“I am a bad mother, but I’m learning to be good.”
This is the mantra that Frida and her fellow moms must recite as they enter a yearlong program that will determine the status of their parental rights. During a “very bad day” in which she leaves her daughter, Harriet, alone for two hours, Frida is reported by her neighbors and finds herself swept away from motherhood by a “new and improved,” hyper-surveillant Child Protective Services program. In order to have any chance of regaining custody of Harriet, Frida must prove to the State that she is a competent mother. How will she do that? By order of a court judge, she is now a patient at the newly-created School for Good Mothers.
Separation and Supervision
The first several pages of the book document the torturous inspections and state-supervised “visits” that Frida must undergo in the aftermath of her neglectful incident. Harriet is removed from her home and whisked away to stay with her ex-husband, Gust, and his perky, bubbly, wellness-oriented mistress, Susanna. Frida is then stripped of her personal privacy as cameras are installed in her bedroom to monitor her behavior for signs of anti-maternal tendencies. Additionally, she is forced to attend brief “play sessions” with Harriet that are sternly evaluated by a social worker. This process alone is difficult enough to read through. We quickly come to the conclusion that no matter what Frida does or how much she atones for her past parenting sins, the meddling surveillance state that CPC has become will always find faults in her parenting.
Our hearts ache for Frida as the judge and social worker responsible for determining her fate misconstrue the behaviors of her child, all of which are documented during the stressful state of a prolonged parent-child separation. How, I wondered, could this ice-cold social worker interpret Harriet’s signs of stress as “fear of her mother” or Frida’s panic as “dissociation from her child?” Unfortunately, we’ve entered a world where each and every interaction between mother and child is put under a microscope and one false step is a step too far. I am not a parent, but I noticed with a chill that this world is not unlike my own. Mothers have to get everything right.
Inside the Institution
The establishment where Frida is confined takes the sexist scrutiny of mothers that is rampant in Frida’s community and magnifies it by 1,000. Frida and the other patients (most of whom are there for indiscretions like spanking their child or letting a 12-year-old be a babysitter for a few hours) are stripped of their personal possessions and forced into parenting classes that cover various aspects of “proper” mothering: the type of language a mother should use with her child, also known as “motherese;” the specific ways in which a mother should soothe a child’s distress; how a mother should talk to her child about complex issues like racism and altruism.
Of course, there is no cut-and-dried formula for mastering such complex parenting practices and mistakes are inevitable. But never mind that—the State has specific qualifications to be met, and the mothers risk lowering their “prognosis” of getting their children back if they don’t measure up. Even more unsettling are the tools the mothers must use to practice their parenting in the absence of their real children..I won’t ruin it, but Artificial Intelligence is involved.
“The mothers speak softly. Conversation proceeds in fits and starts…There are long pauses, hesitations, retractions. They grow quiet and gaze off into the distance. Their eyes turn moist, the longing of these women enough to power a small town.”
85
Hypocrisy abounds. The instructors running the parenting classes are not mothers themselves. The rumored School for Good Fathers across the river has far fewer patients and far fewer rules. Frida is powerless to stop Susanna as she inflicts her own borderline abusive parenting practices on Harriet in Frida’s absence. Still, Frida is the one in trouble; Frida is the bad mother. That won’t change until she can demonstrate otherwise and meet the school’s impossibly high standards. She wonders whether the accusations that have landed the other mothers here are true or if “the true things were twisted and exaggerated until they sounded like a pathology.” It increasingly feels like the latter as the book goes on.
Finding Community in Confinement
The bonds and conflicts Frida experiences with the other patients at the school powerfully exemplify the types of socialization that happen under duress. In many ways, the school is like a microcosm of the society outside its walls—racial tensions fester; relationships bloom; alliances and rivalries are created and broken. At the same time, readers come face-to-face with a group of women whose thoughts, ideas, and behaviors are those of people forced to survive in highly unnatural conditions. The author does an amazing job of giving each of the mothers multiple layers—some good and some bad—while the government employees staffing the school are flat and unpalatable. In this way, readers are prompted to deeply empathize with the mothers’ suffering and root for them in their battles to get their children back.
“It’s a shame, she thinks, that no one has invented grafts or transplants. The school could have replaced the faulty parts of their characters with mother instincts, mother mind, mother heart.”
P. 311
Concluding Thoughts
To put it bluntly, reading The School for Good Mothers is painful. While the genre is dystopian fiction, it’s impossible to set aside the sinking feeling that the spying neighbors, militant social workers, and belittling “school instructors” who victimize Frida throughout the book are almost part of our own reality. In a world where mothers’ smallest mistakes—and women’s smallest mistakes—are judged harshly by their families, friends, and communities, we must remain vigilant about protecting women’s and families’ rights to privacy and liberty. Not everything can be systematically “diagnosed, treated, and cured”—especially not a mother’s love.
