This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I really loathed and was actually repulsed by the main character Leda in ‘The Lost Daughter’, played by Olivia Coleman. She has an affair and leaves her two very young daughters for three years (even with them pleading for her not to go) just to return because she missed them. The character then unfeelingly admits that she’s a selfish mother.
As someone who has always longed to have children but didn’t, parents treating their children as burdens rather than blessings, actually resenting them at times, truly rubs me the wrong way. Why even have them in the first place. Be child free instead of putting your children through that cruelty.
I can’t sympathise with the fact that the mother in this movie is suffocating, robbed of her career, identity and space, because perhaps I never experienced that myself. Some mothers may feel some empathy. All I feel is that their position is enviable. Think of the alternative. Especially people who have actually lost their children before birth or due to illness.
Also it’s because I have seen how damaged people can be due to selfish horrible mothers, and I on the other hand have been blessed by an angel on earth. I know in my heart, I would have been a good one having only known mothering from the best.
