63 pages • 2 hours read
Jessamine ChanThe School for Good Mothers
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Ms. Torres postpones Frida’s second visit with Harriet indefinitely due to double-booking. Renee is worried about how the first visit will look in court but plans to argue that Harriet was provoked and her reaction was normal under the circumstances. Frida struggles to focus at work. She repents for the camera in Harriet’s nursery. She hopes the family court judge has children or understands love. Ms. Torres postpones the second visit four more times. Frida struggles with insomnia and drops a dress size. She turns in a late article, and her boss says she can’t work from home anymore. Ms. Torres interviews Frida’s parents and acts like she can’t understand their accents. Frida’s parents wire Frida money. She doesn’t want the court to know her parents have money and could have paid for babysitters; she believes her parents have sacrificed enough.
The second visit occurs at the end of October, six weeks after the first. Ms. Torres gives Frida and Harriet an hour’s notice. Harriet is tired, hungry, and fussy, saying she misses her mother. Again, she wants to cuddle, not play. Ms. Torres asks Gust and Susanna to leave, but Harriet gets scared, throws a tantrum, and gets a nosebleed. Harriet climbs into Frida’s lap, wanting to sleep, and Frida lets her despite Ms. Torres still demanding they play with toys.
Ms. Torres says there isn’t time for a third visit. On the morning of Frida’s hearing, Renee coaches Frida on how to act (harmless, complacent, “white”). Susanna stays home with Harriet while Gust attends the hearing with Frida and Renee. They wait all day while the court hears other cases. Frida notices that she’s the only Asian, and Gust is the only white man who isn’t a lawyer. The court closes at 5pm but finally calls Frida’s name at 4:17pm.
Chapter 5 Summary
The Monday before Thanksgiving (three months after Harriet was taken), Frida boards a bus with other mothers, as the judge ordered her to do. She’s quit her job and ended her lease early, put her belongings in storage (except a small bag), and prepaid her bills. The mothers are being transported to a year-long rehabilitative institution where they will be taught to be good mothers, with the hopes of regaining custody of their children if they succeed in the program. Nobody will be allowed to visit, but they can have weekly 10-minute video calls. CPS had concerns about Frida’s weight loss, insomnia, anger, and “erratic” behavior. Ms. Torres said Frida couldn’t follow directions or set boundaries, and that she was probably abusing her child in ways that haven’t been discovered. Her diagnosis of depression was used against her as well.
Renee told Frida that “real criminals,” such as kidnappers and murderers, are still sent to prison, and that most of the mothers at the institution will be there because of “neglect.” The whole place will be surveilled. The institution’s location is a secret, and Frida is surprised when the bus pulls up to a beautiful old liberal arts college campus with arboretums and ponds. The school recently went bankrupt, but she remembers visiting this same campus with her parents.
Some employees of the institution wear pink lab coats, including Ms. Gibson, the Assistant Director. The mothers introduce themselves by name and “offense,” most of which are neglect, but also include abandonment, malnutrition, verbal abuse, and physical abuse. Frida thinks she’s better than the hitters, but learns that she is marked down as both “neglect” and “abandonment.” The mothers will sleep in dorms with roommates, eat in cafeterias, learn in classrooms, and wear uniforms starting tomorrow. Frida notices she’s once again the only Asian present. Most of the mothers are Black or Latina, and there are some white mothers who are not as bourgeois as Frida currently appears in her outfit. The mothers begin racially segregating themselves, leaving Frida feeling isolated.
The mothers can’t talk to others about the school, otherwise they will be added to the new Negligent Parents Registry, which will affect their ability to find jobs, housing, and the like. The Director, Ms. Knight, gives a presentation about how bad parenting is correlated with school shooters, teen pregnancy, terrorism, and such. Institutions like the school are being created around the US, but this is one of the first ones to actually operate. There is a school for bad fathers nearby, and later in the program, they’ll learn together. Ms. Knight explains mothers will be charged for any damaged equipment, and they can’t drink alcohol, smoke, fight, steal, use drugs, emotionally manipulate others, or quit the program; they will be expelled, automatically terminating their parental rights. Each mother will be in a class based on the sex and age of her youngest child. Mothers of multiple children will have extra classes.
At dinner, there’s not enough food for everyone. Frida learns other mothers’ actual offenses: not vaccinating their children, using marijuana, not childproofing their apartment properly, letting a child play alone in the backyard, and complaining about a child on Twitter. One woman, Helen, is there for coddling, which CPS says is a form of emotional abuse. Specifically, she cut her teenager’s food for him and tied his shoes. The women judge each other for their crimes, claiming they’d never do such things and are different. Frida is paired with Helen as roommates, though they won’t be in the same class. The women receive limited grooming supplies, but not everything they’re used to. Helen is talkative, but Frida isn’t interested. Frida’s parents aren’t allowed to contact Harriet while she’s here. She hopes Gust will check on them and share news about Harriet. Frida reasons that this campus is far too large for the number of mothers currently in attendance, and that they must be planning to take more children and send more mothers here soon. There are approximately 200 women at the school. If the mothers get in trouble, they’ll be sent to “talk circle,” which will count against their chances of regaining custody.
Chapter 6 Summary
Frida’s classmates include Lucretia, a friendly Black mother whose daughter fell off a slide and broke her arm, as well as the “baddest bitch” Linda, a Latina woman who put her children in a hole as punishment, and now they’re in six different foster homes. Additionally, there’s Meryl, a white teenager who used drugs, and Beth, a young white woman who went to a psych ward. Their instructors are Ms. Russo and Ms. Khoury.
The instructors reveal children who match the ages, sexes, and races of the mothers’ real children. Elsewhere in the building, people cry and scream. The children are waxy, and the instructors reveal they’re robots, “dolls” that need to have their coolant changed once a month. They’re an advanced form of A. I. that is genuinely sentient, resembling human children. Frida is astounded at how “real” the dolls look and act. The instructors argue that the use of “dolls” will protect the women’s’ real children while they learn. The dolls have cameras inside, which will gather data about the mothers’ heart rates, temperatures, facial expressions, and the like, which allegedly indicate negative emotions—which will hurt their chances of regaining custody. The program will have nine units, the first of which is about nurture. Each unit will have a written test and a roleplaying test, the results of which will impact the mothers’ chances of custody as well. The women are instructed to name the dolls, and Frida names hers Emmanuelle. Emmanuelle calls Frida “Mommy.”
At lunch, the instructors freeze the dolls with a button, which seems scary for the dolls. The mothers don’t segregate by race anymore but sit with their classmates instead. They debate where the dolls come from and whether or not they’ll become violent. They discuss rumors of what the bad fathers have to do in their classes, and if it involves dolls. One mother is outside crying because it’s her daughter’s birthday. The mothers start chanting their children’s names in mourning.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
In this section, the novel’s dystopian elements are taken further with the exploration of Frida’s supervised visits, the judge’s ruling, and finally, the introduction of the institution where bad mothers can allegedly learn to be good and regain custody of their children. The novel shows Frida’s visits being postponed or simply canceled due to overbooking of CPS, something that could easily happen and disadvantage a parent in the midst of a custody battle. Additionally, these visits are conducted under unnatural and uncomfortable circumstances that affect Harriet, something that social worker Ms. Torres doesn’t seem to understand. The judge’s ruling seems unfair and exaggerated, but in dystopian novels, such is the norm.
Although CPS does have real parenting classes that they sometimes require people to take, there are no live-in CPS schools for parents, and the parenting classes do not resemble prisons. The Negligent Parents’ Registry is also not a real registry but resembles what people experience after being released from federal prison and having their name added to lists that make it difficult to find jobs and housing, encouraging them to return to crime in order to survive. Authors of dystopian fiction often aim to show how invasive and destructive a situation can become before it actually goes that far.
This section also introduces the heavier science-fiction elements of the novel through A. I. robot “dolls.” Artificial intelligence and robots do already exist to some extent, but the humanoid robots at the institute, which are programmed to act and feel almost exactly like human children of the same age, are not real, but are within the scope of what could reasonably be created in the future. Like authors of dystopian fiction, science fiction authors often embed warnings in their novels, examining what could happen if a particular technology or scientific advancement were used in an inappropriate way. In theory, the instructors believe using robots instead of “real” children eliminates the possibility of harming or traumatizing children, while still allowing the opportunity for parents to practice necessary skills. Although they haven’t abused the dolls yet, there is already a sense among the mothers that this approach is not ethical (as per the theme of The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence).
The judge’s ruling on Frida (and the other mothers), coupled with the school’s philosophy as presented by its employees, develops the theme of The Unrealistic Expectations Imposed on Mothers. The judge’s ruling is excessively harsh given the nature of Frida’s transgression, and when she arrives at the school, others are there for charges such as complaining about their children’s tantrums on Twitter, or their child getting injured while playing on something normal like a slide. The wide range of minor crimes committed by the mothers makes it easy for any reader to imagine themselves as a parent committing at least one of the same crimes and thus ending up in the same type of institution, if they truly existed. This highlights the impossibility of being a “good” mother under these expectations: The instructors, as well as the state, seem to expect an impossible level of perfection. The school’s mantra of “I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good” (84) foreshadows the mothers’ impossible predicament: With impossible expectations, they will never be judged as “good,” despite what they might learn.
This section also further questions The Ethics of Government Interference in Parenting. Besides pointing out how government employees are not necessarily parenting experts, this section explores how government regulation of parenting easily reinforces structural inequality and further disadvantages people of color, working-class people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and single parents, among others. This is demonstrated by the demographics of the school itself: The parents whom CPS feel are “bad” are mostly people of color and working-class people. This suggests that the standards being used to judge parents are informed by racial and class bias, making them even more unrealistic for some mothers. This is also demonstrated through microaggressions that the instructors, counselors, and other staff commit against marginalized peoples throughout the novel, as well as cultural norms that the staff attempt to instill in the mothers as “natural.” From the start, Frida is criticized for being a bit reserved and not using a high-pitched enough voice, criticisms that are deeply rooted in American mothering norms. Far from eliminating bias or subjectivity, the government’s new program is incredibly biased, despite involving robots as well as human teachers.
