2050 HARVARD LAW REVIEW [Vol. 136:2044
character: “Get away from her, you bitch!”);
36
or even the mother in the
recent horror film Barbarian.
37
Or, for that matter, Grendel’s mother,
who avenges her son’s murder.
38
Other times, literature makes the “bad-
ness” of the mothers patently clear. Consider a few examples: Medea,
who murders her own sons when her husband abandons her.
39
The self-
centered mother in the film Precious.
40
And, of course, the many moth-
ers who make the unforgivable mistake of thinking of themselves first.
The mother in Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter
41
comes to mind,
but one could also include Anna Karenina
42
and Madame Bovary
43
and
Frida Liu,
44
and, well, the list is long. Just google “Bad Mothers in
Literature.” Go ahead.
But what might not be obvious is that this policing of motherhood,
this entanglement of motherhood with the law, has been with us all
along, at least in our Judeo-Christian tradition. Think of motherhood
in the Bible, and likely two stories come to mind. The first involves the
Virgin Mary, the quintessential, and nonsexual, “good mother,” the ar-
chetype that still exists today.
45
The other explicitly involves law. I am
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
36
A
LIENS
(Brandywine Productions 1986); see also Adam The Prowler, Aliens — Get Away from
Her, You Bitch!, Y
OU
T
UBE
(Oct. 28, 2015), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j51DfrLHUek
[https://perma.cc/F7Q6-AU83].
37
See B
ARBARIAN
(Regency Enterprises 2022).
38
See B
EOWULF
chs. XIX–XXI, at 23–26 (Joseph F. Tuso ed., Ethelbert Talbot Donaldson
trans., W.W. Norton & Co. 1975) (n.d.).
39
See E
URIPIDES
, M
EDEA
81–85 (Charles Martin trans., U.C. Press 2019) (431 B.C.E.).
40
See P
RECIOUS
(Lee Daniels Entertainment 2009).
41
See generally E
LENA
F
ERRANTE
, T
HE
L
OST
D
AUGHTER
(Ann Goldstein trans., Europa
Editions 2014) (2006).
42
See generally C
OUNT
L
YOF
N. T
OLSTOÏ
, A
NNA
K
ARÉNINA
(Nathan Haskell Dole trans.,
Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 1914) (1877).
43
See generally G
USTAVE
F
LAUBERT
, M
ADAME
B
OVARY
(Margaret Mauldon trans., Oxford
Univ. Press 2004) (1857).
44
It is no accident that, in The School for Good Mothers, it is going to work that is most
damning and results in Frida losing her child (pp. 4–5). One can also think of the writer Ayelet
Waldman, who in an op-ed in the New York Times admitted that she loved her partner more
than her children. Ayelet Waldman, Truly, Madly, Guiltily, N.Y.
T
IMES
(Mar. 27, 2005), https://
www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/fashion/truly-madly-guiltily.html [https://perma.cc/EQ2K-LKDB].
The backlash was swift and inspired Waldman to follow up the op-ed with a memoir reflecting on
motherhood in response to the fallout. See A
YELET
W
ALDMAN
, B
AD
M
OTHER
: A C
HRONICLE
OF
M
ATERNAL
C
RIMES
, M
INOR
C
ALAMITIES
,
AND
O
CCASIONAL
M
OMENTS
OF
G
RACE
6–7
(2009). For more on this and the culture of good mothers, see Melissa Murray, Response,
Panopti-Moms, 4 C
ALIF
. L. R
EV
. C
IR
. 165, 174 & nn.59–62, 176 (2013). For more on the legal
implications of judging mothers and family performance, see Clare Huntington, Staging the Family,
88 N.Y.U.
L. R
EV
. 589, 613–15, 619–24 (2013).
45
On the idealization of motherhood as the primary role for women — at least white women —
especially in the nineteenth century, see Carol Sanger, Separating from Children, 96 C
OLUM
. L.
R
EV
. 375, 399–409 (1996). Indeed, white motherhood was associated with the health of the nation,
as the Court made clear in Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), in which it famously upheld hour
restrictions for working women on maternal grounds:
[W]oman’s physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a
disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence . . . . [A]s healthy mothers are essential to