Post by Kitty279 on Jun 13, 2012 1:07:59 GMT -5
As we keep getting back to the topic all over the place, I thought I'd start a new thread for this.
As I already said, I don't like her and don't think she is a good mother, and here are some reasons:
1) she permanently tries to rule the lifes of her children, even the adult ones. She wants to decide over their haircut, their job, their girlfriends etc. - can you say control freak? I don't think it's coincidence that the two eldest fled the country the moment they were out of school
2) she can't accept that children have to grow up and tries to treat them like five-year-olds. That's something I am very wary of, as I have known such a case in real life with an extreme outcome - the mum convinced herself and her son that he was disabled and needed her because his eyesight wasn't too good and kept babying him. Last I heard, he was in his early 50s and still living at "hotel mum", allowing her to even make his sandwiches and being to an unbelievable extent unable to take care of himself. He couldn't even start the dishwasher! And his mental capacity was completely normal. After that case, I am very wary of mothers with such a mother hen complex
3) her insistence to treat them like babies means that they are unprepared for life. They are living at war, and still, she doesn't want them to know anything. Did she ever hear something about "forewarned is forearmed"? The more the kids know, the better they can defend themselves or make sure they can't get into trouble in the first place. Does she think Voldemort is going to keep from hurting her babies because they are innocent? Look at how she fights tooth and nail to keep anything Order- or war related from them in OotP or how she tries to keep the trio from planning in DH, causing them to have to go much more unprepared on the horcrux hunt. In her obsession to protect them from reality, she endangers them
4) she keeps telling the younger children that they aren't good enough, always insisting that the older ones were less trouble/better students/more successful ... no proper parent should do that! I think most of Ron's inferiority complex can be laid on her doorstep. Her actions reinforced this. Look at the first book, for example. Percy got new robes *and* an owl just for being made Prefect (and I don't think he was a good choice, he was way too stuck-up and self-righteous). At the same time, Ron was sent to school with robes that were too short at the beginning of the year already, and with a wand which not only not chose him (and they are pureblood, shouldn't they know that the wand choses the wizard?), but heavily damaged as well. That made sure that Percy's ego was blown up even more, while Ron's was beaten down and his education impaired from the very beginning. So, who and what was more important for her?
And she keeps putting the twins down, destroying the products they put all their time and money in, trying to force them into a career they would fail at for sure - doesn't that woman understand that they are absolutely unsuitable for a Ministry desk job? She wants to force them into a career she herself thinks respectable, but that would make them unhappy. And that doesn't even count that she seems unable to see what a bunch of nutters the Ministry is, save some few exceptions.
5) then there is Percy. He was the good little boy, always doing what mummy wanted and used as the shining example how to behave. I get the feeling Molly reinforced with her blind adoration for him his faults - blind rule-following, stuck-up attitude, pompousness, lack of humour, and I'd not be surprised if he was a tattletale and she praised him for it. He didn't get along well with his siblings, and I think that she prefered him so much made the matter worse, as it caused resentment among the four younger ones particularly. He was the only one who chose the career Mummy wanted him to chose, and went to the Ministry. We all know how that worked out. Sometimes I really wonder how he would have turned out with less blatant favouritism. Ok, that's not entirely Molly's fault, he had the traits probably in his genes, but I can't help but wonder how much she reinforced them
6) my impression is that Molly doesn't discuss things much and tends to start screaming at every turn. Not a good example. She has no right to complain that the twins are so loud when she is always screaming the house down if something doesn't go her way
7) she disregards anything the children say if it doesn't fit in her ideal little world - see her reaction to being told that Harry was starved, even though she herself complains about him being too skinny
8) her ability to deal with a trauma seems rather limited. Food, playing games and keeping the real world away is *no* treatment! She never realised that Harry needed someone to talk to and thought to never talk about a problem again would make it go away. I always wondered about Ginny, too - she was probably sent to play with her dolls and fed a few more helpings after her first year. (JKR said that after the diary was destroyed she was perfectly happy again - something I find highly unlikely. You can't be possessed by such an evil being for nearly a year and not suffer from it!)
9) she knew Harry and Hermione and still believed Rita Skeeter more. Did she never realise what a scandalmonger that woman is? She should have known better than believing that rubbish about Hermione
10) her treatment of Sirius. Sure, he wasn't perfect, but she disregarded his situation completely. Putting someone down and making snide remarks is the worst you can do when someone is already struggling with depressions. I'd like to know in what state Molly herself would be after 12 years in that hellhole - I doubt she'd even survived. For me it was the last straw.
As I already said, I don't like her and don't think she is a good mother, and here are some reasons:
1) she permanently tries to rule the lifes of her children, even the adult ones. She wants to decide over their haircut, their job, their girlfriends etc. - can you say control freak? I don't think it's coincidence that the two eldest fled the country the moment they were out of school
2) she can't accept that children have to grow up and tries to treat them like five-year-olds. That's something I am very wary of, as I have known such a case in real life with an extreme outcome - the mum convinced herself and her son that he was disabled and needed her because his eyesight wasn't too good and kept babying him. Last I heard, he was in his early 50s and still living at "hotel mum", allowing her to even make his sandwiches and being to an unbelievable extent unable to take care of himself. He couldn't even start the dishwasher! And his mental capacity was completely normal. After that case, I am very wary of mothers with such a mother hen complex
3) her insistence to treat them like babies means that they are unprepared for life. They are living at war, and still, she doesn't want them to know anything. Did she ever hear something about "forewarned is forearmed"? The more the kids know, the better they can defend themselves or make sure they can't get into trouble in the first place. Does she think Voldemort is going to keep from hurting her babies because they are innocent? Look at how she fights tooth and nail to keep anything Order- or war related from them in OotP or how she tries to keep the trio from planning in DH, causing them to have to go much more unprepared on the horcrux hunt. In her obsession to protect them from reality, she endangers them
4) she keeps telling the younger children that they aren't good enough, always insisting that the older ones were less trouble/better students/more successful ... no proper parent should do that! I think most of Ron's inferiority complex can be laid on her doorstep. Her actions reinforced this. Look at the first book, for example. Percy got new robes *and* an owl just for being made Prefect (and I don't think he was a good choice, he was way too stuck-up and self-righteous). At the same time, Ron was sent to school with robes that were too short at the beginning of the year already, and with a wand which not only not chose him (and they are pureblood, shouldn't they know that the wand choses the wizard?), but heavily damaged as well. That made sure that Percy's ego was blown up even more, while Ron's was beaten down and his education impaired from the very beginning. So, who and what was more important for her?
And she keeps putting the twins down, destroying the products they put all their time and money in, trying to force them into a career they would fail at for sure - doesn't that woman understand that they are absolutely unsuitable for a Ministry desk job? She wants to force them into a career she herself thinks respectable, but that would make them unhappy. And that doesn't even count that she seems unable to see what a bunch of nutters the Ministry is, save some few exceptions.
5) then there is Percy. He was the good little boy, always doing what mummy wanted and used as the shining example how to behave. I get the feeling Molly reinforced with her blind adoration for him his faults - blind rule-following, stuck-up attitude, pompousness, lack of humour, and I'd not be surprised if he was a tattletale and she praised him for it. He didn't get along well with his siblings, and I think that she prefered him so much made the matter worse, as it caused resentment among the four younger ones particularly. He was the only one who chose the career Mummy wanted him to chose, and went to the Ministry. We all know how that worked out. Sometimes I really wonder how he would have turned out with less blatant favouritism. Ok, that's not entirely Molly's fault, he had the traits probably in his genes, but I can't help but wonder how much she reinforced them
6) my impression is that Molly doesn't discuss things much and tends to start screaming at every turn. Not a good example. She has no right to complain that the twins are so loud when she is always screaming the house down if something doesn't go her way
7) she disregards anything the children say if it doesn't fit in her ideal little world - see her reaction to being told that Harry was starved, even though she herself complains about him being too skinny
8) her ability to deal with a trauma seems rather limited. Food, playing games and keeping the real world away is *no* treatment! She never realised that Harry needed someone to talk to and thought to never talk about a problem again would make it go away. I always wondered about Ginny, too - she was probably sent to play with her dolls and fed a few more helpings after her first year. (JKR said that after the diary was destroyed she was perfectly happy again - something I find highly unlikely. You can't be possessed by such an evil being for nearly a year and not suffer from it!)
9) she knew Harry and Hermione and still believed Rita Skeeter more. Did she never realise what a scandalmonger that woman is? She should have known better than believing that rubbish about Hermione
10) her treatment of Sirius. Sure, he wasn't perfect, but she disregarded his situation completely. Putting someone down and making snide remarks is the worst you can do when someone is already struggling with depressions. I'd like to know in what state Molly herself would be after 12 years in that hellhole - I doubt she'd even survived. For me it was the last straw.
