Six top bad moms from fiction

Ej Dickson is a senior writer at New York magazine’s The Cut. She previously worked as a senior writer for Rolling Stone and her writing has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Elle, and many others. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

Dickson's new book is One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate.

At Lit Hub Dickson tagged six "favorite bad moms from fiction, from the archetypical overbearing suburban Jewish bubbes to horny housewives." One title on the list:

Katie Carr; How to Be Good by Nick Hornby

This is probably my favorite Nick Hornby book, in part because it’s one of the few with a female narrator and I think he actually writes women really well (mostly because, unlike most straight male novelists, he doesn’t write them that much differently than his male protagonists). Katie Carr is a married mother of two whose life spirals out of control after she has an affair with a younger man. She’s not a very likable protagonist—she cheats on her husband and she doesn’t like her kids all the time and she’s a doctor but she’s not super emotionally present for her patients and she’s kind of a shallow person in general. But that’s what makes her ring especially true. It’s one of the most honest depictions of marriage and motherhood that I’ve ever read.

Read about another entry on Dickson's list.

--Marshal Zeringue