For Mother’s Day, we’re celebrating all moms — and taking a second look at so-called “bad” mothers in classic television shows and movies.
Fictional mothers like Peg Bundy of “Married with Children,” Skylar White of “Breaking Bad” and Miranda Hillard of “Mrs. Doubtfire” are remembered as controversial, but their reputations deserve a closer look.
Mothers in film and television often don’t get to be complex characters, according to Felicia D. Henderson, an associate professor in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. “Mom” is their whole identity.
“The question is never, ‘Who is she as a human?’ with motherhood (as) one trait,” Henderson tells TODAY.com.
Henderson, writer and director of the film “The Rebel Girls,” points out that fictitious dad like sexist Al Bundy (“Married With Children”) and deceptive Daniel Hillard (“Mrs. Doubtfire”) are often remembered dearly.
“We rarely say men are terrible fathers when they, for example, work 80 hours a week, whereas the same mothers might be called ‘absent,’” points out Henderson. “The thinking is, if you are not a good mother, then what is your worth?”
Let’s give these seven underrated moms the justice they deserve — because we all need some understanding.
The Lazy Mom
With her bouffant and 1950s-style clothing, Peg Bundy of “Married With Children” looks like a Tradwife, but she’s no regular stay-at-home mom.
Peg (played by Katey Sagal) takes pride in her errant parenting style, refusing to cook, clean or take her children to the dentist. Instead, she watches television, eats bonbons and smokes cigarettes while Al works as a shoe salesman.
When Peg’s maternal instincts flicker, she models the art of stealing money, hogging the remote and hiding shopping purchases. Peg loves emasculating her husband Al with phrases like, “Kids, I think it’s time to thank your father for bringing home minimum wage.”
According to Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay, an associate professor of communications at Syracuse University, “Peg is a standalone bit of satire.”
“We can laugh at Peg while simultaneously seeing ourselves in her,” L’Pree, author of the upcoming book, “Diversity and Satire: Laughing at Processes of Marginalization,” tells TODAY.com. “She’s frustrated and aggravated, like many moms today … an anti-housewife” written for 1980s audiences that were used to happily traditional TV moms.
Henderson commends Peg’s freedom to prioritize her needs.
“Modern TV moms may not wear aprons and heels, but they’re still judged by how well they service the needs of their spouse and children,” she says.
While Sagal has said that “Married With Children” was “a very misogynistic show” and that the material was “not necessarily my belief system,” she knew it was onto something.
“To me, Peg Bundy is more feminist than not,” Sagal told “The Whoopi Goldberg Show” in 1993. “She does whatever she wants to do … she makes her own choices and her choice is to live the life she’s living which, she doesn’t want to do a lot. That’s as much a feminist choice as anything else.”
The Nag Mom
Skyler White of “Breaking Bad” is the wife of high school chemistry teacher Walter White, who starts secretly cooking and dealing methamphetamine to pay for his cancer treatments.
The mom eventually joins Walt’s cover-up to help him avoid jail and to protect their teenage son and newborn daughter, but their marriage crumbles under his lies and her infidelity.
Instead of viewing Skyler as a wife and mother put in a terrible position — no one wants a drug dealer-murderer for a husband — “Breaking Bad” fans called her “horrible,” “smug” and “annoying” on online message boards. Skyler was also slut-shamed for sleeping with her boss, in reaction to Walt refusing to sign divorce papers.
Anna Gunn (who played Skylar) addressed her “character issue” in a 2013 op-ed for the New York Times.
“Could it be that they can’t stand a woman who won’t suffer silently or ‘stand by her man?’” Gunn wrote. “That they despise her because she won’t back down or give up? Or because she is, in fact, Walter’s equal?”
Gunn noted that male characters don’t get punished in the same way and that disdain for Skyler had gotten personal.
“I finally realized that most people’s hatred of Skyler had little to do with me and a lot to do with their own perception of women and wives,” wrote Gunn. “Because Skyler didn’t conform to a comfortable ideal of the archetypical female, she had become a kind of Rorschach test for society, a measure of our attitudes toward gender.”
The Workaholic Mom
Miranda Hillard’s marriage in the film “Mrs. Doubtfire” ended during her son’s birthday party.
After coming home from work to children jumping on furniture, begonia-eating barnyard animals and a noise ordinance violation, Miranda, played by Sally Fields, explodes: “What the hell is going on around here?!”
“You have all the fun and I get whatever is left over,” she yells at husband Daniel (played by Robin Williams). “Why am I the only one that feels there has to be rules?”
The birthday party — and Daniel’s delusion that “I was going to have everything cleaned up before you got home” — would be any mother’s last straw. Miranda files for divorce and is awarded parental custody of their three children. Scared to lose time with his kids, Daniel impersonates a British housekeeper and nanny named Mrs. Doubtfire, who Miranda unknowingly hires.
Miranda and Daniel’s marital problems weren’t just about a birthday party (are they ever?).
“After a few years, everything just stopped being funny. I was working all the time and he was always between jobs,” Miranda later confides to Mrs. Doubtfire. “I hardly ever got to see the kids and on the nights I would try to get home early to be with them, something would go wrong — the house would be wrecked and I’d have to clean it up — he never knew, but so many nights, I just cried myself to sleep.”
Miranda is widely remembered as “uptight,” instead of a woman who lacked an honest and equal parenting partner. And can you blame her for being attracted to Pierce Brosnan’s character? The woman has eyes.
Viewed through the eyes of a hard-working mother, the movie’s protagonist looks a little different.
“What that film says is, ‘Even a man is a better mother than a woman who dares to want fulfillment,’” says Henderson.
The Strict Mom
Dr. Nalini Vishwakumar, played by Poorna Jagannathan on the Netflix series “Never Have I Ever” is the authoritarian Indian mother of a defiant teen named Devi. After the family moves to Los Angeles from India for a better life, their husband and father Mohan dies.
As they struggle privately with their pain, Nalini becomes more controlling and Devi more rebellious, leading to combustible arguments between the mother and daughter.
Nalini pressures Devi to get good grades, judges her friends, and won’t allow her to date “until she’s old enough to rent a car” or has “received an advanced degree of some sort”— but she is self-aware enough to realize it.
“I am tough on her, I am,” Nalini tells Devi’s therapist. “I know that. But it’s only because I am scared all the time.”
Nalini’s love and protection of Devi is obvious when she encourages her to attend an elite boarding school, despite her own fear of separation, and ends her first-ever mom friendship with a woman whose son treats Devi badly.
Like us, Nalini has mom guilt.
“I’m a terrible mother,” Nalini tells colleague Dr. Chris Jackson. “I work all the time. I haven’t raised my daughter properly. My daughter is acting out all the time and it’s getting worse … I do not know what to do because I truly do not understand her.”
Nalini needs the support of a mom group, but no one can say she doesn’t try to be a better parent.
The Cool Mom
To socialite Phyllis Nefler of “Troop Beverly Hills,” shopping is a sport, community service is “describing the fall fashion trends to the blind” and permed hair is the plot of campfire ghost stories.
Fed up with her superficiality, Phyllis’ husband Freddy (Craig T. Nelson) wants a divorce so he can date a younger woman.
“You had so much energy, you were so creative, I couldn’t wait to see what you’d do with it,” he yells at Phyllis (Shelly Long). “And see, now I know what you did with it — you went shopping!”
Outraged that Freddy has diminished her contributions to a life they built on mutual goals, Phyllis responds: “Hey, I went shopping, Buster, to furnish your perfect house, to build your perfect image, to be your perfect Beverly Hills wife!”
Phyllis decides to volunteer in leading her daughter Hannah’s Wilderness Girls troop and surprises everyone with her capabilities.
As Den Mother, Phyllis teaches the girls to stand up to bullies and embrace their natural talents with merit badges for shopping, sushi appreciation and the international affairs (“for teaching us how to launder money and crush a revolution”).
Phyllis is always unbothered, whether she’s taking heat from a rival troop leader, selling thousands of cookies or surviving a camp-out sans outlets.
Freddy only reconsiders his view of Phyllis after she’s demonstrated what he considers maternal instincts.
Phyllis never needed reconsideration — she was always good enough — and Freddy owed her more than a simple, “I love you, Wilderness Girl” to win her back.
The Mean Mom
Evelyn Wang (played Michelle Yeoh) in Netflix’s “Everything Everywhere, All At Once” is a Chinese American immigrant who is miserable: Her husband is serving divorce papers and her teen daughter is in a same-sex relationship that Evelyn won’t accept.
During an IRS audit of the family laundromat business, Evelyn learns a magical truth: That every decision she’s made in life has spun a parallel reality she can experience through dimension hopping. In each universe, an “Alpha” version of Evelyn encounters her daughter Joy’s alter-ego.
“With Evelyn, you have a demanding mom who came to the United States for the advancement of her daughter, who only wants to run around with a girl, instead of working at the laundromat,” says L’Pree. “The impetus of Evelyn is, ‘I have done everything for you and you don’t want it.’ It’s a common narrative among immigrants in general.”
L’Pree says the “Tiger Mom” cultural phenomenon is “usually framed as a villainous” antithesis of the American mom.
“In intergenerational and collectivistic cultures, the extended family unit is its own building block as opposed to a series of nuclear families,” explains L’Pree. “I wish the conversation was more about different parenting styles and how they work — or don’t work — for children.”
Actor Michelle Yeoh told NPR of the film, “I felt that this was such a perfect opportunity to give a voice to the very ordinary mothers and (housewives) who are out there, you know, doing the most mundane things and get so taken for granted. And then let her discover that, oh my God, she is a superhero.”
The Tough Mom
Cookie Lyons, played by Taraji P. Henson on “Empire,” is out for justice, after a 17-year prison sentence she accepted in part to protect her husband Lucious (the CEO of their music company), and their three sons.
Now that Cookie is released, she wants a piece of the business which wouldn’t exist with her labor.
“She’s a lot of things,” Henson told E! News in 2015 of her character. “She’s very complicated and complex.”
Indeed, Cookie is unapologetically bold and has a hot temper, but her protective nature shines through.
Henderson, a former consulting producer on “Empire,” notes that Cookie’s trajectory was likely driven by sacrifice.
“She made a decision (to cover for Lucious), which she may have believed was best for her children because they are boys who needed their father, particularly in the Black community, where there’s a big emphasis on Black fathers in the home,” says Henderson. “Following her trajectory, now ask yourself if she’s a ‘good’ mother?”