But, Mommy, I *like* comics.
Now, most comic moms are dead or crazy. Some aren't.
When Fangirls Attack did a Mama-thon a couple days ago for Mother's Day, best or most interesting moms in comics, and guess who got mentioned?
Stephanie Brown, aka Spoiler and Robin IV, and Martha Wayne, mother of Batman I, Bruce Wayne. Steph is http://kalinara.blogspot.com/2006/05/mama-thon.html and Martha -- from the Rucka trade Death and the Maidens -- is http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/05/mothers-day-with-martha-wayne.html
Cut for Steph-blabber, since I've never read Death and the Maidens and have no real opinion re: Martha but tons of love for Steph. Read the scans, then come back here.
A lot of people really wouldn't look at Steph and think "good mommy". I mean, teenage vigilante who puts her kid up for adoption and doesn't even know its gender?
Except that vigilante families tend not to do so well. And aside from being a vigilante herself, Steph is also the only child of a C-list Gotham supervillain. I doubt Grampa would be a great influence on the tot.
Steph knew she'd made a mistake by letting herself get pregnant in high school. But she wasn't willing to have an abortion, and keeping the kid wouldn't really work all that well. Spoiler took a year leave from the cape life to bear the child, and if she'd kept it might never have been able to come back. And on the civilian side, I repeat -- high school. At the time of her pregnancy, she was fifteen and unable to hold a job in most places, and the places that would have hired her would probably have fired her once the baby started showing. Her mom also had substance abuse problems and they didn't have a ton of cash.
Steph didn't think of a child as a pet, something a kid could take care of easily. She was mature enough to realize the huge responsibility involved in caring for a child. Nor was she okay with, as she put it, 'selling' her baby. It wasn't that Steph didn't want to keep the kid, it was that she couldn't, and she knew it.
So. Let's recap, shall we? Steph wants the kid, wants what's best for the kid, knows that at this point in her life she wouldn't be able to keep it and have that be the best thing for the baby.
So she gives it up. She's being unselfish, and that's what motherhood should be: to take this creature, flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone, this individual person that has been growing inside you and has been nurtured by everything you did for those nine months of gestation, and to bear it, and to love it... and let it go, if that's what has to be done.
ETA: Rabican informed me below that as she was dying, Steph didn't think of her own parents, or her boyfriend, or herself: she extracted a promise from Batman to look after the child she had given up years ago. Even on her deathbed, she was trying to protect the baby she'd never seen.
Happy Mother's Day, Stephanie.
P.S. The baby was a girl.
Also, to spread the Steph love: http://evenrobins.net/ (The redhead is pre-Crisis I Jason Todd, the black-haired boy in scaly panties is post-crisis I Jason Todd, the blond girl is Stephanie Brown, the short black-haired boy in red is toon!Tim Drake from Batman: the Animated Series, and the black-haired boy in the jacket leaning on Tim's shoulder is post-crisis I post-resurrection Jason Todd) and http://robin.oscillating.net/spoiler/ and http://derryderrydown.livejournal.com/585962.html
When Fangirls Attack did a Mama-thon a couple days ago for Mother's Day, best or most interesting moms in comics, and guess who got mentioned?
Stephanie Brown, aka Spoiler and Robin IV, and Martha Wayne, mother of Batman I, Bruce Wayne. Steph is http://kalinara.blogspot.com/2006/05/mama-thon.html and Martha -- from the Rucka trade Death and the Maidens -- is http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/05/mothers-day-with-martha-wayne.html
Cut for Steph-blabber, since I've never read Death and the Maidens and have no real opinion re: Martha but tons of love for Steph. Read the scans, then come back here.
A lot of people really wouldn't look at Steph and think "good mommy". I mean, teenage vigilante who puts her kid up for adoption and doesn't even know its gender?
Except that vigilante families tend not to do so well. And aside from being a vigilante herself, Steph is also the only child of a C-list Gotham supervillain. I doubt Grampa would be a great influence on the tot.
Steph knew she'd made a mistake by letting herself get pregnant in high school. But she wasn't willing to have an abortion, and keeping the kid wouldn't really work all that well. Spoiler took a year leave from the cape life to bear the child, and if she'd kept it might never have been able to come back. And on the civilian side, I repeat -- high school. At the time of her pregnancy, she was fifteen and unable to hold a job in most places, and the places that would have hired her would probably have fired her once the baby started showing. Her mom also had substance abuse problems and they didn't have a ton of cash.
Steph didn't think of a child as a pet, something a kid could take care of easily. She was mature enough to realize the huge responsibility involved in caring for a child. Nor was she okay with, as she put it, 'selling' her baby. It wasn't that Steph didn't want to keep the kid, it was that she couldn't, and she knew it.
So. Let's recap, shall we? Steph wants the kid, wants what's best for the kid, knows that at this point in her life she wouldn't be able to keep it and have that be the best thing for the baby.
So she gives it up. She's being unselfish, and that's what motherhood should be: to take this creature, flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone, this individual person that has been growing inside you and has been nurtured by everything you did for those nine months of gestation, and to bear it, and to love it... and let it go, if that's what has to be done.
ETA: Rabican informed me below that as she was dying, Steph didn't think of her own parents, or her boyfriend, or herself: she extracted a promise from Batman to look after the child she had given up years ago. Even on her deathbed, she was trying to protect the baby she'd never seen.
Happy Mother's Day, Stephanie.
P.S. The baby was a girl.
Also, to spread the Steph love: http://evenrobins.net/ (The redhead is pre-Crisis I Jason Todd, the black-haired boy in scaly panties is post-crisis I Jason Todd, the blond girl is Stephanie Brown, the short black-haired boy in red is toon!Tim Drake from Batman: the Animated Series, and the black-haired boy in the jacket leaning on Tim's shoulder is post-crisis I post-resurrection Jason Todd) and http://robin.oscillating.net/spoiler/ and http://derryderrydown.livejournal.com/585962.html