There’s a clip about motherhood that went viral on social media recently. It’s from Apple TV’s “The Morning Show” and in it, the TV news anchor Alex Levy, played by Jennifer Aniston, loses it when her teenage daughter Lizzy, played by Oona Roche, blames her for all the ways in which her mom has disappointed her.
This scene spoke to me at a time when I felt a lot like Lizzy did. Strangely, though, I found myself rooting for her mom.
The sequence starts with “I’m sorry I broke your heart” and ends with Alex unapologetically launching an F-bomb at her daughter.
Mothers everywhere from TikTok to Instagram to Reddit discussions shared confessions of how they cheered this tour de force monologue, saying that Alex had the courage to give voice to what they felt they couldn’t: the unspoken frustration and emotional toll of motherhood, especially the feeling of being both unappreciated and criticized by their children after sacrificing so much.
As Alex put, “I’m a human being, Lizzy!”
Last Mother’s Day, my relationship with my mother seemed broken. She had done something that felt to me like a colossal betrayal of trust that greatly affected my future. And like Lizzy, I was brimming with blame.
The details aren’t what matters, but let’s just say that the summer that was supposed to be a bittersweet post-high school farewell was anything but. I carried resentment. She carried guilt. We both acknowledged that she’d messed up, but when I arrived at Stanford in September, I was still furious with her for what had happened.
Then one night, the “Morning Show” video popped up on my phone. Among the GenZ influencers talking about why they cut their “toxic” and “narcissistic” moms out of their lives, the algorithm fed me its counterpoint. And while Alex might have seemed unhinged in her outburst, what she said about the weight of her daughter’s expectations rang true. Mesmerized, I watched it several times in a row, and then I had a realization: maybe we kids were guilty of a kind of narcissism too?
One of the hardest realities to acknowledge is that a parent might be misguided, not see things clearly, or have their own emotional needs that get in the way of their children’s wellbeing, despite their best intentions. There’s a disillusionment in recognizing the fallibility of a parent, especially when that parent profoundly disappoints you.
However, our culture levies this disappointment disproportionately onto mothers.
Mothers are often expected to embody an ideal of perfection that is both relentless and unrealistic. They’re supposed to be endlessly nurturing, patient, uber-competent and self-sacrificing — and there’s no room for error. Maybe because I was raised by a single mom, I noticed a difference in how the fathers around me were viewed. A mom was given tacit demerits if she missed a school function because, say, she was at work; the fathers around me were constantly praised, almost heroically, for making a single appearance in our classrooms. The double standards abounded: If a father made a mistake, he was understandably stressed. If a mother messed up, she was neglectful or uncaring.
Sure, some fathers disappoint in all kinds of ways, leaving their children angry. But the bar is uneven: it doesn’t take much for a mother to disappoint — not just in culture’s eyes, but also in her children’s. When she stumbles, we call it failure instead of what it actually is: being human.
My mom and I have talked a lot about why and how things went south last year, and through these conversations, I’ve come to see her as a whole person with her own history and emotional deficits, which are hers alone to deal with. But what’s interesting is that as she navigates her way through the empty nesting stage of life, my task is to grapple with “adulting” — and a big part of adulting is taking responsibility for the course of my own life.
“Go make the life that you want!” Alex urges her angry daughter in her monologue — maybe that’s what all of us emerging adults need to focus on more. I wish I’d learned this lesson under different circumstances, but I’m also grateful that because of this perspective, my mom and I are close again in a way I couldn’t imagine last year.
As we move into adulthood, we need to rethink Mother’s Day not just as a time to celebrate moms, but to liberate them from the mythology we’ve built around them. Maybe we can honor them better by giving them permission to be full people — mistakes and all. We should thank them for all they do for us, but let’s also remember to thank them for surviving the weight of all we’ve expected them to be.
That, to me, is how we start growing up.