Not to like people that hate their kids?

[highinthesky]

I recently watched "Victoria & Abdul". Queen Victoria was undoubtedly a formidable character and led a long and complex life, but I know from a number of sources that she didn't like her chidren, nor showed much of an interest in them until it came to interfering in their lives. Yet she was capable of loving her husband with a passion. It occurred to me that I could never have liked her as a person - whatever other redeeming eatures she might have - based solely on how she treated her kids. How can anyone be so unpleasant to the fruit of their own womb, even if they have had a prickly relationship with their own mother?

AIBU to on principle dislike people that treat their own children badly? Wtf was wrong wth her? The woman can't have had PND for over 60 years!

[GreyHare]

Maybe she just wasn't cut out to be a mother but had no choice back in those days, as there was little to no contraception.

[krustykittens]

We had a neighbour like this. Her husband had died five years before we moved in and she worshipped his memory, talked about him non-stop. Her three kids, two of whom still lived at home with her, she didn't have a kind word for either of them. Constantly ran them down and ordered them about. Her daughter had left home and had kids of her own and she was awful to her grandchildren as well. The two kids still left at home had no self-esteem and she sneered about it constantly, but with a mother like that, was it any surprise?! Horrible woman.

[Youcanttaketheskyfromme]

Well she may not have wanted children but in those days hardly had much choice.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

I think it's very difficult to judge someone in that position in that era. There was a very different attitude to children altogether in the Victorian era, and she was in a position where she was expected to have them. She had untreated PND as well, apparently which wouldn't have helped. (Of course all
PND was essentially untreated in that era).

[FindTheLightSwitchDarren]

Phew I thought you were talking about someone you knew irl!

You can't really 'know' a historical figure. I think monarchs in the 19th century lived a very different life. I'm sure she hardly saw her children as they grew up; they would have had nannies and governesses I guess. She would have had a lot to do with all the erm... queen stuff (sorry - my grasp of that period isn't great ). Then the PND and just the number of children she had would have made it harder. I thought she was meant to be a doting grandmother but maybe I'm misremembering. Didn't she have a very close relationship with The Tsarina Alexandra who was the last Empress of Russia? Maybe I've made that up.

Anyway, I wouldn't waste head space thinking about whether you like a long dead monarch tbh.

[TizzyDongue]

I think she did like her children (though possibly not her second born.. But Albert wasn't nice to Bertie either. There were very high expectations on him).

She didn't want to be pregnant and therefore confined.

From what is understood she very much liked sex and wished she could be like men and enjoy it and not have to get pregnant.

She was very doting on her grandchildren it seems.

[highinthesky]

Anyway, I wouldn't waste head space thinking about whether you like a long dead monarch tbh.

Its less about the dead and more about the living. We know there are plenty of parents out there that don't treat their kids well. That knowledge for me colours everything else about the person. If you can't be genuinely nice to your own children, then it speaks volumes about a person.

[expatinscotland]

She was so cruel to one her daughters, Alice, when the latter's son died after a fall (he had haemophilia). Very mean-spirited to her. Alice was very sweet natured and nursed her father in his final illness. She was affectionate and warm to her children and when she lost a second child to diphtheria, she wrote to her mother 'the pain is beyond words.' She broke her rule of having physical contact with her ill children when she told her son Ernest of his sister's death. So she contracted diphtheria from him and died.

[opheliacat]

Enid Blyton was apparently awful to her daughters.

[FindTheLightSwitchDarren]

We know there are plenty of parents out there that don't treat their kids well. That knowledge for me colours everything else about the person. If you can't be genuinely nice to your own children, then it speaks volumes about a person.

I don't know anyone irl who "hates" their children, but if that's what you're asking, (as opposed to talking about Queen Victoria), then I definitely think yanbu at all! If I ever met someone who hated their children, (assuming it wasn't a child who was now an adult who had gone on a murdering rampage and harmed their own children or anything like that), then that would obviously make me dislike them.

[SloeSloeQuickQuickGin]

Well she may not have wanted children but in those days hardly had much choice.

She didnt want children but she had no option really.

She had a very good relationship with her daughters. I have no idea about her sons, with the exception of Bertie who was enough to try the patience of a saint. His father had little time for him either, allegedly.

I'm afraid believing something you see verbatim on a screen, which has been enhanced for public ratings, isnt the best way to study history.

[SloeSloeQuickQuickGin]

Wtf was wrong wth her?

I suppose if Victoria were able to utilise a chat forum she'd tell us what it was like growing up without a father but with a domineering, paranoid mother , who used to sleep in her bed and be by her side 24/7 until the day Victoria became queen at 18 and could legitimately escape and run her own household. That might have something to do with your perception of her lack of parenting skills.

We could all offer our advice and suggest she reads a book or goes NC

[FindTheLightSwitchDarren]

@sloe

Tempted to change my username to QueenVictoria and start a thread now... (just kidding, I won't - nobody freak out please and call me a troll)!

[SloeSloeQuickQuickGin]

@find - it would be fun to see what the armchair psychologists come up with!

[raisedbyguineapigs]

Didn't she blame Bertie for Alberta death as he had to go and rescue him from some disaster of his own making, he caught phneumonia and died? She might not have had pnd for 60 years but she must have felt massively out of control having 9 babies she didn't really want. I think she warned to most of them when they were adults.

[shortcake76]

She blamed Bertie for Albert's death and I don't think they spoke to one another for years afterwards. I have been watching Victoria - not historically accurate - but it does tie in with books I've read on her about hating babies and pregnancies. She probably did have post-natal depression - they probably wouldn't have diagnosed it as that then and it would have been disguised by lack of input and servants to do the day to day stuff. There is a scene in the recent Victoria where she is apparently disgusted by wet nurses!

[SloeSloeQuickQuickGin]

Prince Albert died of typhoid, the drains at Windsor were't all that!

But he had fallen from a carriage with a bolting horse some years before and had recurring stomach problems . When Victorias mother died, Albert did most of the organising, became more ill with the recurrent stomach problems, then met up with a couple of his European cousins who coincidentally had typhoid. Then Bertie was supposed to have got Nellie Clifton pregnant and Albert died after giving him a bollocking - with the typhoid caught from the cousins post funeral. The cousins died too.

All bit of a tragedy really. Bertie was a bit of playboy.

[RaptorInaPorkPieHat]

She had a bloody awful childhood, I'm not surprised she had issues really.

[Mittens1969]

She certainly did have an awful childhood, with her mother controlling every part of her life, she never had a moment alone until she turned 18! It's no wonder if she had issues when it came to being a mother herself.

[TizzyDongue]

Very controlling mother. She wasn't allowed to walk up and down the stairs without holding onto her mother's arm - up till she become queen: when she pretty much told her mother to naff off and took to the stairs on her own.

[Fekko]

Do we really know though? Any photos or portraits of her make her look like a right old misery but sure she liked the odd fart joke like the rest of us.

[MargaretTwatyer]

She was essentially a victim of child abuse herself with a very dodgy chap called John Conroy who attached himself to her mother and introduced something called 'the Kensington system' which was intended to brainwash and control Victoria in the hope she would be reduced to dependency on him which would allow him to be the power behind the throne.

She didn't want children and referred to child bearing as the dark or shadow side of marriage. She hated giving birth (most of which she did without pain relief). She didn't like babies but liked older children and could sometimes be capable of great affection at the same time as being a bullying hectoring harridan.

Another thing to remember is that she was a woman with a tremendous amount of power across Europe as a result of the dynastic unions of her children and Gramdchildren. So her relationships were often more an exercise in international diplomacy than familial ones. She, and Edward VII after her were both largely responsible for a reasonable degree of peace in Europe which ended with WWI when there was no strong monarch keeping the various dynastic strands of her family in check.

[MargaretTwatyer]

Some of the things in her childhood were reasonable though. Not being left alone or climb stairs unsupervised were actually quite sensible because at least one if not more of her Uncles behind her in the succession would have quite cheerfully have killed her to get the throne.

[Fekko]

Queen Victoria had a chlorofom birth for at least one of her babies