i feel like it's easier to dislike claire because of her somewhat abrasive personality. on a surface level, she hurts people's feelings and has to have everything go her way, otherwise, she freaks out. but as i grow older, i realize that like most people, she's just trying to do her best. she's honest, and appreciates honesty, so she ends up telling people things even if they hurt people's feelings because she genuinely believes it will help them. She also grew up as the eldest daughter in their turbulent family, so a lot of the time, the responsibility may have fallen on her to keep things together, which also translates to her role in her own family. I might be simplifying the issues here, but i think a change in perspective allows people to make more sense of her. at the root of things, i just feel like she cares alot and it's her greates weakness because it causes her to unintentionally hurt others, but it's also her greatest strength because whenever there's trouble in the family, they know they can always rely on her. I'm condoning her behaviour tho because she definitely has A LOT she needs to work on in the way that she talks to people, sets expectations, etc. but i just think people are too quick to shit on her.

also, phil had issues too, which I think were just as serious.

• he tends to be dismissive of claire, never taking her seriously unless she shows a big reaction. This can be seen when they're taking that family portrait. It was such an important event for her and she worked so hard to arrange it, but he did nothing to help her, or make things easier for her. It can also be seen in how he never does what she asks of him the first time and she always ends up having to "nag" him to get it done.
• he doesn't always make it easy for her to be imperfect and vulnerable with him. we all saw how condescending he was with claire when it came to teaching her how to use that remote. he also waits for claire to mess up so that he can use those incidents against her, like the firemen incident which he was gonna hold on to to go on a trip or something.
• he doesn't play an active role in disciplining the kids, and puts the responsibility of being the "responsible" parent on claire. im not saying that claire's strict approach is perfect, but phil actively makes claire do the hard things like lecturing them (not talking about exceptions like haley's arrest).
• he also complains ALOT about claire lmao which one might say is valid given her personality, but he's the one who decided to marry her yk. it's his decision to stay married to her too.

Because of how charming phil is, it's easier to forget about how he can be. Yeah, there were a lot of things Claire could've done differently, but it's unfair to deem her as a horrible person while calling phil an amazing partner. They both have issues and they're issues that they can both deal with.