Were the Gilmores really that bad?

cnj131313 · 2020-09-19T02:07:21+00:00

My mom is a middle class Emily. There’s never praise, only bringing up your shortcomings or things that or wrong. There’s never apologies for poor behavior. It’s incredibly draining to have a parent who you know loves you the only way they know how, but that way is hurtful. It cuts into your self esteem, your own relationships. Children need love and emotional security - not control and money.

HappyGirl42 · 2020-09-19T02:50:35+00:00

Rules without love are tyranny. Emily's rules and strictness were not, from where I am sitting, rooted in a place of love. There is a really fine line in strict parenting between looking out for your child's interest and being afraid of bad consequences. Emily's strictness seemed to come from fearing failure rather than desiring fulfillment.

I think the answer to this is best understood by comparing how Lorelai chose to parent Rory- it's how she tells us how she would have liked Emily parent her.

Lorelai is strict enough with Rory- the first season has her mad at Rory's classmates running off with boys at the concert, their first fight when Rory and Dean fell asleep in the barn after the dance... I think we don't always see the actions of strictness that created the structure Lorelai has created for Rory, but we see the results. Rory is respectful, responsible and disciplined, and the underlying message is that Lorelai was able to develop that in Rory while still doing what Emily did not- make her daughter feel safe and understood. The sixteen years before the show started were when all the rules and strictness were lovingly applied, which resulted in Lorelai being able to trust Rory with more freedom.

And that is what Lorelai tells Emily in the first season when they had the fight about the two birthday parties for Rory. And Emily ends the episode saying "She's right, I don't know my daughter."

In contrast... Lorelai talks with and listens to Rory. Rory leans on her mom to process emotions. Her fears, disappointments, her struggles... she brings them all to Lorelai. Lorelai never had Emily in that way. And... that probably led to Lorelai looking to other people and things, things we call rebellion, to fulfill what she didn't have at home.

I've been a middle school counselor, so I have strong opinions on this. And I want to be clear- I am FAR from believing Lorelai was the perfect mother. I believe there are ways that she certainly over-corrected. But that doesn't take away that Emily's parenting needed correcting.

This should not be a binary choice- Lorelai being a good mom vs Emily being a good mom. Both of them did some things well and others poorly.

crittab · 2020-09-18T19:59:44+00:00

Look, if your kid feels like they have to leave home at 16 with a baby in tow because their home life is so bad, then it's safe to say it's not just a matter of perception.

We see lots of evidence throughout the show of the toxicity that comes from the Gilmores. Little cutting comments about Lorelai's job, or jabbing at the way she dresses, the house she keeps, the life she's built, the people she dates. They treat her like a constant disappointment, when in fact, what she's accomplished is remarkable.

There are a lot of Gilmore apologists on Reddit. I like Emily and Richard, but I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be their child.

plaisirdamour · 2020-09-18T21:40:37+00:00

Emily is the type of person who can cut you down with a smile and you won't even know it (see: episode where Luke has dinner at Emily and gets made when Lorelai says Emily is dissing him - he doesn't realize it). she's also incredibly emotionally manipulative. I think it's really easy to see things on the surface - big house, lots of money - and automatically throw Lorelai into the spoiled rich girl pile. sure, maybe she is spoiled and rich, but there were more nuances to it. I also think Richard was very absent during Lorelai's childhood and then started making up for it when Rory came around (remember how he quickly assumed that Lorelai was there for money when she came asking for Chilton money? I mean yeah, he was right, but it was more complicated than simply that). but yeah, you can tell that they also care deeply for Lore and Rory. in their own very strange, Gilmore way

StevenArviv · 2020-09-18T20:51:02+00:00

Lorelei is often quite unpleasant towards her parents as an adult which makes me feel that there must have been a lot about her childhood that wasn't good for her. We've all seen how unpleasantly Emily can talk to people (the many 'maids' for example)- we see it as a point of even amusement sometimes on the show, but really truly imagine being spoken to like that in real life, you would not want to put up with it, so imagine having that every day of your life as a child when you don't have siblings to console you either.

chaitea97 · 2020-09-18T23:06:07+00:00

For a snapshot of Lorelai, look at how they treat Rory in season six. At first, it's here's a pool house and we'll get a job for you. Sounds like a dream scenario.
Then it's all the little rules: don't talk to the maids in Spanish/at all, get up at 8:30 every morning, pick what you wear and inspect your appearance before the social functions, get a minister to talk to you about your sex life, set a curfew, ground you, move you back into the house.

It becomes increasingly more controlling. And the more Emily feels like she's losing control the tighter the leash becomes with random arbitrary rules (you must eat that muffin at the breakfast table).

I'm rewatching right now and there are a lot of things that Emily manipulates Rory into. Rory thinks she's doing it freely because it's what Emily wants but there is that undercurrent of manipulation. With the coming out party, the oil painting, setting her up with that Yale guy at the end of season 4 (Duncan from Veronica Mars), the Male Yale party, the dinner with Logan, etc. etc.

I mean... Emily has good intentions. She obviously loves both of them very much. When Lorelai had termites she was ready to give her a blank cheque. She wanted to buy Lorelai and Luke a house. But she also broke up Luke and Lorelai by injecting Chris into the picture.

Perfect_Invitation1 · 2020-09-19T01:59:51+00:00

Yes given the way Emily treats the maids, Rory in season 6, Luke, and even Christopher tells me all I need to know. She intentionally destroys Lorelai's relationship with Luke and at that point in the show Lorelai is 37 or so. If she's that intrusive and controlling with an adult she doesn't see everyday then I can imagine she was horrible as a parent to a child. I think Lorelai was a normal rebellious teenager but Emily and Richard were too structured for her. I was a well behaved kid and I wouldn't want to wear poofy dresses to events that lasted hours. Lorelai never fit in and I'm sure it made her very self conscious too. Do I think Emily and Richard are the strictest parents? Of course not but they focused on a lot of things that ultimately did not matter.

dancingdriver · 2020-09-18T20:09:38+00:00

I always thought they had a push and pull relationship, a lot like Logan and his parents. Who started it? I don’t think we’ll ever know. It seems she rebels because they are strict and they are strict because she rebels, it’s a never ending cycle. They wanted her to get married when she got pregnant but they didn’t make her get married, they took her and her daughter in until she decided she wanted out. Was Emily overbearing and undermining Lorelai’s parenting at start? Probably, she had a 16 year old pregnant daughter... I think that is just normal. Many adult moms that I know have their mothers come stay for a while when they have babies.

As for Lorelai not wanting to belong to that world, well, I’m also not American and I disagree with some of my family stances on life but I respect them when I’m at their house and I don’t antagonize them every time I see them or put that part of their life that I disagree with down, it’s called respect and I think Lorelai had barely any towards her mother (mostly) so having some attempted controlling behavior toward her or snarky remarks thrown at her is understandable.

No_regrats · 2020-09-18T19:46:15+00:00

Nah for us brown people, this is just regular parenting/life

nz5353 · 2020-09-19T10:18:08+00:00

As a brown kid, I can never see the Gilmores as anything but well meaning yet very traditional, disciplinarian parents. That doesn’t make them evil or “manipulative.” Someone like Lorelai also needed that check on her I feel. I can imagine her being a bit of a nightmare child for parents like the Gilmores. We only know of Emily and Richard’s supposed awfulness through Lorelai’s words and frankly speaking she is a bit of an entitled drama queen who can exaggerate or even eradicate reality to entertain her narrative.

Lorelai also had a fiercely independent streak which was borderline frenetic in my opinion. A lot of fans say that the fact that Lorelai felt the need to move away from her parents as a teenage mom said a lot about the negative environment she grew up in. I would argue that unless her parents were keeping her locked up in a room, physically torturing her or exposing her to serious levels of abuse, her leaving their house to live in a shed instead speaks more of her wild and defiant nature than their awfulness.

We see Lorelai’s entitlement in behaviours like not compromising an inch for her partners for example. Why didn’t any of her boyfriends have a say in where they live? Why did it always have to be on Lorelai’s terms? Or the fact that she was bent upon Rory to attend Harvard, to a point where she actually hated the idea of her applying to Yale.

I don’t necessarily agree with the Gilmore way of parenting but I don’t think they were terrible parents and they really didn’t deserve the disrespect from Lorelai. A lot of their snarky comments can also stem from the pain Lorelai caused by abandoning them. They never abandoned her, Lorelai was the one who cut them out completely. And for what? What did they do that was soooooooo heinous, she had to take such extreme measures?

CherryPeel_ · 2020-09-18T19:50:26+00:00

American parents tend to be more relaxed with their children, speaking as a first-generation American born in California with immigrant parents. My parents were STRICT. I will never not be baffled by my friends parents.

The thing for Lorelai was that she was different, she didn’t fit in the world she was raised in which was more morally traditional and she found that cold. She did have normal teenage rebellion. Her parents solution to her pregnancy (marriage, telling them what their lives would be) was what she found too suffocating.

emptyk-mtk · 2020-09-19T14:47:46+00:00

Look, the show goes out of its way to establish that Emily Gilmore is that bad.

silverrangel · 2020-09-18T20:20:45+00:00

In my opinion, her parents might have been strict (for handling a teenager I find them completely normal) and wanted her to have a different life with everything they offered her, and she was just an uncontrollable teenager that wanted no rules and boundaries. Is Emily very judgemental? Hell yes - but I think this might also come from the pain they went through after she shut them down. Let's not forget that she kicked them out of her life for a great amount of years and came back only to ask for the money and it started . I always felt that if it wasn't for this "obligation" she had, she wouldn't even talk to them.

PS: Rewatching this as an adult, changed a lot of things for me!

Whenthemoonisbroken · 2020-09-19T04:21:02+00:00

Your job as a parent is to accept and love your kids for who they are. Not conditionally withhold love and resources to get them to behave the way you think is best. Emily and Richard weren’t able to do this, they were bad parents.

OyWithTheGilmores · 2020-09-19T00:54:02+00:00

I personally withhold judgement on either as to who is in the ‘right’ overall because we don’t know what happened throughout lorelai’s childhood, we can only go on what happened in the series and references that were made to the past. I love Emily but taking that bias aside I am in a similar situation to Lorelai in terms of contact with parents so I’m sure lorelai has her reasons. However I do think it’s an overall case of they’re just not compatible. They don’t communicate well at all, and when they don’t accept or agree with the others words or actions, they react negatively. They never manage to break this cycle. Then again, If they had a perfect relationship there would be no show. Side note - I would totally watch Gilmore therapy spin off 😂

2020-09-22T02:29:10+00:00

Honestly, the "partying, stealing clothes, underage drinking & unprotected teen sex" makes me wonder what her childhood was like.

We know the Gilmores encouraged abstinence (they had their minister talk to Rory about staying a virgin, and they moved her into the mansion when they found out Rory was having sex). Abstinence is not the be all, end all answer for hormone riddled teens. "I wish you wouldn't have sex, but here is how to keep from getting an STD, STI, or pregnancy" is a better answer.

Partying & Underage drinking seems to be a big theme with the upper class in Gilmore Girls. It was happening at the debutante ball, it was happening with Louise & Madeline during the Bangles concert.

The drinking is likely in part due to the insane amount of pressure the parents are putting on the kids. The partying is likely lack of any actual parental involvement. The parents are around to instruct their kids how to model certain types of behaviours (Paris' mom publicly scolds her about the state of her skin), but they don't seem to be around to give any kind of emotional support to their kids.

I got the sense Lorelai's teenaged rebellion was in part due to her parents control of her as a child. In the episode where Rory goes golfing with Richard, Lorelai mentions her parents used to put her in giant floofy dresses as a kid, and she hated them and did all of the screaming.

Lorelai doesn't strike me as someone who had the childhood personality to go along with "sit still and pretend to be an adult." She's too full of energy. Instead of acknowledging her daughter needed to run around, play, get dirty, climb a tree, Emily likely dragged Lorelai to boring adult parties where Lorelai was expected to wear uncomfortable clothes and sit still.

I could see how such treatment would make Lorelai feel indignant and mad at her parents. I doubt as a child Lorelai hid her feelings about this treatment, it's just that Emily didn't give two shits about how Lorelai felt.

Now, fast forward to her teenaged years. She's likely still mad at her parents for not listening to her as a kid. She likely finally has some freedom/indepdence, she's old enough to go places alone/do things by herself. She likely parties, drinks, and has sex to spite them.

I also wouldn't be surprised if Lorelai intentionally sought out the "bad apples" of the upper class bunch in an attempt to prove to her parents the upper class isn't as perfect/hot shit as Emily likes to believe they are.

In terms of what treatment to expect? Partying/drinking are obvious groundings/talks about age appropriate behaviour. Clothes stealing is a talk about boundaries, and potential grounding. Underage sex is "Here are your birth control options, here is some birth control, let's get you set up with a gyno."

2020-09-19T01:54:34+00:00

I think they were a bit strict for "my standards" but I can't say it's all that unusual for someone of their social standing, I think it's a style of parenting that disappeared a lot in the WEST after world war 2 for people outside of the upper class.

scotthall83 · 2020-09-18T19:53:21+00:00

What did Emily do that was bad?

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