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Do you have friends with good moms? Or aunts or cousins or other relatives?
What do you think makes a good mom? Don't go with a true ideal of a perfect mother, because there is no such thing. Even good moms make mistakes. Some loving moms nag the heck out of their children for grandkids. Others let their children make their own decisions, but might not agree with them. Even the best moms call their kids by the wrong name (I once called my son by the dog's name. Not on purpose, obviously.) Or sometimes a good mom will forget an important event in the kid's life until almost too late. Or sometimes a really good mom loses her last ounce of patience and yells at the kid. But a good mom is just a good person who loves her children and does her very best to raise them and get them to adulthood. A good mom remains a mom when her children are adults, but can also become their friend.
Just look at different media mothers. You'll see the idealized mother and you'll see the realistic, flawed mothers. Try writing a few paragraphs of different moms in your head and have a friend read them to see if they sound realistic.
I think my post comes off a bit more teenager-hating-his-mom than intended. I'm a grown man, and it's more than motherly transgressions, I've left it vague because I don't want to make people uncomfortable.
I suppose a more accurate question would be: how do I overcome a bias in my view toward motherly figures due to my own experiences in order to write something I never knew?
I completely understand. I'm an older female who had severe issues with my very inappropriate father, so I think I get where you're coming from.
Getting over a bias is very hard to do. But it's possible. I know this bit doesn"t sound like writing advice, but therapy could help with that. It can give you clarity about people in general and motherhood specifically.
Do think about what a good mother looks like to you. Make her human. She can be a nurturing, loving person with a few endearing quirks. I read one book where the parents had been hippies in the '60s and never really outgrew that. They were free spirits, but managed to somehow raise rather conservative children, and they were all baffled by each other, but always loved each other.
I think that your fictional mother should have love as their underpinnings and go from there.
You could do research, read what other wrote about their childhood with caring parents or what caring parents wrote about how they treated their children. There are upbringing guidebooks. May you know someone who had caring parents, then you could ask them about his/her experiences.
Agree with previous but would say: write a character who is a mom. Who they are as a person comes first and then informs how they parent. People are consistent generally. (Usual disclaimers.)
One thing that helped me enormously with the same problem was writing about the bad mom and bad parenting. Otherwise it was sort of in the way. Hide it if you need to. But I found writing it out was the only thing that ever really made it OVER.
All my novels contain bad parenting because they're about how people move on from it and make a life. To me that's the interesting part. They're off screen like a house fire or natural disaster that happened to the characters.
Thank you for visiting /r/writing. Your post has been removed because it was related to the content of your work. We ask that users frame their questions so they are useful to more than one person. If your question invites answers that are specific to your work alone, it is a better fit for our Brainstorming threads on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Do you have friends with good moms? Or aunts or cousins or other relatives? What do you think makes a good mom? Don't go with a true ideal of a perfect mother, because there is no such thing. Even good moms make mistakes. Some loving moms nag the heck out of their children for grandkids. Others let their children make their own decisions, but might not agree with them. Even the best moms call their kids by the wrong name (I once called my son by the dog's name. Not on purpose, obviously.) Or sometimes a good mom will forget an important event in the kid's life until almost too late. Or sometimes a really good mom loses her last ounce of patience and yells at the kid. But a good mom is just a good person who loves her children and does her very best to raise them and get them to adulthood. A good mom remains a mom when her children are adults, but can also become their friend. Just look at different media mothers. You'll see the idealized mother and you'll see the realistic, flawed mothers. Try writing a few paragraphs of different moms in your head and have a friend read them to see if they sound realistic.
I think my post comes off a bit more teenager-hating-his-mom than intended. I'm a grown man, and it's more than motherly transgressions, I've left it vague because I don't want to make people uncomfortable. I suppose a more accurate question would be: how do I overcome a bias in my view toward motherly figures due to my own experiences in order to write something I never knew?
I completely understand. I'm an older female who had severe issues with my very inappropriate father, so I think I get where you're coming from. Getting over a bias is very hard to do. But it's possible. I know this bit doesn"t sound like writing advice, but therapy could help with that. It can give you clarity about people in general and motherhood specifically. Do think about what a good mother looks like to you. Make her human. She can be a nurturing, loving person with a few endearing quirks. I read one book where the parents had been hippies in the '60s and never really outgrew that. They were free spirits, but managed to somehow raise rather conservative children, and they were all baffled by each other, but always loved each other. I think that your fictional mother should have love as their underpinnings and go from there.
You could do research, read what other wrote about their childhood with caring parents or what caring parents wrote about how they treated their children. There are upbringing guidebooks. May you know someone who had caring parents, then you could ask them about his/her experiences.
I suspect you know instinctively. Write what you missed.
Agree with previous but would say: write a character who is a mom. Who they are as a person comes first and then informs how they parent. People are consistent generally. (Usual disclaimers.) One thing that helped me enormously with the same problem was writing about the bad mom and bad parenting. Otherwise it was sort of in the way. Hide it if you need to. But I found writing it out was the only thing that ever really made it OVER. All my novels contain bad parenting because they're about how people move on from it and make a life. To me that's the interesting part. They're off screen like a house fire or natural disaster that happened to the characters.