Bad Mother Quotes

“Toxic mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.” – Marguerite Duras

“Toxic mothers plant seeds of guilt, low self-esteem, and low self-worth into their daughters which further manifests when those daughters get into their own relationships making them extremely needy or even toxic just like their own moms.” – Anonymous

“Most toxic mothers are not necessarily bad mothers. It’s just that their toxic behaviour blinds them of the reality and effects their toxic behaviour has on their children.” – Samuel Zulu

“If all toxic moms understood the difference between healthy motherly love and toxic destructive love, they wouldn’t be toxic in the first place.” – Samuel Zulu

“Toxic mothers are toxic because of deep underlying issues in their lives such as a rough childhood, physical and emotional abuse which occurred in their early childhood.” – Samuel Zulu

“Narcissist mothers teach their daughters that love is not unconditional, that it is given only when they behave by maternal expectations and whims.” – Dr. McBride

“For toxic mothers out there, just know that your toxic and abusive behaviour will one day backfire when the children you are mistreating grow up and become adults.” – Samuel Zulu

“Toxic mothers are some of the most insecure people in this world which is why they demand constant attention for themselves to feel secure and find solace.” – Samuel Zulu

“Your mother may be toxic or verbally and emotionally abusive towards you but you need to still love, honour, and thank her for the gift of life she gave you not because she deserves your love but because you love, value yourself, and know that your self-worth and value isn’t dependent on anyone, including your allegedly toxic mom.” – Anonymous

“Daughters often get their toxic behaviour from their toxic mothers which they later import into their own relationships in future.” – Anonymous

“Toxic mothers become defensive when you confront them about their toxic behaviour as a way of avoiding shame and embarrassment in front of their children.” – Samuel Zulu

“Sometimes, loving your toxic mom and sending her sweet love letters reminding her that you will always be her dear child and always love her no matter what from a distance can be the best revenge to help your toxic mom come to her senses.” – Anonymous

“All toxic mothers are more dangerous than absent fathers due to their contagious toxic energy which poisons your soul.” – Anonymous

“I will take everything negative about my mother and flip it in my life. I will create a welcoming and warm home life. I will express love and encourage others daily; I will extend myself to those in need and I will remember a life well-lived is the best revenge.” – Rayne Wolfe

“Healthy moms are a delight to their children but toxic moms are a source of grief to their own children.” – Samuel Zulu

“My toxic mother can only intimidate me if I let her. While she’s busy trying to bully the child I, the adult I can reject her, ignore her or report her to authorities.” – Rayne Wolf

“Toxic mothers need not be toxic to their own children if they want their children to revenge in the future when they become adults.” – Samuel Zulu

“You don’t have to feel guilty if you have to distance yourself for a while from your toxic mom if she becomes too toxic to be around her in peace without causing any drama.” – Anonymous

“Boys and girls of narcissistic mothers both have to deal with a deficit of maternal nurturing that their upbringing lacked.” – Mark Banschick

“If only you could take away your toxic behaviour which is sabotaging our relationship, you would be my best and favourite mom in the world.” – Samuel Zulu

“Very often, toxic moms will abandon their own children and find meaningless excuses to justify their deeds as to why they are not able to be there for their children.” – Anonymous

“Sometimes, all it takes is a simple act of unconditional love and kindness on your part to eradicate all the toxic behaviour your toxic mother has.” – Samuel Zulu

“Toxic mothers have this type of toxic manipulative love which is controlling and possessive in nature and never allows you to be yourself or express your true individuality.” – Anonymous

“Just as an apple can’t fall far from its parent tree, toxic love and drama are always close by where toxic moms are around.” – Samuel Zulu

“If toxic mothers clearly understood how their actions affect their children’s growth negatively, they wouldn’t be toxic in the first place.” – Samuel Zulu

“Sadly, most toxic mothers don’t even know that the unhealthy behaviour they display to their children is toxic in the first place.” – Samuel Zulu

“To influence your toxic mother positively and to bring some sense into her, always respond to her with godly love, compassion, and understanding which surpasses all human understanding and avoid bitter confrontations with her.” – Samuel Zulu

“You can’t change your stubborn toxic mom but you can always influence her with your positive energy, unconditional love, compassion, and understanding at a distance if needed.” – Anonymous

“Never hate your toxic mother. Only hate her toxic behaviour.” – Samuel Zulu

“Toxic moms are immature emotionally which is why they behave the way they do. So, don’t mind their toxic behaviour and concentrate on living your best life and don’t let their drama affect the quality of your livelihood.” – Anonymous

“Unconditional love is the best weapon you can ever have in your arsenal to defeat the toxic behavior and resentment your toxic mother has against you for no apparent reason.” – Anonymous

“You may use the no contact rule to get some space from your toxic mom for a while but don’t cut her off completely out of your life as she is still your biological mom who endured for nine months carrying you in her womb different from your friends whom you can just throw by the wayside if they become toxic.” – Samuel Zulu

“Your kindness and unconditional love can change your toxic mother if you stop trying to change her which is her responsibility and not yours.” – Samuel Zulu

“You can’t blame your mother for being toxic. All you can do is to help her understand that you are still her precious biological child and will love her no matter what by your Godly character and positivity.” – Samuel Zulu

“It’s not your fault that your mom is toxic as it isn’t your job to raise your mom because she is already an adult responsible for her own life choices just as you are responsible for your own.” – Anonymous

“Sometimes, unconditional love from you which you were never given by your abusive and toxic mom is all that your toxic mom may need to help her realize where she came up short.” – Anonymous

“I will give my toxic mother one thing she never gave me—the truth.” – Rayne Wolfe

“Love your toxic mother unconditionally with all your heart and give her the respect she deserves as your mother but don’t let her drama affect your happiness.” – Samuel Zulu

“Unconditional love is the best gift you can give your toxic mother which will make her come to her senses someday if you put her in prayers and not give up on her.” – Samuel Zulu

“Toxic moms are self-absorbed parents which is why they are controlling and possessive in the first place to their children.” – Samuel Zulu

“Victimization is a common tactic toxic mothers use to victimize their children to make them submissive to their controlling tyrannical rule.” – Samuel Zulu

“What all toxic and abusive moms don’t understand is that there is a big difference between love and possessiveness. If they did, they wouldn’t be controlling, manipulative and abusive towards their children in any form.” – Anonymous

“If a toxic mom claims to love you, kindly remind her that there is a big difference between real love and abuse or control disguised as love and that real love doesn’t hurt nor is it abusive.” – Anonymous

“With toxic mothers, it’s all about control and manipulation.” – Anonymous

“Toxic and narcissistic mothers are never appreciated by their own children and constantly compare their children to their neighbours.” – Samuel Zulu

“Toxic mothers will often play favorites with their children in that they will love other children more than you if you don’t conform to their wishes.” – Anonymous

“Toxic mothers don’t understand the importance of motherly love for their children which is why they can emotionally abuse their children without having second thoughts about the effect their toxic abusive behaviour has on the welfare of their children.” – Samuel Zulu

“Being surrounded by toxic mothers can be the loneliest moments in your life as a child due to a lack of connection and bonding between mother and child.” – Anonymous

“When it comes to toxic mothers, you are always wrong and they are always right.” – Samuel Zulu

“Divide and conquer is a common tactic toxic moms use to destroy their own family bonds and relationships especially those between them and their own children.” – Anonymous

“Just as a bad or corrupt tree that can’t produce good fruits, you can’t expect to be loved, valued and cherished by toxic mothers corrupted by their own toxicity from within.” – Anonymous

“All toxic mothers are energy vampires in the making who will bleed you dry if you let their toxic behavior go unchecked which is sad indeed.” – Anonymous

“Toxic moms pollute and contaminate everything good around them. So be careful when you are in their presence so that you don’t get contaminated as well.” – Anonymous

“Unhealthy and toxic moms discourage their children from fully expressing their unique selves which is why most daughters raised by toxic moms have low self-esteem and self-worth.” – Samuel Zulu

“The influence all toxic and emotionally abusive mothers have on their children is negative which just tarnishes the image their children will have about them in future when they grow up into adults and start living on their own.” – Anonymous

“There are no shortages of drama in the house if toxic mothers are present.” – Anonymous

“The difference between a healthy and toxic mother is that the former allows her children to freely express themselves without judgement while the latter won’t allow her children to freely express themselves without being judged harshly.” – Samuel Zulu

“When I was with my mother, I sometimes thought of myself as a trophy, something to be flaunted before friends. When out of public view, I sat on the shelf ignored and forgotten.” – Joan Frances

“Just good mothers produce good and strong daughters with high self-esteem and self-worth, toxic and abusive moms produce toxic daughters with low self-image, worth, self-esteem and drama which they later import into their own future relationships.” – Anonymous

“Toxic mothers are image-oriented rather than love-oriented.” – Sherrie Campbell

“The adult son who still lives under the influence of a controlling mother will continue to show a strong emotional restraint which in many cases can lead to different psychological disorders.” – Anonymous

“A controlling mother always creates insecure attachment. In a relationship where the male child has not been validated emotionally, very often, he can show aggressive or hostile behavior.” – Anonymous

“He disguises the pain and reacts in the only way men are allowed. Thus, in a world where man is still being equated with the ideas of freedom or independence, it is not easy to accept the onerous demands of a controlling, narcissistic and manipulative mother.” – Anonymous

“I will participate in a mother-daughter relationship only if it’s positive.” – Rayne Wolfe

“Toxic and abusive moms are indifferent to your feelings and have no regard for your feelings at all even though you are a son or daughter to them.” – Anonymous

“With toxic mothers, come toxic daughters who later become toxic wives to their future husbands due to the toxic behaviour they inherited from their own toxic moms.” – Samuel Zulu

“Even if your toxic mother neglects and forsakes you, don’t despair as you have a perfect father in heaven who can’t leave nor forsake you.” – Samuel Zulu

“Don’t hate your toxic mother. Yes, she may be toxic but she is still the only mom on this earth who had the right genes to have you. So respect your mother, toxic or not, which will attract blessings in your life.” – Samuel Zulu

“A toxic mother talks but never listens, and she gives advice but never takes any.” – Sherrie Campbell

“If toxic mothers are not getting the attention they crave from their children, they experience their children as inconveniences who stand in their way of doing what they want to do for themselves.” – Sherrie Campbell

“She had known it was bad, call it a mother’s instinct, but she’d known this was the knock that was going to scoop her insides out and leave her barely able to stand; merely a shell with nothing good inside anymore.” — Andrew Barrett

“I remember the bad times as a succession of painful emotional snapshots: Me walking into the library at Sussex, seeing my mother in tears, and hearing her talk about leaving while my father stood facing her, stern and ashen.” — Justin Trudeau

“I like cooking but I don’t know much and whenever I enter the kitchen, my mother sends me out! Because whenever I try a dish from a book, it comes out bad.” — Soundarya

“Her mother’s quiet disapproval and withdrawal was a death in itself, and Franckline’s despair at it was transmitted, she was sure of it, to the child. She transgressed twice, first by making the child, then by giving it her despair, the despair that left it unable to live.” — Pamela Erens

“Bad moments don’t make bad mamas”. — Lysa Terkeurst

“There is no such thing as a perfect parent, so just be a real one”. — Sue Atkins

“If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am, in fact, a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.” — Ayelet Waldman

“More than any other personality trait, my mother seemed to be ruled by anger and sadness. She seemed to hate being a mother. Watching her unhappiness as I grew up made me conclude that the answer was to try and be as unemotional as I could, which many therapists have taught me is a bad idea. It also made me want to avoid marriage and having children.” — Merrill Markoe

“I don’t yell back at my mother. When I’m angry or scared or upset, I don’t yell. I stay quiet. I’ve seen how she is, how she would get with Kent and with me and with other people, like if someone at the pharmacy got in the wrong line or asked too long a question, or if someone on the bus accidentally bumped her. I’ve watched her my whole life, the way people react to her. It doesn’t actually help you get what you want, yelling and being like that. It only makes people think bad of you.” — Sara Zarr

“I make a bad mom, but I can pull off a crazy aunt.” — Ilona Andrews

“I work too much to be an appropriate parent. I feel like a bad mom to my dog some days because I’m just not here enough. I just feel like I would do a bad job if I took the time to literally give birth to a kid right now and try and juggle everything I’m doing.” — Rachael Ray

“I work too hard; I’d be a really bad mom, unfortunately. I can’t even keep a plant!” — Maria Ressa

“And that’s the insult of it — how always, it comes back to a woman being a ‘good’ mother in the world’s eyes or a ‘bad’ mother, how everything in a woman’s life is funneled through her body between her legs.” — Joyce Carol Oates

“You’re always going to wonder if you’re doing things wrong, but that’s what it means to be a mom. To care so much about someone else that you just want to be as perfect as possible.” — Naya Rivera

“Repeat after me: ‘I am not a bad mom! I am a good mom having a bad day.’”

“Good mothers make all kinds of choices. Making a decision that might sound selfish does not make a woman a bad mother.” — Jada Pinkett Smith

“I don’t beat myself up anymore about going to work. It doesn’t mean I’m being a bad mother just because I want to go and do my job sometimes.” — Kate Winslet

“I hope my work ethic and positive outlook can be a testimony to other working mothers who may doubt their ability to be a career woman and a great mom. You can accomplish both.” — Gwen Darby

“Every single second of every single day… I don’t know if I feel like a bad mom, but at the end of the day, I’m always plagued with, ’Did I do enough? Should I go in a different direction?’” — Sandra Bullock

“Stay-at-home moms feel guilty because they’re not doing enough… Working moms feel guilty because they’re not doing enough… Let go of the guilt. You are enough.” — Amy

“I’m not a good mom; I’m not a bad mom. I’m the mom I am, and I try very hard, and when I fail, that’s okay.” — Kristen Bell

“One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are bad mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.” — Ayelet Waldman

“Social expectations about what constitutes a good or a bad mother haunt every decision, and the rise of the parental advice industry ensures that moms and dads feel inadequate at every turn.” — Jessica Valenti

“Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.” — Sheryl Sandberg

“Admitting that this job isn’t always easy doesn’t make somebody a bad mother. At least, it shouldn’t. We’re all on this ride together. We are not the first ones to ever accidentally tell our children to shut up or wonder — just for a moment — what it would be like if we’d never had children. We aren’t the first mothers to feel overwhelmed and challenged and not entirely fulfilled by motherhood. And we certainly won’t be the last. Nothing can be lost by admitting our weaknesses and imperfections to one another. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We will be better mothers, better wives, and better women if we are able to finally drop the act and get real. Who are we pretending for, anyway?” — Jill Smokler

“Instead of treating your child like how you were treated. Treat them with the same love and attention you wanted from your parents while growing up.” ― Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Neglected But Undefeated: The Life Of A Boy Who Never Knew A Mother’s Love.

“I wish you would moderate that fondness you have for your children.” — Mary Wortley Montagu

“Relationships are built on small, consistent deposits of time…If you want to connect with your kids, you’ve got to be available consistently, not randomly.” — Andy Stanley

“Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.” — Lois McMaster Bujold

“She shrieked and shrieked for her mother, but her mother was already there. Her mother was the monster.” — Holly Black

“Dysfunctional parents let their children know how burdened they have been by their children and how many sacrifices they had to make in order to raise them.” — Dr Marita Sirota

“Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other – on the contrary, they breed and reinforce each other.” — Haim G. Ginott

“The toxic parent sees the child as a threat to their own ego and having the child overshadow the parent is not an option in their mind.” — Shannon Thomas

“It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.” — Anne Lamott

“It’s amazing how people can change behind closed doors.” — Susan Forward.

“I make a bad mom, but I can pull off a crazy aunt.” — Ilona Andrews

“I work too hard; I’d be a really bad mom, unfortunately. I can’t even keep a plant!” — Maria Ressa

“Repeat after me: ‘I am not a bad mom! I am a good mom having a bad day.’”

“Good mothers make all kinds of choices. Making a decision that might sound selfish does not make a woman a bad mother.” — Jada Pinkett Smith

“I don’t beat myself up anymore about going to work. It doesn’t mean I’m being a bad mother just because I want to go and do my job sometimes.” — Kate Winslet

“I hope my work ethic and positive outlook can be a testimony to other working mothers who may doubt their ability to be a career woman and a great mom. You can accomplish both.” — Gwen Darby

“Stay-at-home moms feel guilty because they’re not doing enough… Working moms feel guilty because they’re not doing enough… Let go of the guilt. You are enough.” — Amy @ The Savvy Sparrow

“I’m not a good mom; I’m not a bad mom. I’m the mom I am, and I try very hard, and when I fail, that’s okay.” — Kristen Bell

One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

Ayelet Waldman
Aborting my baby is the most serious of the many maternal crimes I tally in my head when I am at my lowest, when the Bad Mother label seems to fit best. Rocketship was my baby. And I killed him.

Ayelet Waldman
a bride who is bullied by her mother-in-law will herself become a bad mother-in-law.

Sin-Itiro Tomonaga
Good mothers make all kinds of choices. Making a decision that might sound selfish does not make a woman a bad mother.

Jada Pinkett Smith
In reality the world is as full of bad mothers as it is of bad fathers, and it is not the motherless children who become delinquent but the fatherless ones.

Louis de Bernieres
If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

Ayelet Waldman
And that’s the insult of it, how always it comes back to a woman being a “good” mother in the world’s eyes or a “bad” mother, how everything in a woman’s life is funneled through her body between her legs.

Joyce Carol Oates
I think that, when you play a mother, whether you play a bad mother or a not so great mother or an amazing mother, being a mother is already so complicated. It’s already three-dimensional, automatically, no matter what the role is, because you’re playing a mother.

Eva Mendes

The ‘good’ mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the ‘bad’ mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good.

Rachel Cusk
Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

Sheryl Sandberg
It used to be the one or the other, right? You were the bad girl or the good girl or the bad mother or the good mother, the horrible businesswoman who eschewed her children or the earth mother who was happy to be at home baking pies, all of that stuff that we sort of knew was a lie.

Annette Bening
A bad memory is the mother of invention.

Gerald Brenan
It can’t be bad having a mother who is fulfilled by her work.

Janine di Giovanni
No matter how successful I got, my mother still thinks I’m a bad person, basically.

Jim Jefferies
On a good day, my style is librarian chic. On a bad day, it’s frumpy mother.

Cassandra Page
Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has had a deceitful mother.

Henrik Ibsen

I’ve got my mother’s acceptance of things and my dad’s drive – not such a bad combination.

Kiki Dee
I’ve just had some bad news. Tomorrow is the mother in law’s funeral. And she’s cancelled it.

Les Dawson
My mother thought Hollywood was a den of iniquity, and people came to terrible bad ends there.

Kitty Carlisle
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?

Betty Smith
As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.

Malcolm X
I didn’t grow up with a mother telling me what was under my clothes was bad or evil.

Charlize Theron
I feel bad that I never discussed my mother’s life and times as a career woman with her.

Geraldine Stutz
My mother taught me that the universe guides, teaches, and offers up gifts… even when bad things happen.

John Wozniak

Sometimes when daughters have a bad-girl mother, they rebel and become good girls. They are constantly embarrassed by me!

Ellen Sussman
My mother would beat me so bad, I wouldn’t be able to sit down. And I would never snitch.

DMX
I think of Oprah as a Mother Joseph wannabe, a daytime oracle rewarding the good and punishing the bad.

Margaret Carlson
I couldn’t be as charming as my mother or as smart as my father. So I decided to be bad.

Markie Post
An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

Benjamin Disraeli
As a calf follows its mother among a thousand cows, so the (good or bad) deeds of a man follow him.

Chanakya
I’ve written something like 17 novels, which isn’t bad, I suppose, but my father wrote 120 books, my mother 40. In comparison, I’m lazy.

Deborah Moggach
My mother once told me that no women is naked when she comes equipped with a bad mood and a steady glare.

Mira Grant

It doesn’t work if the bad guys kill his mother’s uncle’s friend’s neighbor’s pet dog. You’ve got to make the stakes high.

Steven Seagal
What’s done is done. You’ve got to move on. I don’t want to say anything bad about the mother of my children.

Peter Andre
The scope of my problem will easily fit in the scope of my rifle. Too bad true love has to come with a mother-in-law.

Jarod Kintz
Never look at other people’s bad fortune,’ my mother said. ‘If you do, it will come back to find you instead of its rightful owner.

Alice Hoffman
No one is more sentimentalized in America than mothers on Mother’s Day, but no one is more often blamed for the culture’s bad people and behavior.

Anne Lamott
My father insisted that the boys in my life were directly responsible for my juvenile-delinquent tendencies. My mother, more accurately, assumed that I was the bad influence.

Lisa Lutz
As a boy, when I was bad, my mother would chew me out in Spanish. And since I was bad a lot, I learned a lot of Spanish!

John Sununu
Any man that has had a mother, has a sister, wants to be a father will find this [movie Bad Moms] incredibly eye opening and hysterical and funny.

Mila Kunis

You know the passage where Scarlett voices her happiness that her mother is dead, so that she can’t see what a bad girl Scarlett has become? Well, that’s me.

Vivien Leigh
I was never allowed to read the popular American children’s books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author’s knowing it.

Edith Wharton
I don’t beat myself up any more about going to work. It doesn’t mean I’m being a bad mother just because I want to go and do my job sometimes.

Kate Winslet

My interests still are my interests. That doesn’t make me a bad mother. I think that makes me a really good mother, because when I go and creatively satisfy myself and those interests, I come home satisfied.