They are like the girls at school who are too eager to raise their hands.  The minute their famous mother dies, they tell the world that she abused them.  Maybe it’s true, maybe not. But it is the perfect topic to discuss in therapy. 

 I have not read the clickbait articles about Alice Munro’s daughter’s accusations, because (a) it is tacky that she contacted the press, and (b) I don’t believe it.

There are many of these tell-all memoirs.  Anne Sexton’s daughter, Linda Gray Sexton, and  Jenny Diski, who lived with Doris Lessing and her son, Peter, during her adolescence, both got books out of it.  Sexton’s daughter claimed her mother had sex with her. At the time, I thought, How horrifying, but I have some doubts about it. Diski made no such claims, but made it clear that she disliked Lessing and thought she was a terrible mother. She raged against Lessing for “leaving” her children from her first marriage in Africa. She left them with their father, not on the streets! And she did take Peter to England, the son from her second marriage, but that annoyed Diski, too.

Some thoughts on the two memoirs. It is true that Anne Sexton was mentally ill, but since she was in love with her psychiatrist, she was probably pretty busy stalking him in her free time. It doesn’t matter how beautiful these women are, they are all out there crouching in their cars outside of their psychiatrists’ houses. And Lessing may not have been the best mother, but she WAS there at home, writing her books, sitting in the kitchen, where she could annoy both Jenny and her son Peter, like mothers everywhere.

Then there was the daughter of Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of my favorite dead science fiction writers.  In 1990, Bradley’s husband was arrested for child abuse. Fifteen years after her mother’s death, the daughter claimed that her mother also sexually abused her. Bradley must have written and edited about 100 books, and co-written, in her old age, several books with other writers, so she was very busy. But, to my knowledge, at least the daughter has not written a book about her mother.

I strongly believe the therapist’s office is the place to discuss incest and abuse. The thrill of public attention and sympathy lasts about a minute and a half. And it is cowardly to come forth with “posthumous” accusations against famous mothers who aren’t there to defend themselves. 

But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? THAT THEY’RE NOT THERE!