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Nicole: [while arguing with Charlie] You're being so much like your father.
Charlie: Do not compare me to my father!
Nicole: I didn't compare you to him. I said you were acting like him.
Charlie: You're exactly like your mother. Everything you were complaining about her, you're doing. You're suffocating Henry.
Nicole: First of all, I love my mother. She was a wonderful mother.
Charlie: I'm just repeating what you told me.
Nicole: Secondly, how dare you compare my mothering to my mother! I may be like my father, but I am not like my mother!
Charlie: You are! And you're like my father! You're also like my mother! You're all the bad things about all of these people! But mostly your mother.
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Nora Fanshaw: People don't accept mothers who drink too much wine and yell at their child and call him an asshole. I get it. I do it too. We can accept an imperfect dad. Let's face it, the idea of a good father was only invented like 30 years ago. Before that, fathers were expected to be silent and absent and unreliable and selfish, and can all say we want them to be different. But on some basic level, we accept them. We love them for their fallibilities, but people absolutely don't accept those same failings in mothers. We don't accept it structurally and we don't accept it spiritually. Because the basis of our Judeo-Christian whatever is Mary, Mother of Jesus, and she's perfect. She's a virgin who gives birth, unwaveringly supports her child and holds his dead body when he's gone. And the dad isn't there. He didn't even do the fucking. God is in heaven. God is the father and God didn't show up. So, you have to be perfect, and Charlie can be a fuck up and it doesn't matter. You will always be held to a different, higher standard. And it's fucked up, but that's the way it is.
Extended Reading
