Finally, Hollywood gives us an alternative view of motherhood – in How To Train Your Dragon 2

Image via: screenrant.com

I don’t know about you, but as a child of the 80s and 90s my norms were shaped as much by anything else as the films and TV I watched. And everywhere I looked, my mother – pioneer, absentee, workaholic, sometimes alcoholic, (well she loves her wine. And gin) glamour puss and intellectual – was somehow missing the cultural memo about how mothers were meant to be.

Mothers were often portrayed as sweet, bland-faced martyrs, like Norma Arnold from The Wonder Years, who were around for their kids, and generally patted on the head a bit, but who were far from complex or angst ridden, except that they sometimes wore the rictus grin of Xanax.

Sometimes, like the mum in ET, they were divorced and worked, leaving their latchkey kids to find aliens and get taught spelling on Sesame Street, but they still were around to take (fake) temperatures and read Peter Pan. Sometimes, they goofed up, like the mum in Home Alone, who was so frantically busy with her greed-is- good lifestyle that she forgot to take troublesome little Macaulay on holiday -partly because she had first class seats and the kids were, to coin an Americanism, in coach. (Notice how I instinctively blame the mother here?)

But always they were there at the appropriate climactic moment, usually weeping, proving that to be a good mother, you usually have to drop everything and get your ass home quick. I’m not disputing this is usually a good model for motherhood, but it’s not the only one.

So finally, in How To Train Your Dragon 2 – which I watched with the kids and Tom this weekend (my review, good fun, see it in 3D to make the most of the flight sequences) we have a Hollywood representation of motherhood that acknowledges this. And it’s a breath of fresh air and a victory for women, like my mother, who couldn’t quite fit the cookie cutter.

Valka, mother of dragon trainer Hiccup, abandons her son at birth to pursue her passion for dragon whispering. She is a martial arts expert, by all accounts, and clearly feels more in with dragons than humans – I know how she feels. The film touches on the blame and anger felt by her son because his mother could not or would not conform to the norm, but all is eventually forgiven –  SPOILER ALERT –  and when his father dies, she agrees to move back in with her son and preside over the community she left for its previous narrow mindedness (towards dragons).

So much so Hollywood. But it made me think how much blame and guilt I’ve laid at the door of my mother for not conforming to a stereotype of how mothers should be. I wrote about it here on Mother’s Day this year, upsetting her greatly (as I probably, sadly, intended to).

But I’m done with making her feel bad for her perceived shortcomings, cultural, personal or socially. My mother was battling her own dragons, and I have to accept that whatever she did she had good reasons of her own. She’s now moving back to the UK, and I’m just happy for myself that she’s coming home (my home – she grew up in Canada), though sad that it is not under the best circumstances for her – she on divorce number 4, (I think).

But mothers, like fathers should not be obliged to live up to a stereotyped ideal propagated by Hollywood, the government, or any other agency that prescribes, actively, or passively, how we should live our lives. And it’s ironic that it took a kids’ film to make me finally recognise this.

You keep on taming those dragons Ma.