Lois: An awful parent?

Murph

New member
Sorry.

That's right, in advance I am sorry for this post because I know it won't be recieved warmly :laugh:

But in my honest opinion, Lois is an awful parent.

Let's face it, she shipped Francis off to Military School when he was just a sixteen year old kid. She didn't care what sort of torture he would be under there, and, as the show says, very rarely informed him of anything. People can say "ohhh, Francis wazzz a troublesome kidd", but in reality, some good parenting would have gone a long way with Francis to PREVENT him from being a troublesome kid.

One episode in particular I think Lois is particularly awful. Garage Sale. How the HELL can she not see that she ISN'T helping Reese's moral, and is just showing so much favourtism for him over Malcolm and Dewey. I don't blame Reese AT ALL for what happened in that episode, it was all awful parenting by Lois. Reese sells Dewey's piggybank for way too cheap, it had money IN IT, and when Dewey gives this perfectly valid argument to Lois, she claims he's "as bad as Malcolm", then continues to heap praise on Reese, whilst telling Dewey she literally doesn't want to hear another sound out of him. Disgraceful.

In the episode when Reese's teacher is out to get him, she forces Malcolm to tutor Reese. Awful. Awful for everybody involved. It undermines Reeses' moral, because his younger brother is teaching him, it makes Malcolm miserable because he has to spend hours of his own time doing something he doesn't want to do, and, although we find out Reese's teacher IS out to get him, for a long while it wasn't helping Reese's grades at all. And AGAIN in that episode, Lois says she would make Malcolm suffer through years in a remedial class, just so Reese could have a minor head-start. Again, not Reese's fault, just poor parenting by Lois.

Then there's the final episode. She forces Reese out of the house. I mean, what the hell? I don't care if he's 19 now, you don't force your own children out of the house. She didn't in any way encourage Reese to persue a career in his obvious talent, cooking, and just seemed content to get rid of him, and force him to move in with Craig. That was the worst parenting of all IMO.

So, Francis got shipped out at 16, Malcolm goes to College at 18, where Lois states the plan is for him to suffer for a long time (which doesn't NEED to happen), Reese gets booted out at 19. I just feel sorry for Dewey, Jamie and the baby to be. Will any of them recieve any better parenting from Lois? I doubt it.

So, in my honest opinion, Lois is an awful parent. Simple.
 

LoisLover

New member
I totally disagree with your opinion on Lois. She was not an awful parent, she did the things that worked for her family.

As far as the Francis thing, she gave him plenty of chances to prove himself and he failed at it every time. She and Hal were unable to provide the discipline that he needed, but I do agree that they probably gave up on him too easily. At the time she was too overwhelmed with Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey.

In the Garage Sale episode, she gave Reese some responsibility to see if he could handle it. She didn't want Malcolm and Dewey intervening with her plan. She ultimately knew that he couldn't handle it, but she wanted to see if he would surprise her.

When Reese was failing history, she made Malcolm help him because he excelled at it. A lot of parents make their other children help the ones that are struggling. It wasn't quite fair to Malcolm, she basically demanded that he help Reese. She should of orchestriated some sort of deal with Malcolm in order for him to help Reese.

I totally understand why she forced Reese out. He was 19 and he needed to be out on his own to learn some responsibility. He had already spent an extra year at high school being a "Super Senior". A lot of parents expect their kids to leave their house after they graduate from high school because they are adults and need to experience life on their own.

Lois parenting was sometimes questionable at best, but she ultimately loved her family and did what was best for them. Things might have been different if Hal had been more helpful and shared more of the parental duties with her. What is anyone's opinion on Hal's parenting?
 

Murph

New member
"Overhelmed" is an awful excuse. She chose to have the kids, she better be ready for them. No excuse at all.
Shipping Francis off to Military school was an awful decision, one because it was shipping off your own child, and two, it proved to be a financial drain on the family. BUT HEYZ I GUESS DAT LOIS WAZ JUST DOIN WAT WAZ BEST LULZ.

You agknowledge it was awful parenting in the tutoring episode.

Screw "YOU GOTTA GET OUT AND HAV UR OWN XPERIENCE", Reese clearly isn't ready yet. Give him a few more years. Encourage him to persue his real talents, istead of the bullshit "YOU GOTTA MOVE IN WITH CRAIG".

In the Garage Sale episode, she was an awful parent to Dewey & Malcolm, favouring Reese, there is no excuse there. I'm glad Reese smashed the computer, it showed he doesn't care what Lois thinks of him, he's Reese and there's no changing that. It's her fault for trying to make him something he's not.

As for blaming Hal, that's a fair point, but Hal is the comedic character, and as stated even by the two themselves, Lois handled the discipline, so that's not really a valid excuse at all.

Comeback? :gunbandana:
 

LoisLover

New member
In the grand spirit of Lois, you knew I wasn't going to let you off that easily.

As far as the give Reese a few more years thing, how long did you want Reese to continue to live with them? Until he's 40? They have to cut the cord sometime. He got a job and why would he need to continue to live at home?

Instead of focusing all of the attention on the mistakes she's made, here are a few of the good things that she's done for her family.

-The best decision she ever made was putting Malcolm in the Krelboyne class even though he didn't want to be in it.
-She wanted her boys to be more well-rounded individuals so she signed them up for charity work.
-She travels all the way to Kabul so that she can rescue her son from the Army.
-Again, she comes to the rescue for Reese when he is humiliated by the girls.

I'm not stating that Lois is the perfect parent, she has made quite a few mistakes along the way, but she acknowledges them. A perfect example of this is when she and Hal go and see a therapist over their parenting skills and were willing to try "active listening".

On her birthday, her sons spend the money that she gave them to buy her a present on themselves. All she wants is a little human consideration.

Francis even states that sometimes Mom's right. Reese admits that we are the worst kids in the world and Dewey agrees with Reese by saying we really are evil little trolls who have absolutely no consideration for anyone but ourselves and destroy everything that we come in contact with and we're lucky if we don't end up in prison or dead.

Lois didn't have the best example of good parenting growing up. Her Mom is a horrible, horrible woman and the man she thought was her dad cheated on her mom for years and had a second family.

Lois is a good parent who had children that were very difficult to handle. They didn't have a lot of money, but they did what they could. There was no nanny to help her out, she had to do everything herself and considering the circumstances she did a great job.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
I really appreciate this thread because it made for entertaining reading and good debate. You're both doing an excellent job presenting your cases. So let me throw my wood on the fire.

First off, Lois didn't choose to have children. I'm not saying that she is suddenly exonerated from all the cruel things that she's done or that she couldn't have taken greater precautions to prevent children. I am simply saying that it's not like she spent three years trying to get pregnant; every kid was an accident.

Secondly, I agree that her parents were poor examples. We see that she is a much better parent to her kids than Ida and Victor were to her. Francis and Piama plus all the other kids will also learn from Lois' mistakes and be better parents themselves. Lois was a spoiling more loving (if you will) parent when Francis was first born. But what are you to do when your toddler starts playing with fire? Everything that Lois does, quite frankly, is to protect her kids. She loves them too much to see them get hurt. Whenever she punishes them, she does it because she is upset because the boys' behavior somehow endangered their lives.
 

Gouki

New member
"I love you, and I will do anything to protect you and keep you safe, you might grow up hating me but thats fine, as long as you're safe."

Lois says this, and she means it. It shows. I mean, we pretty much had this thread last month. Is cross posting okay? I really can't be bothered writing up the same argument again, and again.
 

Murph

New member
Dewey agrees with Reese by saying we really are evil little trolls who have absolutely no consideration for anyone but ourselves and destroy everything that we come in contact with and we're lucky if we don't end up in prison or dead.

Oh come on, that was clearly put into Dewey's head by Lois, no 9-10 year old boy comes out with that sort of thing by himself.

As for waiting for the ambilical cord to be cut, there's nothing to say Reese would stay until he's 40. He could have moved out at age 20, 21, 22 etc., and probably would have wanted to get away eventually, anyway.

Ida & Victor; did they have it hard? Hell yeah. And they probably weren't the greatest parents to Lois, but they could use the Francis argument. They don't care if Lois hates her, they raised her, and seeminlgy well if she's as good a parent as some think she is. They raised Lois, and she has a steady job and family. Not bad parenting by Victor & Ida, if it's put that way. PLUS, they could easily say Lois was "a troublesome kid", as she's clearly a control freak.

In Garage Sale, Lois shows favourtism to Reese. Come on, it's blatant. Victor & Ida favoured Lois' sister. Can't Lois see she's doing the exact same thing?

Gouki, writing the same argument "again and again", you haven't even wrote it for a second time, it's not as if every few days you have to painfully drag yourself to write up the argument, this is the second time EVER. (If even...)
 

MalcolmFun

New member
I'm constantly amazed at the people that think Lois is an awful parent and this is a "dysfunctional" family as was even stated in promotional materials and critics reviews. Lois absoutly has her flaws as a person but not disciplining and taking care of her family is not one of them. It is clear that taking care of her family is the number 1 motivator for everything she does in her life. Does anyone even doubt the line she says about "My family would be naked living in trees eating berries if it wasnt for me" Is that much of an exaggeration? Everything we know about them suggests not really lol.

This example about the Garage sale is interesting. Typically the complaint is Lois is a hard ass who isnt nurturing enough. In this example she is specifically and on purpose doing exactly the opposite, being supportive and encouraging and even following the politically correct child raising nonsense that ignoring errors that should be corrected in order to help Reese's self esteem. This is a paradox of a flawed argument when you try to use it as evidence against Lois's behavior since she was trying something different (she even announced it!). It shows specifically that Lois not using hard discipline tends to cause chaos.

As to Malcolm in that situation, arguments she was damaging his ego to help Reese are not fair since he was smart enough to understand exactly what she was doing and specifically came up with a plan to undermine her! Despite the fact that he was the one who was "right", Malcolm, not Lois, is really the villian in this episode in much the same way he is the villian again later in Ida's dance when he makes Dewey go deaf. (Much like Reese) he will torpedo other people, he just has to do it less often then Reese since he is ussually on top anyway.
 

Gouki

New member
Oh come on, that was clearly put into Dewey's head by Lois, no 9-10 year old boy comes out with that sort of thing by himself.

Don't be so sure. You're underselling a lot of kids. They're not as dumb as people think.
 

Amigo22

Super Moderator
Murph is right. Would you want Lois to be your own mother? Like Sam said, every kid was an accident - and Lois was pregnant with Francis before she and Hal were even married. It was clear that neither Hal nor Lois knew much about parenting. Look at the examples in "Flashback". Francis playing with lighter fluid - what was lighter fluid doing within his reach? Same with Hal's camera, and was it his record album? that Francis broke. None of those were Francis's fault - the problem was that the house wasn't toddler-proofed.

Nor was it when Jamie came along. He had full run of the house, when he shouldn't have. He could climb into the crawlspace by himself, and nobody would know where he was. He was even wandering around outside all by himself in the dark in "Blackout".

Francis, I think his problem was the guys he hung out with. Riche for example, was living in the basment with total freedom at age 16. All 4 of them were into partying, drinking (hence Lois marking the liquor bottles in "Home Alone 4", smoking, and the list probably goes on. Had he not hung out with those guys, he may not have been that way.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
Lois says this, and she means it. It shows. I mean, we pretty much had this thread last month. Is cross posting okay? I really can't be bothered writing up the same argument again, and again.
Usually we allow it but merge the two threads so it's not necessary re-post the same arguements. But in this case I didn't catch it because unfortunately I didn't remember it. I still don't. :D If you can find me the URL of the other thread I can throw them together. Thanks!

Murph said:
there's nothing to say Reese would stay until he's 40. He could have moved out at age 20, 21, 22 etc., and probably would have wanted to get away eventually, anyway.

And what's to say he wouldn't?
 
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Murph

New member
He has ambitions and goals. I couldn't see him staying for more than 3 years. Also, there's probably only so much of Lois' awful parenting you can take before leaving :2guns:
 

Alle

New member
Lois' flaws may be palpable, but then its easier judging her parenting skills from an armchair isn't it?!

Reese is obviously one of those people that needs a good kick up the arse to move his life forward. And while we're still on the subject of "awful parenting", if you saw Reese's reaction at the prospect of moving in with Craig in "Graduation", then you would know how slightly reluctant he seemed with that future. Believe, it was entirely a Lois decision, with Craig's ready agreement, that Reese would move out that year. Reese would still be living with his family if someone didn't come to a decision.
 

Evil King

F.A.Q Freak
No. I really don't think she was an awful parent. Every member in the family had their flaws, and one of Lois' main flaws was the fact that she was too strict and took things too far. The sitcom would not have worked if Lois didn't have those flaws and it doesn't mean she is an awful parent either. You could look at Hal and say he's an awful parent too because he is crazy and doesn't set a good example to his children (also being too lenient). Lois and Hal are complete opposites and in the end it kind of balances out.

We see the problems that Lois has gone through and is still going through and like people have said before, Francis was Lois' first child, of course he would hate her because she was completely inexperienced and had her flaws.

Even though we see how strict she is to Malcolm, Reese and Dewey. In the end, they are grateful for her and love her. Like we see in the episode "Lois' Birthday" and the last few episodes in Season 7.

We also see that she tries her best and is sick and tired of being the person who always says "No" (like we see in the episode "Hot Tub").

I think that she is a good parent who does things differently and has her flaws.

Oh and also, I don't like the fact that people bring out examples such as Jamie Crawling around going anywhere shows they are bad parents.

Of course it will, but why? Because it's a Sitcom, Situation Comedy, without events like those, it wouldn't be funny, and sometimes, it is part of the Storyline, without those things happening, it simply wouldn't work.

If Lois was the "perfect mother", how much flexibility would that have given to the writers? What about if she was the "worst mother", again, how much flexibility would they have to write an episode? There are so many clichéd positions for mothers, the fat, drunk, non-caring mother is one of them, the perfect, in control mother is another.

Lois was neither, she tried to be in control but we know she wasn't always because the house was full of crazy people with behaviour problems.

If she was simply the "worst mother", I really do not think there would have been so many mixed issues about her.

I stand by my point saying she was a good mother (not perfect) who always tried her best but since she is human she has flaws.
 
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Somnilocus

New member
We also see that she tries her best and is sick and tired of being the person who always says "No" (like we see in the episode "Hot Tub".

I agree - she took on that role out of necessity. Just like in the flashback with her and Francis - she was a kind of loving mother until she realized they needed discipline and was willing to do anything out of her love for them, even if it meant them hating her, to ensure that they were safe.

As for waiting for the ambilical cord to be cut, there's nothing to say Reese would stay until he's 40. He could have moved out at age 20, 21, 22 etc., and probably would have wanted to get away eventually, anyway.

Reese was intentionally being manipulative so that he could live with his parents and not have to get a job. In fact, in Secret Boyfriend, Reese decided he WANTED to move out and get a job, so by the time he actually did, it's what they both wanted.

Anyway, I believe she was a good parent. She wasn't perfect, but no one is and certainly none of the characters were.

The Francis thing was presented in a few ways on the show: in some episodes, Lois disliked Francis from the start, as she felt he didn't need her, and this is where her treatment of him stemmed from; whereas in other episodes, she was a good mother (in Francis' words) and only became the way she was later out of necessity to keep the boys safe. Either way, it was made apparent that Francis liked to cause trouble (Lois threatened him with military school if he got his nose pierced, so he chose to come home with numerous nose piercings; at one point he admits to himself that "mom was right; I do get some sick thrill out of trouble") and intentionally did things despite being told it would result in him being sent off.

Frankly, no one is going to agree on parenting in general, and everyone's going to feel a certain way no matter how well you argue your point. I don't agree with sending a kid to military school, but I don't think it makes her a bad parent. I think it's apparent that her intentions were good. Ultimately, it was a sitcom, and the situations happened for the sake of the storyline, and weren't always true to canon.

It's interesting to note that Jane refused to voice Lois on the MoM clip on Family Guy because she "wished to portray that character as likable, and does not wish to jeopardize that."
 

KelEl

New member
I thought I would bump this thread back up, just because I have some things I want to add.

I'm on the side where I don't think Lois is a horrible mother. Granted, this is a sitcom and everything that happened it was for humor, so having the crazy, laid-back Hal, and then having the strict Lois on the other end evened out. But, Lois had to be the way she was because she had to keep her kids from getting hurt.

First things first -- Lois didn't have good examples of parents. Ida was well...Ida, and Victor had another family on the side, and they both favored Susan and were mean to Lois growing up, and forced her to do things she didn't want to do. So Lois learned from what she didn't like from her parents, and tried to apply it to her parenting.

And about the favoring Reese thing: I think if she favors any kid, it's Malcolm. In Garage Sell, she tries to give Reese an oppurtunity because she and the rest of the family always think that Reese can't do anything productive to help, so she's trying to give him a chance.
And the point of me saying that she favors Malcolm, I just think the fact that she always "brags" [in a way] that he was in advanced classes and had an I.Q. of 165, but then again, she's proud of him in her own way. Like she said, it's not often that they get a chance to "move up" (or whatever the line was). And she also has more "bonding time" with Malcolm -- working with her, "Mono" and "Softball" (but that could just be because we see things from Malcolm's point of view *shrugs*). Anyway, I think that she favors him, but not too much that it makes it seem like she likes him more than the others.

I can't believe that nobody's brought up the fact that she had Francis live with Ida for 6 months. I thought that would make her a huge target for insults. But anyway, I don't think that's bad parenting either...good actually. She made sure that Francis got to be looked after while her and Hal tended to Reese. Instead, Francis probably would have reaked havic and killed himself by accident. :confused:

I'm sure there's more I could add, but the bottom line is this: from what I see, most of the people that have said on here that Lois is a "bad" mom are younger. The boys didn't like Lois because she made them behave and kept them in line. And at some point, I think that everyone doesn't like their mom. I personally am not a mom, but I understand how they feel. Lois is the way she is because she has to be. And for the people that said "how much of Lois's awful parenting could you take before you wanted to leaving?" and "would you want Lois as your mother?" how about the flipside?

Would you want Francis, Reese, Malcolm, Dewey or Jamie as your child?

I don't think I would.
 

soche

New member
Murph is right. Would you want Lois to be your own mother?

Yes, I would. Lois put up with a lot. I <3 the kids, but they could drive any mother crazy. Remember in Home Alone 4, when they flashed back to all the incidents they had with the hospital? If I, as a teenager was stupid enough to throw a knife up in the air and then stare at it as it came flying down...my mom would end up in the looney bin from stress. I'd give her a trophy just for not jumping through the window. And Lois had to take the mean role. Hal couldn't handle being the bad cop of the family - he's too much of a sweetie. If it weren't for Lois, the boys would be doing whatever they wanted. Francis needed to go to military school. Period. He never listened to his parents and when he came out of ms, he was a better person. Remember when he fired the fake cowboy when working for Otto? Before that school, he would have played along and exploited those people.

Being a good parent isn't just about being nice, or giving your kids a million chances until eventually they are 45, jobless, spouse less, and living at home. That's called spoiling your kids.

Besides, despite how harsh she was, her kids loved her. In family reunion, we saw how even Francis was angered by how she was being treated. They marched out to defend her, even knowing it would probably ruin their chances of getting their hands on the inheritance.
 
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