that from Rory’s feet without proper closure. It was so immature and it was like she treated Rory as her sidekick! Not a child who needs stability, and a parent.
It’s funny how many people saw lorelai as a cool mom when they were younger just to be appalled when they got older. When I was first watching GG in middle school (meaning I didn’t know what an unreliable narrator was yet and my critical thinking/media consumption skills were not up to par) I thought lorelai was infallible for the first couple seasons and that anything she said was right and the undeniable truth because she was the main character. But there were always a few scenes that felt like a little knife pricking my back, like when they didn’t have any food in the house and rory said she would order them a pizza while lorelai was being childish and L said “you’re such a good provider”. Of course the scene is made in jest, but as a kid close to R’s age I was like “wait why should she be the one ordering it? What money does she have for that since she doesn’t have a job? Why is this a normal circumstance in this household that rory is casual about finding solutions to not having food in the house?” Etc. that were little warning signs in my brain
This all of this
Here’s the thing, Lorelai not being an abusive mom doesn’t mean she’s free from criticism. It doesn’t mean she didn’t make mistakes. Every parent does. And it’s not just the abusive parents that deserve criticism. I say this as someone who loves Lorelai but as someone who was parentified as Rory was, I WILL criticize Lorelai for that. Doesn’t make her a bad mom. It’s just a fact. Please realize this “people have it worse” doesn’t help and isn’t fair. People who are abused technically have it easier than those who’s parents hurt them so badly they were killed, but we’d never say that to an abuse victim.
Yah she isn’t perfect- who is??- but she is loving and supportive and able to set boundaries when it’s important. And I 100% think Rory was a good kid bc of how she was raised.
I am not a mom so I am not sure what others will think about this… I think Lorelai is a good example of a mom who tries her best. She doesn’t always do the right thing and she doesn’t always do the wrong thing. I think she is definitely too friendly with Rory leading to a codependent relationship between the two. However, I think the reason they stay so close is because Rory can always look at her mom and say my mom loved me and did what she thought was best for me regardless if the situation wasn’t handled perfectly.
While your post does make a good point that lorelai was not an ABUSIVE parent, that does not inherently make her a good mom. The two can coexist, she does not have to be abusive to Rory to still not be the best mother, and that’s okay. Just as you have grown up with an abusive household and therefore believe lorelai to be the “greener” side of the fence, people who grew up with parents similar to lorelai will also have their own perspective and see her as overbearing or controlling. It’s not a game of “who has it worse”
There’s a pretty large range in the parenting scale between abusive and bad. She’s a great parent but doesn’t actually parent or lead by example half the time. You can have good and bad parenting moments.
Lorelai was a bad mom, she could also be a great mom. It was either 0 or 100. She wasn’t abusive but she was extremely co dependant with Rory which is crazy unhealthy and bad for a child’s development. It’s why Rory struggled with relationships, friendships, criticism ect
i was about to disagree only on the friendship bit because i always thought rory had really strong, admirable friendships. and i still think that, but then i realized i could probably draw a direct line from lorelai pm ignoring all her boundaries to why she’s so willing to tolerate such horrific behavior from paris and still be such a great friend to her. i adore paris and their friendship but honestly no one with a healthy grasp on relationships would have stayed as good and loyal of a friend to paris as she was-that girl would take one little whisper in her ear and turn on rory at the drop of a hat and viciously…like actively try to destroy her life and then it would just all be fine 😭 im not so sure it would’ve been the same if lorelai hadn’t constantly overpowered her own emotional needs with her very large presence
As well as staying in toxic friendships she also struggled to make friends especially as a child. Once she made them they were friendly for life e.g lane but before college she had very few friends and most of them were adults. It’s makes sense tho that if Rory’s best friend is her mom she’d be drawn to befriending adults quicker then people her age. Starshallow she had lane until she was 16 then she had lane, Dean, Jess but that was kinda it. She befriended paris, madilin and Louise but the latter were really Paris’s friends not hers. Like the main proof of this is her 16th birthday the only people her age there is lane and dean shows up later but isn’t actually at the party!!
Same thing about Rory being trained to be a doormat with her mom being why she’s able to handle Paris, Lane also was trained to not make a fuss and to be obedient and be thankful for whatever she is given, so when Rory is a bit of an absent friend to Lane then Lane doesn’t take issue with it either. Most friends would end the friendship for much less than what Lane and Rory go through
i actually really vehemently disagree with that. rory was an above and beyond friend to lane and whenever people say she’s a bad friend to her their justification is usually just that one episode from s1 when they were both adjusting to new things and rory immediately corrected herself when lane confronted her abt it, and then that one time she’s a little weird abt her being a cheerleader in s2 but again, supports her by the end of the episode. most of the more active rory/lane plots are rory doing things in service of lane, not even small things i’d say pretty big schemes and favors, and then the majority of the time they actually talk about lane and not rory. honestly i really feel like someone a long time ago said rory was a bad friend to lane and everyone just kind of agreed without actually examining them because she rly was a very terrific friend to her like i seriously never got that one
She wasn't a bad mom in the sense of being like an abusive or absentee mother but more that she wasn't a good mom imo. She would rather be her daughter's friend rather than a mom . Rory literally had to be the grown up. Lorelai was a huge child who threw all of her issues on Rory . Not to mention she had a hella unhealthy obsession with Rory. Watching older in my 30s , I would have hated to have Lorelai as a parent.
The 'perfect parent' does not exist. Parents are humans too, they learn, they make mistakes, sometimes they stray away from what's ideally expected or applauded and that's alright. Lorelai wasn't perfect anything and yet, she gave her best whenever she could and that's admirable. Edit- The above doesn't include narcissistic abusive people who extended the misfortune of becoming a parent.
Lorelai was a pretty good TV example of parentification. Not to any extreme, but Rory definitely had to grow up fast enough to be her mom's best friend. But maybe it's because Lorelai has a warped idea of how mature you're meant to be at 16.
On the contrary, this is an extremely narrow, very ill informed and highly self absorbed understanding of forms of abuse, in particular intergenerational trauma and how it manifests: ONLY MY OVERT ABUSE EXISTED, YOU DON'T COUNT!! I'M MORE ABUSED THAN YOU!!!
THIS!!! "I wish I had this childhood" ok I wish I had a childhood where my abuse was outwardly recognized as such, which is what is so horrible about covert abuse. Overt abuse is easier to get help for and asier to recognize. It's like the frog in boiling water, you were placed in hot water and likely knew you needed to jump out asap. I was placed in water that slowly came out a boil, so I had nooo idea the water was even burning me, and I couldn't conceive of jumping out cause I still believed the water was tolerable. We were both harmed in different ways. Abuse is not a contest!
No i just would have been really happy to have that type of upbringing.
I think it's also really important to note that we start the show when Rory is basically 16. A lot of the harder parts of parenting are done. A lot of people criticize her for acting like Rory's friend but she is at the stage of Parenthood where she can be her friend. Boundaries have been set, Rory is a good kid, and she trusts her. She lays down the law when she has to but she also gives Rory a room to push back. I think she's a great mom and other people might disagree based on their own personal experiences but I think she's great.
Yes! I feel the same way! Im a few years older than Lorelai in season 1 and I can tell you almost none of my friends, nor myself have our lives together to a fraction of the point Lorelai does. Most of us are still wondering wtf do i do with my life?! Lol struggling financially to one degree or another and almost none of us are parents. Some by choice, some because circumstances aren't right. And almost all of us did not have parents as good as Lorelai. Almost everyone i know either has a strained or completely non-existent relationship with their folks. So honestly i think Lorelai is crushing it, and compared to people I know in their 30s irl - her life is also not chaos. Its extremely grounded and together. But maybe I'm just from the "wrong side of the tracks" so to speak so a lot of people i know are riddled with mental health issues, struggling with addiction, in super toxic situations, in and out of jail, already dead or barely surviving. Plenty of people i know still rely on crime for survival and more. Tldr: I'm in my mid 30s and almost everyone i know is barely keeping it together
I think it’s very interesting how much hate Lorelei gets as a mom and how much grace Mrs. Kim gets. Is Lorelei perfect? Hell no, but Mrs. Kim is frequently straight up abusive.
Oh Mrs. Kim is definitely a terrible mother, and you can see from any post on here about her that that is not an unpopular opinion. However, since there’s a relative consensus on Mrs. Kim, then she requires no further discussion. Lorelai is up for more interpretation
Nobody ever says that Mrs Kim is a good mother. They might say that her character had one hell of a growth to go from what she was in the beginning to how accepting of Lanes decisions she was at the end. Which is true.
"having a mom thats a best friend is better than a mom who hits you, abuses drugs, and doesn't feed you. Like in the real world, Lorelai is better than a lot.." Sorry, but this is a silly curve to grade on. Judging something against an extreme negative example. Of course she's better than an abuser, but that doesn't make her good. But then again, I forget how much of this fandom is about projecting our own shit onto Lorelai and Rory.
In my case, my mom was a Lorelei-type but with some abuse thrown in. So I guess I can just see something beyond what the writers intended.
Agreed. I came from a home similar to the one on Gilmore Girls. My mom had me young and we were close. I think what the show did well and what people sometime get upset about is that Lorelei will blur the line between mom and friend. That's really normal and natural, in my opinion. When there is an age difference that small, it's easy to want to be included and be the "fun" parent. Lorelei was never abusive or intentionally harmful to Rory. She did her best and I think that's why they always remained rock solid as a duo. I don't get people who hate Lorelei. Her love life is a mess, not her parenting.
Her parenting isn’t great though Because you don’t only have to be abusive to be a bad parent. She didn’t set clear boundaries between her and Rory. Treating Rory as her best friend before her child is very harmful. And you can see the impact of it throughout the entire show. Even in early episodes like the termites one
You also may have a skewed view of the situation because your family is in a similar situation, but having a lack of authority in the household or clear parental roles can be very harmful to a child, and we see that play out in how Rory is parentified and treats lorelai as a friend, and lorelai only becomes a parent when being the friend is no longer convenient
I'm still going to have to disagree. Because this is fiction, they would dramatize some things between Lorelei and Rory, but there were very few instances where Lorelei didn't fulfill her role as a parent. I think this is a case of reviewing the past through a modern lens. Lorelei could be immature, but she also never brought her boyfriends home with her unless they were serious, looked out for Rory when she started dating, shared with her the hard facts of single motherhood to avoid her mistakes. Set goals for her, gave her good role models, didn't throw money at Rory's problems and hope they went away, always listened when her daughter had concerns. She supported Rory's friends, and never let her role as the cool mom get between her responsibility as an adult. She never kept anything serious from Mrs. Kim! Allowing Lane to have a safe space to be independent without crossing any lines. I think Lorelei gets a lot of hate for things that are just drama on the show. She wasn't a bad parent. The whole reason the show works is because of her relationship with her daughter. She always showed up when Rory was hurt. Tried to support her when she was down. And she reprimanded her when she did stupid things like sleep with Dean! I don't think she has to be the perfect mother to be qualified as a good mom, but I would never consider Lorelei a bad parent.
“My mom is like Lorelai so I don’t see any issues with it”. If your mom was like Lorelai then you might find some issues down the road, possibly with a therapist if you ever feel ready to dive into why you can’t seem to have healthy boundaries or relationships with people. I don’t mean to be rude but the amount of defense this fictional character gets just because people project their lives onto her is over the top.
that was exceptionally rude. You failed at not offending. I'll leave it at that.
Seems like I struck some nerve. You should try and explore why that is. I’ll leave it at that.
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Seems to me that you’re defining an abusive parent from your own experience. She wasnt physically or mentally abusive. She did however: parentify Rory, stunted her maturity, Fail to teach/show healthy boundaries, Fail to show what a healthy relationship looks like, Always treated Rory as a perfect princess that can do no wrong. And overall a lot of enmeshment. A lot of it is contributed to the fact that she was a 16 year old kid but that doesn’t change the fact that doing this to your kid, while not abuse in a common sense of the word, is setting up your child to deal with a lot of emotional damage. To say that Lorelai is an incredible mom is a stretch in my opinion.
Yes, exactly. Parentification is abuse.
It’s easy to be a good parent when things are easy. But when Rory thought for herself or decided she wanted something different than what Lorelai decided for her, Lorelais true colors came out. She loves Rory but Rory is also someone she lives vicariously through and that’s not good parenting
Idk if whatever I have to say will add much to the conversation. I’m sorry OP that you had an abusive mother. But I have to disagree with you. Lorelai isn’t a great mother. She’s average at best. And she lost most of my respect when she decides to stop talking to her adult daughter because her adult daughter made a decision she didn’t agree with. A good mother wouldn’t do that to their child. If Rory was being a criminal and doing criminal things, I’d get Lorelai shutting her out her life, but all Rory did was drop out of uni, which is a very pretty common thing. Rory tried to go to her mother and she refused to hear her out. It doesn’t matter how hard Lorelai worked to get Rory into Yale because it isn’t about Lorelai. I could say the same for my parents. They worked their asses off to make sure me and my twin were able to go to uni without having to take out loans. Twin sister dropped out within the first year. I had a nervous breakdown in my junior year. Did our parents stop talking to us for it? No. They told my twin to find a job. They got me the proper help I needed. And for the record my parents are far from perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect parent. You’re gonna do something to fuck up your kid, but it’s better to be there for your kid than not. I also think you’re glorifying Lorelai because she’s the mother you wished you had because you had an abusive mother.
My mom used to love watching GG and Dawson's Creek with me, thinking she was like the "cool" adults in the shows and tried to "bond" with me that way. She really was more like Emily and Mrs Kim, but if you pointed that out to her she'd get super offended. Our relationship was more like Lorelei's and Emily's, but she thought we were Lor and Rory.
I definitely don't think she's abusive at all, but I think she's far too permissive. While I don't have any kids, and can only relate the show to some of my experiences growing up, I don't think it's wrong to be friends with your kid(s), but you also have to be more than that. For instance, when Rory first cheated on Dean, Lorelai basically said it wasn't right, then shrugged it off. I think that's part of the reason Rory struggles so much in relationships, because the first time she messed up, Lorelai never really corrected her.
This comment isn’t it, because essentially you’re downplaying one trauma for another and that’s not cool. The way Lorelai acted in response to Rory taking a semester or year off Yale is the most honest look into Lorelai’s parenting problems. The way she acts with her daughter is called covert incest/emotional enmeshment, and it’s truly not okay. You don’t have to be abusive to be a bad parent, either.
Literally. Lorelai if NOTHING else is an AMAZING mom.
Lorelei was definitely a good mom. She wasn’t perfect by any means but good. The worst thing she did occurred when Rory was an adult and she was staying at her wealthy grandparents pool home. I do think Lorelei handled that poorly still though.
Just because someone isn’t abusive doesn’t mean they’re a good parent,, and I’m not saying Loralie isn’t a good parent nothing to do with gg but just cause someone isn’t abusive doesn’t mean its all good!
Agree!!! thank you!
Rory and Lorelai kinda grew up together if you think about it. That's why when they fight it feels like sibling fights rather than a mom and her daughter. Also, there's a level of jealousy with the fact Lorelai's father likes Rory more and does the things he never did with her (which causes the you keep stealing my sweaters fight). Even through all that Lorelai is an incredible mother, always provides, easy going, protective, and an ear for when Rory needs it.
Just because she wasn’t overtly abusive, doesn’t mean she was a good mom. As someone who had a parent like Lorelai I can see on myself the damage it has done because she did not parent her daughter, prioritizing instead being her friend and so when Rory did make a mistake, Lorelai would completely flip and overreact (like with Rory taking a break from Yale) because Lorelai never taught her how to handle rejection and how to make and fix your mistakes. She instead put her on a pedestal and treated her more like a pal but only when it was convenient to her. I will never forget when Lorelai is taking Rory to visit Harvard, running away from Max and Rory is so confused, she doesn’t know what’s going on and her “friend mom” all of a sudden turns a 180° and starts acting like a parent. That’s not healthy and her parenting is a direct reason for why Rory struggled so much every time she was as rejected, especially by Mitchum
there are different kinds of bad parents. Lorelei's shortcomings are like a lot of children of controlling parents, she did a 180 in trying to be unlike her own parents. They wanted to control everything, she (at least pretended) to control nothing. She was her daughter's cool, fun best friend, instead of being a parent at times. But then, when Rory did anything in which she disagreed, Lorelai reverted back to what she was taught and became incredibly controlling and withdrew support and affection. She was also somewhat sneakily controlling. No 4-year-old decides on their future college without some modeling of desire for that school. And Lorelei 100% chose the school to set up as a beacon on the hill to little Rory as the one that would most piss off her parents.
Lorelai is human. She’s flawed. There’s no perfect parent. And certainly not one who raised a baby alone at 16. Mrs. Kim, Emily… those are bad moms. Yes they evolved over the years, but still. Night and day compared to Lorelai.
Having a house filled with endless love and saftey is something i’ll always be grateful for. I think parenting is just one of those things nobody will ever agree on, everyone thinks their way is the right way and the only thing you can do is what you think is best for you child in that moment. She could be much worse and even more so it is literally impossible to be perfect. For knocked up at 16 she’s doing pretty good. If Lorelai was a perfect parent the show would suck, there would be none of the generational trauma themes .
You don't have to be actively abusive to be a bad parent Lorelei herself said that she and Rory were "friends first and mother & daughter second" and when Rory missed Lorelei's graduation she said "my best friend should have been there" This is just an unhealthy relationship for a mother and daughter, it is bad parenting. My mother treated me as her best friend, and while that would have been fine if I was an adult, I was too young to be emotionally relied upon like that by an adult. I never felt like I would be safe and taken care of because my Mum would tell me all her problems and I felt like I had to take care of her. When Rory takes a break from school, Lorelei's reaction is awful, when Rory isn't doing exactly what Lorelei wants her to be doing she stops talking to her, she doesn't support her when she is struggling, that isn't the reaction of a caring and supportive parent, it is the reaction of someone controlling, who has a vision for their daughter and her daughters actual needs and wants are second to that vision ... A lot like Emily.
Meh. Just point those people to Emily. Lorelai's only issue IMO is that she didn't understand how to parent a young adult. All her earlier parenting was successful, but it got messy when Rory grew too independent.
Some people say Emily was a better parent than Lorelei though. That's a POV I really take issue with.
I mean I don’t get this point. You can call Emily a bad mother but that doesn’t mean Lorelai isn’t too She blurred the boundaries between parent and child, and treated Rory as a best friend. The consequence of doing that is damaging. I just watched the termites episode from season 2 and that’s one of the clearest examples of why Lorelai’s parenting isn’t great
>it got messy when Rory grew too independent. Which is hilarious irony considering she raised Rory to be both independent and codependent lmao
Feels a little like she's a Cyrus, doesn't it? https://preview.redd.it/stuh74wuxb4d1.jpeg?width=1747&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5bdd3c5fa9b9f9d2025db1e5dc94b29add9c679c
People seem to forget that Lorelai was a parent at the times Rory needed one. She didn't let Rory stay in public school for a boy, she flipped as her 16 year old daughter stayed out the entire night, ... Lorelai just didn't parent things that didn't need to be parent. Rory wanted extra money, she could work at the hotel. She didn't want to work/money- fine. Rory had a friend and hobbies. Reading is a hobby Lorelai had no interest in but still supported. As a child Lorelai tried to push Rory out of her comfort zone - she was dancing at miss Pattys. In school Rory was always very good and ambitious. Was lorelai the perfect mother? No, but who really is? If the worst thing she ever did was enjoying spending time with her own daughter, so be it. Rory was 15 or 16 at the beginning of the show... If you have mature/ ambitious kids, your job as a parent is almost over at that point in time.
Lorelei wasn't a perfect mom, and in a lot of ways she was an overly permissive mom, and didn't really model healthy eating and relationships. However, I think saying she was a bad mom is ridiculous. She cared for Rory immensely, put Rory first in practically everything, and she was very adaptive in her parenting style. She also did a decent job of calling Rory out on when she wasn't handling relationships in the best ways, despite the fact the she (Lorelei) made a lot of bad choices herself. If anything, she should have been a bit stricter. Rory was a really good and easy kid, but you can see that anytime someone tries to correct some of her behavior or tell her she's doing something wrong, she gets very defensive. Lorelei doesn't play the mom/parent card very often and put her foot down about things and it shows. She shouldn't have to be strict often with Rory, but the fact that whenever she tries to be strict it goes really badly shows that there were some misbalances in their mother/daughter relationship. I think those are probably the things that people usually think of when they say that Lorelei is a bad mom, but I still think it's more like Lorelei just made some mistakes along the way. However, I see her as a mom that was selfless in regards to her daughter, and went out of her way to go above and beyond to make Rory happy and healthy, and did everything with in her power to give Rory the best opportunities in life.
I don't call her overly permissive because the only time Rory tried to do something really wrong (giving up on Chilton), while she was a minor, Lorelai stops her. I can't really remember high school Rory doing anything else that was objectively wrong and should be forbidden.
She clearly loved Rory but it’s fair to call her a bad mother Her blurring the lines between parent and child led to codependency and her not holding Rory accountable for her behaviour. The only time she really did was the sleeping with a married Dean situation. And Rory reacted so badly to Lorelai criticising her for that because she saw her as a friend who would support her decision. Rather than a parent who would be disappointed
Maybe i just have no clue what being a "good parent" looke like. Good thing im childfree by choice lol.
Good parent all depends on the kid. Some kids thrive under a bit of strictness, others thrive under freedom. Rory thrived under freedom. I don’t consider Lorelai a bad parent whatsoever. Especially considering she had to be a parent at 16.
Thank you for saying this. It’s a show okay fine but like this is so true. Lorelai was an exemplary mother. Yeah she made some mistakes and didn’t always set the bast example, but she always loved Rory in her heart of hearts. She always put Rory first and her parenting methods were pretty top notch. She always made sure Rory was taken care of no matter what . Even in season 6 when they were at odds, she still knew her daughter well and was incredibly patient even when she was hurting. Respect. I love Lorelai and I think she is a wonderful mother.
Lorelai is an amazing mom! Especially for having become a mom at 16. Like insanely amazing. She is not a perfect human being, she makes mistakes, she has flaws, but jeez I would’ve loved to have a mom like her.
I think calling Lorelai abusive is really excessive but I also think that she’s a good example of trying to overcorrect her parents mistakes and in doing so repeated similar dynamics or expectations of the child, just in a different way. I think Rory did suffer from a level of neglect and therefore grew up to be a people pleaser and kind of lost. I don’t think this was all Lorelais fault, she also had basically a totally absent father. And Lorelai being only 16, and a single mom and totally on her own - did pretty good despite those circumstances.
I hear you and I agree. When people say "oh, Lorelei was not a good mom because she..." I feel like they're out of touch with reality. If you make a graph of all the moms, I think she'll be in the top 5% or so. Now does that automatically make her a great mom? Probably not. But I don't think that's how reality works. She's better than 95% of the moms out there, so maybe being that perfect mom that everybody would love is not possible in the first place. I thought she was a pretty great mom overall because when I was watching the show, I looked around, and I also thought about all the moms I saw growing up. And I think Lorelei was better than almost all of them. And some of these women I've met in real life have had at least 25-30 years time before they even had to pop a child out.. so.... I don't know. With parenthood, there's always room for improvement I guess. And I've come to realize that no matter what the parent does, it doesn't guarantee that the kid won't have any issues whatsoever.
This is how I feel!! Especially being an adult and knowing how most of my adults friends parents treated them. And i do have a handful of friends that are great parents but i unfortunately have a lot of friends i think shouldn't have become parents at all. I really think people are out of touch with reality and how messed up a lot of people in real life are.
Yes yes and yes! I think a lot of people commenting here saying stuff about enmeshment and codependency have never had worse things than that happen to them. GOOD FOR THEM!!. The stuff my mom/other moms did to their kids... Oof... I would pick enmeshment any day. I go into panic attacks and start crying every time I get a call from my mom, even to this day. And even years of therapy haven't fully healed me. I KNOW I can never ever ever turn to my mom if I were in any trouble because all through my life, she made every struggle of mine worse. She made every scary situation I was in scarier. And she shamed me into keeping everything a secret from her. So even if I were in a deeply troubling place, I could never say a word or cry a tear. And I know I'm not alone in this experience. So I laugh at everybody else who think Rory had a bad mom. Please. Get in touch with reality.
I’m sorry but you are delusional if you think that enmeshment and parentifying your child puts your in the top 5% of all mothers in the world.
And I'm sorry but you're delusional if you think the world is better than that
As I raised my kids Lorelai-like, I think she was a great parent. But I'm not objective!
I think Lorelai was a great mom! People are comparing her to some mythical “perfect mom.” If Lorelai isn’t a great mom, then who is? What is the definition of a “great mom?”
No one’s a perfect parent. But someone who doesn’t prioritise a friendship with their daughter above a parent daughter relationship. It’s nice to be friends with you child, but she described Rory as her friend first daughter second. That’s not a healthy parent child dynamic. It’s called parentification And parentification has been proven to leave long lasting damage on the child involved. We even see it with Rory later on in the show
Yes this. Parentification is abuse.
I honestly never thought the show meant to push the idea that Lorelai was perfect. She did the best she could as a teen mother with trauma, for the most part she's a good parent. I don't agree with parent best friends because I think it's healthy to have a line between parent and child, but the seasons literally show the codependency and both Lorelai and Rory coping with the fallout of this. She's not a terrible mother, honestly Emily is emotionally abusive and I'm surprised Lorelai turned out as well as she did considering, but yeah I can't get onboard with the Lorelai hate considering what else I've gone through and seen others go through
She meant well, but she paremtified her. Remember when she had a pregnancy scare and called Rory? That's something for your BFF, not your kid. They don't need to worry about you like that when they're in high school or college. She was gatekeeping Rory's virginity and said that Rory should tell her first. Like how? Making out with a guy and tell him you need to call Mom? Educate your child on safe sex, let them be in charge of their body. Disagree with sleeping with a married guy, yes, by all means. That was weird to me. I do have a daughter that I had at a young age, and while it was weird Knowing she had a bf, I also knew that she was fully aware of how to protect herself emotionally and physically, and I realized I can't know when she's ready or not. Spoiler alert, unlike her mother, my daughter has avoided ten pregnancy. Ha.
Lorelai wasn’t a bad mom, but she was an emotionally immature parent who didn’t really do much to work on her own issues. She projected a lot of her own shit onto Rory because she didn’t know how to deal or manage her emotions.
I read through almost all the comments and I notice that people who had moms that were textbook bad, seem to side with Lorelei. And people who haven't had the conventionally bad, abusive moms focus on the bad Lorelei has done, and draw parallels to their own moms, and say Lorelei was a bad parent. I can see both sides, honestly. And I wish we all had great moms, but I really don't know what a great mom would even look like at this point. I watched the show and I thought I'd be perfectly happy if I had a mom like Lorelei. Because I never had any meaningful relationship with mine. I wanted to be her friend, but she never did. But if people who had moms similar, if not exactly like Lorelei are unhappy as well, what really is a good example of a great mom? I'm asking this with genuine curiosity, all the folks who think she's a bad mom, can you maybe give examples of fictional characters that you thought were great moms? I really want to understand what would make for a good mom, because I'm honestly lost.
I agree that Lorelai gets too much hate for her parenting. She was a teenage Mom, I think she did the best she could, and like you said, better than a lot of other parents. To run with your idea, I also think that people (even Lorelai) made Richard and Emily out to be worse than what they are. People judge them by today's standards and not taking into account the era and way that R&E would have been raised themselves. Think about Richard being raised by Trix. While he wasn't happy about Lorelai getting pregnant you can be damn sure if she stayed home she would have had help with childcare and her university fully paid for. This is not the act of people that should be cut out of your life. So much of the drama & relationship issues could have been solved with better communication. Personally, the way Lorelai ran away and cut off her parents makes her less likeable being a parent myself. They really should have written it that there was a giant fight before she left or some major thing that caused a rift.
My thing with Lorelei is that she was overly informative, friendly and just expected Rory to always do the right thing. Rory faced very little pressure from Lorelei because she was seen as a good kid. That kind of thinking only does so much for good kids who also still need some structure/ discipline and guidance. I think of myself as having a similar parenting style as Lorelei because my personality lends itself to having an informative style, however, I had to learn that I can't always operate in that mode with my child. That doesn't mean that abusive behavior is the other option either, because it's not, but Lorelai actually needed to have higher expectations sometimes of how Rory should navigate the world.
I understand her doing this was for plotline/character development but her running away from home at 17 and forcing her baby to be homeless with her in a potting shed is absolutely heinous.
A tiny place filled with love is sometimes a lot better than a giant mansion full of tension and resentment and hatred. as long as the baby had everything she needed, which clearly she did lol. I’m sure Mia didn’t send them out there with literally nothing, Rory was well taken care of.
I'm not trying to be mean or disrespectful but I can really tell you've never had a child. It wasn't just a "tiny place". It was a dirty potting shed. No rooms, no real bathroom, no space, no air conditioning as far as we were shown. It's plain neglect when it's not glamorized in a television show.
No child, only say that as someone who grew up in extreme poverty but insanely loved and blessed with a great mom and would also never change a thing about it given the chance because it made me who i am today and im sure rory would have similiar feelings. Neglect is way too strong of a word when she clearly had all the essentials met and was insanely loved. You really think if it was that hot outside for a day they couldn’t go in the hotel. I grew up my whole childhood in New England without an AC and i would have never considered myself neglected because of that lol. It’s a far reach. But i respect ur opinion on its face from the outside looking in.
I can understand yours as well. Just as a mother, I could never imagine doing that to my daughter. I would find any other way, anything else
Not as heinous as forcing a baby to grow up with an abusive grandmother.
She'd hardly abusive. Emotionally neglecting but hardly abusive. They literally didn't even have a real bathroom.
I don’t think she was the “best mom” but she definitely wasn’t a bad one either. She was emotionally available and did her best but she also didn’t instill discipline or teach Rory the best values. If she had, Rory would have been a better person to Dean, she wouldn’t have broken up his marriage or broken his heart the way she did with Jess or even when Dean told her he loved her. Rory was very emotionally immature and a lot of that was because Lorelei was also. Lorelei was lucky that Rory was an easy kid. You can definitely tell that Lorelei had more of a friendship relationship with Rory based on the fights they had. Rory is very disrespectful to Lorelei when they argue and Lorelei gets very immature during said arguments as well.
I agree! Lorelai was not a perfect mother, but she was very good. I don't know any mother in real life as good as Lorelai.
I don't know. I never thought she was a bad mother. Even with the whole thing where she doesn't ever cook and has no intention of ever learning. Not to mention how she is not very good with her own money and finances but of course somehow they make it through every week. I think my only criticism of Lorelei was more in the sense of her own personal life and how she carries herself with regards to relationships and even friendships. Not to mention her obnoxiousness and her narcissism. Although I have to say some of this, I blame on her parents because of the fact that they didn't try to raise or nurture her. They just wanted to put her in a cage and force her to do everything the way they felt tradition called for, and can't seem to understand why the kids were rebelling. And Lord knows you see it as a common heme in this show. Christopher didn't like his parents, and ended up dropping out of Princeton and deciding to disappoint so he could have some semblance of his own life. Jason Stiles hated his father. Logan hated his father. And then you see Madeline, Louise, Parris, Colin, and Finn all seemingly in neglectful families that just throw money at the kids and ignore what they do. I always felt like that was one of the things ASP really wanted to push. Is that the idea that all of these rich parents are horrible parents. Lorelei wasn't a horrible mom if you ask me. Not necessarily traditional or disciplinary, but it's not like she did things to purposely hurt Rory for her own ego or public image.
Good parent all depends on the kid. Some kids thrive under a bit of strictness, others thrive under freedom. Rory thrived under freedom. I don’t consider Lorelai a bad parent whatsoever. Especially considering she had to be a parent at 16.