Mothers According To Me And Holden

“I gave her a good look. She didn’t look like any dope to me. She looked like she might have a pretty damn good idea what a bastard she was the mother of. But you can’t always tell—with somebody’s mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane. The thing is, though I liked old Morrow’s mother. She was all right.” (Excerpt from pp. 55, The Catcher in the Rye)

This is from the scene in The Catcher in the Rye where Holden is on the train to New York and is talking to the mother of one of his classmates (or ex-classmates since he will officially be expelled in a few days). He is throwing a load of crap at her about her son being wonderful and popular even though he thinks the exact opposite. The thing is as far as Holden can tell she believes all of his lies. I think that this paragraph in particular hits on a relatively common and very interesting part of parenthood—that many parents are willing to believe the best of there children to the point that some will ONLY believe the good stuff and ignore all of the bad. I’ve met parents, mothers especially, that even blame every bad thing their child does on the kid’s friends even when I know that their child was doing the “bad things” willingly or even was the instigator, pressuring his or her friend into it.  I think Salinger was taking a little “time-out” (so to speak) and telling the parents that might read this that they need to open their eyes to what their children really are, and are doing.

Note: Given that this often happens I think I have to acknowledge that many parents are all too willing to believe that their children are delinquents whether they are or not.