How well I remember a time when one of my greatest concerns was to make sure neither of my sons (then about ages one and three) grew up to be anything like George Bush (junior). Or his dad. I can't help but wonder, watching the continuing drama of the bullying, predatory Harvey Weinstein, whether his mother could possibly have influenced him to be a decent person.
Am I blaming her? How could I, when I think of Roy Cohn's desperate mother keeping on a piano teacher (a colleague of my dad's) in order to know, for a single hour, the location of her wayward son.
It is a curious oddity of life that women have so little agency--are so often prey to men of power, money, and influence--but that mothers have the power of life or death. If your kid is born a basically decent human being, his loving mother makes him a wonderful person. If he's a high-forceps delivery, or weirdly hateful from birth, what's a mom to do?
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the Weinstein home. But I wasn't, and all I know is that Madame Weinstein lived to be 90, and seems to have been thrilled when her sons, Harvey and Bob (yes, the son whose kicking his bro out of the company) named Miramax after her and her deceased husband, Max. Did she love Harvey? Did she intrude into every bit of his life, make inappropriate erotic advances, beat him up? Think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's horrorshow of a mom, doing everything in her considerable power to destroy any happiness he and Eleanor may have had. But FDR didn't become anything like Weinstein--or Trump.
An old New York magazine article quotes Weinstein as follows:
Of course, they always ask me about my mother, Miriam. And the trick
about Miriam is, my brother and I love her. She was widowed maybe 30, 40
years ago, so we grew up, you know, with Mom. She was incredibly
supportive and tough on the both of us. She’s still, you know, the one
person you, we have to toe the line with, you know.
So she was tough. Too tough? Who knows.
My sons are well on their merry ways to being very different indeed from anyone in the Bush family.
Thank goodness. I'll take credit for that. Even if credit is due only to a favorable constellation of genes.
I just read a piece in the New Yorker about a guy outed after the whole Charlottesville "situation". Normal, kind parents and siblings, married to a Jewish lady. My son is 16 and he is in what some people call a "bad phase" and is a Republican as well. I worry that people look at him and assume that he is a reflection of me and how my husband and I have raised him. If it wasn't for his lovely, normal sister, I would wonder this as well. I hope that it is just a phase of oppositional defiance but who knows? He knows we love him, and he loves us in return but he also knows I don't really like him that much right now.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure, though, that if something bad happens in the future, everyone will judge me and find me wanting.
How well I know that feeling! Sometimes, as a mom, you feel you just can't win. Thanks for writing, and reading, my blog.
ReplyDeleteI think all parents know we are not, ultimately, responsible for what our kids do and the opinions they hold. We can only love them and raise them by whatever moral code we think is best. Many of the obnoxious things they do as teens are to shove in our face whatever our values are, all the better to rebel and become their own people.
ReplyDeleteThis essay, though, deserves a bigger audience. You need to start sending these things to American journals, like Salon, Slate, The Atlantic.com, The Rumpus, ROAR, and on and on. Huff Post likes bloggers and you have the props to become one of their guest bloggers. Google how to do that. The net should enlarge your reach, not confine it.