AMEN to your whole post. I'm so tired of everyone ragging on Betty for being a bad mother. It's just boring at this point. She doesn't find fulfillment in motherhood, and that's a really important point for the show to make. I *like* seeing Betty angry and frustrated over her situation, it rings really true to me. I never want the show to make her nicer or more palatable to the audience. She's fantastic as is.
I agree, I think Betty's extremely realistic and fantastic as the way she is and they shouldn't change that. I think her story is one of the most important on the show, and I'm glad that Weiner is still telling it.
I'm so far behind when it comes to Mad Men, that it's not even funny, but yeah, bad mother = bad person is a horrible trope.
I get why the characters act like that, since it fits perfectly into the time frame. But the viewers? They should know better.
You're right, Betty seems like a person who probably would have been better off not having children, but didn't even know she had that possibility. She just seems overwhelmed, that whole comment about being outnumbered is just so sad, because it shows that raising her kids under those circumstances feels more like a battle than anything else to her.
Yeah, one thing that annoys me about the viewers is that they don't take the time out to try and understand her character and why she is the way she is. And yet at the same time, they continue to make excuses for Don. I don't understand it.
A big YES to this whole post, pretty much. I could go on for days about the tragedy of Betty and Don (but mostly Betty), and how both of them thought they were marrying an ideal instead of an actual person, etc etc.
At the end of the day - the tragedy of Betty is that she simply was not meant to be a mother.
Indeed; I made this exact point yesterday in a different Betty-love post. Of course she's a terrible mother, she clearly doesn't like children at all and does the best she can. And there are also times when she's a kickass mom, like the pigeon-shooting incident in S1 - yes, it was symbolic of much more than that, but to her kids, they see their mom sticking it to the guy who threatened their dog. Awesome.
I still think that society views women who don't want children to be unnatural or unwomanly... Much agreement here too, the number of time I've been told I'll change my mind on the issue of kids is eyeroll-worthy.
The pigeon-shooting scene! I loved that. It was so iconic.
I think she does love and care for her kids, but at the same time, she still finds her role as a mother deeply fulfilling and it's not enough. I actually think that if Don were a better husband and more attentive father she would have found motherhood much easier, because he's good with them when he tries. As it was, he was barely around, which made the burden so much heavier and made her so much more unhappier.
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I get why the characters act like that, since it fits perfectly into the time frame. But the viewers? They should know better.
You're right, Betty seems like a person who probably would have been better off not having children, but didn't even know she had that possibility.
She just seems overwhelmed, that whole comment about being outnumbered is just so sad, because it shows that raising her kids under those circumstances feels more like a battle than anything else to her.
Reply
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At the end of the day - the tragedy of Betty is that she simply was not meant to be a mother.
Indeed; I made this exact point yesterday in a different Betty-love post. Of course she's a terrible mother, she clearly doesn't like children at all and does the best she can. And there are also times when she's a kickass mom, like the pigeon-shooting incident in S1 - yes, it was symbolic of much more than that, but to her kids, they see their mom sticking it to the guy who threatened their dog. Awesome.
I still think that society views women who don't want children to be unnatural or unwomanly... Much agreement here too, the number of time I've been told I'll change my mind on the issue of kids is eyeroll-worthy.
Reply
I think she does love and care for her kids, but at the same time, she still finds her role as a mother deeply fulfilling and it's not enough. I actually think that if Don were a better husband and more attentive father she would have found motherhood much easier, because he's good with them when he tries. As it was, he was barely around, which made the burden so much heavier and made her so much more unhappier.
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